Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: Where was Sorley MacLean born?
Sorley MacLean was born at Òsgaig on the island of Raasay on 26 October 1911; Scottish Gaelic was his first language. Before he went to school at the age of six, he spoke very little English.[5]:23[6]:194 He was the second of five sons born to Malcolm (1880–1951) and Christina MacLean (1886–1974).[7] The family owend a small croft and ran a tailoring business,[8]:16 but they later gave up the croft to move to a better house, which proved detrimental to their finances when the Great Depression took a high toll on the tailoring business.[9]:10 His brothers were John Maclean (1910–1970), a schoolteacher and later rector of Oban High School, who was also a piper;[7][5]:27 Calum Maclean (1915–1960), a noted folklorist and ethnographer; and Alasdair (1918–1999) and Norman (c.1917–c.1980), who became general practitioners. Sorley's two younger sisters, Isobel and Mary, were also schoolteachers.[10][7][11] His patronymic was Somhairle mac Chaluim 'ic Chaluim 'ic Iain 'ic Tharmaid 'ic Iain 'ic Tharmaid; he could not trace his genealogy with certainty to the eighth generation.[1]:211
MacLean's poetry frequently used Gaelic themes and references, such as place names, trees, and sea symbolism. A knowledge of that tradition would bring additional interpretations and appreciation to a reading of MacLean's poetry.[35]:407-8 Another important symbol in his work is the face, which represents romantic love.[42]:63
In the Gaelic-speaking world, MacLean's influence has been pervasive and persistent. Poet Aonghas MacNeacail started writing in English, because "My education gave me to believe that Gaelic literature was dead"; he credited MacLean with convincing him otherwise and inspiring him to write in Gaelic. The Gaelic rock band Runrig once invited MacLean to come onstage for a poetry reading.[48] However, MacLean had less impact on rural Gaelic-speaking communities. Novelist Angus Peter Campbell wrote that he preferred the work of local Uist bards to MacLean, and he believed that other Uist people felt the same.[36]:68 Australian poet Les Murray has acknowledged MacLean's influence on his work.[21]:5
The poet Sorley MacLean was born on Raasay, the setting for his best known poem, "Hallaig". George Orwell wrote much of the novel "1984" whilst living at Barnhill on Jura and J.M. Barrie wrote a screenplay for the 1924 film adaptation of "Peter Pan" whilst on Eilean Shona. Cressida Cowell, the author of "How to Train Your Dragon", spent childhood summers in the Inner Hebrides and has stated that they are "one of the most beautiful places on Earth" and "the kind of place where you expect to see dragons overhead".
MacLean talked extensively about the poem in Timothy Neat's documentary for RTÉ, "Hallaig: the Poetry and Landscape of Sorley MacLean" in 1984.
While acknowledging the literary merit of MacLean's work, Whyte suggested that it was unfortunate that in the 1980s it stood in for all Scottish Gaelic poetry in the Anglophone world. According to Whyte, MacLean's poetry is "comparatively unGaelic, elitist rather than populist, and permeable only with difficulty to the community which uses the language in its day to day existence".[36]:67-68 MacInnes concedes that MacLean does not cater to his readers; however, in his opinion it would be incorrect to call the poetry elitist because of its "artistic sincerity", speaking "with affective directness and a simple passionate intensity".[35]:417 Compounding the difficulty is that the traditional medium of Gaelic poetry is song, and many fluent speakers do not have strong reading skills.[36]:66-7[32]:3 In an effort to make MacLean's work more accessible to Scottish Gaelic speakers, the Sorley MacLean Trust commissioned several musicians[lower-roman 25] to set some of MacLean's poems to music.[54][55][32]:2
He released "Bothy Culture" in 1998 on the Rykodisc label. One composition "Hallaig" takes its name from the poem by the Gaelic bard Sorley MacLean, incorporating a sample of MacLean reading the poem. "Bothy culture" topped the US college radio charts. The album came close to winning a Mercury Music Prize nomination.
Scottish Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean is mostly known for his self-translations into English.
Sorley MacLean (Scottish Gaelic: Somhairle MacGill-Eain;[lower-roman 1][lower-roman 2] 26 October 1911 – 24 November 1996) was a Scottish Gaelic poet, described by the Scottish Poetry Library as "one of the major Scottish poets of the modern era" because of his "mastery of his chosen medium and his engagement with the European poetic tradition and European politics".[2] Nobel Prize Laureate Seamus Heaney credited MacLean with saving Scottish Gaelic poetry.[3]
A film, Hallaig, was made in 1984 by Timothy Neat, including a discussion by MacLean of the dominant influences on his poetry, with commentary by Smith and Heaney, and substantial passages from the poem and other work, along with extracts of Gaelic song.[6]:193 The poem also forms part of the lyrics of Peter Maxwell Davies' opera The Jacobite Rising;[56] and MacLean's own reading of it in English and in Gaelic was sampled by Martyn Bennett in his album Bothy Culture for a track of the same name.[57]
Dàin do Eimhir () is a sequence of sixty poems written in Scottish Gaelic by Sorley MacLean. Considered MacLean's masterpiece, the poems deal with intertwining themes of romantic love, landscape, history, and the Spanish Civil War, and are among the most important works ever written in Gaelic. 
Hugh MacDiarmid wrote a letter to MacLean in 1977, a year before his death, stating that he and MacLean were the best Scottish poets of the twentieth century.[2] MacDiarmid and MacLean influenced each other's work and maintained an extensive correspondence which has been published.[51] Douglas Young wrote that "the best poetry written in our generation in the British Isles has been in Scottish Gaelic, by Sorley MacLean."[52]:229 John MacInnes called him a "magisterial writer" who "[pushed] Gaelic to its limits". He said that it is "truly astonishing" that Gaelic, so long minoritized, could have produced a writer like MacLean, who could not express what he had to say in any other language: "Somhairle MacGill-Eain needed Gaelic, and Gaelic needed Somhairle MacGill-Eain".[35]:417 According to Iain Crichton Smith, translator of MacLean's poetry, Dàin do Eimhir was "the greatest Gaelic book of this century", an assessment with which Christopher Whyte agreed.[36]:67 According to Maoilios Caimbeul, MacLean was the best Scottish Gaelic poet of all time.[32]:1 Smith compared the calibre of MacLean's love poetry to that of Catallus and William Butler Yeats. Nobel Prize Laureate Seamus Heaney said that MacLean had "saved Gaelic poetry... for all time".[3]
A controversy erupted in 2000, when John MacLeod, chief of Clan MacLeod, put the Cullin on the market in order to finance the repair of Dunvegan Castle. His real estate agency, Savills, used excerpts from An Cuilthionn to advertise the property. Many people found this to be an inappropriate use of MacLean's work. Savills apologized unreservedly, which was accepted by Renee MacLean.[58][59]
on Hallaig and MacLean's writing. full-length documentary at the Scottish Screen Archive. .
He also appears in a catalogue of heroes from Kintail in "Time and Sgurr Urain", a poem by Sorley MacLean:
Maclean was born in Òsgaig, Isle of Raasay, Scotland, into a family of five boys and two girls. His father was Malcolm MacLean (1880–1951), who was a tailor. His mother, Kirsty (1886–1974), was the daughter of Sorley Mor Nicolson of Braes, Skye, and his wife, Ishabel. 
"Symbols of Survival The Art of Will Maclean", Duncan Macmillan, Forward Sorley Maclean, Mainstream, 1992 and 2002
Crichton Smith was brought up in a Gaelic-speaking community, learning English as a second language once he attended school. Friend and poet Edwin Morgan notes that unlike his contemporaries (such as Sorley Maclean and Derick Thomson), Crichton Smith was more prolific in English than in Gaelic, perhaps viewing his writing in what, from Crichton Smith's view, was an imposed non-native language as a challenge to English and American poets. However, Crichton Smith also produced much Gaelic poetry and prose, and also translated some of the work of Sorley Maclean from Gaelic to English, as well as some of his own poems originally composed in Gaelic. It should also be noted that much of his English language work is actually directly related to, or translated from, Gaelic equivalents.
MacLean returned to Britain for convalescence in March 1943. He was discharged from Raigmore Hospital in Inverness in August 1943 and released from the army in September.[22][11] In the fall of 1943, he resumed teaching at Boroughmuir, where he met Renee Cameron in 1944.[lower-roman 7] They married on 24 July 1946 in Inverness and had three daughters and six grandchildren. According to friends, their marriage was happy and peaceful, as they complemented each other well, and MacLean "mellowed" with age and family life.[25][26][21]:5 He had never been a member of the Communist Party,[8]:17 and the Soviet occupation of Poland after the war caused MacLean to become disillusioned with the Soviet Union and Stalinism. He retained his socialist world-view and strong belief in social justice.[8]:32[21]:4 During this period, he frequently reviewed poetry and continued to make friends in literary circles, including younger poets such as Iain Crichton Smith and George Mackay Brown.[21]:4 He became particularly close to Sydney Goodsir Smith, who shared a flat with MacLean and his family for more than a year. In 1947 he was promoted to Principal Teacher of English at Boroughmuir, but MacLean wanted to return to the western Highlands.[26]
What MacLean learned of the history of the Gaels, especially of the Clearances, had a significant impact on his worldview and politics.[13]:231 On his mother's side were three noteworthy singers, two pipers, and a village bard.[9]:10 Of especial note was MacLean's paternal grandmother, Mary Matheson, whose family had been evicted from Lochalsh in the 18th century. Until her death in 1923, she lived with the family and taught MacLean many traditional songs from Kintail and Lochalsh, as well as Skye.[10][9]:9-10 As a child, MacLean enjoyed fishing trips with his aunt Peigi, who taught him other songs.[11] Unlike other members of his family, MacLean could not sing, a fact that he connected with his impetus to write poetry.[8]:17[14]
Devlin, Brendan P. (1977) 'On Sorley MacLean' Lines Review 61, June, 5–19. Herdman, John. (1977) 'The Poetry of Sorley MacLean: a non-Gael's view.' Lines Review 61, June, 25–36. Ross, R.J. & J. Hendry (ed.) (1986) Sorley MacLean – Critical Essays Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press Ltd. Caimbeul, Aonghas Pàdraig (ed.). Somhairle – Dàin is Deilbh. A Celebration on the 80th Birthday of Sorley MacLean. Stornoway:Acair, 1991. Thomson, Derick (1994) The Companion to Gaelic Scotland Glasgow: Gairm Publications. Mackay, Peter (2010) Sorley MacLean Aberdeen: AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies. Dymock, Emma (2011) Scotnotes: The Poetry of Sorley Maclean Glasgow: Association of Scottish Literary Studies.
The poet Sorley MacLean was born in Osgaig, a small crofting community on the west coast of the island; perhaps his most famous poem is about "Hallaig", an abandoned community on the east coast. MacLean's writings often combine an ancient traditional awareness, with a modernist political outlook, in which Raasay, and the areas adjacent to it are frequently referenced. But while MacLean's work dwells on the brutality of war, of the Highland Clearances and modern exploitation, he also writes about nature. Thus, although the Clearances leave an empty landscape populated only by the ghosts of those evicted or forced to emigrate, "Time, the deer, is in the Wood of Hallaig".
William Ritchie Sorley was born in Selkirk, Scotland, the son of Anna Ritchie and William Sorley, a Free Church of Scotland minister. He was educated first at Edinburgh University, where he took a degree in philosophy and mathematics. This was followed by New College, Edinburgh where he studied Theology with the intention of training for the church. He gave this up, and after winning the Shaw Fellowship he spent a year at Trinity College, Cambridge where he took Part II of the Moral Sciences Tripos. He subsequently spent several years at Cambridge where he was lecturer and in 1883 he was elected a Fellow at Trinity.
After his retirement in 1972, MacLean moved to his great-grandmother's house at Peinnachorrain in Braes on Skye, with views over the Sound of Raasay, where he entertained frequently.[30][18] Following the English publication of his poetry, he began be in demand internationally for poetry readings, for which he traveled to such places as Rotterdam, Baddeck Cape Breton, and Berlin.[21]:5[31][30] MacLean was writer in residence at the University of Edinburgh from 1973 to 1975,[2][12] where he reportedly kept an open door and warm welcome for aspiring Gaelic poets.[32]:1 Later, he was the first filidh at the recently founded Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, a Gaelic-medium university on Skye, from 1975 to 1976.[2] He was involved in founding the institution and also served on its board.[33] In 1993, his daughter Catrìona died at the age of 41; MacLean and his wife helped to raise her three children. The poet died of natural causes on 24 November 1996, aged 85, at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.[14]
Maclean's four brothers were the famous Gaelic poet and scholar, Sorley MacLean ["Somhairle MacGill-Eain"] (1911–1996), a schoolmaster and classicist, John Maclean (1910–1970), and two general practitioners, Dr. Alasdair Maclean (1918–1999), and Dr. Norman Maclean (c.1917-c.1980). Alasdair was also a historian. Ishabel and Mary, his sisters, were also schoolteachers.