Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: What years did Sorley MacLean live?
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]
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]
Between the years of 1956 and 1972 Plockton was home to the renowned Gaelic scholar Sorley MacLean (Somhairle MacGill-Eain) whilst headmaster at the high-school, who introduced the teaching of Gaelic and championed shinty.
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. 
MacDiarmid wrote a number of non-fiction prose works, including "Scottish Eccentrics" and his autobiography "Lucky Poet". He also did a number of translations from Scottish Gaelic, including Duncan Ban MacIntyre's "Praise of Ben Dorain", which were well received by native speakers including Sorley MacLean.
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]
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
In 1985 James Kelman edited his ‘’Writers For Miners’’ project in Sirocco. It was a live recording made by Sorley in The Third Eye Centre in Glasgow of Scotland’s prominent poets and novelists at the time. The same year Dick Gaughan, also in support of the miners, made the ‘’True & Bold’’ album at the studio for the S.T.U.C. which Sorley co-produced.
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.
In 1977, Canongate Books published Reothairt is Contraigh: Taghadh de Dhàin 1932-72 (English: Spring tide and Neap tide: Selected Poems 1932-72). MacLean changed the ordering of the poems in Dàin do Eimhir, altering many poems and omitting others. In the original version of An Cuilthionn, MacLean had called upon the Red Army to liberate Scotland.[lower-roman 20] This passage was expunged, among other alterations and omissions that led the Scottish Poetry Library to describe the 1977 version as having been "bowdlerized". MacLean said that he would only consent to publishing the parts of his older work that he found "tolerable".[2] The critical acclaim and fame that MacLean achieved was almost entirely from critics that did not understand his poetry in the original Gaelic.[36]:172 In 1989, a further compilation of his poetry, O Choille gu Bearradh / From Wood to Ridge: Collected Poems in Gaelic and English won him lasting critical acclaim. Complete annotated editions of his work have since been published.[2]
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]
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.
In 2011, the ASLS's edition of Sorley MacLean's "An Cuilithionn/The Cuillin" was shortlisted for the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year award.
MacLean once said that various Communist figures meant more to him than any poet, writing in a letter to Douglas Young in 1941 that "Lenin, Stalin and Dimitroff now mean more to me than Prometheus and Shelley did in my teens".[21]:4 Other left-wing figures that inspired MacLean included James Connolly, an Irish trade union leader executed for leading the Easter Rising; John Maclean, Scottish socialist and pacifist;[lower-roman 12] and John Cornford, Julian Bell, and Federico García Lorca, who were killed by the Francoist regime during the Spanish Civil War.[21]:4 Many of these figures were not Gaels, and some critics have noted MacLean's unusual generosity to non-Gaelic people in his work.[8]:34 Perhaps the one uniting theme in his work is MacLean's anti-elitism and focus on social justice.[8]:37
“I have no doubts that Angus Peter Campbell is one of the few really significant living poets in Scotland, writing in any language.” Sorley MacLean (West Highland Free Press, October 1992)
"Symbols of Survival The Art of Will Maclean", Duncan Macmillan, Forward Sorley Maclean, Mainstream, 1992 and 2002
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
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
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
MacLean talked extensively about the poem in Timothy Neat's documentary for RTÉ, "Hallaig: the Poetry and Landscape of Sorley MacLean" in 1984.
MacLean's many friends and visitors commented on his prodigious knowledge and deep interest in genealogy and local history.[29][18] He continued to participate in left-wing politics, eventually joining the Scottish Labour Party.[18] During his later years, he published few poems due to his "concern with quality and authenticity over quantity";[29][27] his family responsibilities and career left him little spare time to write.[21]:5 MacLean said that he had burned his poetry instead of publishing it because of his "long years of grinding school-teaching and [his] addiction to an impossible lyric ideal".[20][2]
From the early 1970s, MacLean was in demand internationally as a reader of his own poetry. He would start a reading of a poem by describing the images, then read the poem first in Gaelic and again in English, emphasizing that the translations were not to be read as poems in of themselves.[36]:72 His readings were described as deeply moving even by listeners who did not speak Gaelic;[8]:17 according to Seamus Heaney, "MacLean's voice had a certain bardic weirdness that sounded both stricken and enraptured".[43] Gaelic poet George Campbell Hay wrote in a review that MacLean "is gifted with what the Welsh call Hwyl, the power of elevated declamation, and his declamation is full of feeling."[16]:1 These readings helped establish his international reputation as a poet.[8]:30 MacLean's poetry was also translated into German, and he was invited to poetry readings in Germany and Austria.[36]:255
on Hallaig and MacLean's writing. full-length documentary at the Scottish Screen Archive. .
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. 
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.