Poetry
Dàin do Eimhir agus Dàin Eile
Sorley MacLean · 1943
Synopsis
A sequence of sixty love poems addressed to a woman who is never named other than by a name borrowed from Irish legend, of which only forty-eight appeared in the collection. While Europe burns, the poet asks himself whether he has the right to love someone rather than go off to fight, and weaves into these verses the landscape of his island, the history of the emptied Highlands and the Spanish Civil War.
Context
The collection appeared in November 1943, while its author was still in the army, and it gave back to his language a modern poetry after three centuries of oral tradition and hymns. Twelve poems of the sequence were withdrawn from it, which the author later asked his publisher to destroy: eleven survived and were published in 2002 in an annotated edition. His own English prose translations were printed at the end of the volume, a choice that fixed for half a century the way of editing Gaelic poetry.
Who it is for
About a hundred pages in Scottish Gaelic, with the author's English translation facing in the standard editions. Nothing in French.
Prizes and reception
The collection that gave modern poetry back to Scottish Gaelic, and the most widely read in that language in the twentieth century.