Hallaig

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Hallaig is a major poem by Sorley MacLean. It was originally written in Scots Gaelic and has also been translated into both English and Lowland Scots. A recent translation was made by Seamus Heaney, an Irish Nobel Prize winner.

The poem is named after a deserted township located on the south-eastern corner of the Hebridean island of Raasay, the poet's birthplace. It is a reflection on the nature of time and the historical impact of the Highland Clearances, leaving an empty landscape populated only by the ghosts of the evicted and those forced to emigrate.

The poem is notable also for its nature imagery, harking back to Duncan Ban MacIntyre's Ben Doran, in its references to the woodlands, and deer.

Hallaig forms part of the lyrics of The Jacobite Rising, an opera by Peter Maxwell-Davies, and can be heard as part of the song "Hallaig" on Martyn Bennett's album Bothy Culture.