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the land, for the poem goes on to another familiar theme which permeates the culture of the
Highlands – that of loss and unquestionable sadness.
Multitude of springs and fewness of young men
today, yesterday and last night keeping me awake:
the miserable loss of our country’s people
clearing of tenants, exile, exploitation
and the great island is seen with its winding shores
a hoodie-crow squatting on each dun
black soft squinting hoodie-crows
who think themselves all eagles.
The loss which Sorley mourns in this and other poems is at once the people forced to leave their
homes during the notorious Highland Clearances in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries and also the language, Gaelic, which was the language of his poems. At first he wrote in
Gaelic and English but in 1933, when he was twenty-two, he decided to write only in Gaelic and
he destroyed those of his English works that he could lay his hands on.
Gaelic and her cousin tongues are a strong unifying force of the Celtic lands. Their fortunes, in
Scotland, in Ireland, in Wales and also in Brittany, are a barometer of the self-confidence of the
people who call themselves Celts. Since Celtic was a linguistic definition in the first place, this
seems only appropriate.
In Skye, as in many parts of the Highlands, there is a palpable sense of a Gaelic revival, a
renaissance in poetry and music and above all in the language. The steady decline in Gaelic
speakers – it is spoken as a first tongue by only a few thousand people in the Hebrides, most of
them in middle age or beyond – has been halted by the welcome introduction in 1986, after decades
of lobbying, of Gaelic-medium education in primary schools, where all lessons are given in that
language. Most children whose parents have the choice opt for lessons in the Gaelic stream rather
than the English alternative. Now Skye children can go right the way through school being taught in
Gaelic and, in recent years, go on to tertiary education in Gaelic at the world’s first Gaelic College
at Sabhal Mor Ostaig in Sleat on the southernmost of Skye’s many peninsulas. Whether this very
hard-fought initiative will reverse the decline in the language in the long term remains to be seen,
but I have never visited a higher education institute anywhere in the world that is so brimming with
confidence and enthusiasm for its mission in life.
Sabhal Mor kindly allowed me to use their library for my research – a library with what must
be the best view in the world. Sabhal Mor (pronounced Sall More and meaning simply ‘Big Barn’
in Gaelic) is perched on a promontory overlooking the Sound of Sleat; the view takes in the distant
outline of Ardnamurchan and the sands of Morar to the south and up to the hills above Glenelg and
Kyle of Lochalsh to the north. But straight ahead, across 3 miles of blue and wind-blown sea, are
the mountains of Knoydart, yellow and brown in the autumn setting sun. Knoydart, between the
secret lochs of Nevis and Hiourn, was once a prosperous community of twenty-seven crofting
townships and 3,500 people. Now it is empty, save for a cluster of white houses I can see on the
shore at Airor. The Knoydart estate was cleared of people in the 1840s by the landlord, Sir Ranald
McDonnell of Glengarry, to make way for the more profitable sheep. This is an all too familiar