Qualla: Hallaig

Hallaig: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vincent van Zeijst, CC BY-SA 4.0. Hallaig is a place and a poem and a wound. The place is a green hollow on the eastern shore of Raasay, the small island between Skye and the Scottish mainland, where ruined stone walls trace the outlines of houses that have stood empty for nearly two hundred years. The poem was written in Edinburgh in 1954 by Sorley MacLean, born on Raasay in 1911, in the Gaelic he spoke at home. It is one of the great elegies in any modern European language. It is about the people who lived in Hallaig before they were forced out, and about the silver birch trees that grew back in their absence, and about how the dead are sometimes more present than the living.

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Image: Vincent van Zeijst | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hallaig: The clearance

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vincent van Zeijst, CC BY-SA 4.0. Between roughly 1852 and 1854, the Macleod laird who owned Raasay evicted the families living on the eastern townships of the island, including Hallaig, Screapadal and Leac. The land was wanted for sheep. The forced removal was part of the Highland Clearances, the long, brutal re...

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Image: Vincent van Zeijst | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hallaig: What the poem does

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Douglas Nelson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Hallaig was first published in the Gaelic literary magazine Gairm in 1954. MacLean wrote it in Edinburgh, where he was working as a teacher, and translated it himself into English. The Gaelic title is simply Hallaig. The opening line, "Tha tim, am fiadh, an coille Hallaig" - "Tim...

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Image: Douglas Nelson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Hallaig: Sorley MacLean

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Jpponcarova at Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0. Somhairle MacGill-Eain, the Gaelic name on his birth certificate, was born at Osgaig on Raasay on 26 October 1911. He spoke Gaelic as his first language. He studied at Edinburgh University and taught school for most of his life, including a long stretch as headmaster of Plockton ...

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Image: The original uploader was Jpponcarova at Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hallaig: The wood today

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Euan Nelson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Hallaig is reached now by a footpath from the road, an hour's walk through bracken and birch. The path ends in the township: low ruined walls in lines, the dykes that once divided fields, the foundations of houses with the doorways still visible. Birches grow inside what used to ...

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Image: Euan Nelson | CC BY-SA 2.0