Tour Scotland Photograph Hallaig Isle of Raasay

Tour Scotland photograph of Hallaig on Isle of Raasay across from, Isle Of Skye, Scotland. Hallaig was cleared of people during the Highland Clearances, an event made famous by a poem by Sorley Maclean.

Hallaig, by Sorley Maclean.

The window is nailed and boarded
through which I saw the West
and my love is at the Burn of Hallaig,

between Inver and Milk Hollow,
here and there about Baile-chuirn:
she is a birch, a hazel,
a straight, slender young rowan.

In Screapadal of my people
where Norman and Big Hector were,
their daughters and their sons are a wood
going up beside the stream.

Proud tonight the pine cocks
crowing on the top of Cnoc an Ra,
straight their backs in the moonlight -
they are not the wood I love.

I will wait for the birch wood
until it comes up from the cairn,
until the whole ridge from Beinn na Lice
will be under its shade.

if it does not, I will go down to Hallaig,
to the sabbath of the dead,
where the people are frequenting,
every single generation gone.

They are still in Hallaig,
MacLeans and MacLeods,
all who were there in the time of Mac Gille Chaluim
the dead have been seen alive.

The men lying on the green
at the end of the house that was,
the girls a wood of birches,
straight their backs, bent their heads.

Between the Leac and Fearns
the road is under mild moss
and the girls in silent bands
go to Clachan as in the beginning.

and return from Clachan
from Suishnish and the land of the living;
each one young and high-stepping,
without the heartbreak of the tale.

All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.

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