The decade 1970 to 1980 saw a significant extension in public awareness of the poetry of Sorley MacLean. The publication in 1970 of Four Points of a Saltire, containing poetry by Sorley MacLean, George Campbell Hay, William Neill and Stuart MacGregor, was an important milestone, since it made available in book form (for the first time since 1943) a substantial part of his work. On its publication, Tom Scott, the writer and critic, wrote: ‘That

Sorley MacLean is a great poet in the Gaelic tradition, a man not merely for time, but for eternity, I have no doubt whatever …’ In the same year, a special issue of Lines Review was devoted to the poet’s work.

The following year, another influential publication appeared: Iain Crichton Smith’s English translations of ‘Dàin do Eimhir’ as Poems to Eimhir, which made the poems widely available to non-Gaelic speaking audiences. At the start of this decade, as retirement approached in 1972, Sorley MacLean had more time for himself. In 1970, he recorded (on 22 February) the first formal discussion of his work in conversation in Aberdeen with Iain Crichton Smith, John MacInnes, Hamish Henderson and Donald MacAulay.

In the same year, an article on his work following a lecture he had given in Thurso in May 1970 on ‘Some of my own Work’ was published in Scotia. The year 1973 brought the first published recording of Sorley MacLean reading his own work by Claddagh Records, followed two years later by ‘An Evening with the Heretics’ issued by Heritage Records.

When Seamus Heaney heard him reading his poetry for the first time, he was struck by the ‘sense of bardic dignity that was entirely without self parade, but was instead the effect of a proud self-abnegation, as much a submission as a claim to heritage’.

On retirement in August 1972, Sorley MacLean and his wife left Plockton after sixteen years to move to his great grandmother’s house at Peinnachorrain in Braes on Skye. He continued to write poetry throughout this decade, the most significant of which are the long poems ‘Uamha ‘n Òir’ and ‘Screapadal’. From the early 1970s, the volume of critical assessment of Sorley MacLean’s work increased, and the number of articles about his work were published by Iain Crichton Smith and John MacInnes. In an article in 1973 Iain Crichton Smith describes his poetry as the ‘work of an imagination, which is both revolutionary and scholarly, avant garde and traditional, local and universal’.

	The major publication of the decade was Reothairt is Contraigh, the poet’s own selection of his work over the period 1932 to 1972, published in 1977 by Canongate, the Edinburgh publisher. The volume contained two new poems ‘Dol an Iar’ and ‘Soluis’, and included the poet’s own line-by-line English translations. Reothairt is Contraigh received enthusiastic reviews on publication, and in his review in The Scotsman, Dr John MacInnes referred to ‘the harvest of his genius’.

As his work received more national and international acclaim, Sorley MacLean was in ever-increasing demand to read his poetry at poetry festivals and conferences both at home and abroad, and in this decade he travelled extensively, among many others, to Rotterdam, Baddeck Cape Breton and Berlin.

Between 1973 and 1975 the poet spent two fruitful years as Creative Writer in Residence at Edinburgh University, and from 1975 to 1976 he was Filidh at the fledgling Gaelic College on Skye, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig.

In a letter written on 23 January 1977, the year before he died, Hugh MacDiarmid had written to Sorley MacLean: ‘There is, I think, no doubt about you and I being the two best poets in Scotland… By definition, every good poet has something that is sui generis – something that is his alone and couldn’t be done by anyone else’.20 In February 1977, Sorley MacLean visited his friend, Hugh MacDiarmid, by then in failing health, at his home at Brownsback, near Biggar. After MacDiarmid’s death, on 9 September 1978, he wrote a moving obituary for him, ‘Lament for the Makar’.

This decade also saw increasing recognition of Sorley MacLean’s achievements. He was awarded honorary degrees (University of Dundee 1972), National University of Ireland (1979) and University of Edinburgh (1980).