The maps of Raasay and of Skye and Lochalsh and the adjacent mainland coastline listed below show a selection of the place names that appear in the poetry of Sorley MacLean (from the 1999 Birlinn/Carcanet edition of the Collected Poems, O Choille gu Bearradh). A small number of additional place names of particular significance to the life and work of the poet from the areas noted above are also included. An alphabetical list of the place names which appear in the O Choille gu Bearradh edition is also provided: please note that this list includes place names which are outside the scope of the two maps.

NOTE: the Gaelic place names appear in the nominative case regardless of the case in which they appeared in the poem, and the articles ‘A’’, ‘Am’ or ‘An’ have been bracketed and the noun that follows governs where the entries appear in the Gaelic alphabetical list. So, for example, the place name ‘An Àirde’ appears on the list as ‘(An) Àirde’, and is listed alphabetically by the first noun. Some small orthographic changes have been made to a number of the place names in Gaelic to mirror modern conventions: for example, Edinburgh appears as Dùn Èideann reflecting modern orthography, rather than Dùn-éideann as it appeared in the 1999 edition of O Choille gu Bearradh; and acute accents have been replaced with grave accents. Please note that place names used in an adjectival sense, and any adjectival derivations of place names are not included on the list. Thus, for example, the use of the adjective ‘Sgitheanach’ meaning ‘of or from Skye’ does not appear under Skye; and the same applies to the use of Skye or other nouns in an adjectival sense in English, such as ‘Skye men’.


Map of Raasay

Map of Skye and Lochalsh

Alphabetical List of Place Names in Gaelic (PDF)

Alphabetical List of Place Names in English (PDF)