‘death’s proletariat’ time he got.’ The poem’s conclusion establishes a kinship in grief for this ‘poor
manikin’by echoing the last lines of a formal lament for the Jacobite Alasdair Dubh
MacDonell, the 11th chieftain of Glengarry, written by Cicely MacDonald in 1721:
‘Thug thu ’n diugh gal air mo shuilibh’ (‘You brought tears to my eyes today’). The reference is further complicated, however, by the fact that the 15th chief of Glengarry, also called Alasdair, is remembered as a flamboyant and vain character, swathed in tartan and immortalized in a famous portrait by Raeburn. Proud of his ancestry and touchy about his status, he was not averse to ‘improving’ his estate and clearing his tenants off the land. In either case, MacLean’s chubby Englishman with his ‘ugly high-pitched voice’ is less, and also more, than these romantic icons from a warlike Highland past. The poet’s tone is equally muted in ‘Glac a ́ Bhais’/‘Death
Valley’, thinking of a dead German boy, ‘with his forelock down about his cheek’.
He may have been an abuser of the Jews, but perhaps he was also a member of
that greater band—‘led, from the beginning of generations,|unwillingly to the
trial|and mad delirium of every war|for the sake of rulers?’ In any case, ‘he showed
no pleasure in his death|below the Ruweisat Ridge’.^46
These few poems by Sorley MacLean are among the most memorable of the
desert war. Their matter-of-fact tone is completely different from the passionate
address of ‘The Cuillin’ or ‘Poems to Eimhir’, yet there is emotional and conceptual
complexity here, as the poet negotiates the double-edged references to his own
Gaelic heritage. Thus ‘Latha Foghair’/‘An Autumn Day’ remembers lying all day on
a slope under an artillery bombardment with six dead men:
Ris a’ ghr ́ein ‘s i cho coma,
cho geal craiteach;`
air a’ ghainmhich ’s i cho t`ıorail
socair baidheil;`
agus fo reultan Africa,
’s iad leugachalainn.`
Ghabh aon Taghadh iadsan
’s cha d’ ghabh e mise,
gun fhoighneachd dhinn
cob’fhe ́ arr no bu mhiosa.`
In the sun which was so indifferent,
so white and painful;
onthesandwhichwassocomfortable
easy and kindly;
and under the stars of Africa,
jewelled and beautiful.
One Election took them
and did not take me,(^46) MacLean, ‘Glac a ́ Bhais’/‘Death Valley’, ibid. 211.`