Recently, my sister-in-law Debbie, bought me a book of Modern Scottish Gaelic Poems as a souvenir from her trip to Wales. It is a bilingual anthology of Scotland’s most acclaimed Gaelic poets. Even though my husband’s family is Scottish (Lowrie), I have not read much about the Gaelic history or language of his homeland. This book of poems was a great introduction to this rich culture and language. I chose works by Sorley Maclean to study as he was engaged with European poetic tradition, so this ties nicely with my quests of France and Germany!

Sorley Maclean’s poem, Glac A’ Bhais (Death Valley), is a tribute to the fallen soldiers of the British Eighth Army at Ruweisat Ridge of July, 1942. At this site, the German Afrika Korps defeated Rommel in a series of engagements known as the Gazala  battles. This set the stage for the battle of El Alamein. [for more details on this battle, visit The National WWII Museum website at this address ]

This poem reminded me of Joel Barlow’s Advice to a Raven in Russia of Napoleon’s 1812 Campaign [see my post]. President James Madison sent Barlow to Russia to persuade Napoleon to sign a peace treaty with the United States-he was too late. His poem describes the carnage he came upon.

 In both poems, Advice and Death Valley, the reader is transported to the battlefield. Carnage is all around. The Russian battlefield is frozen. Barlow witnessed the catastrophic carnage of the war. In his poem, he describes the raven “eating frozen orbs” of the dead and observes that Napoleon’s quest is futile, even describing him as a “monster”. Unfortunately, Barlow died of pneumonia before he was able to learn that Napoleon would ultimately be defeated.

Maclean also witnessed carnage from the battlefield as a soldier. He served in the Royal Corps of Signals and was sent to El Alamein in November 1942. Maclean was wounded in this battle but would live to see the monster in his poem, Hitler, defeated.

In Death Valley, Maclean begins with this notation, “Some Nazi or other has said that the Führer had restored to German manhood the ‘right and joy of dying in battle’” (106).

Death Valley

Sitting dead in Death Valley

Below Rutweisat Ridge

A boy with his forelock down about his cheek

And his face slate-grey.

I thought of the right and the joy

That he got from his Führer,

Of falling in the field of slaughter

To rise no more;

Of the pomp and the fame

That he had, not alone,

Though he was the most piteous to see

In a valley gone to seed

With flies about grey corpses

On a dun sand

Dirty yellow and full of the rubbish

And fragments of battle.

Was the boy of the band

Who abused the Jews

And Communists, or of the greater

Band of those

Led, from the beginning of generations,

Unwillingly to the trial

And mad delirium of every war

For the sake of rulers?

Whatever his desire or mishap,

His innocence or malignity,

He showed no pleasure in his death

Below Ruweisat Ridge.

Works Cited

Nua-Bhardachd Ghaildhlig Modern Scottish Gaelic Poems: A Bilingual Anthology. Edinburgh: Canongate Publishers. 1976