# Transcript

IAIN CRICHTON SMITH
Sorley, I heard you once saying something about that it's very very difficult to translate Gaelic poetry into English.
SORLEY MACLEAN
Well, I think fundamentally, there is the difficulty of the sound, because on the whole, and especially with our Skye dialect, there is a tendency for the vowel to be longer than it is in English, and therefore even the assonances stand out more than vowel assonances would do in, in English. Of course there is another syntactical difference, because I think Gaelic is wonderfully good at expressing degrees and places of emphasis with the use of natural inversions, and particles, than English is nowadays at any rate. I think that is a big difficulty, besides, of course so much Gaelic poetry is outside the main European traditions. I try myself to be as literal as possible, I mean, logically, but of course, the sound is awfully difficult.
IAIN CRICHTON SMITH
Yes, I suppose that is what we have to remember about poetry, that you are translating not just words, but complete units of sound and words.
SORLEY MACLEAN
I think if you're doing a line by line translation, it is very desirable to have, you know, approximately the same number of syllables in a line, but that is terribly difficult.
IAIN CRICHTON SMITH
And since there is such a lot of assonance in Gaelic, there is a lot of music which English really cannot get at, and it sounds natural in Gaelic doesn't it? Assonance actually sounds more natural sometimes in Gaelic than in English.
SORLEY MACLEAN
Yes, mind you, it's very often inevitable in Gaelic, because there are so many fewer vowels than consonants.
IAIN CRICHTON SMITH
That's right, that's right, yes, yes, yes.
And therefore it is at once more natural, I think, and stands out more too, because of the relative length of the vowel.
SORLEY MACLEAN
CEANN LOCH AOINEART
Comhlan bheanntan, stoiteachd bheanntan, corr-lios bheanntan fasmhor, cruinneachadh mhullaichean, thulaichean, shleibhtean, tighinn 'sa' bheucadch ghabhaidh.
Elrigh ghleanntan, choireachan udlaidh, laighe 'S a'bhuirich chracaich; sineadh chluaineagan, shuaineagan srulach, briodal's an dubhlachd arsaidh.
Eachdraidh bheanntan, marcachd mhullaichean, deann-ruith shruthanach cathair, sleamhnachd leacannan, seangachd chreachainnean, strannraich leacanach ard-bheann.
Onfhadh-chrois mhullaichean, confhadh-shlios thulaichean, monmhar luim thurraidean marsail, gorm-shliosan Mhosgaraidh, storim-shliosan mosganach, borb-bhiodan mhonaidhean arda.
SIMON MACKENZIE
KINLOCH AINORT
A company of mountains, an upthrust of mountains a great garth of growing mountains a concourse of summits, of knolls, of hills coming on with a fearsome roaring.
A rising of glens, of gloomy corries, a lying down in the antlered bellowing; a stretching of green nooks, of brook mazes, prattling in the age-old mid-winter.
A cavalry of mountains, horse-riding summits, a streaming headlong haste of foam, a slipperiness of smooth flat rocks, small-bellied bare-summits, flat-rocks snoring of high mountains.
A surge-belt of hill-tops, impetuous thigh of peaks, the murmuring bareness of marching turrets, green flanks of Mosgary, crumbling storm-flanks, barbarous pinnacles of high moorlands.
IAIN CRICHTON SMITH
Well, I suppose, even someone who doesn't know any Gaelic would notice that – in reading the Gaelic version – that there are all these similar sounds like "mhullaichean", "thulaichean", and "chluaineagan", and "shuaineagan" and so on. This gathering together of lots of adjectives and lots of nouns and so on, this is something that we find traditionally in Gaelic, isn't it, certainly in earlier Gaelic?
SORLEY MACLEAN
This poem is fundamentally semi-surrealist, with a confusion of the senses. I mean, in the sense of that things heard, things seen in terms of things heard, and vice versa, and there is also the fact that it is on a day of wind and rain and swirling mists, where mountains – tops – appear and disappear, and seem to move. Now in this poem, I've been asked again and again by Gaels where on earth the rhythm came from, and I think myself that the rhythm is, in spite of the great number of assonances and all that, that the rhythm is fundamentally original, and by the way, there is a bigger congregation of nouns than of adjectives.
IAIN CRICHTON SMITH
Yes. I suppose really that the closest you might get to something like this in English would be, maybe some of the poems of Hopkins, where he draws from the Welsh. I think sometimes he has a series of nouns or a series of adjectives and so on.
SORLEY MACLEAN
Douglas Young always used to tell me that there's an awful lot of sprung rhythm in my verse. But I didn't agree with him, however it may be something like that.
IAIN CRICHTON SMITH
I notice also that in this particular poem, and I've noticed also in some of your other nature poems, that you've got quite a lot of comparison of mountains and so on to women, especially a kind of sexual mountains, like "impetuous thigh of peaks".
SORLEY MACLEAN
I wouldn't quite agree that it's here. You see I think there, you see, it was more the suggestion of the horse rider there, you see.
IAIN CRICHTON SMITH
Oh yes.
SORLEY MACLEAN
I think. You see you have to say a word for "seangachd", "small-belliedness", you see that word "seang" in Gaelic, you know, is often used of a horse, the small belly of a horse, and it's a terribly difficult word to get an equivalent in English …
IAIN CRICHTON SMITH
Yes, yes, yes. Because it's specialised …
SORLEY MACLEAN
… You see this word seang, the adjective "seangachd", small-bellied, and it's used more of horses than of human beings, although it can be used of human beings too, and of course, it's a word that expresses great approbation.