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Afternoon Reading: The Mystery of the Hills

Afternoon Reading: The Mystery of the Hills: Episode 2: The Girl with the Red Hair

The Mystery of the Hills

Episode 2

Episode 2: The Girl with the Red Hair

The Girl with the Red Hair

BBC Radio 4 - Afternoon Reading, The Mystery of the Hills, The Girl with the Red HairSearch BBC

A woman has a mystical experience while walking in Skye's Cuillin mountains.

By Mairi MacLeod: A woman's mystical experience walking in Skye's Cuillin mountains. Tribute to Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean read by Mairi Morrison.

By Mairi MacLeod.


Read by Mairi Morrison.


A young Skye woman, Eilidh, stops for a break during a walk in the Cuillin mountains. In her rucksack she carries a recent gift: the collected poems of Sorley MacLean. As she begins to read, she hears a woman singing and is transported by the sadness in her voice. Who is the stranger; what tragedy has she suffered?


Second in a series of stories specially commissioned to mark the centenary of the birth of the Highland poet Sorley MacLean. A warded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1990, MacLean is regarded as the greatest Gaelic poet of the Twentieth Century, giving new literary standing to a language which has at times seemed close to extinction. 


MacLean was born in October 1911 on Raasay, a small island lying off the east coast of Skye, into a family immersed in Highland history and culture. It is often said that what Hugh MacDiarmid did for Scots, Sorley MacLean did for Gaelic, sparking a Gaelic renaissance in Scottish literature. He was also instrumental in preserving and promoting the teaching of Gaelic in Scottish schools. He died in 1996.


Produced by Kirsteen Cameron.

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Series of stories marking the centenary of the birth of the Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean

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