Aonghas MacNeacail, who has died aged 80, was a significant literary presence in Scotland over five decades, best known for writing in his native Gaelic – although he was resistant to being labelled exclusively a “Gaelic poet”.
He wrote with equal power in English, and his Gaelic identification stemmed not only from his poetic output but also from a public commitment to the language, signalled by the legal adoption in the late 1970s of the Gaelic form of his name at birth, Angus Nicolson. “Scotland has a curious relationship with its Gaelic poets,” he said. “It likes the fact that we’re there, so long as it doesn’t have to read us … The rest of the world is more open to what we have to offer.”
