Place-names in Modern Scottish Gaelic Poetry

Abstract

The significance of place-names in Celtic, especially Irish, literature has been extensively discussed in numerous studies. Though an important feature of older poetry, the usage of geographical names is employed also in contemporary verse, not only in Irish, but also in Scottish Gaelic. The preoccupation with places may be viewed as a broader awareness of the geographical setting, a point extensively discussed by Sorley MacLean (1985) in connection with the consciousness of the presence of the sea in the seventeenth-century Gaelic poetry. Place-names are often used as means of appropriateness of nature, and this is one of their major functions in Gaelic poetry.