George Campbell Hay
Scottish poet
George Campbell Hay (1915–1984) was a Scottish Symbolist poet and translator, who wrote in Scottish Gaelic, Scots and English. He used the patronymic Deòrsa Mac Iain Dheòrsa. He also wrote poetry in French, Italian and Norwegian, and translated poetry from many languages into Gaelic.
Life
He was born in Elderslie, Renfrewshire, and brought up in Tarbert, Kintyre and Argyll, where his father, the novelist John MacDougall Hay, had been born. He was educated at Fettes College (which he despised) and the University of Oxford. He served in the British Army in North Africa, Italy and Macedonia during World War II, a region which featured in much of his work and then lived for a long period in Edinburgh where he worked in the National Library of Scotland.
He was a Scottish nationalist. His life was difficult, with long periods of hard living, including hospitalisation and homelessness.
Work
He was a multilingual poet and published three collections between 1947 and 1952: Fuaran slèibh (1947), Wind on Loch Fyne (1948) and O na ceithir àirdean (1952). Some of his poetry was set to music by Francis George Scott.
The public source identifies “George Campbell Hay” as scottish poet. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around George, Campbell and Scottish.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3078573. VIAF identifies the subject as 38719586. The Library of Congress control number is n2001040246. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1915, 1984, 1947 and 1952.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Campbell Hay” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.