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.
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).
He was a frequent contributor to Gairm magazine, and other Gaelic periodicals. The critic Kurt Wittig suggested Gaelic traits were more evident in his English than his Scots poetry.