Hamish Henderson, 82; Scottish Poet, Folklorist

Hamish Henderson, 82, award-winning Scottish poet, folklorist and translator who helped found the forerunner of the Edinburgh Fringe arts festival, died Friday in an Edinburgh nursing home of an undisclosed illness.

Henderson won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1949 for his “Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica,” which chronicled his experiences as an intelligence officer in North Africa in World War II. He served with the 51st Highland Division, was commissioned in 1941 and served in the west African desert, Sicily and Italy.

Before the war, Henderson completed a degree in modern languages at Cambridge University and worked as a courier for a Quaker group that was moving Jews out of Germany.

In 1951, Henderson helped create the first Edinburgh People’s Festival as the companion to the vast Edinburgh International Festival.

The People’s Festival later became known as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.