Songs, by The Ettrick Shepherd

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Songs, By the Ettrick Shepherd is a collection of 113 songs by James Hogg published in 1831. All except one of the songs had previously appeared in print, mostly either in Hogg's earlier publications or in a range of periodicals.

Contents

Background

During the 1820s songs by Hogg had appeared in a number of periodicals, most notably in the Noctes Ambrosianae series in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine . In April 1830 Hogg announced to William Blackwood that he was selecting the best of these songs for a 'pocket volume'. [1] In the event the choice was not limited to the previous decade: Hogg assembled songs from throughout his career, so that the volume offers a comprehensive survey of his work in the field. He was closely involved with the production of the volume between October and December, adjusting the contents and correcting the proofs, although his nephew Robert played a minor part in the process. [2] In preparing the volume, Hogg provided most of the songs with short explanatory headnotes. The contents are presented as a miscellany rather than with any formal categorisation. [3]

Editions

Songs, by The Ettrick Shepherd. Now first collected, published by William Blackwood in Edinburgh and T[homas] Cadell in London, appeared at the beginning of January 1831. The print run was 1500. [4]

A critical edition, by Kirsteen McCue with Janette Currie, appeared in 2014 as Volume 28 in the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of The Collected Works of James Hogg, published by Edinburgh University Press.

Reception

The reviewers gave the volume an overwhelmingly favourable reception. Hogg was seen as a worthy successor of Burns, and the headnotes were found entertaining and informative. The final sentence of the review in The Literary Gazette may be regarded as representative of the general verdict: 'This volume will greatly raise the poet in the estimation of England, which is too apt to mistake him for a Noctesian roisterer, and, though an imaginative, a sometimes coarse prose writer.' [5]

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The Pilgrims of the Sun is a narrative poem by James Hogg, first published in December 1814, dated 1815. It consists of four cantos, totalling somewhat less than 2000 lines. In similar vein to 'Kilmeny' in The Queen's Wake (1813), it tells of a young woman's journey to an ideal world and her return to earth.

Winter Evening Tales is a collection by James Hogg of four novellas, a number of short stories and sketches, and three poems, published in two volumes in 1820. Eleven of the items are reprinted, with varying degrees of revision, from Hogg's periodical The Spy (1810‒11).

A Queer Book (1832) is a collections of 26 poems, mostly short narratives, by James Hogg, all but two of which had been previously published, more than half of them in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.

Altrive Tales (1832) by James Hogg is the only volume to have been published of a projected twelve-volume set with that title bringing together his collected prose fiction. It consists of an updated autobiographical memoir, a new novella, and two reprinted short stories.

Tales of the Wars of Montrose is a set of six fictional narratives by James Hogg published in 1835. Each of them centres on the fortunes of an individual during the civil conflict of the 1640s in Scotland.

The Shepherd's Calendar (1829) is a collection by James Hogg of 21 articles, most of which had appeared in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine since 1819. They are set in, or deal with aspects of, the Scottish Borders, in particular Hogg's native Ettrick Forest.

A Series of Lay Sermons is a set of eleven moral and religious discourses by James Hogg published in 1834.

Familiar Anecdotes of Sir Walter Scott, a memoir by James Hogg, was published in New York in 1834.

The Brownie of Bodsbeck (1818) is the first (short) novel by James Hogg. Set in the Scottish Borders in 1685 it presents a sympathetic picture of the persecuted Covenanters and a harsh view of the Royalists led by Clavers (Claverhouse). It draws extensively on local superstitions.

References

  1. ↑ The Collected Letters of James Hogg: Volume 2 1820‒1831, ed. Gillian Hughes (Edinburgh, 2006), 380: Hogg to William Blackwood, 11 April 1830.
  2. ↑ Songs, by The Ettrick Shepherd, ed. Kirsteen McCue with Janette Currie (Edinburgh, 2014), xxi‒xxiii.
  3. ↑ Ibid., xxiv‒xxv.
  4. ↑ James Hogg, A Queer Book, ed. P. D Garside (Edinburgh, 1995), xxi.
  5. ↑ The Literary Gazette, 1 January 1831, 5‒6 (6).
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