James Hogg (1770–1835): The Ettrick Shepherd and the Justified Sinner

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Hogg wrote several versions of his own life story, and he liked a good anecdote, so some colourful details come from him alone. The image of the uneducated rustic genius was partly created by his Edinburgh friends in Blackwood's, and scholars now treat it with care. The Stirling/South Carolina edition of his works, completed in recent decades, restored many texts that had been bowdlerised after his death.

Shepherd of Ettrick

established James Hogg was baptised in Ettrick on 9 December 1770. His father, a tenant farmer, went bankrupt when Hogg was a child, and the boy was sent out to work as a cowherd with only about half a year of formal schooling. He worked as a shepherd through his teens and twenties, most happily at Blackhouse in Yarrow, where his employer's son, William Laidlaw, lent him books. He taught himself to write by copying letters and began composing songs for local gatherings.

established Hogg was proud of his supposed kinship with Robert Burns and claimed to have been born on Burns's birthday, 25 January. His baptism record shows otherwise.

A shepherd among readers

Not as rare as he seemed. established Hogg's self-education was remarkable, but it grew from a real reading culture among Lowland country people. The historian Jonathan Rose, in The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (2001), notes that the Statistical Account of Scotland of the 1790s observed that shepherds, in their isolation, were often great readers. In the early nineteenth century shepherds in the Cheviot Hills ran their own informal lending library, leaving books in crannies of boundary walls for the next man to take, so that a volume slowly travelled a circuit of 30 to 40 miles. A century earlier John Christie, the "literary shepherd" of Clackmannan, had built up a library of about 370 volumes.

Loved at the loom. established Hogg in turn found working-class readers. The handloom weaver and poet William Thom recalled the weavers of a large Aberdeen factory talking over Scott, Byron and Thomas Moore after work. "Nearer and dearer to hearts like ours was the Ettrick Shepherd", he wrote, surpassed only by their fellow weaver-poet Robert Tannahill (as quoted by Rose).

Hogg and Scott

established When Walter Scott was collecting old ballads for his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802–03), William Laidlaw introduced him to Hogg, whose mother, Margaret Laidlaw, knew many ballads by heart. Ballads from Hogg's family appear in the Minstrelsy, and Scott and Hogg became lifelong friends, though an uneasy one given their difference in class.

shared Hogg recorded that his mother scolded Scott for printing the ballads, saying they "were made for singing an' no for reading" and that he had "broken the charm". The story is famous but comes from Hogg's own later account.

Fame in Edinburgh

established Hogg moved to Edinburgh in 1810, founded and edited a weekly paper, The Spy (1810–11), and published The Queen's Wake (1813), a cycle of poems framed as a contest of bards before Mary, Queen of Scots, which made him famous. In 1815 the Duke of Buccleuch gave him the small farm of Altrive in Yarrow, where he spent the rest of his life farming, often unprofitably, and writing.

established Hogg became a contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, and in the "Noctes Ambrosianae", imaginary tavern conversations written mainly by his friend John Wilson, he appeared as "the Shepherd", a boozy, comic, ungrammatical rustic. The character made him famous but also fixed an image of him as a naive peasant poet, which Hogg sometimes resented.

Hogg and his publishers

established Hogg's dealings with publishers show how hard it was to earn a living by writing without capital or connections. The Queen's Wake came to William Blackwood almost by accident, when its first publisher, John Goldie, went bankrupt; through Blackwood it reached John Murray in London and brought Hogg fame, though not matching profit. In 1818 Blackwood published Hogg's novel The Brownie of Bodsbeck, with Murray taking two-thirds of an impression of 1,500, but Murray withdrew from promoting it when he took alarm at Hogg's alleged improprieties. Oliver & Boyd published his Winter Evening Tales in 1820. Exasperated by what he saw as unfair treatment from Murray and Blackwood, Hogg proposed to Oliver & Boyd a return of one-sixth of the retail price on every copy, an early version of the modern royalty, but the firm refused.

established Walter Scott worried about Hogg's position. In 1827 he wrote that an author without independent means was forced to write too fast on unsuitable subjects, while booksellers valued least the books they got most cheaply. When Blackwood would not back a collected edition of his fiction, Hogg turned to the London publisher James Cochrane, for Altrive Tales (1832), a venture cut short when Cochrane went bankrupt. His collected Tales and Sketches by the Ettrick Shepherd appeared only after his death, in 1836–37, from Blackie & Son of Glasgow, a firm known mainly for religious books sold in parts.

The Justified Sinner

established In 1824 Hogg published, anonymously, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. It tells the story of Robert Wringhim, brought up in an extreme Calvinist belief that he is one of the elect, saved whatever he does. Encouraged by a mysterious stranger, Gil-Martin, who may be the devil or a projection of his own mind, he commits a series of murders. The story is told twice, first by a sceptical editor and then in Wringhim's own confession, leaving the reader unsure what really happened.

established The novel sold poorly and was little noticed at the time. In the twentieth century it was rediscovered, championed by André Gide in a 1947 edition, and is now regarded as one of the greatest Scottish novels and a forerunner of Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde and of the modern psychological thriller. It has its own card in the Arts series.

Hogg in America

The most popular of Scott's followers. shared The literary historian Andrew Hook, in Scotland and America: A Study of Cultural Relations, 1750–1835 (1975), judges that of the writers who followed Scott in Scottish subjects, Hogg was probably the most popular in America, as both poet and storyteller. The judgement rests on reprints and reviews rather than sales figures, but the evidence for it is substantial.

Reprinted almost everything. established The Queen's Wake was published at New York in 1813, at Baltimore and Boston in 1815 and at New York again in 1818; Hook notes that a bibliography's date of 1812 for the first American printing must be a printer's error, since the poem was not written until 1813. The Pilgrims of the Sun appeared at Philadelphia in 1815 and 1816, the Spenserian romance Mador of the Moor there in 1816, and The Forest Minstrel, his songs set to Scottish airs, in Philadelphia the same year. The Brownie of Bodsbeck (1818) and Winter Evening Tales (1820) were published at New York, and magazines such as the Analectic and The Casket reprinted single tales. The Familiar Anecdotes of Sir Walter Scott was published in New York in 1834. The one great exception, Hook notes, was the Justified Sinner, which was not reprinted in America.

The peasant-poet, American version. established American reviewers loved the story of the self-taught shepherd. The Analectic Magazine opened its 1814 review of The Queen's Wake with his lack of schooling and his Ettrick upbringing, and returned to his life in 1818, drawing on the memoir Hogg had prefaced to The Mountain Bard. The Port Folio in 1815 went so far as to suggest that with The Queen's Wake and The Pilgrims of the Sun he had surpassed Ramsay and Burns among Scotland's "unlettered bards" (as quoted by Hook). In 1829–30 N. P. Willis's American Monthly Magazine made Hogg the type of the Scottish poet who sang from the hillside rather than the city salon.

Americans meet the Shepherd. established Not every American was charmed in person. The Boston scholar George Ticknor met Hogg in 1819 at the Edinburgh house of Anne Grant of Laggan, a meeting place for American visitors, and found him "vulgar as his name" (as quoted by Hook). Others were warmer. In 1834 the American Monthly Magazine printed an American's account of visiting Hogg at home, where the Shepherd remarked, "They tell me that my writings are kent in America", and was assured they had all been reprinted there and were as well known as in Scotland. The same year the magazine urged Americans who had been "delighted with the works of Hogg" to buy the Anecdotes so that some of the profit would reach him. With no international copyright, the many earlier American reprints had paid him nothing.

Later years

established Hogg married Margaret Phillips in 1820 and had five children. He kept writing prolifically, including The Three Perils of Man (1822) and his Familiar Anecdotes of Sir Walter Scott (1834), which offended Scott's family by its frankness. A visit to London in 1832 brought him great acclaim. He died at Altrive on 21 November 1835 and was buried in Ettrick kirkyard.

Legacy

shared For a century Hogg was remembered mainly as a minor songwriter and the comic Shepherd of the "Noctes". Modern scholarship, including the Stirling/South Carolina edition of his collected works and the James Hogg Society (founded 1981), has restored him as a major and daring writer. A statue of Hogg looks out over St Mary's Loch.

• Hogg's Jacobite Relics of Scotland (1819–21), collected for the Highland Society of London, caused offence by being insufficiently bowdlerised. His novel The Brownie of Bodsbeck (1818) answered Scott's Old Mortality by turning its "brownies" into Covenanters hiding in a cave (Murray Pittock and Edward J. Cowan, 2002).
• Hogg had only about six months of schooling.
• He claimed to share Burns's birthday, but his baptism date shows he did not.
• His mother supplied ballads for Walter Scott's Minstrelsy.
• Aberdeen factory weavers, according to the weaver-poet William Thom, loved the Ettrick Shepherd more than Scott or Byron.
• His greatest novel was published anonymously and largely ignored.
• André Gide helped rediscover it in 1947.
• His statue stands beside St Mary's Loch in the Borders.
• Almost all Hogg's books were reprinted in America in his lifetime, but not the Justified Sinner.
• A Philadelphia magazine claimed in 1815 that Hogg had surpassed Burns.

• Myth: Hogg was born on Burns's birthday, 25 January. Hogg claimed it, but his baptism record shows he was baptised on 9 December 1770.
• Myth: the "Shepherd" of the Noctes Ambrosianae is an accurate portrait of Hogg. The character was largely the comic creation of his friend John Wilson, and it fixed an image of Hogg as a naive peasant poet, which he sometimes resented.
• Disputed: Margaret Laidlaw's rebuke to Scott. The story that she told Scott the ballads "were made for singing an' no for reading" is famous but comes only from Hogg's own later account.
• Myth: Hogg was an uneducated rustic who could not read. He had only about half a year of formal schooling, but he taught himself to read and write as a young man, in a Lowland reading culture where shepherds were often great readers.
• Myth: the Justified Sinner was a success in America. Almost all of Hogg's books were reprinted there in his lifetime, but the Justified Sinner was the one great exception.
• Myth: the self-help collection Men Who Have Risen is by this James Hogg. It was compiled by a different James Hogg, born in 1830.