Hogg, James (1770–1835)

Abstract

James Hogg was born in Ettrick, an area of the Scottish Borders, and became a shepherd there. As a young man, he collected folk poems and ballads, which he sent to Walter Scott for The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Scott, who mentions Hogg in the notes to ‘Auld Maitland’ in the Minstrelsy, encouraged Hogg as a writer; Hogg’s first book, a collection of his ballad poems, was published in 1807 under the title of The Mountain Bard. He became known as ‘the Ettrick Shepherd’, and subsequently moved to Edinburgh, where he became a contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine and a noted man of letters. He retired to a farm at Yarrow, in the Scottish Border country, in 1816. His best-known works are The Queen’s Wake (1813), a series of poems supposedly recited by various poets to Mary, Queen of Scots, at Holyrood Palace; and, above all, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).