James Hogg

This article is about the Scottish poet James Hogg. For the British English scholar and historian of religion, see James Lester Hogg .

James Hogg

James Hogg (* December 1770 on a farm in Ettrick Forest, then County Selkirkshire , today District Scottish Borders , baptized December 9, 1770 , † November 21, 1835 on his farm Altrive Lake, Scottish Borders) was a Scottish poet.

Life

James Hogg, known as The Ettrick Shepherd, was the son of an impoverished sheep farmer and looked after the sheep from an early age. The legends and songs of his fatherland, which his mother had collected, sparked his imagination so much that he began to write poetry without being able to write or read. He laboriously learned to read in order to be able to record his poetry. In 1801 he published a small volume of poems at his own expense - without much success. He met Walter Scott and helped him collect ballads for The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border . In his own poems he was inspired by these old folk ballads. He wrote in English and in Scots .

In 1807 he published a collection of poems under the title: The mountain bard and an essay on sheep , which brought him £ 300 profit. In February 1810 he went to Edinburgh. There he published the weekly The Spy , which soon had to cease publication. In 1813 he published The Queen's Wake , a collection of short stories and ballads allegedly sung by Scottish bards to Mary Queen of Scots . The collection that established his poetic fame includes the Kilmeny fairy tale and The Poetic Mirror . His dark novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, about an Ulracalvinist Presbyterian who eventually becomes a fratricide, was to influence Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae .

Despite the large sales that almost all of these works found, Hogg struggled with abject poverty. Finally, the Duke of Buccleuch at Altrive Lake on Yarrow awarded him an almost interest-free lease, where he wrote the epic Queen Hynde (1825) and The queer book (1832), a collection of poems against the emancipation of Catholics and against reform, without financial problems Bill , could complete.

The homage which he received on a visit to London went to his head. He took on a larger lease and again suffered significant losses. Even the 12-volume Altrive tales did not bring him anything, as the publisher went bankrupt after the first volume (including Hogg's autobiography, 1832) was published. His last publication was the Tales of the Wars of Montrose (1835, 3 vols.). He died poor on November 21, 1835 in Altrive Lake.

Hogg's poetic significance does not match that of his compatriot Robert Burns , but for all the deficiencies inherent in his uneven education, he cannot be denied that he was very faithful to observation and effective reproduction of the same. His prose works vary in quality.

Thomas Thompson obtained new editions of his works ( Poems and life , Edinburgh 1874, 2 vols.). His daughter Mary Gray Garden published the Memorials of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd (London, 1884).

Works

• The Pilgrims of the Sun (1815)
• Mador of the Moor (1816)
• The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)

Furthermore, miraculous legends and descriptions of the Scottish folk characters in prose :

• The Brownie of Bodsbeck (1818)
• Winter evening Tales (1819)
• The three Perils of Man (1822)
• The three Perils of Woman (1823)
• The Jacovite Relics of Scotland (London 1820-21, 2 vol.) And others, which appeared first in Black Wood's Magazine and then under the title: The shepherd's calendar (das. 1829, 2 vol.) Collected

literature

• Gillian Hughes: Hogg's verse and drama: a chronological listing . Stirling: James Hogg Society, 1990. ISBN 0-9509577-3-9 .

Web links

Commons : James Hogg  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about James Hogg in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about James Hogg  in the German Digital Library
• Literature by James Hogg in the catalog of the Berlin State Library
• The James Hogg Society

This article is based on a text in the public domain from Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , 4th edition from 1888 to 1890.

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