Early life James Hogg was born on a small farm near
Ettrick,
Selkirkshire, Scotland in 1770 and was
baptised there on 9 December, his actual date of birth having never been recorded. His father, Robert Hogg (1729–1820), was a tenant farmer while his mother,
Margaret Hogg (née Laidlaw) (1730–1813), was noted for collecting native Scottish
ballads. Margaret Laidlaw's father, known as Will o' Phawhope, was said to have been the last man in the
Border country to speak with the
fairies. James was the second eldest of four brothers, his siblings being William, David, and Robert (from eldest to youngest). Robert and David later emigrated to the United States, while James and William remained in Scotland for their entire lives. In 1784 he purchased a fiddle with money that he had saved, and taught himself how to play it. In 1785 he served a year working for a tenant farmer at Singlee. In 1786 he went to work for Mr. Laidlaw of Ellibank, staying with him for eighteen months. In 1788 he was given his first job as a shepherd by Laidlaw's father, a farmer at Willenslee. He stayed here for two years, learning to read while tending sheep, and being given newspapers and theological works by his employer's wife. In 1790 he began ten years of service to James Laidlaw of Blackhouse in the
Yarrow valley. Hogg later said that Laidlaw was more like a father to him than an employer. Seeing how hard he was working to improve himself, Laidlaw offered to help by making books available for Hogg from his own library, and through a local lending library. Hogg also began composing songs to be sung by local girls. He became a lifelong friend of his master's son, William Laidlaw, himself a minor writer and later the
amanuensis of Walter Scott. It was at this time that Hogg, his eldest brother, and several cousins, formed a debating society of shepherds. Hogg first became familiar with the work of the recently deceased
Robert Burns in 1797, after having the poem ''
Tam o' Shanter read to him. During this period Hogg wrote plays and pastorals, and continued producing songs. His work as a sheep drover stimulated an interest in the Scottish Highlands. In 1800 he left Blackhouse to help take care of his parents at Ettrickhouse. Early in 1801 he published a booklet Scottish Pastorals''. His patriotic song "Donald Macdonald", printed as a broadside probably in 1803, achieved considerable popularity.
Career In 1801 Hogg was recruited to collect ballads for
Walter Scott's collection
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. He met Scott himself the following year and began working for the
Edinburgh Magazine. In the summer of 1802 he embarked on the first of three tours of the Highlands with a view to securing a farm of his own. He eventually found a farm on Harris but due to trouble with his finances and a legal issue he was unable to secure a lease by 1804. He may not have been really committed to the project in any case. His experiences on his Highland tours were described in letters to Scott which were published in the
Scots Magazine. On his way back to Ettrickhouse in 1803 he dined with the novelist
John Galt in Greenock. In 1805–06 he worked as a shepherd in
Dumfriesshire, meeting the poet
Allan Cunningham and becoming friends with him and his family. In October 1806 he became the lover of a young woman named Catherine Henderson, and in the same autumn he attempted unsuccessfully to establish himself as an independent farmer. Hogg's first collection,
The Mountain Bard, was published in February 1807 by
Constable. At the end of summer 1807 his daughter by Catherine Henderson was born, baptised on 13 December as Catherine Hogg. In 1837 she married David Lauder and they named their son James Hogg Lauder. Catherine Henderson herself went on to marry David Laidlaw in 1812. Hogg continued working as a sheep-grazer for other farmers, but his debts began to grow throughout 1808–1809. At the end of 1809 he began an affair with Margaret Beattie, and soon after absconded from his creditors, returning in disgrace to Ettrick. In 1814 Hogg completed a visionary poetic narrative
The Pilgrims of the Sun in three weeks, and in the same year he met
William Wordsworth and made a visit to the
Lake District to see Wordsworth and other poets. In 1815 the
Duke of Buccleuch granted him a small farm at Eltrive Moss, where he could live rent-free for his lifetime. He continued to write songs and poems, including "The Field of Waterloo" and "To the Ancient Banner of Buccleuch". His poem
Mador of the Moor was published in 1816. Later in the year he published his collection of parodies
The Poetic Mirror, achieving a marked success. Hogg first met the publisher
William Blackwood in the aftermath of his own publisher John Goldie's 1814 bankruptcy, and in 1817 he helped with the start of Blackwood's
Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. He published his two volume collection
Dramatic Tales in May. In 1818 his collection
The Brownie of Bodsbeck; and Other Tales was published by Blackwood. This work utilized genuine Scottish folklore which Hogg had collected. At this time Hogg was busy with his work
Jacobite Relics. In 1819 he proposed marriage to Margaret Phillips. At the end of the year he published the first volume of
Jacobite Relics. He married Margaret Phillips on 28 April 1820. His second tales collection
Winter Evening Tales was published a month later. At the end of the year his father died. The second volume of
Jacobite Relics was published in February 1821, and his son James Robert Hogg was born in March 1821. Around this time, Hogg began having serious financial problems. It was through the
Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, soon renamed ''Blackwood's Magazine
, that Hogg found fame, although it was not the sort that he wanted. Launched as a counter-blast to the Whig Edinburgh Review'', Blackwood wanted punchy content in his new publication. He found his ideal contributors in
John Wilson (who wrote as Christopher North) and
John Gibson Lockhart (later Walter Scott's son-in-law and biographer). Their first published article, "The Chaldee Manuscript", a thinly disguised satire of Edinburgh society in biblical language which Hogg started and Wilson and Lockhart elaborated, was so controversial that Wilson fled and Blackwood was forced to apologise. Soon Blackwood's Tory views and reviews – often scurrilous attacks on other writers – were notorious, and the magazine, or "Maga" as it came to be known, had become one of the best-selling journals of its day. But Hogg quickly found himself forced out of the inner circle. As other writers such as Walter Maginn and
Thomas de Quincey joined, he became not merely excluded from the lion's share of publication in Maga, but a figure of fun in its pages. Wilson and Lockhart were dangerous friends. Hogg's ''Memoirs of the Author's Life
were savagely attacked by an anonymous reviewer, causing Hogg to temporarily break with Blackwood's'', and go to work for Constable's smaller
Edinburgh Magazine. In 1822 the
Maga launched the
Noctes Ambrosianae or "Nights at Ambrose's", imaginary conversations in a drinking-den between semi-fictional characters such as North, O'Doherty, The Opium Eater and the Ettrick Shepherd. The Shepherd was Hogg.
Later life In 1830 he started publishing in the new ''Fraser's Magazine'', which helped to alleviate a further financial crisis, and at the end of the year he met with Walter Scott for the last time. In early 1831 Hogg's
Songs, by The Ettrick Shepherd was published, but the publishing of the companion volume
A Queer Book was held up by Blackwood. Hogg's last child, his daughter Mary, was born in August. At the end of the year he quarrelled with Blackwood, and decided to publish his works in
London. In 1832 his
Altrive Tales was published in London, while Blackwood finally published
A Queer Book in April or May. Hogg was offered a large sum to edit a collection of the works of Robert Burns, but the bankruptcy of his London publisher stopped the publication of his
Altrive Tales after the first of the twelve projected volumes. In 1833 Hogg had an accident while
curling, falling through the ice, causing a serious illness. In 1834 his biographical work
Familiar Anecdotes of Sir Walter Scott was published in the United States, while a pirated version published in Glasgow led to a break with Lockhart. Hogg mended his relationship with Blackwood in May, but Blackwood died at the end of the year. Hogg published
Tales of the Wars of Montrose in March 1835.
Death James Hogg died on 21 November 1835 and was buried in Ettrick Churchyard, close to his childhood home in the
Scottish Borders. In 2021, it was reported that his grave had been preemptively toppled by
Scottish Borders Council out of safety concerns and that independent restoration efforts were planned by the community.
Wordsworth's "Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg", written on 30 November, nine days after Hogg's death, includes the lines: The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer, 'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies; And death upon the braes of Yarrow, Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes. This
eulogy notwithstanding, Wordsworth's notes state "He was undoubtedly a man of original genius, but of coarse manners and low and offensive opinions." ==Legacy==