THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.

Otago Witness, Issue 1890, 10 February 1888, Page 32

THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.

" Hogg," says Professor Wilson, " is a true genius in his own style — one of the most wonderful creatures in the world, taking all things together." In him we have the poetic genius of the Scotch hillside. Just as Burns was the inspired ploughman, so Hogg, touched with the same celestial fire, was " the most remarkable man that ever wore the maud of a shepherd."

Thi3 shepherd of shepherds was descended from a long line of ancestors who had all followed the same healthy open-air calling. The origin of the name is thus accounted for. Hog in Scotch is not an animal domesticated from the wild boar; it is a young sheep before it has lost its first fleece.

According to his own evidence, Jarnea Hogg entered the world on the 25th of January 1772, but the date is entered 1 in black and white in the parish register as December 1770. In this conflict of authorities it is not difficult seeing which to believe. Hogg's version of the month and day was no doubt a poetic license to enable him to pose as having the same birthday as Robert Burns, to whose mantle he confidently believed himself to have succeeded. As to the alteration in the year, he is not the first whom vanity has induced to subtract a year or two from their real age.

The personal appearance of the Ettrick Shepherd was manly and prepossessing. He was a little above the middle height, and of a stout, well-set figure. His hair was light, and his complexion ruddy with the glow of health. All his life long he was a convivial man — the social glass having then an importance which it has fortunately since lost — but indulgence never seemed to have the least effect on his strong constitution. He passed his sixtieth year looking so fresh and vigorous that most young men might have envied him.

There was a marked and curious likeness between him and Sir Walter Scott. Professor Wilson Uvscd to say that, had they been brothers, everyone would have spoken about the strong family resemblance.

Hogg was gi a joyous temperament ; one can see that in the turn of his mouth. It was a useful characteristic. " Werena my heart light I wad die." Misfortune pursued him through life. His farming schemes were unsuccessful ; his publishers failed ; his wife's father unexpectedly, and at the wrong moment too, became bankrupt. But what might have cast a gloom over other men had no power over his self-satisfied good humour.

Speaking of a time when, at the age of GO, he was left " once more " without a sixpence in the world, he writes :— " It will be consolatory to my friends to be assured that none of these reverses ever preyed in the smallest degree on my spirits. As long as I did al\ for the best, and was conscious that no man could ever accuse me of dishonesty, I laughed at the futility of my own calculations, and let my earnings go as they came, amid contentment and happiness, determined to make more money as soon as possible, although it should go the same way.'* His uniform happiness was partly owing to a good constitution, and partly arose, he is careful to tell us, " from a conviction that a heavenly gift, conferring the powers of immortal song, was inherent in my soul."

The Shepherd did not always show to advantage. No one, for example, will say that he was at his best when ho appeared for the first time at the hospitable board of the author of " Waverley."'

Yet Scott looked beyond the Shepherd's manners to his naturally kind and simple heart. "Well as Scott knew," remarks Lockhart, "that reflection, sagacity, wit, and wisdom were scattered abundantly among the humblest rangers of the pastoral soli' tudes of Scotland, there was here a depth and a brightness that filled him with wonder, combined with a quaintness of humour and a thousand little touches of absurdity, which afforded him more entertainment, as I have often heard him say, than the best comedy that ever set the pit in a roar."

In the start of life James Hogg had absolutely no advantages. He was a self-taught genius if ever there was one. "In all," he tells us, " I spent about half a year at school." A poet is not made, however, by book lore, and no one need perhaps lament that he escaped the instructions of tbe dominie, and was allowed to develop freely under the blue sky, and with no other teaching than that of sunshine rend storm. Even as late as his eighteenth year he read wfli difficulty ; and whea, a few years later, he began to compose verses, the writing of them out, as he sa> on the hill side surrounded by his flacky was a Herculean and painful process, for which he prepared himself by taking off both coat and vest !

Of all incidents in the Shepherd's )ife, that which makes the most pleasant impression on the fancy is a childish love-affair. Many a reader of his autobiography has lingered over it with delight. To give it in any other words than his ow» would spoil it- " When only eight years of age," he says, " I was sent out to a height called Broa:lbeads with a rosy-cheeked maiden to herd a flock of new-weaned lambs, and I had my mischievous cows to herd besides. But as sbe had no dog, and I had an excellent one, I was ordered to keep close by her. Never was a master's order better obeyed. Day b/ day I herded tha cows and the )ambs both, and Betty had nothing to do but to sit and sew. Then we dined together 1 every day ti> a well near to the Shipl-sike Head, and after dinner I laid my Lead clown on her lap. covered her b&re feet with ray plaid, and pretended to fall sound asleep. One day* heard her saj to herself, * Poor little laddie I he's just tired to death ' ; and then I wept till I was afraid she would feel the warm tears trickling on her knee. I wished my master, who was a handsome young man, would fall in love with her and marry berr wondering how he could, be so blio4 &**

stupid as not to do it. But I thought if I y-cte he I would know well what to do." « Never was poet now or of yore who was nO fc tremulous with love-lore." The Ettrick Shepherd says that he '• always liked the women better than the men," and his sweetest songs were flowers of his own experience. He was fortunate in drawing a prize in the matrimonial lottery, his wife being a handsome and estimable woman a good deal above his original rank in life, and he showed his appreciation of a happy fireside by being a faithful and devoted husband. If, it has been well remarked, it was his ambition to rival Burns as a bard, he had fewer of the greater poet's frailties to reproach himself with. It was a happy and playful turn that he gave to his admiration for the fair sex when lie wrote : Could this ill world hae been contrived To stand without mischievous woman, How peacefu' bodies might hae lived, Released frae a' the arts sac common. But since it iB the woefu' case That man maun hae this teasing croayi Why sic a sweet bewitching face ? Oh had she no' been made sac bonny ! Circumstances compelled the Shepherd to write a good deal, not with an eye to reputation, but to supply the needs of the day. This pot -boiling work, having served its turn, has long since gone the way of forgetfulness. But no shades of oblivion are likely to close round his " Bird of the Wilderness," or " My Love she's but a Lassie yet," or " Cam' ye by Athol ? ", or " Flora Macdonald's Lament," or " The Hill of Lochiel," or " Come o'er the Stream, Charlie," or "When the Kye comes Harne," to name only a few songs the production of which gives a glory to the Vale of Ettrick. So long as there are Scotchmen to sing the strains of their fatherland it is safe to predict that these songs will keep the Shepherd's memory green. Of his longer poetic flights " Kilmeny," in the " Queen's Wake," has always, and with reason, been most admired. On its appearance the " Queen's Wake " took even those who knew him by surprise. The Shepherd had gone to Edinburgh with a beating "heart to hear what people said, and the first criticism was from a friend, whom the poem had cheated out of a night's sleep. It was to this effect : " Wha wad hae thought there was as muckle in that sheep's head o' yours?" A considerable honour has befallen the Shepherd of late years, her Majesty the Queen having selected the following verses from his pages as a motto for her " More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands " : Caledonia ! Thou land of the mountain and rock, Of the ocean, the mist, and the wind — Thou laud ot the torrent, the pine, and the oak, Ot the roebuck, the hart, and the hind ! < • . • • Thou land of the valley, the moor, and the hill, Of the storm and the proud-rolling wave— Yes, thou art the land ot iair liberty still, And the land of my forefather's grave. If the Shepherd could only have foreknown this, what pride and joy it Would have imparted ! Of all his admirers he himself was the most enthusiastic. He believed in his powers as a great poet, and spoke of them too without reserve. Without this "quid conceit o' himseP" he might never have accomplished anything like what he did, or maintained his joyous temperament in spite of many ups and downs. A more modest man would have been snuffed out. It was this vanity that caused him to be exhibited often in a ludicrous light, and induced Professor Wilson to make free ■with his name in the famous "Noctes Ambrosianic," of which the Ettrick Shepherd is the animating spirit. _ But every one has his weak points. Considering the disadvantages under which he all along laboured, no one can deny that the Shepherd was a remarkable man. "In pace requiescat," said Lockhart, when Hogg was (lead and gone. " There will never be such an Ettrick Shepherd again." — James Mason, in the " Leisure Hour."