The Shepherd's Calendar [Hardcover]

James Hogg (Author), Douglas S. Mack (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Collected Works of James Hogg | Publication Date: April 15, 1994

James Hogg is one of the acknowledged masters of the short story. Some of his best stories appeared in The Shepherd's Calendar, a work of the 1820s in which he sets out to re-create on paper the manner and the content of the traditional oral storytelling of Ettrick Forest, the remote and mountainous sheep-farming district in which he grew up. Like Hogg's masterpiece The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, several of the stories from The Shepherd's Calendar deal disturbingly and hauntingly with the supernatural, and explore psychological depths with a remarkable insight and intensity. The Shepherd's Calendar also draws on Hogg's experiences as a young shepherd in the 1790s as it produces a convincing and very human picture of the dangers, the pleasures, and the tensions of the lives of the rural poor in Scotland in the years that followed the French Revolution. This Polygon paperback is based on the acclaimed hardback edition of The Shepherd's Calendar for the Stirling / South Carolina Collected Works of James Hogg (Edinburgh University Press, 1995).

Editorial Reviews

Review

An important and addictively readable addition to the Scottish canon.

(Christopher Harvie Notes and Queries )

The reader is not being treated to a quaint display of an outmoded lifestyle, but privileged with glimpses of a community possessed of special knowledge and internal laws. Hogg's shepherds are far removed from those of Virgil or Spenser, while even Wordsworth's Michael seems remote from the narrator who can describe the destruction of '12 scores of excellent ewes' with such calmness and compassion: 'when the snow went away they were discovered all lying dead with their heads one way as if a flock of sheep had dropped dead going from the washing'

(Fiona Stafford Review of English Studies )

The stories are about storms, sheep, lairds, about farmers with designs on their servant girls, as in one of the most memorable, 'Tibby Hyslop's Dream', where a pious, winsome lass, prophesied over by a second-sighted, 'unco parabolical' great-aunt, copes with such designs - and the farmer in this case comes to one of Hogg's suicidal ends.

(Karl Miller Times Literary Supplement )

About the Author

Douglas S. Mack is a Professor in English at the University of Stirling, and editor of the much acclaimed Edinburgh Edition of Walter Scott's The Tale of Old Mortality.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 287 pages
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press; The Stirling/South Carolina research ed edition (April 15, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074860474X
• ISBN-13: 978-0748604746
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,109,504 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 'Infinite Riches In a Little Book', July 30, 2004

By 

K D Farrow (Prestwick, Ayrshire, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Shepherd's Calendar (Paperback)

The Shepherd's Calendar, James Hogg, (ed. Douglas S. Mack), Edinburgh University Press, 2002, 287pp.

This book is a paperback re-issue from the 1995 Stirling / South Carolina edition of the `Collected Works of James Hogg', and the overall package which it contains is almost too generous: thirteen short stories written by one of the world's greatest masters of the form, a literary introduction, an essay on the development of `The Shepherd's Calendar', a select bibliography, a chronology of Hogg's life (compiled by Gillian Hughes), extensive end-notes, and a six hundred word Scots / English glossary. The apparatus of any such work is of great value, but especially so in Hogg's case, as, with this book, we are getting for the first time in history, access to the stories as he actually wrote them, without the bowdlerising hand of editors. But of course, the book's real treasure lies in the stories themselves.
They are divided into classes (although as the text now stands, enumerations are not always consecutive); the first deals with storms, the second with `Deaths, Judgements and Providences', the next few with dogs, lasses, and general anecdotes; then comes `Dreams and Apparitions', and the last focuses on `Fairies, Brownies and Witches' (a forte of Hogg's). The largest class, by a narrow margin, is `Dreams and Apparitions'. This, indeed, is hardly surprising given what most readers will already know about Hogg's deep and, for his time, remarkably modern insights in to the human psyche. But every section exhibits a charm and genius of its own. The book opens at a high level of excellence, with Hogg narrating a veritable meteorological history of bygone times, including a tale about a storm which he himself endured as a shepherd.
In the next class, 'Robb Dodds' is a tale from oral tradition, narrated by the shepherd, Auld Andrew, of an unresolved mystery which has at its roots the cruelty of Tam Linton, and which ends in horror and retribution. Cruelty, and the vengeance it calls forth, is also at the heart of `Mr Adamson of Laverhope'; this takes as its subject matter a farmer whose egregious behaviour apparently results in his being struck by lightning, whereupon his bowels gush out, and his corpse collapses into what seems to be a ready-made grave. The `General anecdotes' section, though of deep interest, lessens the dramatic intensity of the collection with some interesting diversions, but here it is a comedy, `The Lasses', dealing with `Window Wat''s and `Jock the Jewel''s attempts to win the hand of the `bonny Snaw-fleck', that reveals best the complex machinery of Hogg's narrative technique.
It is fitting that the next two tales, which are probably the most major, `George Dobson's Expedition to Hell and The Soutars of Selkirk', and `Tibby Hislop's Dream', come right at the centre of the collection. The former, indeed, is two tales in one, the linking device being the name of the central character. It refers to two different people, but since the blurring of identities (shades of `The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner'), is a central concern of the tale's latter part, this form of artifice is again especially appropriate. In the opening, which draws upon an eerie tradition of the descent into the underworld, the real and supernatural realms impinge upon each other in a way that suggests the pervasive power of the latter; in `The Soutars', a contorted conundrum of events revolves around the prejudices contained in old Scots songs. `Tibby Hislop's Dream', which for me contains echoes of Henryson and Lindsay, deals with the gory end of the corrupt `Gibby Gledger', whose innards are devoured by birds. It is a `just-deserts' tale, par excellence, but read it for yourself.
`Smithy Cracks', although it is suitably ghoulish, eerie and mysterious, is a rare tale in which the rational interpretation of events wins out over the natural assumptions of folklore. But `The Laird of Cassway', `Mary Burnet' and `The Witches of Traquair' decidedly place the emphasis again upon supernatural events. In `The Laird', the ancient tale of mortal enmity between two brothers, mingles with the Scottish witch-story; in `Mary Burnet', vengeance is visited upon a seducing rogue in a parable which is heavily reliant on the Scots ballads; and `The Witches', an old Catholic morality tale, complete with allegorical characters, uses genuine historical figures (George Wishart and David Beaton appear) to `earth' the fantastic firmly in Scottish soil.
The climax of the collection, however, comes with the brilliant `The Brownie of the Black Haggs'. For those who do not know it already; it concerns itself, superficially at least, with the monomaniac obsessions of Lady Wheelhope, whose implacable hatred for an interfering brownie, the `evil Merodach of Babylon', knows no bounds. But in its sub-text, it explores sado-masochistic sexuality, in quasi-biblical language, and combines all of this with copious allusions to Scottish history and shepherd's lore. Given this brief for a creative endeavour, any potential short-story writer could be forgiven for thinking it an impossible task, but, evidently, not so the great `Ettrick Shepherd'.
Hogg's use of Scots has been analysed before now, but it might be well to end with a reference to this feature of his writing. Hogg's Scots dialogue is of an exceptionally accomplished order, and there's no doubt that everything here is the `real MacKay'. His imprecatory registers are, by far and away, the most powerful, (although everything is authentic and natural). As Wattie says to Bessie, in a famous phrase: `... but nipping an' scarting are Scots folk's wooing'!. If ever you wanted `infinite riches' in a little book, James Hogg's `The Shepherd's Calendar' certainly comes close to containing them.