Contributions to Musical Collections and Miscellaneous Songs

When James Hogg published what was to be his final collection of songs, Songs by the Ettrick Shepherd (1831), he set out to present his public with ‘a pocket volume’ of his best and most popular songs. It contained 113 songs spanning the whole of Hogg’s career as shepherd and professional writer, from his ‘first’ song, ‘Donald MacDonald’, created around 1803, to songs which had only just appeared in print.

Hogg chose to write his own little ‘notices’ or headnotes to each of the songs providing information about the creation, and several humorous anecdotes about performances, of these songs. He also used these introductory notes to advertise the whereabouts of his songs within larger musical collections and in printed song-sheets which had appeared the length and breadth of the British Isles. In so doing Hogg was able to stake his claim as Scotland’s most important songwriter since Robert Burns.

For the first time since their initial publication in the early decades of the nineteeth century, Hogg’s Contributions to Musical Collections and Miscellaneous Songs presents Hogg’s songs in facsimile. Designed to be used in collaboration with the new edition of Songs by the Ettrick Shepherd, this volume will open up the world of Hogg’s songs for readers, providing, for the very first time the full textual and musical contexts of these songs as Hogg’s public would have known and enjoyed them. Information about Hogg’s involvement with a wide range of composers and music publishers, in addition to the affiliation of his songs with several leading singers of his day are given in the accompanying introductory and editorial notes.