3/10/2023 0 Comments James songsterSecondly, pulling all these songs together in 1831 with little notes explaining his role as creator, performer and collector, has to do, I think, with making sure that Hogg’s own peers, not to mention future generations, are able to see and assess his importance as a songwriter and collector, as a protector of national song tradition.Īnd there’s even more evidence that this was indeed the case in the early 1830s for Hogg. While this is, in one sense, a back-handed complement-to be at one with popular tradition&mdahs it’s also a scary prospect for an artist, who has been all too often underestimated or brushed aside during his professional life. Indeed the extended note about his first and most famous song is illustrative of this: Hogg tells the story of hearing ‘Donald McDonald’ performed in two very different contexts, noting that neither performance made any reference to Hogg as its creator. Firstly it shows just how widely popular his songs are during his lifetime. Reclamation and retrieval of his own songs from a wide variety of popular media has two distinct purposes for Hogg at this late point in his career. Moreover, a substantial group of the most celebrated songs in this album (as seen by the chart-topping list above) were of Jacobite provenance, signaling Hogg’s role as the key collector of Jacobite songs of his time (his two series of Jacobite Relics appeared in 18). But this editorial decision also reveals his anxiety that he, James Hogg, is not really being given due credit as creator of these songs. ‘The Noctes Sang’, ‘I Lookit East, I Lookit West’, ‘The Village of Balmaqhuapple’ etc.) shows Hogg’s awareness of his fame as the singing shepherd of this series. The inclusion of a group of songs from Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine‘s serial Noctes Ambrosianae (e.g. Unlike his earlier collection The Forest Minstrel (1810), which was clearly divided into set categories of songs (Love, National, Humourous etc.) akin to the main song collections of the 18th century, Hogg chose to present a relaxed mix of his best songs, with his own little anecdotal head notes. And, like Hogg’s wonderful X-factor ballad competition in The Queen’s Wake (1813), it shows just how diverse his songs could be-love songs (sad and happy, pastoral and lamenting), comic, bacchanalian and social songs, political songs, songs celebrating the best qualities of the Scottish nation and character and several from his beloved Ettrick. Setting out, as he explained to his publisher William Blackwood, to include the songs which ‘have been popular in the first place’ (Hogg’s letter to Blackwood, 20 October 1830) Hogg also stated, with characteristic modesty, that the volume wouldn’t even contain a third of his songs, and that if Blackwood wished to delete any from the projected list, Hogg would certainly be able to replace them with even better ones! His ‘gold album’ of Songs by the Ettrick Shepherd included what had already been popular and what have posthumously proved to be his most popular songs-’Donald McDonald’, ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, ‘Flora MacDonald’s farewell’, ‘The Skylark’ and his most Burnsian song ‘When the kye comes hame’. Hogg’s last little text-only collection of songs appeared in January 1831 (after a very quick publication process) and pulled together 113 songs from across a thirty-year period, many of which had been circulated in song sheets or musical collections across Great Britain, and, probably unbeknown to Hogg, also in Europe and America. As my work on the new edition of James Hogg’s final collection of songs comes to an end, I’m spending a while thinking about just why Hogg’s songs meant so much to him, and what purpose his hands-on involvement in the production of this volume really serves at this late point in his career.
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