Stephenson: The Ettrick Shepherd 15 



brother, and, never having drawn a pen for such a number of years, I 

 had actually forgotten how to make sundry letters of the alphabet; 

 these I had either to print, or to patch up the words as best I could.^' 



At Whitsuntide 1790 Hogg left Willanslee and took service 

 under another Laidlaw at Blackhouse on the Douglas Burn, 

 a petty tributary of the Yarrow. For ten years he remained 

 as a shepherd at Blackhouse. It was there that his character 

 was moulded into its final form; it was while there that he 

 first heard of Burns, a fact that gave rise to his life ambition ; 

 it was while there that he conquered the mechanical difficulty 

 of writing and began to compose rhymes; and from Black- 

 house he sent forth the first songs that appeared in print, 

 winning for the ''Ettrick Shepherd" a small measure of local 

 fame. 



When he went to Blackhouse in 1790 he was a strong young 

 fellow just on the threshold of manhood, a shepherd with a 

 recommendation but as yet young in experience, ignorant, 

 able to read but slowly and with difficulty, and unable to write 

 at all. As yet he had given no evidence whatever of literary 

 feeling or genius. However, within ten years he had learned 

 to read fluently, to compose with a fair degree of rapidity, and 

 to write on paper with tolerable ease. In addition to this, 

 1800, the year in which he left Blackhouse, found him the 

 author of Donald McDonald, a spirited war song that was 

 ringing over the whole of England and Scotland. 



For ten years, beginning with 1790, Hogg herded sheep in 

 the most romantic part of the Border country. This decade 

 is the most significant in his life, not because it marks the 

 beginning of his literary career, for nothing he wrote previous 

 to 1800 is worthy of attention, but because during this period 

 he met the friends who henceforth guided his life, and because 

 the sojourn at Blackhouse converted his character from 

 youthful formlessness to what it afterward became. 



The Ettrick and Yarrow valleys trend northeast in nearly 

 parallel lines for a score of miles till they unite in the historic 

 neighborhood of the battlefield of Philiphaugh close to Selkirk. 

 On the Ettrick road, an hour's walk from the latter town 

 still stands the ancient peeltower of Oakwood, the reputed 

 abode of the wizard Michael Scott. As one passes up the 

 winding valley one sees the places that figure in the ballads 



^1 Autobiography. 



