Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/417

JAMES HOGG 4OI who held in fee from Scott's ancestors, the Knights of Harden and Oakwood, until their own extravagance and the pacification of the Borders reduced them to the occupation of shepherds. In " The Fray of Elibank," Hogg celebrates his redoubted ancestor the Wild Boar of Fauldshope, chief champion of that Harden who was eldest son of Mary Scott, the famous Flower of Yarrow ; and records not without pride, that several of the wives of Fauldshope were accounted rank witches, the most notable being Lucky Hogg, who turned Michael Scott himself into a hare, and baited all his own dogs upon him, so that he escaped with difficulty; but he took therefor a terrible revenge, as told by Hogg in a Note to " The Queen's Wake," in accordance with the popular tradition and correction of Sir Walter Scott. In the " Pilgrims of the Sun " he bedevils viking Haug into Hugo of Norroway, a pious and peaceful minstrel, who marries Mary Lee of Carelha', and is an utterly impossible milksop : — " For he loved not the field of foray and scathe, Nor the bow, nor the shield, nor the sword of death ; But he tuned his harp in the wild unseen, And he reared his flocks on the mountain green." For which damnable namby-pamby defamation of old Norse and Border character, and that in an ancestor of his own, it has doubtless fared full hard with the poor shepherd's wraith if ever it forgathered with that of grim Haug or the Wild Boar of Faulds- hope. His mother was of the Laidlaws of Phaup and Craik, a woman of strong natural talents and humour, and remarkable for her knowledge of Border 2 C