Margaret Laidlaw
Margaret Laidlaw (1730 – 1813) is described on her gravestone (shared with her father, husband, and three of her sons) as an adjunct: ‘Daughter, Spouse to Robert Hogg & Mother of the Ettrick Shepherd’. Whilst she delivered all these roles very well she deserves recognition, too, as an outstanding tradition bearer. Margaret Laidlaw passed on folklore both orally in Selkirkshire and in print: as a source for her son James Hogg’s writing, and of ballads for Walter Scott.
Born at Over Phawhope, Ettrick, Laidlaw was fourth of the seven children of Bessie Scott (1692 – c.1751) and William Laidlaw (1691-1775). Her father, known as ‘Will o’ Phaup’, was tenant farmer of Old Upper Phawhope. Widely respected as an authority on Ettrick tradition, he was the last man, reputedly, to see fairies in this area. In his old age he lived with Margaret, sharing traditional culture within the family and community.
In 1765 Margaret married Robert Wallace Hogg (1729 – c.1823), shepherd at Mount Bengerhope and, later, tenant of Ettrick House and Ettrick Hall. The couple had four sons: William (1767 – 1847), James (1770 – 1835), David (b.1773) and Robert (1775 – 1833). In 1776 Robert went bankrupt. Walter Bryden of Croslee rented Ettrick House and employed Robert as a shepherd. The children were sent to work and their schooling, thereafter, was limited. Laidlaw ensured her children were literate, teaching them to read from the Bible.
Through her cousin, Scott’s amanuensis William Laidlaw, Margaret became involved with the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802 – 3) collecting project. Later, on Scott’s editing of her songs she observed, 'they war made for singing, an' no for reading; and they're nouther right spelled nor right setten down' (qtd Bold 2000, pp.116-17). Where to Scott ballads were cultural and aesthetic artefacts, Laidlaw valued them in performance, as the living traditions of families and communities; for sharing rather than ‘collecting’ (see Bold 2003).
Laidlaw’s performance skills were outstanding, as her son William recalled:
Our mother’s mind was well fortified by a good system of Christian religion […] but her mind was stored with tales and songs of spectres, ghosts, fairies, brownies, voices, &c […] seen and heard in her time in the Glen of Phaup; and many a winter night, to keep us boys steady, has she told us how the dead-lights, or some shapeless appearance twisting and throwing itself, announced the death of some near relative; and not unfrequently, the spirit of the gathering storm was heard to shriek through the air. These tales arrested our attention, and filled our minds with the most dreadful apprehensions (W. Hogg 1836).
James Hogg called his mother ‘a living miscellany of old songs’ (qtd Batho 1969, p. 70) who encouraged him to make new pieces too: '"it's a shame to hear sic a good tune [Athol Cummers] an' nae words till't. Gae away ben the house, like a good lad, and mak' me a verse till't"' (J. Hogg 2014 p.86).
Laidlaw had formidable narrative skills. In one dispute, she drowned out an adversary with ‘Johnnie Cope’; she dismissed one disgruntled man with a caustic, “ye look at a’ things as ye coudna help it” (qtd Hughes 2007, p.5). Laidlaw was the model for the reductive matron of 'The Love Adventures of George Cochrane'(J. Hogg 2004) and the ‘kind heart’ and ‘loved parent’ of ‘The Last Adieu’ (J. Hogg 1817). She lived her life well: as mother, daughter, wife and, especially, an outstanding bearer of Borders’ traditions.
Contributed by Valentina Bold
Bibliography
Edith Batho The Ettrick Shepherd (New York: Greenwood, 1969).
Valentina Bold '"Nouther right spelled nor right setten down": Scott, Child and the Hogg Family Ballads. The Ballad in Scottish History, ed Edward J. Cowan (East Linton: Tuckwell, 2000) pp. 116-41.
_____, ‘Ballad Raids and Spoilt Songs: Collection as Colonization’, in T.A. McKean (ed), The Flowering Thorn: International Ballad Studies (Logan, UT: University of Utah Press, 2003), pp. 353 – 62.
James Hogg, ‘The Last Adieu’, published as by ‘H’ in Blackwood’s Edinburgh
Magazine vol 1 (1817), p. 169.
_____, Songs, first published 1831, rpt ed Kirsteen McCue (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014).
_____, ‘The Love Adventures of George Cochrane’, ‘Winter Evening Tales, first published 1820, rpt ed Ian Duncan (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), pp. 166 – 208.
William Hogg, ‘Some Particulars Relevant to the Ettrick Shepherd’, The New Monthly Magazine 1836, Part the First, p.456.
Gillian Hughes, James Hogg. A Life (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007).
Elaine Petrie, E. (1983). 'Odd Characters: Traditional Informants in James Hogg's Family', Scottish Literary Journal 10 (1983), pp. 30-41.