Ettrick Shepherd
Preserved but no longer current.
The name given to James Hogg (1770-1835), the Scottish poet who was born at Ettrick, Selkirkshire, the son of a shepherd, and himself a shepherd at Willans- lee. He obtained his first success in 1807 with a volume of verse entitled The Mountain Bard; his principal work is, however, The Queen's Wake, 1813. Hogg figures largely in Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae.
Era: ca. 1898 (Victorian)
Sources & notes
Reproduced from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898 edition, public domain; archive.org, retrieved 2026-07-31; OCR text, minor errors possible). Reflects the scholarship and attitudes of its era.
Common questions
What does “Ettrick Shepherd” mean?
The name given to James Hogg (1770-1835), the Scottish poet who was born at Ettrick, Selkirkshire, the son of a shepherd, and himself a shepherd at Willans- lee. He obtained his first success in 1807 with a volume of verse entitled The Mountain Bard; his principal work is, however, The Queen's Wake, 1813. Hogg figures largely in Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae.
Is “Ettrick Shepherd” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.