"The Bush aboon Traquair," like Allan Ramsay's "The Gentle
Shepherd," is a pastoral drama with songs, and in this play Hogg
celebrates the life of the people of his native community in
Ettrick Forest. At times earthy and at times hilarious, The Bush
focuses on rural courtship, and it derives part of its energy from
its presentation of a contrast between the old ways and an emerging
(but not always admirable) modernity. Here, as elsewhere in Hogg's
writings, the shepherds and ewe-milkers of Ettrick Forest operate
in a pastoral world that is noticeably realistic and convincing.
They pursue their love adventures as ardently as if they were
inhabitants of the more literary pastoral world of the Forest of
Arden, but as they do so they also have to cope with some very
unpoetical and very troublesome sheep. It appears that The Bush was
first drafted around 1813, but the first publication of Hogg's play
came when a bowdlerised version was included in his posthumous
Tales and Sketches (1837). Douglas Mack's edition includes the
first-ever publication of the unbowdlerised version of "The Bush
aboon Traquair,"
Written on the occasion of George IV's famous royal visit to
Edinburgh in 1822, The Royal Jubilee is another pastoral drama with
songs. In this 'Scottish Mask', Hogg brings a group of
representative Scottish spirits to a 'romantic dell' on Arthur's
Seat. The spirits (including an Ossianic Highlander who has
suffered dispossession, and the ghost of an old Covenanter) give
expression to past Scottish grievances against royalty, while
indicating their hope that the King's visit will bring renewal and
a fresh start. This potentially ambiguous expression of loyalty is
further complicated byvarious Jacobite references and echoes as the
spirits prepare to welcome a Hanoverian king, returning to the
ancient kingdom of his Stuart ancestors.
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