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James Hogg, “The Ettrick Shepherd” (1770–1835), is remembered today as the author of that strange and unsettling novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. To his contemporaries, though, he was probably better known for his poems and for his stories – especially his supernatural tales, which often drew upon the folk-beliefs of the Scottish countryside.

The three stories in this volume – “Mary Burnet”, “The Brownie of the Black Haggs”, and “Strange Letter of a Lunatic” – fall into this category. In each, Hogg demonstrates his mastery of the craft of storytelling, and his understanding of the quirks, possibilities, and dark undercurrents of human psychology.

CONTENTS

• Introduction
• Mary Burnet
• The Brownie of the Black Haggs
• Strange Letter of a Lunatic
• Notes

Cover image: “The Brownie of Blednoch”, by Edward Atkinson Hornel (1864–1933)