Four Tales

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James Hogg's incomparable stories of the supernatural hark back to the oral traditions of his own upbringing and tales of wonder around the fireside. The Brownie of the Black Haggs tells of the eerie relationship between the violent-tempered Lady Wheelhope and her strange servant, the ill-favoured Merodach, who has 'the form of a boy, but the features of a hundred years old'. The Cameronian Preacher's Tale tells of murder, spiritual apparition and God's justice in a world of hidden bodies and uncertain witnesses. Mary Burnet is one of the 'traditionary tales' that Hogg loved to recount, while his poem Kilmeny offers another account of faerie visitation and a virgin's vision of the future. All of these pieces explore themes that echo in his masterpiece, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.