The Three Perils Of Man. James Hogg

And, as in Henryson’s Fables, the violence is all the more shocking, coming as it does in a pastoral setting; Jock’s anxious mother, the scene in the goodman’s cottage of the family eating, the shepherding, all assert the rhythms of peaceful countryside quietly repeating themselves. The violence is in horrible contrast to all this, as are the sensual descriptions of Jock’s hunger and the goodman’s nauseating and unnatural grief over his pet lamb. And all this is embodied in the main development of the surrounding story. Hogg reveals that Jock, this monster of carnal hunger, this unnatural child-demon, is in fact the Deil’s Tam. With one easy move Tam’s evil takes on a new depth and his fate grows darker. And again the reactions of the others reveal their characters. Charlie thinks it a good tale – ‘o’ the kind’, he stresses; the poet, sensitive plant that he is, accepts the lamb-daughter equation, and is horrified at the eating of ‘the flower of all the flock … her lovely form that’s fairer than the snow’. And in fact many of the others accept this symbolism too; as Michael Scott says:

      The maid Delany is the favourite lamb, whom he wished you to kill and feast on and I am the Goodman whom you are to stick afterwards …

      Charlie Scott’s tale is a good example of Hogg’s mastery of the story of action. Charlie Scott of Yardbire is a Border type Hogg loves, akin to the homely, honest, yet powerful giant hero of The Brownie of Bodsbeck, Wat o’ Chapelhope. His tale illustrates the same qualities of stern bravery and feudal devotion that are found in the ballad of ‘The Battle of Otterbourne’. It also serves to reveal Charlie’s goodness, in his saving of a child in a raid – who turns out to be the poet. Thus like the others it relates to the main theme, in that it extends our knowledge of the characters in the embassy and supplies answers to Hogg’s beloved mysteries. Its merits are such as recur abundantly in Hogg’s story-telling, notably in the later ‘Mary Montgomery’ and ‘Wat Pringle o’ the Yair’. Then Tam’s tale reveals that he is the ‘Marion’s Jock’ of Gibby’s story. His character as personified Greed and Lust is completed by it. The story, with its savagery and cruelty and anti-heroic qualities, provides a contrast to Charlie’s tale of healthy heroism, in the same way that Basil Lee and Robert Wringhim are utter opposites to that most natural of men, Wat o’ Chapelhope. These types are recurrent polarities in Hogg’s fiction, and Tam’s story is one of Hogg’s many horrifying pictures of amoral, lustful and utterly wicked men.

      Nevertheless, although many of the tales are good in themselves (the poet’s, ironically enough, being the weakest), and taken together contribute towards the development of relationships amongst the group, they do distract us from the main, hitherto swift-moving plot. And while Hogg may in this authorial self-indulgence be mocking the historical fiction of his time, it is nevertheless a relief for the reader, as well as for the trapped embassy, when Dan Chisholm and his Border friends arrive at the castle. Hogg now links his two projects, and we see Scott’s wizardry through fresh eyes. Dan asks:

      Do nae ye ken that the world’s amaist turned upside down sin ye left us? The trees hae turned their wrang ends upmost – the waters hae drowned the towns, and the hills hae been rent asunder … Tis thought that there has been a siege o’ hell …

      But the reign of Disorder is not yet over: Dan and Charlie now meet a mysterious friend of Sir Michael Scott. Unlike the friend Gilmartin, who is sinister from his very bland sophistication, this devil is in the best manner of Hogg’s and Ballad demonology.

      It appeared about double the human size … its whole body being of the colour of bronze, as well as the crown upon its head. The skin appeared shrivelled, as if seared with fire, but over that there was a polish that glittered and shone. Its eyes had no pupil nor circle of white; they appeared like burning lamps deep in their sockets; and when it gazed, they rolled round … There was a hairy mantle that hung down and covered its feet … every finger terminated in a long crooked talon that seemed of the colour of molten gold … It had neither teeth, tongue, nor throat, its whole inside being hollow, and the colour of burning glass …

      It pursues them, vomiting burning sulphur, and, as the nightmare climax of Disorder is reached, ‘immense snakes, bears, tigers and lions, all with eyes like burning candles’ threaten the heroes. Hogg here draws from sources as diverse as Bunyan, the Ballads and contemporary Gothic novels.

      This supernatural climax, with its strange, glittering beauty of imagery, so close to the clarity and concrete visualisation of the Ballads, proves completely Hogg’s right to claim that he was ‘king of the mountain and fairy school’ of poets. He achieves new heights of imagination in its description of how Dan meets the Devil with his agents, disguised as a Black Abbot and all on terrible white horses; of how the Devil wanders in a village as a great shaggy black dog, terrifying peasants; of how Dan and his friends undergo a nightmare ride through the firmament; of how the devil plays on the weakness of Charlie and his friends for drink and lovely women, seducing their senses with a superficial beauty such as Dunbar exposes in ‘The Two Mariit Wemen and the Wedo’, with the essential foulness of this beauty revealed when the drunken Borderers realise that the lovely girls are hags with rotten teeth and wizened faces. The Devil, in a final, glorious flourish of Disorder, finishes the long dance by transforming them all into bulls. All this is told with a dry attention to details, along with a strange and beautiful description of the trappings of evil. As in ‘The Daemon Lover’, with its fascination for gold and silver, and the ‘taffetie’ of the sails, Hogg sees clearly and enjoys the rich colours of his devils. This delight in the physical and supernatural grotesque is a counterpoint to the etiquette of chivalry elsewhere in the romance; the horrors are vivid, but accompanied by a sense of release through carnal and carnival enjoyment, so that the reader almost shares the ‘hellish delight’ of the withered hags. Yet for all this, Hogg does not forget more homely and human matters, such as Charlie’s consideration for his horse, Corby, or his honest joy at realising that his Border lord and friends had not forgotten him. It is Charlie, of course, who characteristically persists through all terrors to secure the prophecy for Sir Ringan which is the point of his embassy, while Gibby is claimed by Sir Michael to replace Gourlay, and ‘the Deil’s Tam’ fulfils his destiny in a scene which foreshadows the nightmare climax of The Justified Sinner.

      There is nothing in the final part of the narrative to match this richness of fantasy and diablerie, but the return to the Siege of Roxburgh has at least two episodes – the affair of Dan Chisholm and the cattle skins, and the taking of the castle by Borderers disguised as cattle – which for sheer speed of action, racy dialogue and character, are as enjoyable as any of Hogg’s short stories. This last episode marks the final irony of the Siege, for Douglas at last confesses that the chivalrous Game has beaten him. He has to descend to ‘wiles’ and beg Sir Ringan’s aid. The chivalrous pattern has finally been wrecked. Musgrave, the dour defender of the besieged castle, has not been taken captive but has killed himself. Princess Margaret is believed to have been hanged. If Douglas finally obtains his desire, it is not in his intended chivalric way, nor by his own doing. And Lady Howard becomes the wife of the homely Borderer Charlie!

      One aspect of this outcome that Hogg emphasises is its unity with the demonology of the middle parts. Sir Ringan acts because of the success of Charlie’s embassy and Sir Michael’s (and the devil’s) advice; and his ruse of disguising his men as cattle connects with the metamorphosis of Charlie and his men into bulls. The wizard of the north and the devil have, in a manner, kept faith till the end. Hogg was aware of the strain imposed by his range of plots and characters, and he thought it necessary to make his ‘editor’ remind the reader that the final ironic burst of Border warfare which finishes the siege was

      … wholly owing to the weird read by the great enchanter master Michael Scott, so that though the reader must have felt that Isaac kept his guests too long in that horrible place the Castle of Aikwood, it will now appear that not one iota of that long interlude of his could have been omitted; for till the weird was read, and the transformation consummated the embassy could not depart – and unless these had been effected, the castle could not have been taken …

      Thus the perils of War and Witchcraft are shown to be inextricably linked in the events and shape of the novel. There is of course a third peril, that of Women. While this peril is handled with humour and ambiguity, it is still true that women