While we were thus
nestled together, he pointed to a hole in the opposite bank of the
glen. That, he said, was the hole of an old gray badger, who was
doubtless snugly housed in this bad weather. Sometimes he saw him at
the entrance of his hole, like a hermit at the door of his cell,
telling his beads, or reading a homily. He had a great respect for the
venerable anchorite, and would not suffer him to be disturbed. He was a
kind of successor to Thomas the Rhymer, and perhaps might be Thomas
himself returned from fairy land, but still under fairy spell.
Some accident turned the conversation upon Hogg, the poet, in which
Laidlaw, who was seated beside us, took a part. Hogg had once been a
shepherd in the service of his father, and Laidlaw gave many
interesting anecdotes of him, of which I now retain no recollection.
They used to tend the sheep together when Laidlaw was a boy, and Hogg
would recite the first struggling conceptions of his muse. At night
when Laidlaw was quartered comfortably in bed, in the farmhouse, poor
Hogg would take to the shepherd's hut in the field on the hillside, and
there lie awake for hours together, and look at the stars and make
poetry, which he would repeat the next day to his companion.
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