The Friends have continued their generous assistance to Aberdeen University Library, and in particular the enhancement of our Bernard C. Lloyd Collection on Sir Walter Scott. Four years ago, the Friends assisted in the purchase of a copy of Sir Walter Scott’s Description of the Regalia of Scotland, 1819. Now they have enabled the acquisition of another first edition, this time by Scott and James Hogg, the ‘Ettrick Shepherd’ and author of The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, 1824.
The University Library’s Bernard C. Lloyd Collection, running to over 6,000 volumes, has been described by Professor Alison Lumsden, co-Director of the Walter Scott Research Centre at Aberdeen, as being probably the finest relating to this author anywhere in the world. However, Mr Lloyd’s library had lacked a first edition of The Ettricke Garland, 1815, a curiosity by Scott and Hogg. The item was printed in Edinburgh by James Ballantyne. The full title is The Ettricke Garland: Being Two Excellent New Songs on the Lifting of the Banner of the House of Buccleugh at the great football match on Carterhaugh Dec. 4, 1815. It is comprised of a poem by Scott, ‘The Lifting of the Banner’, and Hogg’s own tribute, ‘To the Ancient Banner of the House of Buccleuch’, and it is amongst the rarest of either Scott’s or Hogg’s titles.
The Ettricke Garland has relevance for our established programmes of undergraduate teaching on history and authors in the Romantic period – for example ‘Scottish Literature into the Modern World: 1750-1900’– as well as for Aberdeen’s well-established postgraduate English MLitt course on ‘The World of Walter Scott’. This text will feature in programming for exhibitions and public lectures in the University’s Sir Duncan Rice Library, which was officially opened in September 2012 by HM the Queen and HRH Prince Philip. Its acquisition and promotion are also in keeping with the University’s objective to alert the wider local community in Scotland to aspects of national heritage.
This grant was awarded from FNL's B. H. Breslauer Fund, thanks to the generosity of the President and Officers of the B. H. Breslauer Foundation.