Set in the Scottish Borders in 1685 it presents a sympathetic picture of the persecuted Covenanters and a harsh view of the Royalists led by Clavers (Claverhouse).
[2] The Brownie was making its way through the press in January 1818, and it is clear from Hogg's letters to Blackwood that the material he is providing in batches consists of a transcription of an earlier manuscript: the amount of revision is unspecified.
[3] The date of composition of The Brownie is particularly important because Hogg claimed that, contrary to popular assumption, his novel was composed before the very different treatment of the period by Walter Scott in Old Mortality, which appeared in December 1816 with a much less sympathetic view of the Covenanters and a distinctly less harsh depiction of Claverhouse.
[4] Compassion leads Walter Laidlaw, a man of no strong religious views, to assist a group of Covenanters in hiding near his farm of Chapelhope.
On his return to Chapelhope he is introduced by his daughter to the Covenanters, their leader being John Brown of Caldwell who is revealed to be Nanny's long-lost husband.
By James Hogg, Author of "The Queen's Wake," &c. &c. was published in two volumes in 1818 by William Blackwood, Edinburgh and John Murray, London.
'The Hunt of Eildon', a virtuoso display of medieval enchantment and shape-changing, centres on the beneficent actions of two innocent young women who have been changed into hounds with supernatural powers.
1: Walter Laidlaw of Chapelhope is told by his wife Maron that their daughter Katharine has been ordering her Brownie to kill five of Clavers' Highland troopers.
6: Clavers and his men arrive and examine in turn Nanny, Katharine (defended physically by her father), and finally Maron who reveals the Covenanters' hiding-place.
Preparing to leave Chapelhope to seek help for her father from the laird of Drumelzier she entrusts the house to Nanny, whose covenanting credentials are now made clear, with instructions to admit one or two Covenanters every night.
Walter and his fellow-prisoners are transferred from the custody of a fair-minded Highlander Sergeant Daniel Roy Macpherson to less sympathetic officers to be taken to Edinburgh.
At the neighbouring Riskinhope farm, where she has taken refuge, Nanny joins the inhabitants in prayer (led with peculiar eloquence by the shepherd Davie Tait) and sacred song, after the inadvertent raising of a spirit.
15: On Halloween Walter returns home, in spite of supernatural warnings, and looking in through a window sees Katharine and the Brownie with a fresh corpse.