ABSTRACT
On 29 January 1810, the Edinburgh Theatre re-opened to a packed house with a spectacular production of Joanna Baillie’s The Family Legend. This chapter examines the transformation of ‘the family legend’, a piece of primitive Highland history through the work of three Scottish writers: Baillie; Sir Walter Scott; and James Hogg. It explores the primitive energies that emerge in Baillie’s play, and the way in which she and Scott worked to contain them for the stage. The chapter examines how Hogg implodes the nation, re-working the motif darkly in his Blackwood’s story, ‘A Horrible Instance of the Effects of Clanship’, and a later version of it, ‘Julia M,Kenzie’, in his final work, Tales of the Wars of Montrose. Scott and Baillie’s success in appropriating a piece of Highland family history for the new national theatre anticipated further developments in the transformation of literary genres for Scottish national discourse.
