ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Scottish writers of short fiction, and their relationship with tradition and regionalism, but it is worth pausing to survey the regional tales that aligned themselves with other parts of the British Isles. Irish regionalism is associated with the negotiation of local and national identities within the unified Britain that had emerged after the Irish Act of Union and the Napoleonic Wars. One of the most remarkable Scottish instances of this practice was Allan Cunningham's Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry. Hogg's uncanny stories celebrate traditions and folklore in a way that actively interrogates Enlightenment historicism, but Cunningham is rarely so bold. In Hogg's stories, however, the villagers manage to combine Christian beliefs with a firm conviction in the operation of other supernatural forces. The short fiction of the early nineteenth century brought marginalised modes of thought into dialogue with more modern philosophies.
