Margaret Laidlaw

Margaret Laidlaw m. Hogg (1730–1813) was a tradition-bearer who collected native Scottish ballads from Ettrick in the Scottish Borders.

Life Margaret Laidlaw was born in 1730 in Ettrick, Scotland to Bessie Scott and William Laidlaw. Her father, known as Will o' Phawhope, was said to have been the last man in the Border country to speak with the fairies.

In 1765, she married tenant farmer Robert Hogg (1729–1820) and the couple had four sons, including poet and novelist James Hogg. In 1836, Laidlaw's son William writes in The New Monthly Magazine that Laidlaw was an adept storyteller of "tales and songs of spectres, ghosts, fairies, brownies, voices, &c". Winter Evening Tales (1820) vol. ι., and The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).