In 2005 Professor Emeritus Douglas Mack, at the University of Stirling and Dr Kirsteen McCue of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow were awarded a major research grant of just over £150,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This grant is allowing Dr McCue, and Dr Janette Currie also of the University of Stirling, to undertake a major project on the songs of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd.

The work is now well underway and will culminate in Dr McCue's editing, with Dr Currie, James Hogg’s final volume of songs, Songs by the Ettrick Shepherd (1831), and Hogg's contributions to Musical Collections and his miscellaneous songs for the acclaimed Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of The Collected Works of James Hogg. The AHRC 'Hogg Songs Project' is enabling key research into both the literary and musical contexts of the songs, and the final volumes will present the songs in a new way for most literary editions, also encouraging performance of the songs themselves.

A number of these songs and musical performances of them are now available on a newly developed website, also funded by the AHRC as part of a separate dissemination award and this can be found at: http://www.jameshogg.stir.ac.uk and on the CD 'I'll sing ye a wee bit sang': Selected Songs of James Hogg, released in the summer of 2007.

Kirsteen McCue will also be taking part in a forthcoming Glasgow University Concert on 24 January 2008, with Jamie MacDougall (tenor), Joanie McLachlan (fiddle) and David Hamilton (fortepiano) celebrating the close connections between Hogg's songs and those of Robert Burns. See  University of Glasgow Events.