|
Date: |
|
Description: | Tam has spent the evening in a pub getting drunk with his friends and on his way home on horseback encounters the devil and a crowd of witches cavorting inside the auld Kirk of Alloway. Careless with drink, Tam disturbs the witches and flees towards the nearby bridge over the river Doon - with the witches in hot pursuit. (poem No 321)
Printed in the second volume of The Antiquities of Scotland by Captain Grose. Burns had persuaded Grose to include a drawing of Alloway Kirk in his work which Grose agreed to do, on condition that Burns provided him with a suitable poem to go with the engraving.
Page ten of fourteen which reads from ''and coost' down to 'and Wawlie'. Burns has the witches down to their flannel underwear speculating that had the dancers been 'plump and strapping in their teens' and dressed in fine lingerie, Tam would have had his trousers off in no time! However the witches are so ugly in their hideousness that the poet wonders that they 'didna turn (Tam's) stomach'. Nevertheless the worldly Tam spies one 'winsome wench' amongst the witches who was to be his undoing. | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 | Publisher: | Burns Monument Trust | Temporal: | 1790-01-01 - 1790-12-31 | Source: | Burns Scotland | Identifier: | Poem by Robert Burns: 'Tam o' Shanter - | Go to resource |
|
|