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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 fourteen and last from ''The carlin' to the end. Here Burns draws the moral of the Tale which warns against the dangers of the demon drink and debauchery. It is suggested that the bones of the story are based on fact. Tam's mare one day while in the stable of the pub had its tail clipped by local Ayr scallywags, and Tam fearful of his wife's reaction, invented the story of being pursued by witches which she by all accounts accepted. | 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 |
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