Tam O'Shanter

DESCRIPTION: "When chapman billies leave the street, And drouthy neebors neebors meet," Tam O'Shanter, somewhat at the worse for drink, thinks he sees a coven dancing, including a pretty witch in a cutty sark. He flees; his horse loses its tail before he escapes
AUTHOR: Robert Burns
EARLIEST DATE: 1790 (date of composition, according to Kinsley; first published 1791 in the _Edinburgh Magazine_ and Grose's _Antiquities of Scotland_, according to Lindsay)
KEYWORDS: drink witch escape horse injury
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood, p. 24, "Ah, gentle dames, it gars me greet" (1 fragment)
ADDITIONAL: James Kinsley, editor, Burns: Complete Poems and Songs (shorter edition, Oxford, 1969) #321, pp. 443-449, "Tam O'Shanter. A Tale" (1 text)
Roud #24056
NOTES [288 words]: Although this is one of Burns's most famous poems, there is little evidence of it having gone into tradition, probably because it's so long. Even Helen Kane had just four lines.
According to Maurice Lindsay, The Burns Encyclopedia, 1959, 1970; third edition, revised and enlarged, St. Martin's Press, 1980, Gilbert Burns, Robert's brother, Robert "had asked the antiquarian [Francis Grose, who was preparing Antiquities of Scotland] to include a drawing of Alloway Kirk when he came to Ayreshire, and Grose agreed, provided that Burns would give him something to print with it." Burns responded with three "witch stories," of which he claimed two as "authentic" and the third (as I interpret it) true but not as strongly identified with Alloway. The second of these was the tale of Tam O'Shanter, subsequently amplified into a poem.
A "cutty sark" is, of course, a short sark, or garment; the idea is that the witch was wearing "a smock with was considerably too short to answer all the purpose of that piece of dress," according to Burns's prose summary.
Linsdsay, pp. 149, 268, says that Tam O'Shanter and his wife Kate were "probably" based on Douglas Graham (baptized 1738; died 1811) and his "superstitious, eccentric, and irascible" wife Helen McTaggart Graham (1742-1798), who farmed at Shanter. Graham reportedly owned a boat with the name Tam O'Shanter, and was very fond of alcohol while his wife was opposed.
Some others in the poem are also supposed to be real people, e.g. the smith in the line "The smith and thee gat roarin' fou' on" is said to be one John Niven, Sr., of Damhouse of Ardlochan, and his son Robert Niven, a miller and farmer, was the subject of the line "That ilka meddler wi' the miller." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: KSUC024C

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