Read Tam O' Shanter.  Visit the Robert Burns Heritage Trail. 

Robert Burns and Tam O'Shanter

Robert Burns (25th January 1759 - 21st July 1796), also known as Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and The Bard, was a Scottish poet and lyricist.

Tam O' Shanter is likely Robert Burns' most well-known poem.  It is a rousing affair that Burns composed to accompany a drawing of Alloway Kirk, Ayr, in the second volume of Captain Francis Grose's Antiquities of Scotland (April 1791).  It was at Burns' request that Captain Grose included Alloway Kirk in the volume. The Kirk is the resting place of Burns' father. Grose agreed on condition that Burns submitted a witch story to accompany the drawing. 

The poem composed around the autumn/winter of 1790. Mrs Jean Burns states in her memoirs that her husband walked fitfully up and down the banks of the Nith, reciting loudly to himself the verses and rhymes that would eventually become Tam O' Shanter.

Burns wrote a letter to Captain Grose in which he recounts three witch stories.  The first relates the adventures of a drunken farmer who courageously enters Alloway Kirk on a stormy night after seeing odd lights.  On entering the Kirk, he discovers the remnants of an infernal meeting. The second tale mirrors Tam o' Shanter closely. A farmer on his way home from the market in Ayr comes across a party of wildly dancing witches in the Kirk.  Burns' mother possessed a wealth of supernatural tales and such tales surely influenced the poet.

Ayrshire locals claim a literal and contemporary inspiration for Burns' poem. The real Tam O' Shanter could have been Douglas Graham (1739 - 1811), a tenant on the farm of Shanter. His wife, Helen McTaggart (1742 - 98), was a woman as well known for her nagging as he was for his drinking.  After bouts of dissipation, Douglas is claimed to have blamed Ayrshire witches for his lost possessions, including his mare's tail on one occasion. 

Tam O' Shanter is the finest of Scottish poems.  It inspired Malcolm Arnold (21st October 1921 - 23rd September 2006), an English composer and symphonist, to write his rousing Tam O' Shanter composition.