To mark the Bard's birthday week, one of his own favourites, describing a celidh to remember
Robert Burns's Tam O'Shanter as
interpreted by Scotland's anonymous secret book sculptor. Photograph: Chris
Scott
This week, the Scottish Bard's birthday will be
celebrated around the world, and what better relish to accompany your dram
of usquabae than the mock-heroic, hero-mocking "Tam
o'Shanter, a Tale", said to have been Burns's own favourite among his poems.
It's a substantial feast of 224 lines, so I've chosen an extract, some verses
from the climax of the narrative.
Burns wrote it for his
friend Francis Grose,
who had asked for a few lines to accompany the illustration of Alloway Kirk intended for
volume two of his book The
Antiquities of Scotland. Burns remembered the Ayrshire tale from his
boyhood. A farmer from Carrick, detained after a long market-day, rides his mare
home in the early hours, his course unavoidably passing by the haunted Alloway
Kirk. Through the brightly-lit church windows he watches a demonic ceilidh, with
Old Nick himself playing the pipes. One young witch, dancing in an under-slip
too short for her, so impresses the farmer that he shouts, "Weel luppen, Maggy
wei' the short sark!" – with the result that the demonic crew rounds on him and
gives furious chase. In the poem, Burns changes the witch's name to Nannie Dee,
and gives her an inspired nickname, having the irrepressible Tam call out "Weel
done, Cutty-sark" ("Well-done, Mini-skirt!" in rough modern translation).
Cutty-sark gave her name and figurehead to the Clyde-built tea-clipper
and "tam o'shanter" (the surname probably derived from the Scots noun, mishanter)
entered the language to denote a flat-crowned
woollen hat with a pom-pom. Poetic immortality can take some strange twists
and turns.
Full piece including the poem in full
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