| Tam O' Shanter (burns Poem) |
Article Index for Tam |
Website Links For Tam |
Information AboutTam O' Shanter (burns Poem) |
|
:''This article is about the poem by Robert Burns. For the hat, see Tam O'shanter (hat) Tam o' Shanter was written by Robert Burns in 1790. It is known as one of Burns' finest Poem s. It is told using a mixture of Scots and English . Many consider it one of the best examples of the Narrative Poem in a modern Europe an language. It tells the story of a man who stays too long at the Pub and witnesses a disturbing vision on the way home. SUMMARY The poem begins:
After Burns has located us geographically:
(a quote that gave Ayr United F.C. their nickname), Tam sits and drinks with his friends, and the reader is regaled with a bad character reference of him by his wife:
The wife, Kate, is portrayed as an authority to be feared. Then:
Tam continues to drink and even flirts with the landlady of the Pub . Eventually he mounts up and rides off on his grey mare Meg, for his long, dark, lonely ride home. Burns emphasises the spooky character of the Ayrshire countryside Tam has to ride through – but of course it is much easier as he is drunk:
With the scene set, suddenly: ‘wow! Tam saw an unco sight!’ The sight he sees is Alloway Kirk, ablaze with light, where a weird hallucinatory dance involving Witch es and Warlock s, open coffins and even the Devil himself is in full swing. The scene is told with grimly enthusiastic Gothic attention to detail. Tam manages to watch silently until, the dancing witches having cast off most of their clothes, he is beguiled by one particularly comely female witch, Nannie, whose shirt ( Cutty Sark ) is too small for her. He cannot help shouting out in passion:
There is a chase and Tam’s evident pride in the ability of his horse is justified as she is able to help him to ‘win the key-stone o' the brig’. (Witches and warlocks cannot cross running water.) They only just make it though, as Nannie, first among the ‘hellish legion’ chasing, grabs the horse's tail, which comes off. In fine, tongue-in-cheek (or is it?) moralistic mode, the poem concludes:
BACKGROUND The poem first appeared in the Edinburgh Magazine for March 1791, a month before it appeared in the second volume of Francis Grose 's Antiquities of Scotland, for which it was written. Robert Riddell introduced Burns to Grose. According to Gilbert Burns, the poet asked the antiquarian to include a drawing of Alloway Kirk when he came to Ayrshire, and Grose agreed, as long as Burns would give him something to print with it. Burns wrote to Grose in June 1790, giving him three witch stories associated with Alloway Kirk, two of which he said were 'authentic,' the third, 'though equally true, being not so well identified as the two former with regard to the scene'. The second of the stories was, in fact, 'Tam o' Shanter'. This is Burns's prose sketch of it to Grose:
Thus began what was to be one of Burns' most sustained poetic efforts. The story that the poem was written in a day was perpetrated by John Gibson Lockhart , aided by Allan Cunningham . Its subtle nuances of tempo, pace and tone suggest that it had been given, as Burns told Mrs Dunlop on 11 April 1791 , 'a finishing polish that I despair of ever excelling'. {Link without Title} ANALYSIS By the use of Scots alongside English , and by the sheer power of his expression in both, Burns at the same time tells a good story, and makes points about Alcohol , Good And Evil , Marriage , Sexual Attraction , and relations between Women and Men in general, and indeed between a man and his Horse . There are many dramatic tensions and ironies in the poem. The tensions between the fairly twee, ostensibly moralistic frame of the poem, and the relish with which Burns describes Tam’s disreputable tale, are obvious and lend the poem a lot of its power. Less obvious perhaps is the way Burns alternates Scots and English for effect. In this way, he seems to signal the Irony of his own intention in writing the poem. Is he expressing regret for his own life, which was not short of drink and ‘cutty-sark’? Or is he celebrating his rock and roll Romantic lifestyle? To what extent Burns ‘believed’ in beings like Devil s, Witch es and Warlock s is another question. He makes it clear in his quote from Gawin Douglas at the start: "Of Brownyis and of Bogillis full is this Buke." that he is invoking the Scottish tradition of Magic , and there is another irony there as to how much he believed in the Church of the time (not at all?), how much in the older traditions (he is supposed to have been a Mason , after all), and how much in the new spirit of Science and Rationalism that was sweeping the country at the time of the Scottish Enlightenment . GLOSSARY
REVISION An early version of the poem includes four lines which were deleted at the request of one of Burns' friends - a judge. The poem originally contained the lines:
A handwritten note on the manuscript written by Judge Alexander Fraser Tytler , reads "Burns left out these four lines at my desire, as being incongruous with the other circumstances of pure horror." Burns had the lines removed from later editions. It was not unknown for Burns to make changes at the request of friends. SEE ALSO
EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|