Poetry

Tam O’Shanter

by Robert Burns

Tam, a farmer who stays too long at the inn in Ayr on market night, rides home through a storm past Alloway Kirk and sees through its window warlocks and witches dancing to the Devil’s pipes. Burns wrote it in 1790 for Francis Grose’s Antiquities of Scotland, as the tale to go with a drawing of the kirk, and called it his standard performance in the poetical line. Tam escapes over the bridge, but his mare Meg leaves her tail behind.

The librarian

Read it in the Library After Dark Or read it as plain text

Reading time

About 7 minutes

Where to find it

The Burns Room

Edition

Project Gutenberg, eBook #25733. In the public domain in the United States.