Tam o' Shanter: Scotland's legendary tale of sorcery

Tam o' Shanter, a farmer who often went drinking with his friends, is a character in a poem by Robert Burns. It is one of his most popular, making Tam an icon of Scottish culture.

She was one of Robert's sources of inspiration when he was very young. Superstitious and non-literate, Betty entertained the family with old legends and stories of witches and warlocks.

Burns later recalled her influence in one of his letters written in 1787 to Dr John Moore, a London-based Scottish physician and novelist: "In my infant and boyish days too, I owed much to an old Maid of my Mother's, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity and superstition...

"...She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the county of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, inchanted towers, dragons and other trumpery."

"This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry, but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look out in suspicious places..."

However, all good things come to an end and Tam must now mount his faithful mare, Maggie to make his long way home where his long-suffering wife Kate awaits.

Through the brightly-lit  windows, he sees witches dancing and the Devil himself playing the bagpipes. There is one particular young witch in her 'cutty sark' (a revealing undergarment) who catches Tam's eye.

Despite Meg being fast, by the time Tam reaches the middle of the arch of the 'Brig o Doon', the witches are nipping at his heels. They're so close that one of them actually springs to seize him but only manages to grip Maggie's tail. At this point Burns adds a useful footnote for anyone caught in similar circumstances:

The tale may, in fact, be based on an actual person, Douglas Graham of Shanter Farm, Carrick who had a reputation for getting very drunk on market days. He supplied his cousin’s inn with barley and it was at this inn that he would drink, along with his friend John Davidson.

It's thought that Douglas Graham lost his bonnet one night, in the lining of which he had hidden the day’s takings from market. 

To explain this to his wife, he made up a story of how he was delayed by the sight of witches dancing in the kirk and how, when they spotted him, chased him and his horse just made it over the river before the witches caught him - but his bonnet was lost in the process.

Tam O' Shanter is just one of the many unique Robert Burns manucripts at the National Library of Scotland. Read more about his life and work in his own words.