Tam o Shanter, excerpt

Robert Burns, 1790

Recited by Rhona Keenan

Tam o Shanter was composed to accompany a drawing of Alloway-Kirk in the second volume of Captain Francis Groses’s Antiquities of Scotland. Burns specifically requested that Grose include Alloway-Kirk in his volume, as it was his father’s final resting place, and Grose agreed. In her memoirs, Jean Armour, Robert Burns’ wife, recalls the autumnal day when 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’. 

This poem is one of five works recited and recorded by Gold and Silver medallists in the Dumfries and Galloway Burns Association Schools Competition 2026 to create the Ellisland Poetry Trail.  Follow the trail, scan and listen to explore more of Burns’s writing from his time at Ellisland as brought to life by Dumfries and Galloway’s finest young performers. 

Special thanks to OASIS Youthwork and the Holywood Trust who supported this project.