TAM O'SHANTER

Tam’s midnight adventure in Alloway Kirk is a haunting tale.

Tam’s return from a day at the market takes a ghoulish turn, as a prophecy, told to him by his wife, comes true… that he would be caught with ‘warlocks in the mirk, by Alloway’s auld haunted kirk’, a spooky place, with a dark and dangerous past.

For that night, ‘a child might understand, the deil had business on his hand.’

Ignoring all the warning signs, the foreboding thunderstorm, the rattling showers and racing winds, Tam sings happily as he rides home on his faithful horse Meg, until they come upon the ‘auld haunted’ place and cannot resist sneaking a peek through the church’s window…

What he sees there is such ‘an unco sight’: witches and warlocks in a dance, deid people and the Devil playing the bagpipes!

Bewitched by the macabre ceilidh, Tam shouts out to the dancers, but his excitement soon turns to fear as they turn upon him and chase him with all their speed and scariness!

Can Meg, his faithful mare, save the day?

The live music, ‘skreich and hollow’ was composed and performed by cellist Wendy Weatherby in Andy Cannon’s masterly re-telling of this spooky poem by Scotland’s national bard, breathing life into the verse and creating a gripping performance.

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