Magic Lantern Slide with Photograph of the Tam o' Shanter Inn, Ayr

A black and white photographic image of the inn in the town of Ayr which provided the setting for the beginning of Burns' poem "Tam o' Shanter.   It is suggested that this inn was the "howff" in which Tam o' Shanter and Souter Johnnie were in the habit of meeting on market days and "bousing at the nappy". It is also thought that Burns himself frequented the inn when in Ayr.   Burns wrote the poem, "Tam o' Shanter" as a "witch story" to accompany the illustration of Alloway Kirk which was to be published by his friend, Captain Francis Grose, in his "Antiquities of Scotland". It is both comic and epic, telling the story of Tam's encounter with a coven of witches on his ride home from a night's drinking at the inn.   Because of its associations with Burns and his poem this inn became a landmark for those visiting Burns' haunts in the latter part of the 19th Century; hence the inclusion of this magic lantern slide in a presentation on "Burns' Country."