Tam O’Shanter in Paris

Spooky omens! A blustering storm! Witches dancing and a horse galloping create the black magic of Robert Burns: The epic tale of Tam O’Shanter. Performed at Paris Lit up. Rhythm, rhyme and reason, what a genius was our Rabby!

It was at the grave of Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, on his anniversary, that I got talking to the Irish cultural attaché, and she suggested I put on a one-woman show, weaving together all my talents. Wow! I decided to entitle it, “Exotic tales and Dances from Celtic Literature,” I was so very delighted.

I mixed both Irish and Scottish literary extracts, as well as Arabian-style dance to Celtic music. Here is a drop of the Scottish, from that most famous poet of all times, Robert Burns. Please, listen to the pounding rhythm and clever rhyme of his masterpiece, a technique that most abstract modern poets choose to abandon.

Extracts from Tam O’Shanter

Church Alloway was growing nigh
Where ghosts and owls nightly cry
By this time he was passed the ford
Where in the snow the sheep-man smother
Past the bitches and cobble stone
Where drunken Charlie broke his neck bone.
And near the thorn above the well
Where Mungo’s mother hanged herself.
The river Doon pours all its floods
The doubling storm roars through the woods
The lightnings flash from pole to pole
More and more near the thunder rolls
When glimmering through the groaning tress
Church Alloway seems all ablaze
Through every beam lights were glancing
And loud resounded mirth and dancing

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn
What dangers thou can make us scorn
With tuppeny ale we fear no evil
With whisky too we’ll face the devil.
The pints they reeled in Tam’s noddle
Fair play he cared no devils a-doddle
But he Horse stood right sore astonished
Until the heel and hand admonished
She ventured forward on the light and
Wow! Tam saw a wondrous sight.

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