Best Scottish Tours of Alloway Kirk

Best Scottish Tours of Alloway Kirk. Built about 1516. Alloway Kirk was last used for worship in 1756, by which time it had fallen into a state of disrepair. It became roofless very soon after. When the parishes of Ayr and Alloway were joined in 1891 by the Boundary Commissioners, a proposal to remove the bell was mooted; but the villagers successfully protested against any such desecration. William Burnes, The father of the poet Robert Burns, lies buried in the kirkyard; not however, under his original stone, which was carried away in pieces by souvenir hunters. Alloway Kirk was, of course, the setting for Burns's poem 'Tam o' Shanter', based on legends which the poet transmitted to the antiquarian Francis Grose in a letter written probably in early June 1790.

The story of Tam o' Shanter was borrowed by Robert Burns from St John's Town of Dalry. Burns heard it from his friend Dr Robert Trotter, a member of a Glenkens family. In this version the hero was Adam Forrester, who farmed Knocksheen, about three miles west of Dalry. One evening Forrester went drinking at an inn in the Midtown, a group of houses near the top of Dalry. The proprietress was known as Lucky Hair. At a late hour he left for home mounted on his grey mare. Riding down the hill towards the ford over the Water of Ken, he was surprised to see an eerie light coming from the kirk. Stopping, he peered through a window and saw what looked like a coven of witches performing a diabolical dance.

Recognising one of them he shouted, 'Aye, Lucky Hair, ye'll no deny this the morn', meaning that he would accuse her of witchcraft. The light vanished. Through pitch darkness a voice screamed: 'Get him!' He spurred his horse and galloped to the ford. On Waterside Hill the witches were gaining on him. Forrester dismounted, described
with his sword a circle around himself and his horse and defied them in the name of God to step inside it. The witches stood jeering and screeching until cockcrow when the horse backed over the sacred circle and Lucky Hair cut off its tail. Then they vanished. For many years afterwards Forrester and his descendants annually renewed the circular score on the turf of Waterside Hill.

In 1790 Burns wrote the story in prose, locating it in Alloway, his birthplace, where his father was buried beside the ruined kirk. Soon afterwards he rewrote it as Tam o' Shanter, one of his greatest poems:

The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last;
The rattling showers rose on the blast;
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd;
Loud, deep, and lang the thunder bellow'd:
That night, a child might understand,
The deil had business on his hand.

Weel-mounted on his gray mare Meg,
A better never lifted leg,
Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire,
Despising wind, and rain, and fire;
Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet,
Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet,
Whiles glow'rin round wi' prudent cares,
Lest bogles catch him unawares:
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh,
Whair ghaists and houlets nightly cry.

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