To those at Bard’s Dinner, we hope you had fun . . .
Celebrating Bard’s Birthday . . . Two Hundred Sixty-One!
© Forrest W. Heaton 28 January 2020
You Dear Readers reading our Blog know that we posted, 29Dec19, Robert Burns’ Auld Lang Syne to bridge 2019 to 2020 and then, 13Jan20, we posted encouragement to attend a Robert Burns Dinner in your area celebrating my favorite poet’s 261st Birthday, 25 January! For our part, on Saturday 25Jan, Mary & I attended what surely is North Carolina’s Number One Burns Dinner! The organizing group was the St. Andrews Society of NC and the Robert Burns Society of NC, all led by Jim Graham, the handsome fellow with his bride, Patricia, in the photo below.
We hope those of you who chose to attend a Burns Dinner had similar good fortune! There was so much going on at our event that the opportunity didn’t present itself to read my Epigraph to Burns’ Tam o’ Shanter that I wrote in 2006 while in Burns’ hometown of Ayrshire sketching the Brig o’ Doon, eating Haggis, drinking a wee dram of Oban single malt, and soaking in the glorious history, culture and poetry. Having this opportunity, we’ll present it here for you Dear Readers:
Tam’s Tale Twice Told!
In Alloway, Ayrshire wi’ my Mary Dear,
It’s been twenty years sin’ I’ve been here.
At Brig o’ Doon House, by river’s edge,
Now trim an’ bright in flower an’ hedge.
The air grows chill after dinnner’s swoon,
As we read Burns by Brig o’ Doon.
The brig grows brighter by spotlight,
As sun slade down an’ comes the night.
The trees by Doon must hae been small,
If ere those trees were there at all.
We imagine Tam o’ Shanter’s mare,
Sweet Meg, frightened, standin’ there.
Tryin’ t’ gather courage t’ run,
Whilst Tam’s heel an’ hand encouragin’.
Chased by witches an’ “warlocks in mirk,
By Alloway’s auld [and] haunted kirk.”
Aye, Maggie dids’t run ‘midst lightenin’ an’ hail,
She crossed the brig, but lost her tail.
Robbie first wrote this Tam’s tale bold,
Now with this addition, we’ve Tam’s Tale Twice Told!
© Forrest W. Heaton 6 September 2006
