Burn the witch

It was Burns night last night and as a local boy done well his birthday is a bit of an event here.
There are poetry recitals, whisky drinking (that's whisky without the e) and haggis eating. I like haggis and I'm OK with the whisky, though I prefer whiskey, but the poetry I can do without.
In school it was all "O my Luve's like a red, red rose / That's newly sprung in June;" and I just couldn't be bothered.

So when Fiona said that we managed to get tickets for the ghost tour in Alloway as part of Alloway 1759 I was in mixed feeling. The company would be good and the walk about would be interesting but I feared the ghosts we would be meeting would be this milk maid who Burns wrote this about [insert recital] or that beastie [add another recital].

I was wrong. There was little Burns at all. The walk was run by Scruffy Dog and was fantastic!

The walk was based around Alloway and as such it had to include mention of Burns, but that just based it. He was a concrete connection from the past that the history were would be told was tied to.

The bulk of the talk was about some of the more gruesome goings on. The bodies that fell into the train tunnel after a cheap contractor tunnelled under the graveyard with out moving the bodies (think 1982's Poletgeist film). Or of the abbot of Crossraguel who was pulled off his horse, tied over another one and then tortured until he signed over the lands.

A hooded figure in the church yard?

We were told about the witch purges - about 4000 Scots who were 'cleansed' by fire or water of witchcraft. One of the group was singled out and used to illustrate the tests - the needle, the thumb screws, the knotted ropes. All very frightening, but more because of how dangerous it became   A witch couldn't be trusted not to lie and a parishioner wouldn't lie

All the while we were walking in the area, and along the path that Tom O'Shanter would have come along. We end up in the old Alloway Kirk, the one made famous by Burns and Tam, and whose graveyard collapsed into the tunnel.
Here we did get a bit of Burns, but it was fitting.

The tour was all done in alight hearted way, but still made you think. Some of the lighter moments was the non traditional Burns supper - we had haggis pakora delivered to us on the walk - and our own personal traffic lights.

After the walk the 6 of us went out for a nice meal. Originally we had tried to get onto the 2130 walk but it was sold out and we had to settle for the 1830 one. At 2145, while our mains were just about finished  we could see the rain bouncing off the street and the wind blowing a gale, so a lucky escape for us.


It seems a bit unfair that Burns gets all the noise. There are plenty of other notable local boys who should get as much adulation. What about John Loudon MacAdam from Ayr and his road making (eventually tarmac), or John Dunlop from Dreghorn who invented pneumatic tyres, or even Alexander Fleming from Darvel for his penicillin? I personally have more interest in solid tarred roads and good rubber tyres than in whether or not "auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind "