―――― TAM O’SHANTER. In a recent number of _Notes and Queries_ (December 19, 1885), there was a long article, by Mr. Shirley Hibberd, on the origin of Burns’s masterpiece. It contains so much interesting information that readers of Burns will, no doubt, be pleased to have the following extracts:―― “In the year 1790, when Burns wrote _Tam o’Shanter_, stories of witches were current in Scotland, and there was yet a large survival of popular belief in their power and the diabolical source thereof. The poem bears evidence of a reality that has hitherto failed of recognition. The confession of certain Scotch witches at the assizes held at Paisley, February 15, 1678, must have been well known to Burns, for it was a theme of fireside conversation in his youth, and there were many living who remembered the whole of the circumstances. That confession establishes the reality of witchcraft. The confession is cited in _Demonologia_ (Bumpus, 1827). In a letter to Francis Grose, Burns gives three prose versions of the story. In one, a farmer who “had got courageously drunk in the smithy,” saw the “infernal junto” play their antics in Alloway Kirk, and managed to carry off the cauldron in which the hell-broth was prepared from the bodies of the unchristened children. In another, a farmer of Carrick witnessed the incantation, and, losing his self-command in admiring a buxom lass who danced with peculiar liveliness, shouted the dread words, “Weel luppen, Maggie, wi’ the short sark.” In this case the speed of the horse was insufficient for his complete escape, for at “the keystane o’ the brig” the witches despoiled the horse of its tail, and the stumpy steed became a witness of the truth of the farmer’s declaration. The third story is of no account in this connexion. In Robert Chambers’s _Life and Works of Burns_, iii. 152, we are told that “the country people of Ayrshire unmythicise the narration, and point to a real Tam and Souter Johnny,” the first being Douglas Graham, farmer, of Shanter; the other, his neighbour, John Davidson, noted for telling the “queerest stories.” That a drunken freak and the lies told to cover it explain the form of the poem is well enough. But we have in these “facts of the case” no explanation of the motive, no indication of the source of the inspiration, no key to the supernatural business. The moral is obvious for the _dénoûment_ proves the impotency of witches, and mocks the prevalent belief in their powers. These considerations, however, do not remove witches and witchcraft from the category of historical facts.