Capturing Nannie in her cutty sark

We went to Mauchline today to the Robert Burns House museum, the place where he and Jean Armour stayed in a bedsit while waiting for his new farm to be ready. And apparently the place where he did find a lot of inspiration and wrote lots of his famous works.  Over the years during many Burns Suppers I've always enjoyed the story of Tam o' Shanter and it was very interesting to find out that Robert Burns wrote this poem to accompany this illustration  by Francis Grose, an English antiquarian, artist and lexicographer. They had met while busy on a book about the antiquities of Scotland and Burns had asked him to include scenes of Kirk Alloway, the Auld Kirkyard at Alloway. This illustration must have inspired these verses:

"But here my Muse her wing maun cour;
Sic flights are far beyond her pow'r;
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,
(A souple jade she was, and strang),
And how Tam stood, like ane bewitch'd,
Even Satan glowr'd, and fidg'd fu' fain,
And hotch'd and blew wi' might and main;
Till first ae caper, syne anither,
Tam tint his reason ' thegither,
And roars out, "Weel done, Cutty-sark!"
And in an instant all was dark:
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied,
When out the hellish legion sallied"

I did capture something pink as well for Pinktober, Breast Cancer Awareness Month. See the extra for an image of the rather garrish pink gates of our hotel in Troon :-) If you want, please follow this link  and click on the pink button for free mammograms for those who can't afford them otherwise.

Thanks so much for your kind comments, stars and even faves for yesterday's rose for Burns. The only way I can connect to the internet and send comments or photos is in the bathroom of our hotel room and even then it's so slow, so I do hope tomorrow's hotel will have  a better connection