A Son of the Rock

After Culzean we came back via Alloway and of course came across this:-

Familiar not only from shortbread tins but tea towels, mugs, plates, memorabilia of all sorts.

And this is the rather more elaborate memorial to Scotland’s greatest poet than the house he was born in.

It was late when we got there and the memorial and the rather nice looking gardens surrounding it were both shut for the day. Between Burns’s Cottage and the Memorial there is a so-called Poet’s Path leading past a sports ground and every so often there are silhouettes like this in painted metal showing scenes from Burns’s poem Tam O’ Shanter.

The path leads down to opposite Auld Alloway Kirk. The building was derelict even when Robert Burns was a boy, reputed to be the haunt of ghoulies and ghosties and so became the inspiration for Tam O’ Shanter.

Burns’s father is buried there.*

With a Burns verse to him on the stone’s rear.

*Edited to add:- The grave is also that of Burns’s mother, here commemorated, in that old Scottish tradition, under her maiden name, Agnes Brown.