Seamus Perry

speaker

386 appearances 5 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 31 Aug

Seamus Perry’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 2.

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Close Readings · Narrative Poems: ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ by Robert Burns and ‘Peter Grimes’ by George Crabbe · 13 May 2026 podcast

The landlady and Tam, as you say, grow gracious, and the landlord's laugh echoes around the beams of the pub.

Meanwhile, outside, there is a terrible storm.

But Tam doesn't give a whistle for the storm, says Burns.

And so we get this wonderful portrait of Tam drunk and happy.

So let's listen to the next six lines or so, which talk about Tam in this state.

So this is a very lovely example of the way that Burns is playing with literary tradition, isn't it?

Because he introduces care.

Care mad to see a man so happy even drowned himself among the nappy.

The nappy being the beers, the ales.

So there we have, as Burns's editor, great editor James Kinsey points out, care, a kind of a capitalized abstraction, like you might get in formal Augustan verse.

And here it is, you know, Burns is sticking it into this very comic setting where care is.

is so frustrated to see Tam not giving up, you know, tuppany about anything, that Keir gets drunk.

You are going to sober up one day.

Yes.

I mean, they're beautiful lines, aren't they?

And actually, these lines, as you point out, are in standard English.

When he turns to make these more sort of sententious, sort of slightly tongue-in-cheek, I suppose, kind of comparisons, he doesn't write in Scots dialect anymore.

But pleasures are like poppies spread.

You seize the flower, its bloom is shed.

Or like the snow falls in the river, a moment white then melts forever.

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