Engraving by Capt. Francis Grose, made at the request of the poet Robert Burns, in return for which Burns wrote the poem Tam o' Shanter to accompany the illustration. Grose wrote, "This church is also famous for being the place wherein the witches and warlocks used to hold infernal meetings, or sabbaths, and prepare their magical unctions; here too they used to amuse themselves with dancing to the pipes of the muckle-horned Deel. Diverse stories of these horrid rites are still current: one of which my worthy friend Mr. Burns has here favoured me with in verse."ALLOWA KIRK. Scottish, Strathspey (whole time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. "Allowa Kirk" was composed by composer, editor, musician and dancing master biography:Joseph Lowe of Inverness, who published a set of collections in the mid-1840's. This strathspey has become his most famous composition in Cape Breton, according to Paul Stewart Cranford (1995).
Alloway Kirk was built about the year 1516, and survived for two hundred and fifty years as a place of worship, until 1756, by which time it had fallen into disrepair. Its roof caved in soon thereafter, but the grounds were maintained. Scots poet Robert Burns knew it well as it was the burying place of his father William (whose original stone was chiped to pieces by souvenier hunters), referring to it as 'Alloway's auld haunted kirk'. It was the setting for his famous poem "Tam o' Shanter', based on local legends. Another Scottish literary great, Robert Louis Stevenson, mentioned the church in his In the South Seas, when, whilst staying on one of the Gilbert Islands in the South Seas, he recorded:
The night was very dark. There was service in the church, and the building glimmered through all its crevices like a dim Kirk Allowa.
Additional notes
Printed sources : - Joseph Lowe (Lowe's Collection of Reels, Strathspeys and Jigs, book 1), 1844–1845; p. 12.
Recorded sources : - Celtic CX14, "The Scottish Fiddling of Dan Joe MacInnis" (c. 1965). Ashley MacIsaac - "Fine, Thank You Very Much" (1996).
See also listing at : Alan Snyder's Cape Breton Fiddle Recordings Index [1]
