Cutty Sark
“Cutty Sark” (“short shirt”) comes from Robert Burns’ long poem
Tam o’ Shanter
, in which he describes how the titular hero, on his way home from a bout of heavy drinking, passes the old church of Alloway where a witches’ sabbath is in progress. Being a curious sort, he can’t resist surrepetitiously watching the wild proceedings, and when a particularly good-looking and scantily-clad young witch performs a particularly graceful dance step, Tam is completely overwhelmed and shouts “Weel done, cutty-sark!”. Immediately the lights go out, the music stops, and the festive crowd comes after Tam, who hurriedly mounts his mare, Meg, and gallops away, pursued by the witches led by Nannie, a.k.a., “Cutty Sark”, who almost manages to catch him. In the nick of time, Tam and Meg reach the bridge over the river Doon, and since witches can’t cross moving water, the two are safe – but not before Nannie catches hold of Meg’s tail, which comes off and leaves the horse with only a stump. Burns’ moral for us is
Now, wha this tale o’ truth shall read,
Ilk man and mother’s son, take heed:
Whene’er to Drink you are inclin’d,
Or Cutty-sarks rin in your mind,
Think ye may buy the joys o’er dear;
Remember Tam o’ Shanter’s mare.
The “short shirt” thus has found its way into Scottish folklore. Also famous is the
Cutty Sark
, one of the last “clipper ships”, the fast sailing ships which in the 19th century engaged in annual informal races to be the first to bring the new tea harvest from China to England. Designed by Hercules Linton (1873–1900) from Inverbervie on the north-east coast of Scotland (south of Aberdeen),
Cutty Sark
was built in 1879; during her first voyage in 1870 it managed the distance from Shanghai to Beachy Head on the English south coast in only 109 days (carrying almost 600 tons of tea). At about the same time the Suez channel was opened, and improvements in steam-ship construction meant that the days of the sailing clippers were numbered. In 1872,
Cutty Sark
raced
Thermopylae
, a very similar ship. The two left Shanghai on the same day, but two weeks later
Cutty Sark
had accumulated a lead of almost 750 km when she lost her rudder in a storm. While the ship’s carpenter managed to construct a replacement, this cost a lot of time and the ship eventually reached London one week after
Thermopylae
. The last “tea race” for
Cutty Sark
took place in 1876, and afterwards she was used to transport wool from Australia to England. There, too, steam ships eventually dominated, and
Cutty Sark
was sold to Portugal, where it used to sail the Atlantic until 1922 as a freighter called
Ferreira
. After some back and forth with various owners, in 1953 the ship was given to the
Cutty Sark Preservation Society
and, in 1954, housed in a specially constructed dry dock in Greenwich, where it can be visited to this day. In 2007 the ship was heavily damaged in a fire, but later reconstructed at great trouble and expense.
From “Anselm's Notes on Dances”, by Anselm Lingnau
(Used by permission.)