Verses Written on a Window of the Inn at Carron

Verses Written on a Window of the Inn at Carron - context Summary

Written at the Inn, 1787

Composed in 1787 during Robert Burns’s visit to the Inn at Carron, this short piece is a witty, convivial inscription tied to a specific place and moment. Addressing the innkeepers and their porter, the speaker jokes that the party did not come seeking enlightenment but merely to avoid a surprise trip to hell. The reference to being kept out by the porter and a comic fear of encountering “billy Satan” at hell’s gate gives the poem a teasing, folk-humor tone typical of Burns’s light occasional pieces written for social occasions.