chunk: The poem begins:
  When chapman billies leave the street,
  
  And drouthy neibors, neibors, meet;
  
  As market days are wearing late,
  
  And folk begin to tak the gate,
  
  While we sit bousing at the nappy,
  
  An' getting fou and unco happy,
  
  We think na on the lang Scots miles,
  
  The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,
  
  That lie between us and our hame,
  
  Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
  
  Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
  
  Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.
  After Burns has located us geographically:
  (Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses,
  
  For honest men and bonnie lasses).
  (a quote that gave Ayr United F.C. their nickname "the honest men"), Tam sits and drinks with his friends, and the reader is regaled with a dark prophecy of Tam's wife Kate:
  She prophesied that late or soon,
  
  Thou wad be found, deep drown'd in Doon,
  
  Or catch'd wi' warlocks in the mirk,
  
  By Alloway's auld, haunted kirk.
  Tam's wife, Kate, is portrayed as an authority to be feared. Then:
  Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet,