Cutty-sark (witch) "chemise", or "shirt". The earliest recorded literary usage of the term "cutty sark" (as opposed to older usage of the two separate words) is by Dougal Graham in c. 1779 (the year of his death): "A cutty sark of guide harn sheet, My mitter he pe spin, mattam." In Burns' 1791 poem Tam o' Shanter, the drunken Tam, riding home on his horse, happens upon a witches' dance. Among the dancing figures is a particularly beautiful young witch named Nannie (Scots pet-form of Anna), "ae winsome wench and wawlie" (line 164). She is wearing a "harn" (linen) "sark" (nightshirt) which
River Sark made famous, partially by Robert Burns' poem, "Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation", which in the first verse says: The poem's subject was the alleged sale of Scotland in the Anglo-Scottish Treaty of Union. The most famous town on the Sark is Gretna Green, best known for its wedding industry. The A74 motorway passes over it. The area around the Sark was notoriously marshy and sandy, as much of the coast of the north west Irish Sea is. The small section between the lower end of the Sark and the River Esk is known as the "debatable lands",