Tam O'Shanter poursuivi par les sorcières

The story comes from a poem by the Scottish writer Robert Burns, written in 1790. Tam O'Shanter, riding home drunk in the dark, stumbles on a coven of witches dancing in a ruined church and, forgetting himself, shouts out. They give chase, and his one hope is the bridge ahead, since a witch cannot cross running water. Delacroix paints that exact instant, Tam bent low over his pale mare as the pack closes in behind. Readers of the poem knew the mare would lose her tail to the nearest witch at the bridge's edge. Delacroix likely first met these verses during a visit to England in 1825, and the subject stayed with him for years. He treated it more than once; this is the version of 1849.