Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER
Where does the name ‘Cutty Sark’ come from?
SHORT ANSWER
It refers to a short nightie worn by a water-hating witch in a Robert Burns poem... a natural fit for a ship, right?
LONG ANSWER
Any visit to London will always be enriched by popping over to Greenwich, where you’ll find, among other things, the National Maritime Museum, John Harrison’s magnificent clocks to tell Longitude, and Cutty Sark. The 19th-century tea clipper – the fastest in her day with a state-of-the-art design before steamships came along – has been on display since 1957 and its name is famous around the world.
The ship’s original owner, Jock Willis, chose the sobriquet Cutty Sark having taken it from the poem Tam O’Shanter by fellow Scot Robert Burns. The titular Tam, on his way drunk one night, sees a witch named Nannie dancing in a ‘cutty sark’, or revealingly short nightdress. “Weel done, Cutty-sark,” he calls to her. This gets Nannie’s attention, who chases Tam and is only prevented from catching him when his horse’s tail comes away in her hand when she grabs it.
The white figurehead of Cutty Sark is of Nannie, still clutching the horse Meg’s tail. Other than out of a dose of Scottish pride, it is not abundantly clear why Willis thought this would be a good name for a ship, especially since witches were well-known to be unable to cross bodies of water.
