This painting was shown at the Royal Academy in 1817, and is an illustration of a popular Scots drinking song. The ballad’s erotic subtext is ironically implied through the titillating detail of the young woman’s discarded shoes and stockings, and her garter inscribed with the motto of the Order of the Garter ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’ (‘Shame on him who thinks evil of this’). The composition evokes seventeenth-century Netherlandish and Flemish tavern scenes in which drunkenness and dalliance were stock themes.