Wild haggis (Haggis scoticus) is a mythical and elusive creature in the Scottish Highlands, rumoured to be the main ingredient in the meal of the same name. The stories claim that haggis's right and left legs are of different lengths, allowing it to run around the steep Scottish hillsides, but only in one direction. There are two distinct populations of wild haggis, one with longer left legs, and the other with longer right legs. Due to the inability to turn around on the hill, sadly the two subspecies cannot interbreed.
In reality though, haggis is a traditional Scottish dish made from sheep's hearts, livers and lungs, cooked in the sheep's stomach (or mostly plastic these days). Apart from sheep's meat, haggis also contains oatmeal, suet and spices. Haggis goes back a long way. The first record of the dish in the English literature dates to 1430, but it is thought that it has been created many centuries before then, possibly by the Scottish cattle drovers or hunters, as it is a convenient way to cook the meat whilst travelling without a vessel.
Haggis is eaten with tatties (potatoes, usually mashed) and neeps (Swedish turnips or swede, also mashed), and whisky sauce. It is traditionally eaten on the 25th of January on Burns Night, a celebration of the birth of the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759–1796), who is often described as the national poet of Scotland, and who wrote the "Address to a haggis". The poem is read out loud during the Burns Supper culminating with the haggis being sliced with a ceremonial knife.
Here's the poem in full:
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.
The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o need,
While thro your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.
His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An cut you up wi ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!
Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive:
Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
The auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
'Bethankit' hums.
Is there that owre his French ragout,
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi perfect scunner,
Looks down wi sneering, scornfu view
On sic a dinner?
Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as a wither'd rash,
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!
But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll make it whissle;
An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
Like taps o thrissle.
Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies:
But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer,
Gie her a Haggis
It is quite a challenge after a few whiskies!
댓글