Honoring a Scottish Legend

Allentown, PA is about a two hour drive from our home  Down the Shore. Debbie, a dear friend from high school lives there with her husband, Peter. He’s a Scot. He’s a real Scot, bred and born.

Several years ago I noticed that on Debbie’s FB page she’d mentioned being a member of the “Scottish Society of the Lehigh Valley” and that they were throwing a “Robert Burns” dinner at the end of January.

Robert Burns was a poet who lived in Scotland back in the 1700s. 
He was a formidable talent as well as a formidable rake. (Look it up!)

He wrote hundreds of poems about love and what a wonderful place Scotland was and he was famous for having done so.  But, for all that, he and his wife and children lived mostly in poverty.

About 9 years after he passed away, a group of friends got “into their cups” and were reminiscing about their friend and they decided to have a dinner in his honor. And low and behold, people who love Robert Burn’s poetry continue to honor him.

The dinner began with a cash bar and moved on to the main event, the presenting of the haggis. Burns wrote a long and vivid poem about haggis. Here it is:
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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 of 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 ye 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;
Then 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 sconner,
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’ bluidy 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!
For those of you who are uninitiated, haggis is an old and revered dish created for hearty people who worked hard and couldn’t afford better.
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This is sturdy and dependable Peter Stark

The President does the honor of slashing the haggis.

Here’s the recipe:
Take one sheep stomach, well rinsed.                                                                                                Fill it with oatmeal mixed with organ meats from the above sheep, like heart, lungs, liver kidneys and such.                                
Tie up the incision tightly with twine and place in a boiling pot of water and turn it down to a simmer.     Watch the pot so that it doesn’t boil or the sheep stomach might burst open and ruin the haggis.                                                                                                      For a 2 lb. Haggis, simmer for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Put it on an attractive plate and have your Scotland Laddie recite the Address to a Haggis! Spoon it up and see what all the fuss is about!