Grace before haggis on Burns Night
Ours will be a low key celebration for just 2 people, but we have haggis. What else could we eat on Burns Night? It will be a traditional Scottish haggis and comes from a manufacturer based in an area of Scotland where some of my forbearers were farmers of sheep and growers of oats, 'neeps' and 'tatties'.
The basic haggis recipe is the minced heart, lungs and liver of a sheep, seasoned and mixed with oatmeal, stuffed into a sheep's stomach lining and boiled. It is traditionally served with mashed root vegetables like potatoes and swedes/turnips. Haggis is one of those foods that tastes much better than it looks. However elaborately it is sometimes presented, a stuffed sheep's stomach just looks revolting to my mind.
It does seem strange that what was essentially the food of poor people (if they could manage a bit of offal to go with their mostly vegetarian diet) is now treated with great respect at formal dinners to remember Robert Burns. It is even piped in to the dinner table by a bagpiper. Burns himself grew up in poor circumstances in lowland Scotland. Although his father was a tenant farmer, I assume the best cuts of meat rarely featured on the Burns family dinner table. They probably ate mostly oatmeal, barley, vegetables and offal.
Whatever you are eating today. Take a moment to be grateful that you have food to eat. Here's one Scottish way to say thank you to God for haggis or any other food. It was known as the Covenanters' Grace. After Robert Burns used it (in Anglicised form) when he was hosted by the Earl of Selkirk, it became known as the Selkirk grace. It is often used at formal Burns' Night suppers.
"Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit."
Previous posts on haggis and Burns Night:
Burns Night
Haggis and Conversion
10 things you never knew about haggis
Image Credit: Wikimedia commons, CC License
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