For Webutante who has the great fortune to have a son she loves and the good fortune to be visiting Scotland. Scotland beat the English. They were so rude to Rome that Hadrian built a wall to keep them in Scotland. The Scottish also gave us possibly the two greatest banes known to man, golf and Haggis. It is fully possible that the first Haggis may have been made possible by a frustrated Scotsman slaughtering a sheep with a nine iron.
Being that you are a lady, I will suggest that you only read the ingredients alone or with close friends.
Haggis Recipes
Haggis "is typically served on Burns Night, January 25, when Scotland celebrates the birth of its greatest poet, Robert Burns, who was born in Ayrshire on that date in 1759. During the celebration, Burns poems are read, and the haggis is addressed by a member of the party, ceremonially, in the form of verses from Burns' poem, 'Address to a Haggis.' A typical meal for Burns Night would include Cock-a-Leekie, Haggis with Tatties-an'-Neeps, Roastit Beef, Tipsy Laird, and Dunlop Cheese."
Oh, and did I mention that whisky is also served?
Haggis has many ingredients, many recipes and many supporters. So do many other fetishes.
P.G. Wodehouse has the following to say about haggis:
The fact that I am not a haggis addict is probably due to my having read Shakespeare. It is the same with many Englishmen. There is no doubt that Shakespeare has rather put us off the stuff.... You remember the passage to which I refer? Macbeth happens upon the three witches while they are preparing the evening meal. They are dropping things into the cauldron and chanting "Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog," and so on, and he immediately recognises the recipe. "How now, you secret, black and midnight haggis," he cries shuddering.
This has caused misunderstandings and has done an injustice to haggis. Grim as it is, it is not as bad as that-- or should not be. What the dish really consists of -- or should consist of -- is the more intimate parts of a sheep chopped up fine and blended with salt, pepper, nutmeg, onions, oatmeal, and beef suet. But it seems to me that there is a grave danger of the cook going all whimsey and deciding not to stop there. When you reflect that the haggis is served up with a sort of mackintosh round it, concealing its contents, you will readily see that the temptation to play a practical joke on the boys must be almost irresistible. Scotsmen have their merry moods, like all of us, and the thought must occasionally cross the cook's mind that it would be no end of a lark to shove in a lot of newts and frogs and bats and dogs and then stand in the doorway watching the poor simps wade into them....
An odd thing--ironical, you might say-- in connection with haggis is that it is not Scottish. In an old cook book, published 1653, it is specifically mentioned as an English dish called haggas or haggus, while France claims it as her mince (hachis) going about under an alias. It would be rather amusing if it turned out that Burns was really a couple of Irish boys named Pat and Mike.
To paraphrase Waylan and Willie, "Mothers don't let you babies grow up to eat Haggis."
