Your hosts:Tom. Joyce and Campbell
"wi' usquaebach we'll face the devil!"
9th Annual Burns Supper 2005
Our gathering this year on January 29 celebrated
the 246th anniversary of the poet's birth
Will Sutherland and Shawn Scarlett:
"Tae give them music was his charge"
(many thanks to A.A. Milne from whom some plagerism occured)
by Mich Davis
Of all the men at Hannegan's
The wisest was Sir Robert Burns.
He multiplied as far as four
And knew what nights were always best
To fill his lonely bed.
The prudest waitress he could sway
Her clothes to quickly shed.
Was resting from his evening toils,
The women he was hiding from
Seemed somehow loud . . . or was it sore?
The passioned cries, the moaning yells.
These (and especially the last)
had chatted by him all these weeks.
Was this the same? Or was it not?
Something different there was . . . but what?
And suddenly he seemed to hear,
Or not to hear, the reason why
These women made a different sound
Than other nights he'd been around.
He realized his luck was far
Away, for all the recent girls he'd known
Were gathering with bitter tones.
That even poets should always know:
If bedding women is thy goal,
Then different bars thou must patrol.
"and drouthy neighbors, neighbors meet"
by Tom
W's for the Women all around us,
They add the spice that Nature cannot match.
We thank the gods they want to help us scratch.
But it's a tithe that we all gladly pay.
They gave us rules from which we dare not stray.
At guessing at their every mood and whim.
For going out and doing something dim.
Without them, where would we be today?
"his ancient, trusty, drouthy crony"
Last Tuesday I rode up to the town of Dixon to buy our Haggis from the Scottish Meat Pie Company. Dixon lies just this side of Davis, in an area that is still pretty much farmland. There, Alec Henderson and his daughter Saundra raise the finest free range Haggis this side of McIntyre's Butcher Shop on my beloved Isle of Bute in Scotland.
As I was driving my small herd of Haggis back down to the Bay Area, I had opportunity to muse a bit on the little critters. You see, free range Haggis are so contented that they pose no problems in driving them back. No danger of stampedes or even the occasional stray to slow us down.
Haggis live to please. Those of you old enough to remember the comic strip L'il Abner will remember the Schmoos. The Schmoos were little ham shaped creatures whose pleasure in life was to please. They would be quite willing to jump in a fry pan to feed hungry people. They could have been cousins to our beloved Haggis, who is quite willing to jump into a pot of boiling water to feed the hungry.
So it was that I started thinking of how misunderstood these roly-polys are. This was brought home to me again the last couple of weeks as I asked people if they wished to attend our Supper, since we always like some new blood in the mix. More than a few vigorously shook their heads "No", saying they didn't think they could get through the Haggis (as though their entire evening would be spent tied to a chair and force fed Haggis like a goose at a pate farm). When pressed, they would admit that they really didn't know what Haggis was, just that they had heard it was sheep's innards in a sheep's stomach. Of course, these are the same people that have no trouble scarfing down the All American Hot Dog at ballgames and family barbecues. I like to point out to these delicate folk that Haggis contains pure ingredients: liver, kidneys, heart, minced up with pepper as a spice and and oatmeal as a binder so that it is more like a coarse pate. The all-American hot dog is allowed, by the government no less, to have a percentage of rodent hair and rat droppings in the mix. Yum-mee!!
You'll find none of that here tonight.
Of course there are all kinds of Haggis recipes. Cookbooks will give you recipes for lamb haggis, beef haggis, easy haggis, traditional haggis, American haggis . . . even vegetarian haggis. There's this very rare "California Haggis" grown on grapefruit trees. And even this canned stuff . . . grown in Texas. Well, what can you expect from Texas?
Part of the problem also comes from a basic inability to understand all the words of late 18th century Scottish vernacular. The Scots, especially in Burns' time, regarded Haggis as a sausage, or in their terms, a "pudding". Burns considered it King of all puddings, taking its place above all other puddings and worthy of a long grace before dinner.
He described the platter or trencher that holds the Haggis as groaning under the weight of so majestic a beast. The roundness of the Haggis suggests a rump or "hurdies". In the olden days, the casing that held the sausage was skewered with a pin and twisted shut. Such a tremendous pin that was needed for such a beast could be used to repair millworks.
"Rustic Labor" is the common, working man and this was his dish. He cuts open the beast, delightfully exposing its innards. Utensils of the time, other than knives, were made of wood or stag horn. So the group reaches out to scoop up the meat, "horn for horn", stretching and striving to get as much as they can. Their stomachs, their "kytes", swell taut like a drum. Then "Auld Goodman", which is just a polite term for an old gentleman, about to burst or "rive", belches contentedly and gives thanks.
Chef Bill Brown dishes "them oot their bill o'fare"
Burns then asks if anyone could even compare the Haggis to other cuisines, saying they would make a sow sick. Those that partake of such trash are feeble and withered. Their legs, "shanks", are like spindles, about as substantial as buggy whips. Their fist described as a "nit" which is sometimes translated as a nut, like a walnut, or like a tiny louse. He then shows us the Rustic, the Common Man, raised on Haggis, treading the earth with resounding footsteps and ends by beseeching the Powers above not to serve Scotland some watery fare that splashes about in milk pails, but to give her Haggis.
With that, I shall now begin . . .