Link to Robert Burn's Information

To a Haggis

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,                                           
Great Chieftan 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 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;
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, scronful' 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 mak it whissle;
An' legs, an' arms, an' heads will sned,
Like taps o' thrissle.

Ye Pow's wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o' fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae shinking ware

That jaups in luggies;
But, if you wish her gratefu' pray'r,
Gie her a Haggis!

 

What is haggis? Think of a big, round sausage

January 21, 1998

BY JUDY ROSE
Free Press Staff Writer

About 4,000 Robert Burns Day dinners will take place around the world this week, and each of them needs a haggis. Many of these are shipped from Scotland, where the haggis is revered as a national symbol. Aficionados hold haggis contests and quarrel over recipes the way Texans fight over chili.

This year, there's a glitch. Mad cow disease has brought a ban on exporting beef from Great Britain, and much haggis is being stopped at borders by wary customs inspectors, who don't know that haggis traditionally is an all-sheep product. So, rumor has it, many a haggis is making it across the border this year in the security of a diplomat's pouch.

Scots like to tell visitors the haggis is a small native animal that has adapted to Scotland's steep hills by growing legs shorter on one side. In fact, it's a logical food for people who once had to feed families on tight resources. Each winter, a farm family would sacrifice an adult sheep or two so the sparse grazing land could support the spring lambs.

"They'd kill an animal and use every part -- nose to tail," says Alan Ackroyd, who sells about 500 haggis a year from his stores in Redford and Birmingham.

Traditionally, the haggis is made with a sheep's stomach as a casing. It is filled with oats, onions, spices and the other edible organs that are cooked first and then chopped up. These are called "pluck," -- things plucked from the sheep carcass -- and include the "lights," or lungs.

For all its strange look and lore, the haggis is basically a big, round, spicy sausage.

Making classic haggis is best left to experts, but many Scottish cooks know about mock haggis. That's not something you do to a haggis, but an easier version employing the same ingredients and cooked in an open pan.

Most likely, if you are eating a small haggis or any haggis made in the United States, you are eating an adaptation. "I don't know if you can even buy a sheep's stomach here,' Ackroyd says.

His recipe, like those in many modern cookbooks, uses lamb meat, lamb liver and heart, but no esoteric organs such as lungs. It's stuffed into beef casings in 1- to 2-pound quantities.

As Ackroyd says: "Most people can't really use 10 pounds of haggis."