Great chieftan o the puddin’ race!

Yesterday evening we were honored to be guests at a traditional Scottish Burns Night, the essential ingredients for which are haggis, whisky (are you Scots out there appreciating my spelling?), and a little poetry. The men in kilts were just an added bonus.

We learned a lot about Scottish culture while sipping on the delicious, warming whisky, important facts such as what kind of shoes are worn with a kilt, why haggis is better than salmon, and a variety of uses for the word ‘pudding’.

You’ve never seen a folk more enamored with their national dish than the Scots and their haggis. This love of a dish based on sheep entrails is hard for a vegetarian like myself to understand. But indeed, the Scots consider haggis so important that they want to make sure that everyone gets a chance to partake: there’s even a vegetarian version (entrail-free, naturally).

Without further ado, I give you the dramatic interpretation of Robert Burn’s poem ‘To A Haggis‘:

A poem for a haggis from zurika on Vimeo.

I wasn’t able to coax anyone into proclaiming ‘If it’s not Scottish it’s crap!’ (mainly due to a lack of concerted effort on my part), but there’s always next year… lucky for me Burns Night is celebrated each and every January 25th.