Some hae meat and canna eat,
This 25 January, as every year, people in Scotland, Britain and the worldwide Scottish diaspora will gather merrily to celebrate the birth date of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns. Though it’s a gathering now as jolly as any birthday party, the event started life as a commemoration of Burns’ death in 1796 at the young age of thirty-seven. In 1801, a group of nine of his friends met at the Burns Cottage in Alloway, Ayrshire, on what would have been his birthday to reminisce about him and then turned their gathering into an annual event. Now it’s celebrated by countless millions. Other poets, like Keats, Shelley and Chatterton died untimely, but none has ever lodged so firmly in so many people’s hearts.
Over the decades and centuries since that first gathering an order of service, as it were, has sprung up for Burns Night or a Burns Supper. But a Google search suggests plenty of uncanonical interpretations, such as a Burns Supper on a double-decker bus, an underwater Burns Supper (how?) or on the former Royal Yacht Britannia. Some venues even seek to cash in on the occasion by turning it into a fully-fledged Burns Day.
Apologies to those who know the drill like the back of their hands. What follows is for those unfortunates who won’t be attending a Burns Supper, or for novitiates.
And some wad eat that want it;
Exact arrangements vary, but the running order of a typical Burns supper goes like this:
The host – or staff member acting as such at a commercial venue – says a few words about why everyone’s gathered, and when people are seated, recites the Selkirk Grace.
Its four lines, shown in the headings of this post, celebrate our good fortune in having enough to eat and thank the Lord. They’re in Scots and display typical features: verb forms differing from Standard English, like hae (‘have’), wad (‘would’), thankit (‘thanked’), and different spellings reflecting pronunciation, like sae for ‘so’.
It’s popularly believed that Burns wrote this grace. He didn’t. It existed in the seventeenth century as ‘The Covenanters’ Grace’. Burns recited it at supper at the Earl of Selkirk’s – there’s still an earl of that title – in 1794, and at other times, so it became indelibly associated with Burns’ name.
If there’s to be a starter a soup as hearty and nourishing as Cullen skink or cock-a-leekie would be appropriate. Some eateries will serve the haggis as a starter or even a ‘gateau’ and then have a meat main dish, which might include skirlie (yuy-yum) as an accompaniment.
But the highlight is of course the presentation of the haggis, traditionally piped in on a silver salver. At home, you might serve it more simply on an ashet.
Both words are interesting. Salver took the French salve and added an -r to give an -er ending on the analogy perhaps of platter; ashet is a reformulation in British mouths of French assiette, ‘plate’ and is a mainly Scots word.
The host or other officiant then recites Burns’ famous ‘Address to a Haggis’. Only after that can people tuck in to their haggis, which should always be served with neeps (short for turnips) and tatties (Scots for potatoes). And often with a whisky and cream sauce.
On the perennially vexed question of ‘when is a turnip not a turnip’, what Scots mean is often Brassica napus, which others would call a ‘swede’ or ‘rutabaga’, as opposed to the smaller and generally white-fleshed Brassica rapa turnip. Funnily enough, though neeps might be Scots, and dialectal elsewhere, it comes from Old English næp, which is a direct borrowing from the Latin nāpus you can see above in the botanical name.
But we hae meat, and we can eat
Remembering the whole ‘Address to a Haggis’ is a major memory feat, especially because several words may be unfamiliar to the reciter outside the world of the poem. Possibly, the simple rhyme pattern AAABAB helps, as it gaily drives the narrative forward over the work’s eight stanzas and forty-eight lines.
For those pressed for time, here’s my free summary. Please spare the brickbats.
What a glorious-looking and -smelling thing is a haggis, the pinnacle of pudding perfection! As men race to tuck in, one man who’s fit to burst says grace. Forget your fancy foreign grub: it would give a sow the boke and so enfeeble men they’re like a withered rush. The haggis-fed rustic with sword in hand will hack off heads and limbs like thistle tops. Give Old Scotland haggis, not poncey soups!
For anyone wanting the organ grinder, not the monkey, the link to the unadorned full text is here.
If you know none of the rest of the poem, many readers will, I’m sure, be familiar with the opening couplet.
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great Chieftain o’ the Puddin-race!
It’s worth stating, because we’ve probably forgotten through familiarity, that addressing a haggis is a startlingly novel and hilarious example of personification, designed to bring a smile to the listeners’ faces from the start. And if you’re wondering how a haggis can be a ‘pudding’,* it very much is one according to the fourth Collins definition: ‘a sausage-like mass of seasoned minced meat, oatmeal, etc, stuffed into a prepared skin or bag and boiled’. In haggis, the ‘minced meat’ is lamb.
‘Fair fa’ in that first line is a formulaic ‘expression of blessing’, using the Scots variant fa of fall. Sonsie is a highly polysemous word, to use the lexicographical jargon: it has many meanings. As part of personification, the line reapplies the meaning ‘comely’ or ‘bonny’ from people to a thing, as you can see in 3 (3) of the Dictionaries of the Scots Language online. In that same entry, there’s a nice quote for another meaning of sonsie, ‘engaging and friendly in appearance or manner’: ‘Burns was handsome and sonsie, courteous and brave, clever and self-perceptive.’
I’d love to go on with my commentary, but there’s not room. And you may be relieved. If you wish to explore further, this link has a parallel translation in Standard English. And this one glosses the unfamiliar words. There, that should cover all bases.
Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as a wither’d rash
The only other linguistic comment I’ll make is that feckless in stanza 6 means ‘weak, feeble’, not its often-used meaning of ‘irresponsible’.
And sae the Lord be thankit.
Back at ‘the order of service’, after the haggis or main course, there could be pudding or dessert. (I noticed several venues offering cranachan, yum-yum, a Scottish Gaelic word.)
There could be another Burns reading.
Next comes the section when the host or speaker comments on Burns’ importance and legacy in the ‘Immortal Memory’.
Then there could be a further Burns reading, followed by a ‘Toast to the Lassies’, who may then reply with ‘A Reply to the Toast to the Lassies’, sometimes called ‘Toast to the Laddies’.
Finally, there could well be some Scottish dancing to a band in a ceilidh, another Scottish Gaelic word (pronounced KAY-lee). And then a rousing rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
I’ve left a couple of words uncommented. So, to finish, whisky is from Gaelic, shortened from whiskybae, from Scottish Gaelic uisge beatha, literally, ‘water of life’. And if you take a ‘wee dram’ of whisky, you’ll be using a word, dram, that goes back to the Classical Greek drachma, the coin. How so? Because fifteenth-century apothecaries brought it into English from French, which in turn took it from Late Latin, as a unit of measurement supposedly equivalent to the weight of the coin, or one-eighth of an apothecary’s ounce.
Cullen in the Cullen skink starter mentioned is a wee village on the North-East coast of Scotland. The skink is from a Middle Low German word meaning a ‘shank, shinbone’ and is directly cognate with Modern German Schinken and Danish skinke, ‘ham’. You see, before fish became part of the recipe, a shin of beef would be used to make a skink, a potage or soup.
That same noun skink produced the verb in the final stanza of ‘Address to a Haggis’, meaning the thin, clear, watery soups that Burns objected strenuously to.
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware,
That jaups in luggies. (‘splashes in small wooden dishes’)
I’m off to see where I can buy haggis in York. It shouldn’t be too difficult: lots of Scots live here.
Meanwhile, here’s a toast to you on Burns Night: slàinte mhath! (slan-jee-var)
* I expatiate on puddings in this November post for British Pudding Day.
By Jeremy Butterfield
Jeremy Butterfield is the former Editor-in-Chief of Collins Dictionaries, and editor of the fourth, revised edition of Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
