Haggis: ‘Great Chieftan o’ the Puddin-race!’

The national dish of haggis plays an important role as an increasingly popular ingredient in cafes and restaurants, as well as a feast food and signifier of Scottish culture. However, its role as a traditionally Scottish food is a relatively recent one. Louise Morgan, PhD candidate in the History Department at University of Warwick explores more…

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great Chieftain 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.

-        Robert Burns, ‘Address to a Haggis’, (1786)[1]

Meat has traditionally been the centrepiece of feasts in many different cultures. As a Scot, my national dish of haggis plays an important role as an increasingly popular ingredient in cafes and restaurants, as well as a feast food and signifier of Scottish culture. However, its role as a traditionally Scottish food is a relatively recent one. This blog post will explore how haggis came to be associated with Scotland, and how its reputation spread through the world, linking to Coventry.

 What is Haggis?

Haggis, Neeps, and Tatties, Bernt Rostad. Image under CC BY 2.0 taken from: Haggis, Neeps, and Tatties, Bernt Rostad. Image under CC BY 2.0 taken from: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/109d9ce7-59bb-4338-95e6-b6322a7dfd32

Haggis is offal – minced heart, liver, and lungs – mixed with oatmeal, onions, and spices. Traditionally, the cleaned stomach would then be used as a cooking bag, but nowadays butchers are more likely to use synthetic casings. Similarly, it would have been made with any animal, with historians finding references to deer and hare haggis, but nowadays haggis is normally made from sheep. Vegetarian, vegan, and gluten free varieties of haggis are also widely available. Haggis is traditionally served with neeps and tatties – mashed turnips and mashed potatoes.

What are its origins?

There is some historical debate about the origins of haggis. Traditionally, it would have been made by hunters, which is why offal was used as it goes off first. This origin story means that we have had varieties of ‘haggises’ to preserve offal for as long as we have eaten meat and written about it. As such, historians have linked it to the Romans, the Vikings, or thirteenth century France. These claims are partially made on linguistic bases – the root ‘hag’ could have been derived from Old Norse, or from French, as both languages have similar verbs meaning ‘to chop’ or ‘to mince’.[2] The first English-language references to Haggis were found in fifteenth century recipes and dictionaries, but it was not seen as a food specific to Scottish culture until the eighteenth century, where Scottish economic trouble increased its popularity as a cheap food.[3] From then onwards, political events such as the Jacobite Risings created a common view of the Scots as ‘barbarians’, with haggis being regarded as an obvious example of this.[4]

Rather than abandoning the dish, Scots began to take pride in haggis, claiming it as their own. The most obvious example of this pride is Robert Burns’ poem Address to a Haggis, written in 1786. The poem paints haggis as not only something beautiful for the nation to be proud of, but something which actively makes the nation stronger and better than others. By the late nineteenth century, haggis was firmly cemented as an iconic part of Scottish culture. This was due to the ‘tartanisation’ of Scotland – a process which saw the English elite become fascinated by all things Scotland and turning the nation into a tourist destination. Tartan became fashionable, monuments were built to Scottish heroes, and Burns Suppers became key social events.[5] The spread of Scots throughout the world through empire and migration spread haggis’ reputation as a Scottish dish further.

When and how is it eaten?

Haggis can be eaten any time of the year – it is a staple in Scottish cooked breakfasts, and can be found as a pizza topping, burrito filling, and, of course, deep fried in chip shops throughout Scotland. The biggest feast where haggis is eaten is the Burns Night Supper. Burns Night is the anniversary of Robert Burns’ death, and falls on 25th January each year. Five years after his death, nine of Burns’ close friends got together to have a meal to celebrate the Bard – this tradition is said to have developed into the modern Burns Supper, however like most traditions, these origins are disputed.

A Burns Night Supper celebrates the life and work of Burns, along with haggis and Scottish culture more generally. It has a fairly strict running order, beginning with the Selkirk Grace – a prayer of thanks before the meal, written by Burns. The haggis is then carried into the room, in a procession led by a bagpiper. The host of the Supper will then perform the Address to the Haggis, after which the guests are invited to toast the haggis, usually with whiskey, before sitting down to enjoy it, along with other Scottish foods such as cock-a-leekie (chicken and leek) soup for a starter and cranachan (raspberries, cream, oats, and whisky) for pudding. After the meal, Burn’s poems are often performed, along with the Immortal Memory, which is a tribute speech to the poet. This speech recognises Burns contributions to Scottish culture and society, as well as imagining how he would understand present day Scotland. The final speeches are the Toast to the Lassies and the Reply to the Toast to the Lassies, which are comical speeches given by a man and woman respectively, referencing the romantic poetry of Burns, along with his womanising ways. Finally, the night finishes with a rendition of Auld Lang Syne, which Burns wrote as a poem based on an older folk song.

 Links to Coventry

Haggis at the Hotel Leofric, Coventry, 1st January 1966. Image taken from: Haggis at the Hotel Leofric, Coventry, 1st January 1966. Image taken from: https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/rise-fall-coventrys-legendary-leofric-21810007

The migration of many Scots throughout the world led to the founding of Caledonian Societies and Scottish Dance Societies, which upheld traditions like Burns Suppers. This happened in Coventry – partly due to the prospect of mine work at local collieries, such as Binley Colliery, where in 1936 Scottish workers founded the Binley Colliery Pipe Band.[6] The legacy of Scots in Coventry and Warwickshire was maintained through the founding of Scottish clubs, such as the Tam O’Shanter Club, named after one of Burns’ most famous poems, which had 3,000 members at its height in the 1960s. After the club closed, the Tam turned into a Burns Society, which continues to hold annual Burns Suppers. Other examples include the Coventry Thistle Club, which celebrates Scottish country dancing and has been running for 60 years. The Scottish influence in Coventry can be seen throughout its history and is widely reported in the pages of local newspapers, such as the photo of a Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve) party at the Hotel Leofric in 1966, which depicts several haggises being piped and drummed in to the lavish celebration. Perhaps most indicative of all is how easy it is to buy a haggis in Coventry – several local butchers sell the dish!

Car decorated for a Caledonian Society celebration, children in Scottish costume, Nuneaton. 1900s. Reproduced from the “Our Warwickshire” website
© “Warwickshire County Record Office”[7]

Discover more about haggis in FEAST! Meat Week Two

Louise Morgan

Biography: Louise Morgan is a final year PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Warwick. She is broadly interested in the history of food, dieting, and nutrition. Her current research focuses on the recent history of ‘clean eating’ in Britain and the historical linksbetween food obsession and eating disorders.

Endnotes:

[1] This is the first verse of the poem, which would always be read and performed in Scots. It can be loosely translated into modern English as: ‘Good luck to your honest, happy face / great chieftain of the pudding race! / Above them all you take your place / Gut, stomach-lining or intestine / You’re well worth a grace / As long as my arm’. The full text can be found here: https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/address-haggis/

[2] Anatoly Liberman, ‘Putting my mouth where my money is: the origin of “haggis”’, OUPBlog (28 April 2021), <https://blog.oup.com/2021/04/putting-my-mouth-where-my-money-is-the-origin-of-haggis/> [Accessed: 10 October 2021].

[3] Joy Fraser and Christine Knight, ‘Signifying Poverty, Class, and Nation through Scottish Foods: From Haggis to Deep-Fried Mars Bars’, in Atsuko Ichijo, Venetia Johannes, and Ronald Ranta (eds), The Emergence of National Food: The Dynamics of Food and Nationalism (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 73-84.

[4] Alex Tyrrell, Patricia Hill, and Diane Kirkby, ‘Feasting on National Identity: Whisky, Haggis and the Celebration of Scottishness in the Nineteenth Century’, in Diane Kirkby and Tanja Luckins (eds), Dining on Turtles: Food Feasts and Drinking in History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 46-63.

[5] Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland’ in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 15-42.

[6] For more on the history of Binley Colliery, see the ‘Memoires of Binley Colliery’ project: https://warwick.ac.uk/about/community/newsandevents/news/memories_of_binley/

[7] IMAGE LOCATION: (Warwickshire County Record Office). Reference: PH, 352/135/196, img: 1814

https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/catalogue_wow/nuneaton-caledonian-society