Haggis, Neeps & Tatties
Jan. 31st, 2006 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhythmaningWe went to a Burns’ supper on Saturday night, in memory of Scotland’s renowned poet, Rabbi Burns*.
It was a large affair in Edinburgh University’s Playfair Library – a large Georgian hall, set within a “quad” (now used as a car park).
This was the first formal Burns’ supper I had been to; there was an interesting mixture of people there, including several who work in different parts of the firm I work for, plus a load of graduate students and alumni from the university, and their partners.
On our table of seven (someone’s partner being indisposed – the joy of baby-sitters), there were two Scots, three from England (that’ll be me, then), a German and a Georgian**.
After the Selkirk grace –not originally said in Selkirk, apparently, but said about the Earl of Selkirk or someone – the pukka Englishman who had only recently left the army asked, “Was that gaelic?”, and he clearly didn’t buy my explanation that it was lalands – a lowland Scots dialect of English. He hadn’t understood a word.
Personally, I had trouble understanding the rich brogue of the Atlantan***. I have never travelled to the far south of the US, and I could not separate out the peachy words. He had the brashness associated with American graduate students – though he acknowledged his countrymen’s failings (and perhaps by extension his own?) when he said that he had really wanted to travel to Europe to do his masters degree – most Americans, he felt, were too parochial, and he wanted a broader experience than that. So he was, in part, a good guy.
One of the Scots was my wife; strangely, the other was studying to be a plant taxonomist at the Royal Botanic Garden; I say strange, because I doubt that anyone else in the room aside from would have had the faintest idea what she was talking about; and similarly, no one else would have gone “Oh my God!” when I told I had collected plants in New Caledonia whilst I was working at the Botanics. And we shared a mutual excitement for rain forest.
I quite like haggis – though it is vegetarian haggis I prefer; this maybe because I have been told what goes into making haggis. This one was more spicy than usual, and very rich; I had a large portion, washed down with some shiraz and a dram of Old Poulteney, which I thought was rather good.
If the Selkirk Grace had confused them, the Address to the Haggis had them completely bemused; the Immortal Memory was good – a speaker called Watt Lomax, I think –but the Toast to the Lassies and their reply didn’t quite hit the mark – trying to be too clever by half. And God, they went on…
We actually left before everything was done – we didn’t hear Tam O’ Shanter, and we didn’t hear some musical accompaniment; but there is a time and place. It seemed a little too formal for me; it was interesting to go, but I think I prefer rather more boozy, energetic and amateur suppers.
*The influence of Burns on the interpretation of ancient Hassidic texts is often overlooked.
**That is, someone from Atlanta, Georgia, rather than someone from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia; or a person who helped build Edinburgh in the seventeenth century; although I guess technically you could say that there were Georgian’s in the twentieth century, too. History never was my strong point.
***Not someone from Atlantis – which doesn’t exist – but a native of Atlanta. Which would be in Georgia. (See above.)
It was a large affair in Edinburgh University’s Playfair Library – a large Georgian hall, set within a “quad” (now used as a car park).
This was the first formal Burns’ supper I had been to; there was an interesting mixture of people there, including several who work in different parts of the firm I work for, plus a load of graduate students and alumni from the university, and their partners.
On our table of seven (someone’s partner being indisposed – the joy of baby-sitters), there were two Scots, three from England (that’ll be me, then), a German and a Georgian**.
After the Selkirk grace –not originally said in Selkirk, apparently, but said about the Earl of Selkirk or someone – the pukka Englishman who had only recently left the army asked, “Was that gaelic?”, and he clearly didn’t buy my explanation that it was lalands – a lowland Scots dialect of English. He hadn’t understood a word.
Personally, I had trouble understanding the rich brogue of the Atlantan***. I have never travelled to the far south of the US, and I could not separate out the peachy words. He had the brashness associated with American graduate students – though he acknowledged his countrymen’s failings (and perhaps by extension his own?) when he said that he had really wanted to travel to Europe to do his masters degree – most Americans, he felt, were too parochial, and he wanted a broader experience than that. So he was, in part, a good guy.
One of the Scots was my wife; strangely, the other was studying to be a plant taxonomist at the Royal Botanic Garden; I say strange, because I doubt that anyone else in the room aside from would have had the faintest idea what she was talking about; and similarly, no one else would have gone “Oh my God!” when I told I had collected plants in New Caledonia whilst I was working at the Botanics. And we shared a mutual excitement for rain forest.
I quite like haggis – though it is vegetarian haggis I prefer; this maybe because I have been told what goes into making haggis. This one was more spicy than usual, and very rich; I had a large portion, washed down with some shiraz and a dram of Old Poulteney, which I thought was rather good.
If the Selkirk Grace had confused them, the Address to the Haggis had them completely bemused; the Immortal Memory was good – a speaker called Watt Lomax, I think –but the Toast to the Lassies and their reply didn’t quite hit the mark – trying to be too clever by half. And God, they went on…
We actually left before everything was done – we didn’t hear Tam O’ Shanter, and we didn’t hear some musical accompaniment; but there is a time and place. It seemed a little too formal for me; it was interesting to go, but I think I prefer rather more boozy, energetic and amateur suppers.
*The influence of Burns on the interpretation of ancient Hassidic texts is often overlooked.
**That is, someone from Atlanta, Georgia, rather than someone from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia; or a person who helped build Edinburgh in the seventeenth century; although I guess technically you could say that there were Georgian’s in the twentieth century, too. History never was my strong point.
***Not someone from Atlantis – which doesn’t exist – but a native of Atlanta. Which would be in Georgia. (See above.)
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Date: 2006-01-31 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-31 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 10:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 10:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 09:33 am (UTC)I usually pour my dram over my haggis - a strange habit, but I like it.
I also like that our national day is to honour a poet, not a politician or a soldier, and that most Scots if asked in the street will know at least a line or two of Burns - even if it's my Granda's favourite: "where ever ye be, let your wind blaw free. "
The Selkirk grace is a handy one to have up your sleeve in case you get asked to say grace at table: my version is,
"Some hae meet that cannae eat, some nae meat that whant it, but we hae meat, and we can eat, so let the Lord be thankit."
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Date: 2006-02-01 10:07 am (UTC)Informal suppers = way better. Been to a couple of formal ones but, nah, small and personal is the way forward.
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Date: 2006-02-01 01:27 pm (UTC)All we ever do on our national day is look at people developing pneumonia while participating in a parade and then get blootered. Ah well....