Large Fierce Mammal

The Noble Haggis arrives at the banquet table of the Royal Burgess Golfing Society in Edinburgh, Scotland on Jan. 24, 2013. (Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/haggis-related-bomb-scare-inspires-poem-1.2510524

On the subject of that famous Christmas confection called fruitcake, Johnny Carson once said, “The worst gift is fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.”

He appears to have had little of the sort to say of The Haggis, and that was wise of him, for though the fruitcake is tradition, The Haggis is holy.

Tonight, wherever Scottish feet have trod (and what place worth being would openly claim otherwise?), The Haggis will be paraded ceremoniously to the accompaniment of The Pipes, its arrival and presentation toasted by kilted and scotch soaked diners at banquet tables all over the world. Poems and songs have been written of its spicy splendour, christened, “Great chieftain o the puddin’-race!” by none other than the Bard of Scotland Robert Burns himself, whose day of nativity everyone worth knowing remembers on this date in the rolling year.

And though the splendour that is The Haggis be immortalized in poetry by Burns in his Address to a Haggis, the sheer perfection of which you can read here complete with translation for those who don’t imbibe, The Noble Puddin’ has recently shown itself discontented to remain a part of history in favour of making it.

I once knew a man – a member of no less august body than the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – who one day found himself dispossessed of the ability to tell the difference between eating fish and chips and being dead – a development of such strangeness as to have previously provoked me to write of it here. Yet even that has been far surpassed by the day a few years agone on which a Haggis by MacSween took it upon itself to convince security at Birmingham Airport, UK, that it was, in fact, made of plastic explosive. The bearer of The Haggis, one Mr. Ian Blake – himself a poet and writer of some note – was himself provoked by the incident to write his own post-script to Address to a Haggis.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has the facts of the case, at least insofar as The Haggis has let them be known, and I invite you to listen as the rippin’ yarn unfolds by clicking here!