The trembling earth resounds our tread

And it would resound yours too if you'd put away the Burns Supper that was absorbed at my house on Saturday night.

I started haggis prep on Thursday, grating suet and boiling offal and generally getting quite Macbethy.

Now, in Scotland, no one makes their own haggis. It would be insane. It would be like making your own cornflakes. And I complained a lot at first. But I have to say it was only by making my own that I realised what a simple dish it is and came to appreciate how magically not-very-much gives plenty for many.  (Jesus still wins with his fish picnic but haggis is worth a mention.)

It's got four ingredients (plus salt and pepper). Two pounds of sheep offal, a pound of suet, a pound of oatmeal and eight onions makes a feast for fifteen people. See? Minor miracle.

And it's all down to the oatmeal. The menu of some Burns Suppers has oatmeal in every single course: cock-a-leekie (chicken and leek soup) and buttered oatcakes, then the haggis, then cranachan (raspberries, cream and whisky-soaked oatmeal). I usually take pity and leave the oatmeal out of the sweet course.  I substitute lemon posset (50% heavy cream, 50% sugar and some lemon juice) and quite a lot of butter shortbread, mind you.

So how do people cope with all that and a wheelbarrow full of mashed potato too? When the most salad-like thing on the menu is another wheelbarrow full of buttery mashed turnip (= English swede, = US rutabaga)? 

Well, it's because Burns Night almost beats Passover Seder when it comes to putting down your knife and fork to listen to stuff.

There's a very short grace, the Selkirk Grace, that goes like this:

Some hae meat and canna eat

and some wid eat that want it.

We hae meat and we can eat

sae let the Lord be thankit.

But next there's quite a long poem. And an even longer traditional search for it in The Collected Works of Robert Burns because you can't remember if it's called "To a Haggis", "Ode to a Haggis", or "Address to a Haggis".

(It's "Address". we'll have forgotten that again by next year). Then you eat for a bit and then one of the men gives a Toast to The Lassies.

And when that man is John Lescroart you're in for a treat, as in an original poem in the style of Burns himself, that's not on eBay already. I have no idea where you'd get that idea. Then more eating, before one of the women gets up to fire back the Lassies' Reply.

And when that woman is the talented Eileen Rendahl, you might laugh so much that, briefly, the oatmeal doesn't seem like such a good idea after all.

But still you eat a bit more. Then it's time for the last toast, the big one: the toast to the Immortal Memory. This is where I usually lose my cool and start to cry. I remember an Immortal Memory given by Neil (the one in the Hawaiian kilt combo) in 2012, talking about Burns' passion for social justice and equality that killed my mascara stone dead. This year Spring Warren went another direction, finding all the naughty bits of Burns we never got at school...

and digging into her past as an art teacher (before she was an amazing novelist) to make us all draw the man himself, with instructions like "Now put a cat on the egg".

Which is funny, because it's true.

Now it's all by for another year. Except for the leftovers and let me tell you - reheated with just a bit more butter, they're even better.

Comments

[Meg]

Sounds like a Scots feast! Ever try pickled rutabaga? Yummo.

[catriona]

As an ingredient in piccalilli (sp?) but not alone.

[Eileen Rendahl]

Aw, you're a peach! Such a fun fun night!

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

Ahhh..SO FABULOUS! haggis aside, you had me a cranachan--and then add my absolute idol John Lescroart and signing buddy Eileen Rendahl and ahh....you are too amazing.

Love this. Thank ou for introducing me to a whole new thing. And I will send you waterproof mascara for next year!

[Charlaine Harris]

I am so glad there are people who enjoy eating this. It makes my world seem broader. As a kid, I ate crackling bread many a time (cornbread with pig small intestine) and loved it, but it only took describing it to my semi-Yankee husband to find out that the rest of the world found crackling bread totally yucky in concept.

[Marcia Talley]

Last year on Burns Night, a group of like-minded sailors, some American, some Canadian, gathered at the Hope Town Inn and Marina on Elbow Cay to celebrate. No haggis, alas -- the local grocery was fresh out of sheep stomachs, if you can believe it -- but we had a lovely time toasting, singing and reading poetry to one another. That some had such a splendid time that they could hardly find their way back to their anchored vessels was, I suppose, a plus.

[Donna Andrews]

So am I a bad Scottish-American if I want to pass on the haggis? I'm there for the cock-a-leekie and oatcakes; I'm fine with oatmeal in the cranachan, but may I be allowed to take only a tiny, token nibble of the haggis?

[catriona]

I steam mine in a bowl instead of in a stomach, because I can't get whole sheep's stomachs here. But still, I'll whip up a mushroom omelette for anyone who's scunnered.

[Edith Maxwell]

I just want to say - can I come next year? I have never experienced a Burns night, and now desperately want to, especially at your house!

[Elaine Viets]

The evening sounds wonderful. The haggis -- not so much. But what a lovely blog. Thank you, Catriona.

[Dana]

What a fantastic evening, Catriona! And the drawings are just perfect.