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Reluctant Hero · Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 8:28 pm Post subject: Haggis is English!

According to someone we have never heard of, haggis isn't Scottish!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8180791.stm

Haggis is English, historian says

A haggis recipe was published in an English book almost two hundred years before any evidence of the dish in Scotland, a historian has claimed.

Historian Catherine Brown said she found references to the dish inside a 1615 book called The English Hus-Wife.

The title would pre-date Robert Burns' poem To A Haggis, which brought fame to the delicacy, by at least 171 years.

But former world champion haggis maker Robert Patrick insisted: "Nobody's going to believe it."

'Popular in England'

Ms Brown said the book by Gervase Markham indicated haggis was first eaten in England and subsequently popularised by the Scots.

The first mention she could find of Scottish haggis was in 1747.

Ms Brown told the BBC the author made it quite clear haggis was enjoyed by everyone, not just Scots.

She said: "It was popular in England until the middle of the 18th Century. Whatever happened in that period, the English decided they didn't like it and the Scots decided they did.

"We had Robert Burns come along who saw in it a very practical dish using up the odds and ends and making something good out of them.

"Obviously the English turned up their noses at it and ate their roast beef, and the Scots for 350 years have been making it their own."

Her findings are due to be broadcast in a documentary on STV in Scotland.

'Scottish product'

Mr Patrick said the idea haggis originated in England was akin to claims by the Dutch and Chinese to have invented golf.

He added: "Anything that's to do with Scotland, everybody wants to get a part of.

FROM BBC WORLD SERVICE

More from BBC World Service
"We've nurtured the thing for all these years, we've developed it, so I think very much it is a Scottish product.

"It's one of the mainstays of my business's economy so we'd never give it up."

James Macsween, whose Edinburgh-based company makes haggis, said it would remain a Scottish icon whatever its origin.

He said even if the haggis was eaten in England long before Burns made it famous, Scotland had done a better job of looking after it.

And he added: "I didn't hear of Shakespeare writing a poem about it."

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chicmac · Standing in a Council Ward Joined: 18 Mar 2008 Posts: 459

This was immediately torn to pieces on soc culture scottish as an example of gross incompetence by the said historian.

Dates which mention Haggis are known and readily findable centuries before this book although several are English.

For example, Dunbar (who should be reasonably well known by any British historian) c 1500-1510

"Thy fowll front had, and he that Bartilmo flaid;
The gallowis gaipis eftir thy graceles gruntill,
As thow wald for ane haggeis, hungry gled."

Note that I accord little or no cultural significance to Haggis myself.

Cullinary and sartorial icons to me act as not much more than cultural badges and change with almost as much regularity as fashion.
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Luke P · Gaining a Reputation Joined: 03 Jul 2009 Posts: 218

I like haggis butties from the cafe in North Berwick.
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Alasdair · Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 6:38 am Post subject:

I like chicken stuffed with haggis!

Apparently the historian is a culinary historian who gets their history from cookery books!?
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mairead · Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 6:56 am Post subject:

Saw this mentioned on television, but the ingredients of the 'English ' haggis were not the same as those in the Scots version
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Rinty · Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 10:22 am Post subject:

who cares? Tea isnt english, potatoes are not irish

Corby Boy · Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 10:55 am Post subject:

De ja vu. I have seen this somewhere before????

Alasdair · Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 11:59 am Post subject:

Alasdair · Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 12:00 pm Post subject:

besides the haggis could never have come from England originally, after all it's far to flat for them to have evolved that curious arrangement of legs that allows them to run around and around and around and around and ... Laughing

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Aventinian · Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 1:13 pm Post subject:

Rinty · Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2009 10:34 am Post subject:

does proto-haggis taste any better than veggie haggis?

Stevie · Independentist Joined: 22 Nov 2008 Posts: 1179

I love haggis.
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Rinty · Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2009 11:11 am Post subject:

it's offal Embarassed

Fidget · Standing in a Council Ward Joined: 21 Jan 2007 Posts: 556

Luke P · Gaining a Reputation Joined: 03 Jul 2009 Posts: 218

I think the cafe is the Buttercup on North Berwick High Street. I recommend.
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"Hath He not made us all in one island, compassed with one sea and of itself by nature indivisible?" James VI/I

Stevie · Independentist Joined: 22 Nov 2008 Posts: 1179

Reluctant Hero · Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2009 10:25 pm Post subject: Re: Haggis is English!

Fidget · Standing in a Council Ward Joined: 21 Jan 2007 Posts: 556

Stevie · Independentist Joined: 22 Nov 2008 Posts: 1179

I just saw the word haggis and it put me in a mood to eat haggis but living in France makes that impossible.

Haggis, haggis, haggis, haggis, haggis...
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Fidget · Standing in a Council Ward Joined: 21 Jan 2007 Posts: 556

Do you get stopped and tested for random haggis eating or something in France? Laughing