For a haggis.

Friday night was Kilwinning No. 565, Monday was Caledonia No. 637, then Thursday, a night out with our lassies at the Rose Croix. A factor connecting all these events is James Allen.  

BURN’S HUMOR

The whole craze was started by a Scottish Mason, Robert (Robbie) Burns who was born January 25 two and a half centuries ago. Annual Burns Nights are held to honor his philosophy, his poetry and his effrontery.  And to eat haggis.

Burns had a terrific sense of humor.  His “Address to a Haggis” is akin to the Poet Laureate composing “An Ode to Fried Liver and Onions”. The eight stanza poem ennobles the glorified sausage, endowing it with magical power.
“But mark the Rustic, haggis fed, the trembling earth resound his tread.”

Properly cooked, every part of a sheep is edible, right down to a rich soup stock from long-simmered shanks and hooves.  When an animal was butchered in Burns’ days, the choice meats would grace the laird’s table, prime cuts like the loin and the steaks and chops.  Tradesmen might have a few pence to afford the neck and the flank and stringy parts to be simmered into soups and stews.  The crofter or share-cropper subsisted on dairy products, eggs and oatmeal. The only meat to hit the family pot was a hen too old for laying or a illegally-harvested hare.

And haggis.

TASTES OFFAL

When all the good meat had been claimed, the offal would go to the lower class where it was mixed with oatmeal, suet, onions, and herbs. “Offal” is a polite word seldom used any more. Your kid’s would say “guts”. The lungs, tripe, heart, the kidneys and any other edible scraps were chopped, mixed with the other ingredients, and stuffed into a sheep’s crop.   The whole works were then steamed or boiled to combine the flavors.  (“Crop” is another vanishing word..  A veterinary friend described it as a “pre-stomach” where ruminants prepare grass for its trip to the stomach by regurgitating their cud then re-swallowing it.)

THE ENTERTAINMENT

Depending on where you go, the evening may have a complete band of pipes and drums, as in the case of Kilwinning where we were serenaded within the lodge room. Or a display of Scottish Country dancing staged by Caledonia, and sometimes music. But always the poetry of Robbie Burns, and camaraderie, and eating haggis.

Think of a mealy poultry dressing, steaming, spicy, and not quite crumbly. Some take to it naturally, but for others it’s an acquired taste. A single malt makes an excellent chaser.

BEHIND THE HAGGIS

I mentioned James Allen....Brother James Allen. All the haggis at these events came from Allen’s  Scottish Butcher, a small shop on Weston Road just south of the 401. James arrived from Britain in 1962 and went to work for Shopsies, a leading purveyor of Kosher foods.  Within three years he had his own shop in Weston and, along with two Scots, catered to the expatriate British market. 

“They wanted black pudding, Scottish meat pies, pasties and bridies.  And haggis.

“It’s not happing now,” he recalls, “but within two months of our introducing the Old Country foods, you couldn’t get into the store and they were lining up outside.”

The neighborhood had a lot of Scots and a Presbyterian Church just around the corner.  When the families grew up and dispersed, they kept coming back for the specialties, along with military messes, cultural clubs, lodges, legions, and pipe bands as the store’s fame grew.  January Burns dinners put on the pressure, and James and his son Steve, produce six tons of haggis a year.  There’s no lineup now because most of the orders come by phone. The product is made fresh every night for morning pickup.

GENTRIFIED HAGGIS

“Twelve thousand pounds,” I commented to Steve, “is a lot of haggis. Wherever do you get enough sheep’s crops to cook it in?”

“We don’t do that any more,” he confided. “We use the large intestine of a cow. It gives us a greater choice of size.”

And as for the offal, that’s by the boards too. The lowly haggis has become gentrified.  Lungs and tripe are out, replaced by lean ground beef exclusively. But the oatmeal and suet and all the secret herbs remain constant.

On my way out of the store, with a bag of sausage rolls in hand, I asked James what part of Scotland he had come from.

“I didn’t,” he replied.  “I was born in Liverpool.”  

*  “ To a mouse on turning her up in her nest with a plough ”    Nov. 1785

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