Robert Burns Suppers

The Burns Supper is the annual festive tribute to the life, works and spirit of the great Robert Burns (1759-1796) Scotland’s best-loved Bard. Burns Suppers have been celebrated on, or about, the poet’s birthday, January 25th, for nearly 200 years. Close friends of Burns started the ritual a few years after his death in 1796 as a celebration of his life. The basic format for the evening has remained unchanged since that time and begins when the chairman invites the company to receive the haggis, immortalized in Burns’ The Address to a Haggis.

Robert Burns

“The events range from lavish formal gatherings of aesthetes and scholars to uproariously informal revelries of drunkards and louts. Most Burns Suppers fall in the middle of this range, and adhere, more or less, to some sort of time honored form which includes the eating of a traditional Scottish meal of haggis, neeps and tatties, the drinking of Scotch whisky, and the recitation of works by, about, and in the spirit of the Bard.”

Q: Why Did Burns Write About the Haggis?
We at the Caledonian Kitchen went straight to the “official” source for this answer, The Robert Burns World Federation, the oldest Burns club in the world, established in 1885! Here’s what they told us:

A: “This is an interesting question and I doubt if we will ever know exactly what inspired him to write The Address To A Haggis. What is clear however, is that Burns was presenting the Haggis as being a unique and symbolic part of Scottish identity and culture. Through the power of the spoken word and the imagery of vivid language, Rabbie successfully portrayed a picture in the mind, which has long since become the focal point of the celebration of Burns and Scotland.

When written, only a short time had passed since the Jacobite Rebellion. The French Revolution was alive, and America was in the aftermath of the War of Independence. In Britain, the political struggle between Scotland and England was very much to the fore and Burns wrote passionately on the subject.

So war, political struggle, and the Scottish identity were the catalyst for the poem. The humble Haggis was merely the vehicle used to demonstrate his proud Scottish nationalism, which he does in a light-hearted way. Burns clearly thought that Haggis was a great meal but he also recognized its nutritional value, its popularity and its unusual preparation and presentation. It was uniquely Scottish.

It is therefore easy to see why Rabbie made the link between Scotland’s Identity at that time, and the serving of Haggis to ordinary Scots, as an ordinary Scottish meal. I suppose it was a strange subject to write about but this is the mastery of Burns!”

Continue to “Address To A Haggis” >>