Burns Night

We attended a Burns Night this past Saturday evening.  Anyone who has been in the Expat world for a while knows about Burns Night, as it's a popular Scottish tradition and is a fairly easy event to organize.  I didn't know anything about it so I went online to read about it.  You can read more about it here:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burns_supper

Burns Night celebrates the life and poetry of Robert Burns and usually occurs around his birthday, which is January 25.  The dinner follows a standard format and focuses on a main dish called haggis.

After a short happy hour in the bar, we moved to the dining room and once seated were welcomed by the host of the evening, Gregor.  Then a special blessing called The Selkirk Grace was said by the host's wife, Sheena.  It is short and you can read it via the above link.  When Gregor and Sheena, who are both Scottish, spoke with their heavy, exaggerated, Scottish accents, it was really hard to understand them and you wondered if they really were speaking English.  After the blessing, we had soup, salad and appetizers.

Upon completion of the first course, the haggis was brought in and paraded around by the chef.  Normally it is accompanied by a bagpipe player, but this is Sakhalin Island, and I would be very impressed if they would have been able to find a bagpipe player.  But there was bagpipe music.

The haggis was then presented to the host by the chef.  Supposedly, this was authentic haggis brought to Sakhalin by someone from Scotland.

What is haggis? Well, it is a traditional Scottish dish containing sheep's heart, liver and lungs, minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices and stock and cooked in the sheep's stomach lining for 3 hours.  Although I think these days, the haggis is cooked in the intestine casing instead of the stomach lining.  Sounds yummy!

At this point the host recites The Address to the Haggis (in a heavy Scottish accent).  (Click on the link to read the entire poem.)  At a certain point in the poem, the host took a large knife and sliced the haggis end to end.

Everyone was so excited because the poem was very dramatic and this is supposedly a highlight of the dinner.  At the end of the poem, a toast with Scottish whiskey was made to the haggis and we were then served our meal.  Haggis is usually served with mashed potatoes, but I think that something was lost in the translation as we had roasted potatoes instead.  Haggis was actually quite tasty.  I just didn't think too much about what I was actually eating.

Upon completion of the meal there were several traditional speeches.  One was about remembering Robert Burns and his life.  Then there was a toast to the lassies, which was actually a long speech about the differences between men and women, and more.  So interesting is this multicultural environment we live in.  The toast to the lassies was made by an Indian guy (who wears an earring) in a kilt.  He was hilarious.

The reply to his toast was also very funny.  Then a girl read one of Robert Burns' poems in Russian.  After all the speeches, the host thanked everyone and we sang Auld Lang Syne.  Who knew that Robert Burns wrote that song?.....I will never forget that now.  That was the conclusion of the dinner part.  Then there was traditional Scottish dancing.  Max and I tried a couple of the dances, but they were sort of tricky, like square dancing.

It was a fun evening and it's always interesting to learn about and experience traditions from other countries.

Love to you all!
Karen