Legalising Haggis

Τι είναι το ‘χάγγις’; I hear my Greek friends cry. ‘Είναι κάτι σάν κοκορέτσι από τη Σκοτία’ is the appropriate (or approximate) response should you ever be asked this question. And that, my dears, is the Bugle Greek lesson of the month. For some of our other international readers who are also puzzled about the concept of haggis, as they say in the House of Commons: I refer you to the answer I gave you a moment ago. (I’m now hearing the question: ‘Und was ist der House of Commons?’ To which the appropriate response may or may not be ‘Es ist ein Englischer, aber kein Berliner type thing.’ But I see that you are now champing at the bit and want to know all about illegal haggis. In the US, haggis has been banned for several years now due to the potential risk posed by mad cow disease (there are some things I could say now, but some of my best friends - and even some of my relatives come to think of it, (including at least one brother) - happen to be American, so I won’t).

Great excitement, then, when it seemed as if the US ban was about to be lifted in time to celebrate Burns Night on 25th January. Oh dear, I see that further explanations may be required. Burns Night is not - as some of you might quite reasonably imagine - the annual Scottish celebration which involves setting fire to a haggis and the surrounding neighbourhood (and as quite a lot of my friends and many of my relatives come to think of it once again (complicated multi-national family) are Scottish, I wouldn’t dream of saying that a burnt haggis might taste better). Robert Burns was a famous Scottish poet who wrote ‘Ode to a Haggis’. Whilst it is safe to say that he was not Shakespeare, one has to applaud the opening lines of his poem which go as follows: ‘Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, / Great Chieftan o’ the Puddin-race!’ And for anyone who can submit a Greek translation of this by the next copy deadline, there is a seriously good prize involved. But, as you can see, we still haven’t got to the point. Burns Night is an important Scottish festival, and as is the case with many expatriate communities that originate from different countries around the globe, festivals are one way that people can validate their own cultural identity (or at least that’s what it said in my anthropology textbook way back when). Sort of like the Greek diaspora in Alexandria. Perhaps not. Haggis is probably not terribly popular in Northern Egypt (but oh, don’t you just know it, someone, somewhere is gong to write in about the great Scottish party that starts off in the Coptic part of town and boogies all the way down the Corniche). Anyway, you get the general idea. Given that there is a huge ex-pat Scottish community in the US, the twenty year plus ban on importing haggis has caused considerable grief (particularly, perhaps, in Pennsylvania). So the news that the ban might be lifted on imported haggis caused great excitement. Unfortunately due to some last minute weird legislation this was not to be. And apparently George W Bush didn’t help the cause either. When the extraordinary ’W’ went to a summit at Gleneagles (Scottish place, large hill, big birds) his comment was that ’I was briefed about haggis’. There then followed a diatribe about how his mother never gave him haggis as a child because he would refuse to eat it. He wasn’t great about broccoli either, as I recall. Picky eater, which explains a lot. And as for world politics? Don’t get me started. By the way, did we actually get to the end of the haggis story? If not, don’t worry, there may well be a sequel, possibly involving penguins.