The First Supper

Here’s a first.

As the more alert of you will be aware, last Friday was Burns’ Night and that was a good thing, not least because for the first time I gave a Burns’ Night Supper.  If you’re not aware of this tradition, and it’s one that I suspect Burns himself would have mercilessly mocked, it consists of Scottish people dining on haggis, neeps and tatties (swede and potatoes) while someone recites Burns poetry and someone else plays bagpipes unless forcibly restrained.

Actually I quite like the sound of bagpipes.  Or a solitary bagpipe to be precise.  Mass pipe bands, less so.  My late father who delighted in his Scottish heritage would occasionally give me a record of the Argyll Regiment Pipe Band or some such and this put me off that particular musical niche for life.  Though with the glorious lack of taste that only a small child can muster, I did adore Scotch on the Rocks.

But these days, I prefer the solitary pipe, preferably lamenting something.

So, at the request of an Eastern European of my acquaintance who is interested in the ethnography of her adopted country, I put together a rather scratch Burns Night Supper.  I gave the Selkirk Grace* and poured out some whisky while some cove in a kilt recited an appropriate poem.  We missed out on the appallingly winsome sounding ‘Toast to the Lassies’ and ‘The Lassies Reply’ though I did find a youtube clip of an arch middle aged gentlemen giving the toast but as he was so remarkably fat** I was obliged to drown him out with a rousing chorus of ‘Who Ate All the Haggis’.

*Some have meat but cannae eat

And some have none but want it.

But we have meat and we can eat,

So may the Lord be thankit

**And I’ll never be asked to pose for a campaign about the dangers of over-dieting

And then it settled to an evening of Corries and Silly Wizard CDs interspersed with a blast of Paul McCartney’s Mull of Kintyre which my dining companion had adored as a six year old.  I refer you to my above comments about music appreciation among the under-10s.  This led to quite a lot more whisky.

And so it ended.

What did I learn?  That obtaining a haggis in central Newcastle is surprisingly hard given we’re only about 100 miles away from the border.  I mean, I know the Scots besieged the city but that was coming on for four and a half centuries ago and there is such a thing as holding a grudge for too long.  I learned that it is possible to steam a haggis, boil potatoes and then suedes when only one ring on your cooker works.  You boil the veg in the boiling water that’s steaming the haggis of course.  I found out that Burns really should not be recited in an English accent and finally, according to the radio the next day, I found out that I probably got the grace wrong.

Still, the haggis was nice.

Happy Burns' Night!

Another January, another Burns’ Night. I make no secret of my liking for this particular poet even though I have a distaste for the patina of professional Scottishness that has grown up around him. But perhaps that’s just me being a killjoy.

Until recently I had believed that Robert Burns had made the worst deal in publishing history when he sold the copyright to his Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect for an outright fee rather than take a commission. But then, I heard about the unfortunate Mervyn Peake, artist and Gormenghast author, who apparently designed the logo for Pan Books. He was offered an one-off fee or a commission every time a Pan book was sold. Acting according to advice from Graham Greene who turned out to be better at overweening Catholic guilt than financial forethought, he accepted the former and so lost a fortune. Ah me, but as the bard of Alloway himself allowed: ‘The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley’

So, to kick off our Burns’ Night festivities, here’s a clerihew by GK Chesterton (I think):

When reading Robert Burns

What a lot one learns.

He said a king can make a belted knight.

And he was right!

And now here’s Eva Cassidy giving us My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose:

And finally, a famous one from the man himself. Enjoy:

To A Mouse

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,

O, what a panic's in thy breastie!

Thou need na start awa sae hasty,

Wi' bickering brattle!

I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee

Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion,

Has broken nature's social union,

An' justifies that ill opinion,

What makes thee startle

At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,

An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;

What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!

A daimen icker in a thrave

'S a sma' request;

I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,

An' never miss't!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!

It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!

An' naething, now, to big a new ane,

O' foggage green!

An' bleak December's winds ensuin,

Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,

An' weary winter comin fast,

An' cozie here, beneath the blast,

Thou thought to dwell -

Till crash! the cruel coulter past

Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,

Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!

Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,

But house or hald,

To thole the winter's sleety dribble,

An' cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,

In proving foresight may be vain;

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men

Gang aft agley,

An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,

For promis'd joy!

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me;

The present only toucheth thee:

But och! I backward cast my e'e,

On prospects dreaer!

An' forward, tho' I canna see,

I guess an' fear!

Robert Burns