Posted on 08/02/2009 2:02:52 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Before being hijacked by Scottish nationalists
Catherine Brown has discovered references to the dish in a recipe book dated 1615, The English Hus-wife by Gervase Markham.
This was published at least 171 years before Robert Burns penned his poem Address to a Haggis, which made the delicacy famous.
The first mention she could find of Scottish haggis was in 1747, indicating that the dish originated south of the Border and was later copied from English books.
Ms Brown, whose findings feature in a TV documentary broadcast this week, said: "It was originally an English dish. In 1615, Gervase Markham says that it is very popular among all people in England.
"By the middle of the 18th century another English cookery writer, Hannah Glasse, has a recipe that she calls Scotch haggis, the haggis that we know today."
But reference to haggis in a 1771 novel by Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, showed it was considered a Scottish dish by the late 18th century.
The English hero of the story says: "I am not yet Scotchman enough to relish their singed sheep's head and haggis."
Haggis, which is made from a mixture of oatmeal, liver, heart and lungs, is not the first Scottish icon said to originate from England.
In his last book before his death, Hugh Trevor-Roper, the eminent historian, wrote that the kilt's inventor was a Quaker from Lancashire.
Ms Brown believes that Scottish nationalists may have appropriated haggis as a symbol of their nationhood in the decades following the Act of Union with England in 1707.
"It seems to be that there's an identity thing there. We'd lost our monarchy, we'd lost our parliament and we gained our haggis," she said.
"There was a latching onto everything that was distinctive about Scotland,
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Eating haggis could make “tossing the caber” into a metaphor. ;’)
Haggis was inflicted on Scotland as punishment for Scottish Rebellion.
“If you eat sausage...then you’re just a wee bit doon the road from the stomach...”
My husband and I are cracking up over this comment!
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