Sherry Chandler » Stalking the Haggis
Stalking the Haggis
Here’s a holiday tradition you might like to share. It’s The Scotsman’s Haggis Hunt:
The temperature is plummeting. The frosts of winter nestle on the moors. And the steam is rising from massed ranks of the haggis hunters.
At haggishunt.com we are reviving a fine old Scottish tradition: the hunting of the haggis.
The American Heritage Dictionary (how would it know?) says a haggis is:
A Scottish dish consisting of a mixture of the minced heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep or calf mixed with suet, onions, oatmeal, and seasonings and boiled in the stomach of the slaughtered animal.
Not so, says The Haggisclopedia:
The most common mistaken belief about the haggis is that it is some kind of pudding made from sheep innards. This somewhat macabre idea dates back many centuries. Its origins lie in a Pictish fertility ceremony which featured a parade of creatures known to produce large numbers of offspring. The haggis was one such animal. However, as hunting techniques were not as sophisticated as they were then and - for reasons explained in The Haggis in Scotland’s History - haggis numbers were low, the Pictish priests often had to make do with a model for these ceremonies. Said model haggis was made from an inflated sheep bladder, hence the myth.
To facilitate the hunting of the haggis, The Scotsman has mounted ten web cams in places like Loch Ness (you might see Nessie, too), Princes Street in Edinburg, Leicester Square in London, and Times Square in New York. So now you can hunt the haggis in your pajamas. When you spot one, report it and your name will be entered into a drawing for prizes like a weekend at the Gleneagles Hotel (think golf) or a full line of Haggis merchandise.
Tired of hunting, you can play haggis games, like Farquhar’s Revenge (Shockwave), otherwise called bash the haggii, and Drop the Haggis (Flash), in which you have to help Farquhar catch the falling haggii while avoiding the drops of rain.
Or you can just have fun watching the web cams.
I stole these neat graphics from the haggishunt.com
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2 Comments
1. Sam L. Martin replies at 12th December 2007, 2:03 am :
Ah, yes, the mysterious haggis. In 1969 I had a motorcycle accident in Scotland and spent time in the hospital in Dingwall, then was transferred to the hospital in Inverness. After being released, I mounted my cycle and drove to Lochinver in the far northwest, but before I arrived, I had an encounter with haggii. About five miles from Lochinver a family of haggii, mom and dad and four little ones, were attempting to cross the road, so I stopped and waited but didn’t turn off the engine. They waited and scowled. When I turned off the engine, they began crossing the road but stopped in the middle of the road, turned to face me, and nodded. They wanted quiet, and they wanted respect. I gave them both. Perhaps they somehow intuited that some of my ancestors were Picts from Nairnshire. They continued their journey into the glen, and I went to Lochinver and watched the first moon landing on a black-and-white television in a small pub.
2. sherry replies at 12th December 2007, 9:44 am :
Sam! You’ve seen haggii. In addition to the various wrens and foxes with which you share your home. You are a blessed man.
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