You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Scottish Burn's Night Celebration Ode to a Vegetarian Haggis
LOL @lilygolightly, I've not come across this excellent address to Veggie Haggis before. Although horrified when I first learnt of the ingredients in 'proper' haggis, I do like the veggie version- the 'meat free bairn of John MacSween', but don't eat it very often. I live in Edinburgh and, where I work, we served Haggis, Neeps and Tatties last night - without the piper, the address or the veggie version. A previous workplace used to pipe the haggis in and someone or another would recite Burns' version.
Chris Young wrote this in 1993!!!
Thanks for the poem - it's witty, funny and makes some serious points too!
Well, well, an Edinburgh laddie eh @barge??? The parameters of the world are small indeed! Lovely to know you are in Auld Reekie - do please give that fine city my fondest greetings, and the same to your good self of course! 😊
I am so glad you appreciated the veggie version of the Address to the Haggis...I loved it as soon as I clapped my eyes on it and knew I had to share it and since Burns Night was just yesterday it seemed like something of a no brainer!
We were regularly served haggis at school (the revolting meat, sheeps stomach, offal and all version) and the scent of it cooking would fill the corridors with its noxious odours turning the stomach from hungry to nauseous in mere moments...it sure was torture for this self because back then every pupil HAD to eat every single scrap of food on the plate, there were no food allergies to hide behind, vegetarianism had not been invented in Scotland at that time and school discipline was the Dickensian "thou shalt or else face the slipper" kind. I chose the slipper pretty much every time because, although it hurt, it was soon over whereas the "losing one's lunch" vomiting was so much worse and lingered far longer, along with the taste of the loathed haggis!!
Shall I go all grumpy old lady and say "Kids today don't know how lucky they are?" Nah I am still too young for that!!! 😊😊😊
Thanks again for adding your lovely comments and for showing appreciation for my bonkers sense of humour! ❤️
Yes, somehow I always end up back in Auld Reekie - roughly half my life here now! It is beautiful though eh? I'll certainly pass on your greetings :). I grew up in India, where vegetarianism is no problem at all, and universally recognized. Mum became veggie when I was 5, so only vague memories of a fish bone getting stuck in my throat - I've been veggie ever since. We were forced to eat boiled aubergine and cold porridge at school though - British-style ex-colonial boarding in the hills - discipline, discipline, discipline!!!
Ah she calls us does Auld Reekie alrighty! Like the sirens of old we all hear the call of her ancient and venerable walls (this rhyming thing really is infectious isn't it?) Thank you for saying "hi" to the old place for me!
I bet India was an education in its own right, without the need for tutors, or Saturday prep!!! And you were indeed blessed to be in a part of the world where the value of EVERY creature is still held sacred, albeit in a land of great contrasts.
Please tell me that the boiled aubergine and porridge were NOT served together in the same dish??? What is it with boarding schools are their need to serve their pupils slop? This combination of sloppy food and rigorous discipline seems a universally agreed principle whether in the far flung foothills of the Himalayas (Dehradun perchance?) or the cobbled streets of Edinburgh in the prime of Miss Jean Brodie (no I wasn't one of her Gels...I was a Mary Erskine!) the mantra is pretty much the same isn't it?
LOL, no, they kept the two separate.....Indian boarding school system totally based on the long-established system in the UK - only now changing to adopt a fuller Indian flavour. In the 80's was still reminiscent of a 50's British school! I think the 'philosophy' behind boarding schools has a lot of 'toughen them up so they no longer feel what's true to them, but learn to toe another's line'. But then, the current education system the world over is questionable - are kids being encouraged to be free, or to be trained up into bondage and slavery (primarily of the mind)?. But again, things are changing and I don't think the youth of today are as naive as we were - although perhaps more confused!
Phew thats a relief...I am not sure I could have coped with the aubergine/porridge combo, any more than I can manage to eat even a veggie haggis!
Oh yes, totally agreed...the education system is part and parcel of the mass mind control and brain washing from as early an age as possible for sure! Most govern-mentes (to rule the mind...hidden within the word itself!) actively WANT a dumbed down and compliant new generation so they have legions of unquestioning and bidable slaves.
The pressures on the younger generations are very heavy...not least in the arena of social media - something that was absent when we were growing up. But for me their lack of naivety is down to the fact that they have access to so much more information (via the internet) than we had. The pressure cooking of their childhood actually seems to me to REMOVE their childhoods completely so they grow up significantly faster, which isn't necessarily a good thing. ⭐️
Yes, very good point - along with naivety going, so does the sweet innocence of childhood.......but then, I'm not sure I had more than a handful of sweetly innocent childhood experiences (being so surrounded by the corruption of adulthood makes it difficult anyway). There's also the aspect of re-discovering this child-like innocence as an adult - without the naivety!
'Govern' + 'Mentes' - hmmm, yes, one of many hidden in broad daylight - nice one!
Boom...good bang of the nail directly on the right spot...Thank you @barge we DO need to recapture the innocence of our inner child and play, with joy and abandon, at the things we love!
Just as we did as children...healing the inner child is a HUGE aspect of this and doing so adds immeasurably to the evolvement of us humans as a species.
If you liked govern-mente I have stacks more coming up in articles on etymology and what words truly mean...if we are indeed berthing/birthing a new reality from the ashes of this fading and unconscious dream of the old paradigm we NEED to know exactly what word spells we are creating with each and every word we utter. They are the logos...the word...and very powerful things to be used carefully and wisely.
I am interested in etymology and language(s). I look forward to reading your posts on the subject.