The Effect
Every year on the 25th of January since the early 1800’s, a curious ritual unfolds across the highlands and lowlands of Scotland. Amidst the bustle of town halls and restaurants throughout the land, pipers’ skirls fill the air, they walk through the standing congregation followed by a server solemnly bearing a silver salver. The music ceases, a kilt clad master of ceremonies delivers a dramatic recitation in Scots, beginning with the famous lines:
‘Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin’-race!’
During this, with a flourish, the salver is lifted and a ceremonial dagger slices open the object of reverence beneath it, revealing the innards of a haggis. This former living creature is shared amongst the gathering, typically accompanied by mashed turnips, potatoes, and a ‘wee dram’ of whisky.
So what exactly is a haggis? Haggis are small, rodent-like mammals that vaguely resemble bagpipes. Like the famous Scottish instrument that has a number of hollow pipes sticking out of a small ball-shaped bladder, haggis are small ball-shaped creatures covered in long, stiff, hollow hairs - usually brown with light coloured tips. They are nocturnal mammals that share distant ancestry with the shrew, and fossils show that they have changed little over the last fifteen million years.
The diet of a wild haggis is varied, consisting mainly of insects, slugs and snails. However they are opportunists and have been known to eat frogs, eggs and even scavenge any carrion they might discover whilst roaming the glens as they snuffle quietly, concealed by the purple Scottish heather.
They have also been known to eat snakes, as remarkably, haggis are one of only four mammalian groups with a magical immunity to snake venom!
Naturally, they are fans of whisky. Many a haggis has been found lying on its back, foaming at the mouth, after licking the wood of a barrel that once contained the Scottish nectar.
The haggis was once a fairly common sight in the garden, but numbers have declined dramatically with around a third of the haggis population lost since the year 2000. This is due mostly to their natural environment being destroyed or altered. Rural haggis have seen the widespread use of pesticides, reducing the number of invertebrates they can eat. And the urban haggis is now quite rare as its preferred habitat of hedges and natural scrub more frequently becomes car parking spaces and over-manicured gardens. And, like many other wild animals have also discovered, traversing busy roads at night doesn’t always go to plan…
The International Union for Conservation of Nature recently declared the Haggis to be on its red list as “Near Threatened”, meaning that if you do come and visit Scotland, and stay up one ‘braw bricht moonlight nicht’, the chances of you seeing one are nae very good. It’s no wonder so many people believe we just made them up!
The Method
1995 saw the release of the film Braveheart, in which Mel Gibson played the role of William Wallace fighting against King Edward I of England in the First War of Scottish Independence. The film was a box office hit and created a massive boost to Scottish tourism.
A survey of North Americans visiting Scotland in 2003 found that nearly one quarter of them believed they could catch a haggis. While consuming haggis is illegal in the USA, the reason no tourist has ever brought one back isn’t a legal one, but a biological one: the haggis isn’t an animal.
The foodstuff called a haggis is made of the organs of a sheep. Its heart, liver and lungs are mixed with chopped onion, oatmeal, suet and spices. The mixture is stuffed into the empty stomach of the sheep which acts as a casing in which it is cooked.
The origin of this recipe is unknown. Some believe the concept of preserving meat inside an animal’s stomach was introduced to the Scots by invading Romans or Vikings, who supposedly carried these portable meals during raids.
Another theory suggests that haggis originated locally, born of practicality rather than invasion. Hunters, seeking to preserve the quickly perishable parts of their game, would chop up the innards, stuff them into a stomach, and cook the resulting haggis near their kill site.
It is due to the Scottish poet, Robert Burns’, poem ‘Address to a Haggis’ that the meal of haggis, swede and potatoes (or ‘haggis, neeps and tatties’ as we say) has become the country’s national dish.
In 1801, five years after the death of Robert Burns, a group of his friends held a memorial supper in his honour, they drank whisky and ate a haggis after addressing it with his poem - and so the tradition has continued to this day.
The joke of claiming that the haggis is a wild creature indigenous only to Scotland is probably a more recent one, most likely started and then annually perpetuated by newspapers being read by visitors to the country around Burns Night. Even those who know the true ingredients of a haggis, still enjoy making up wild stories about their unusual habits and the comical or violent mishaps that have befallen the brave haggis hunters of yesteryear.
But what of the strange behaviours you heard earlier? Fanciful facts of a creature, almost unchanged for fifteen million years, a bizarre beast that licks barrels of whisky, only to make it lie belly up and foam from the mouth, a creature with an immunity to snake venom? All these unbelievable facts are true, they’re just not about the non-existent wild haggis. They’re about a real creature, a creature whose numbers genuinely are declining rapidly, so rapidly, in fact, that this creature may, like the wild haggis, eventually exist only through folklore. That very real, “near threatened” creature is the hedgehog!
© 2025, Lora Jones. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without written permission.
