Raise Ye Glass for Scots’ Burns Night Traditions

. . . His knife see rustic Labour dight,

An’ cut ye up wi’ ready slight,

Trenching your gushing entrails bright, Like onie ditch;

And then, O what a glorious sight, Warm-reekin’, rich! . . .

--”Address to a Haggis,”

Robert Burns

At the moment of truth, the skean dhu glints overhead, then plunges full force into the sheep’s stomach.

Then, in staggered order, come the toasting and the boasting and the feasting, the speeches and the flings and the strathspeys, until the piper peters out and the last lingering laddie fa’s like the dew into his own crumpled kilt.

This, though, is not the end. There never is an end to it (just ask the Sassenachs). It simply is the beginning of preparations for next Burns Night.

The skean dhu is the dagger every guid Scotsman stashes in his stocking for special occasions. The strathspey is one of those indelibly intricate Scottish country dances, best performed under the friendly persuasion of Dufftown Glenlivet.

The haggis is the Scottish national dish, the Sassenach an Englishman who would far less rather eat a haggis than spread it on his rose garden.

The excuse for the annual Caledonian hoedown is Robert Burns, poet of the people, who was born on Jan. 25, 1759, and who will die whenever people stop singing “Auld Lang Syne.” On or around the 25th, Burns Night is celebrated wherever there are two Scots to rub together: Nairobi, Stockholm, Tokyo; Inverkeithny, Craigellachie and Kirkton of Auchterless; Santa Monica, Santa Barbara and Santa Anita.

Southern California, with its disproportionate influence of Scottish expatriates, is not excepted. (Indeed, that stretch of the coast that bends like a practiced elbow from Palos Verdes to Malibu has long since been dubbed the Costa Clyde.)

Locally, there are dozens of celebrations, to which non-Scots are generally welcomed (including all of those listed below). Details vary slightly for reasons of space, taste and degree of relative sobriety, though the basic Scottish rite goes something like this:

Toasts. Haggis, on a silver platter, borne in, preceded by a bagpiper. Toasts. Burns’ “Address to a Haggis” recited. Toasts. Haggis impaled by skean dhu . Toasts. Diners attack the traditional meal: tatties, neeps and nips--potatoes, turnips and sippin’ whiskey--along with the haggis. (Alternate dishes--roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, peas, etc.--generally are provided for those of little faith and lesser palate.) Toasts. “The Immortal Memory” (of Robert Burns) delivered by a notable. A recited “Toast to the Lassies.” Reply toast to the laddies. Singing of the auld songs, often by a visiting entertainer. Exhibition dancing, preceded by toasts and followed by social dancing for those still able to toast and chew gum.

Participating Scots dress in the traditional and many-splendored garb (guests often asked to dress rather formally), and untoward incidents are not unknown, particularly those involving the haggis. Just getting hold of one involves ingenuity, if not fortitude.

“The haggis originally was a poor man’s dish,” explains Nancy Clanachan, Malibu caterer extraordinaire (by appointment to the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, ex-King Constantine of Greece and the late Louella Parsons, among others). “Mainly it was the intestinals of an animal that a rich man would throw away. The poor people would grind it up and add oatmeal--the cheapest thing you could buy--and then you’d boil it in the bag (the stomach lining) of a sheep.

(Modern version of the dish, courtesy of the Scottish Council in Edinburgh: one sheep’s pluck (liver, lights and heart) the stomach bag, fresh beef suet, fine oatmeal, onions, stock of gravy, cayenne and benediction. The bag is filled five-eighths full (it swells in the steaming) and sewed securely, to stand up under three or four hours boiling.)

With a number of ingredients proscribed by U.S. law, Clanachan herself is sometimes forced to substitute--kidney for lights; coarse linen for the bag--leaving untamed Bakersfield as one of the last frontiers of the authentic haggis. Ina Stewart of the Kern County Scottish Society celebrates on the 22nd and reports that sheeps’ stomachs are readily available from local ranchers. “Put it in the washing machine,” she advises, “with a couple of old towels and half a cup of bleach. It’ll clean up all the goopie stuff.”

Less fortunate Scots groups make do, often supplying a local chef with ingredients, and often with hilarious effects.

Frank Ibbott of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society recalls the year Tom Girvin of radio station KIEV was called upon to give the “address.” Either the ingredients or Girvin, or both, were diluted: “He did a marvelous job, but he got so carried away that his dagger went right through the haggis, through the silver dish and stuck fast in the table below.”

Frank Smith’s United Scottish Society supplies the haggis makings to the Proud Bird restaurant, whose Mexican chefs take it from there. “A few years ago,” Smith says, “the haggis was piped in, the words spoken, the dagger raised--and boing! The skean dhu bounced right off. The chefs had frozen the thing.”

Baxter’s Foods of Scotland supplies a canned (and delicious) version--or at least they did. “We had some trouble with your Food and Drug Administration,” chairman Gordon Baxter said by phone from Fochabers, Scotland. “We could export it, but it was classified as fertilizer.

“Somebody, it seems, had told the FDA that only a drunken Scotsman would make a haggis--and only a very drunken Scotsman would eat it!”

Be that as it may, Robert Burns, as usual, had the last word:

Ye powrs wha mak mankind your

care,

And dish them out their bill o’ fare,

Auld Scotland wants no skinking

ware,

That jaups in luggies;

But if ye wish her gratefu’ prayer,

Gie her a haggis!

Tonight: St. Andrews Society of Southern California. Altadena Town and Country Club, Altadena, $30; no-host cocktails at 6 p.m., dinner at 7 p.m. (Entertainment includes Alisdair Fraser (fiddle), Yvonne Macleod (accordion), Neil Macleod (moothie), the Grouse Band. For information and/or reservations, call (213) 820-9251 or (213) 656-8565.

Friday: Kern County Scottish Society. Casa Royale, Bakersfield, $18. Cocktails 6 p.m., dinner 7 p.m. (Entertainment includes Alex Beaton, songs and guitar.) Call (805) 871-2088.

Next Saturday: United Scottish Society. Grand Ballroom of Proud Bird restaurant (near Los Angeles International Airport), $27; no-host cocktails 6 p.m., dinner 7 p.m. (Entertainment includes Tom Brunjes, tenor, and Harry Farrar, pipes.) Call (818) 842-1231.

Next Saturday: St. Andrews Society of L.A. Santa Monica Beach Club, $35. Cocktails 7 p.m., dinner 8 p.m. (Entertainment includes Ron Murray, bard). Call (213) 472-8557.

Next Saturday: Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, L.A. Branch. Edgewater Hyatt Hotel, Long Beach, $28. Cocktails 5:30 p.m., dinner 6 p.m. (Entertainment includes the Jack Rennie Thistle Band, the Scottish Accordion Band.) Call (213) 833-0530 or (818) 887-7728.

Next Saturday: Daughters of Scotia. Alta Vista Country Club, Placentia; $15, 6 p.m.-midnight. (Entertainment includes Charlie Wood Trio and Jim Binnie.) Call (714) 528-1931.

Next Saturday: Scottish Society of Santa Barbara, $35. Fess Parker’s Red Lion Resort Hotel, Santa Barbara. Cocktails 6 p.m., dinner 7 p.m. (Entertainment includes Alex Beaton, Yvonne Macleod, the Glenn Lyon Pipes and Drums Band.) Call (805) 684-2359.

Restaurants: Next Saturday: Buchanan Arms, 2031 W. Burbank Blvd., Burbank, entertainment by Shanachie group, (818) 845-0692. Jan. 25: Tam O’Shanter Inn, 2980 Los Feliz Blvd., haggis by Ivan Harrison, (213) 664-0228. Jan. 25: Bob Burns Restaurant, Promenade Shopping Center, Woodland Hills, entertainment by James Keigher, Don MacDonald, (818) 883-2145.