Burns supper

The Burns Supper is an annual celebration in Scotland in honour of the poet Robert Burns. It is held on his birthday, 25 January (Burns Night, in the Anglo-Saxon world commemorations are usually birthdays, not deathdays). Burns Suppers are held on this date not only in Scotland, but wherever the very substantial numbers of Scottish migrants and their children have settled in the world, notably Canada, Northern Ireland, Australia and the United States.

The menu is always the same: soup, haggis with rutabaga and potatoes (neeps and tatties), and trifle for dessert. At least during the toasts, whisky is drunk. The formal part of the evening follows a very ritualized routine. Before the haggis is served, it is ceremoniously carried on a platter by the cook, accompanied by a kilt-clad piper, to the speaker's table, where the host (or landlord of the restaurant where one is celebrating Burns Night) recites the Burns poem The Address to a Haggis (see below). At the words cut you up wi' ready slight ("slit you up with plain dexterity") in the third stanza, the haggis is cut open so that the innards spill out and spread all over the serving platter.

After dinner, a series of speeches is given, always according to a strictly ritualized order. The Immortal Memory is a memorial speech to Burns, typically with literary tributes to selected poems and a reference to contemporary politics and morals. At the Toast to the Lassies, a selected man may wickedly tease the women before dedicating a toast to them. To this, one of the women may respond in a similarly teasing tone. In between, poems and songs by Burns are recited and sung.