HAGGIS, that great stumbling block to all who are not Scottish, is not the famous musical instrument beloved of all who hail from the Land o' Cailees and abominated by the unmusical, although the sainted haggis and the bagpipes are so closely related tha it is difficult to tell them apart when they are together.

Haggis - Ben Haggis - is nt the name of the highest mountain in Scotland, nor is it another name for the whitewash brush the highlander wears in front of his kilt.

It has even been suggested that the haggis is a pudding. Ye gods! the noble haggis a pudding!

Of course, Scotland's nationalk bard, Robbie Burns, is to blame for this strange idea, as he hails the haggis "Breat chieftain o'd the puddin's race". What Burns really referred to was the haggis's (or is it hagga??) traditional love for meally puddings, this being the only bait by which the haggis can be trapped alive.

The haggis, let it be known, is a wild animal that frequents the lonely sequestered places in the highland glens and hills. It is ferocious to an extreme (or to anything else), and it is a great fighter. But its flesh is so great a delicacy that it is much sought after, and desperate chances have been taken in pursuit of it, as well as in trying to get away from it. Time and again has the sturdy highlander risen from his bed and gone out in the dead of night, clad only in kilt and shirt, bare of foot and armed with a short dirk, thus to track the kingly haggis to his native lair in the highland fastnesses. For hours will the intrepid hunter lie quietly on his stomach behind a haggis-hole, awaiting the first faint blink of dawn, when the brute, with the stupor of sleep still upon it, ventures out in search of stray mealy puddings.

The haggis can be killed in one way only. Its vulnerable point is the tender, unprotected part between its shoulder blades; and it is at this point that the crafty hunter strikes. If he succeeds, the haggis is his. If he does not, it is not.

In addition to the haggis being a great table delicacy, there is a bounty on haggis tails of two-pence-ha’penny. This is why the average highland Scot has grown so wealthy.

One has to be very careful in approaching a haggis after he has speared or dirked it. It should always be taken in the rear. Not so very long ago, a gallant young highlander, much beloved in his native glen, in a moment of rashness rushed in to capture his haggis after stabbing it, thinking that it was already dead. Two days later, the poor fellow died of hydrophobia, snarling like a haggis with whelps.

Fortunately for most people, they have been providentially preserved from hearing the awful death shriek of a haggis. Those who have been unfortunate enough to hear it know that it is like nothing on earth. Stay! That is not quite accurate—it is like one other thing only, but of that anon. That terrible, agonizing yell, once heard, can never be eradicated from the human consciousness.

Scottish history, and also Sir Walter Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather, inform all who care to read that the poor, peace-loving, law-abiding, sober, harmless, oatmeal-eating, money-hating Scots in bygone days were much harrassed by their thieving, rapacious, head-chopping neighbours to the south of them, the English; and for years they strove to clear their beloved land of the Sassenach hordes, but without success. But one day, in dire straits, it occurred to one of the noble Scottish leaders, Sir Ian Gleg Cumhuch MacAllister, familiarly known as Red Ian of the Highland Gathering, that, if the awe-inspiring shriek of the dying haggis could only be preserved and reproduced, it might be the means of terrifying the English and putting them to flight. Wise heads set about trying to find some means of so doing, but all was unavailing until, after years of research, whisky (that wonderful preservative) was discovered—a whole lake of it—in a quiet, unfrequented part of Scotland. This lake is still in existence and, although the droughts of recent years have made great inroads on it, it is still the centre of a busy and thriving city of over a million inhabitants. The experiment was tried out before the then aged and venerable Red Ian of the Highland Gathering, who was ending his days peacefully by the lake shore taking the waters. Haggis (or haggai) were caught alive, stabbed between the shoulder blades over a vat of this marvellous lake fluid, then plumped into it as they commenced their last, long-drawn swansong. Thus, to the everlasting glory of Scotland, was the dying shriek of the haggis preserved.

Next, a hundred haggis skins were stretched and dried. Holes were pierced in these at intervals, and reeds were thrust into the holes. Through these reeds, the whisky containing the preserved yells of a hundred haggis was poured. A hundred volunteers were called for the hazardous undertaking, and a million volunteered. A selection was made, and finally one hundred of Scotia’s brawniest highlanders, each with a haggis skin, fully charged, under his arm, set out in the dead of night to liven up the English by murdering them. At a given signal—the snuffy sneeze of their leader—those gallant men of the North sprang to their feet, compressed the haggis skins under their arms and reproduced, one hundred fold in terrifying and thunderous volume, the hundred haggis’ dying yells.

Those were the first known bagpipes in Scottish history.

The English broke and fled, leaving half their number dead on the field.

Next morning, finding that his trusty followers had not returned, Red Ian, in deep anxiety, put a monocle in his eye and a pair of trousers on his legs and, thus disguised as an Englishman, made for the scene of carnage. There, to his unbounded delight, he found his “hundred pipers and a' and a’ lying in various picturesque attitudes among their dead foemen, celebrating their victory by singing “Auld Lang Syne” in a hundred different keys. And not a liquid yell could the thirsty Red Ian find in any haggis skin, so well had his brave highlanders done their work.

This is the story of how the haggis freed Scotland forever from the depredations of the hated Sassenach.

This story came from The Beaver Magazine, Volume 3 No. 2 (pdf)