By David Helwig
SooToday.com
Thursday, January 03, 2008

JOINT NEWS RELEASE

JOHNSON TOWNSHIP

ALGOMATRAD

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AlgomaTrad and Johnson Township bring you Robbie Burns and all you wanted to know about haggis

ALGOMA - AlgomaTrad (The Algoma Traditional Music and Dance Family Camp) and the Township of Johnson Recreation Committee are teaming up this year to present a Traditional (almost) Robbie Burns Night on the actual birthday of Robbie Burns on Friday, January 25, 2008.

All the elements of a traditional Burns dinner will be there from the dinner menu to Scottish bagpipe and fiddle music, to highland dancers provided by the Township’s Highland Dance program, to Burns songs sung by Rick Deevey of Blarney, to the traditional address to the Haggis and more.

The event will be, untraditionally, non-alcoholic, which doesn’t seem too out-of-place in this day and age of vegetarian Robbie Burns’ dinners.

The evening is a fundraiser for the AlgomaTrad Nicholas Missere Bursary Fund and Johnson Township Recreation programs.

Tickets are $20 and available at the Johnson Township Office, the Desbarats Arena, the Desbarats Market, McClelland’s Hardware, 17E Trading Post, Kent’s Corners, and Ambeault’s.

Robbie Burns is hailed as Scotland’s greatest wordsmith and his poems and songs are still performed to this day, 312 years after his untimely death at 37 years of age.

If you’ve gathered with friends and family on New Year’s Eve and sung the words “Should auld acquaintance be forgot...” then you too have celebrated Burns mastery of verse, as it was he who composed the words to Auld Lang Syne and put it to a melody with roots deep in Scotland’s past.

A celebrity in his own time for his poetry, Burns’ songs like “My Love is like a Red, Red Rose”, “A-comin’ Through the Rye” and “Ye Banks and Braes of Bonny Doon” have been perennial favourites ever since.

Every year since the mid-19th century admirers of Burns, and those who simply enjoy a fun event, get together on or around his birthday and celebrate his life and his art.

Central to this festive occasion is the celebration of an old Scottish dish haggis, to which Burns wrote a clever and funny address that is performed just before it is served as part of dinner.

The Haggis is surrounded by all kinds of misinformation, from being described as a cooked sheep’s stomach to the more absurd legend of a species of Scottish beastie, half bird and half sheep.

Actually, the haggis is a kind of sausage, traditionally made from a mixture of organ meats (liver, heart, kidneys) and mixed with oatmeal and spices and cooked in the lining of a sheep’s stomach, a material that has been used for generations as a way to hold sausage together. Delicious!

The Burns dinner usually features as well cock-a-leekie soup (chicken and leek soup), roast beef, “champit taties” (mashed potatoes) and “bashed neeps” (mashed turnips), and a trifle for dessert, though there are all kinds of variations on these basics as well as on the recipe for the haggis.

The evening is rounded out by a speech and a toast to the immortal memory of Burns, a toast to the ladies, meant to be delivered with tongue firmly planted in the cheek, and a reply to that toast in which women get a chance to give their own back to the menfolk.

Piping, highland dancing demonstrations, and a few Burns songs and poems are often included in the evening’s entertainment.

Kilts are optional on January 25 for this event in Desbarats but bring your sense of humour and come enjoy this opportunity to celebrate Robbie Burns, the haggis and all things Scottish.

A Traditional (almost) Robbie Burns Dinner

Friday, January 25, 2008 at 7 p.m.

Township of Johnson Community Centre

Tickets: $20 available at Johnson Township Office, the Desbarats Arena, the Desbarats Market, McClelland’s Hardware, 17E Trading Post, Kent’s Corners, and Ambeault’s.

Proceeds to AlgomaTrad Bursary Fund and Johnson Township Recreation Program

This is a non-alcoholic event

Info: 782 6601 ext 205

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