Official: Wild haggis do exist...in OED
IT is long-running joke, usually played on unwitting tourists.
But now the mythical Scottish wild haggis has been honoured with a mention in the Oxford English Dictionary.
In the latest edition of the OED, published this month, the definition reads: ‘A fictitious wild animal, supposedly native to Scotland, and said to be hunted and eaten as the foodstuff.’
Haggis supper and Haggisland – a derogatory term for Scotland – have also been included for the first time.
In a blog post about the new entries, Jonathan Dent, the dictionary’s revision editor, said: ‘Revision of haggis sees the addition of a new sense dealing with humorous references to a fictitious wild animal from Scotland, often said to have legs shorter on one side of its body than those on the other, the better to enable it to run around hills, supposed to be killed and eaten as the foodstuff now indelibly associated with its native country.
‘Our earliest reference to this bizarre creature is from the London magazine Fun in 1900, when Liberal leader (and later prime minister) Henry Campbell-Bannerman was said to charm his constituents by dancing the Highland fling “as they sit round the glowing hearth and eat wild haggis to the sound of bagpipes”.
‘Later evidence suggests that many Scottish people enjoy the story of this rarely seen beastie – our last quotation, from the Southern Reporter in Selkirk in 2010, is an earnest plea that the rights of locals to hunt the haggis are respected.’
He added: ‘Haggis suppers are available in the Oxford English Dictionary for the first time. Recorded earliest in the general sense of a meal with haggis as the main dish in a report on the local Scottish Association’s plans from the Sunderland Echo in 1877, this phrase now more usually refers to a takeaway meal of haggis, often deepfried and served with chips.’
The main definition of haggis in the dictionary reads: ‘A dish consisting of the offal (typically the heart, lungs, and liver) of a sheep, calf, etc., minced or chopped with suet, oatmeal, onions, and seasoning, and boiled or roasted in a bag, traditionally one made from an animal’s (especially a sheep’s) stomach.’