Guide Note

Haggis is a Scottish dish made of various parts of a sheep, onion, oatmeal, suet and spices. The parts of the sheep in question are its heart, liver and lungs, mixed with all of the other ingredients and then boiled in a sheep's stomach. In the past, these were the leftover parts of a sheep and were eaten boiled mixed with vegetables as an inexpensive and nutritious meal. Today haggis is more of a delicacy, and a point of Scottish pride.

Fast Facts

1. Associated with poet Robert Burns
2. January 25 is Burns Night, and haggis is eaten in his honor
3. National dish of Scotland
4. Served with "neeps and tatties": aka turnips and potatoes
5. It is illegal to import Scottish haggis to the U.S.
6. Boiled in sheep stomach
7. Commercially produced haggis is stuffed inside a casing, not a stomach
8. Commercially produced meat-free haggis for vegetarians available

Beloved Scottish poet Robert "Robbie" Burns wrote the poem "Ode Tae a Haggis" and every year on Burns Night, January 25, the ode is read aloud accompanying a meal of haggis, neeps, tatties, and whisky.

If you've ever been told to watch out for the wild haggis, roaming the Scottish countryside with two legs shorter than the other to make climbing around the hillsides easier, you've been tricked by merry pranksters. Tourists to Scotland are often told the myth of the wild haggis, an animal said to be the meat that the haggis is made from. There is no such creature, though the myth persists.