What Is a Burns Supper and What Is the History of It?

Some hae meat and canna eat
And some wad eat that want it:
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.
(The Selkirk Grace)

History

Exporting Tradition

Gendering Commemoration

… surely women have even more reason to remember the great poet who paid them so much homage more than he ever did to his own sex. Burns, indeed, might be claimed as the patron saint of women, if they have not one already.

Things have changed in the last hundred years and male-only clubs and suppers are increasingly rare: still, some Burns Clubs – Paisley and Calgary are two examples – hold out.

A Burns Supper

Regardless of the gender of the invitees or top table participants, the ceremonial of a Burns supper accords women a role in the Toast to ‘the Lasses’. The traditional Burns Supper has a number of core elements and their sequencing is a fundamental feature of a supper ‘done properly’. The evening typically runs like this:

• Piping in the guests: this is the first feature of the evening when music has a role and where we can see the active association of Burns and the trappings of Highlandism – pipes and tartan.
• The Selkirk Grace
• Piping in the haggis: again the strains of the bagpipe mark the arrival of the supper centre-piece – a dark pudding containing sheep’s offal, oatmeal and spices
• ‘To a Haggis’: Burns’s poem is recited as the reader cuts open the hot pudding, typically in a dramatic fashion. At the closing line ‘Gie’s a haggis!’, the guests raise their glasses in a toast before settling down to eat a meal, the main course of which is usually the haggis accompanied with neeps [turnip/swede] and tatties [potatoes].
• Toasts and Entertainment: There then follows a series of toasts and entertainments, two of which are de rigueur, ‘The Immortal Memory’ (a keynote address on the life and works of the bard), and the ‘Toast to the Lasses’, with its attendant reply (often an occasion for somewhat ribald humour, especially when no women are present).
• ‘Auld Lang Syne’: The meal ends with a collective rendition of Burns’s famous song.

Much can be learned from a study of suppers worldwide. In the selection of toasts we may learn a lot about the politics of the hosts, or the politics they assume that Burns would have endorsed. Down the years we can see how in countless Immortal Memory tributes, Burns’s legacy has been shaped by the contemporary interests of those that followed him. What speakers focus upon in the life of the poet has usually got more to do with current priorities than historic pre-occupations. In the style of the ‘Toast to the Lasses’, we can read the gender history of successive generations and how culture has shaped what it is possible to say in public – whether in earnest or in jest – about the relationship between the sexes.

Burns suppers are about so much more than eating and drinking; they’re also about what we wish to forget and how the past is deployed in the present.

Points for further consideration:

• Why did the early supporters of Burns chose haggis as the centre-piece of the supper?
• Given all the themes in Burns’s poetry, why do you think women (lasses) were accorded a role in the supper, even in their absence?
• What other national celebrations honour a writer? In what ways do such celebrations differ from those that commemorate Burns?