Address to a Haggis is a Scots-language poem by Robert Burns, written in 1786, and the full text appears below.
Its eight stanzas praise Scotland’s national dish as a hero, and it is recited every January 25 at Burns Night suppers, where the host cuts the haggis open mid-poem.
Praising a humble dish as though it were a champion is an old move in poems about food, and few poets have staged it with as much noise as Burns.
The Scots is thick in places, so a line-by-line English version is linked with the text.
Read the poem once for its sound and once for its sense, and the words that look strange on the page start to make sense when spoken.
Read the Full Text of Address to a Haggis
Burns died in 1796, so the poem is in the public domain. At a Burns supper, the haggis is piped in on a silver salver, and the host draws the knife during the third stanza, where Burns describes the cut.
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin’-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace
As lang’s my arm.
The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o’ need,
While thro’ your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.
His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An’ cut you up wi’ ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!
Then, horn for horn, they stretch an’ strive:
Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
Till a’ their weel-swall’d kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
The auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
‘Bethankit’ hums.
Is there that owre his French ragout,
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi’ perfect scunner,
Looks down wi’ sneering, scornfu’ view
On sic a dinner?
Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as a wither’d rash,
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro’ bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!
But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He’ll make it whissle;
An’ legs, an’ arms, an’ heads will sned,
Like taps o’ thrissle.
Ye Pow’rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o’ fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies:
But, if ye wish her gratefu’ prayer,
Gie her a Haggis!
Credit: “Address to a Haggis” by Robert Burns, first printed in the Caledonian Mercury, December 1786. Public domain.
Why Address to a Haggis Is Worth Reading Aloud
The address to a haggis moves from the platter to the dinner table to a battlefield and ends on a one-line prayer, and that quick change of scale is what makes it work when spoken.
The thick Scots slows you down in the first stanza, and by the last one the rhythm carries you through.
Read it aloud once at your next meal, and let the final line land the way it does at a Burns supper.
Then try another poem that praises a plain dish, such as Neruda’s “Ode to the Onion” or Williams’s plums, both in our poems about food guide.
