The gastronomy of HAGGIS and KAIL

Taken to be a distinctly Scottish dish from the 1750's onwards the haggis can be shown to have an interesting derivation and the ‘evidence’ is cast across several different areas. It was extolled as an English dish by Gervaise Markham in 1615. ‘Small oatmeal’ he says ‘mixed with blood and liver of either sheep, calfe or swine maketh that pudding which is called the Haggas of whose goodness it is vain to boast,…’ A modern writer remarks that haggises nowadays have all emigrated to Scotland; at one time however ‘haggas’ or ‘habbys’ was equally common in the ‘south’ and as ‘hash pudding’ was well known in Cumberland. Whatever its origin and distressing though it may be to patriotic Scots, the word, like the dish, is definitely English.