Happy Birthday Rabbie

Moira Mcpartlin

Happy Birthday Rabbie Burns

On Monday we commiserated on the most depressing day of the year but I have now discovered that this phenomena does not affect Scots as badly as the rest of the UK. And the reason why is the man on the right, the poet Robert Burns. We have a winter cure for the blues.
Today, in Scotland and throughout the world people will be celebrating Rabbie’s birthday with a supper of cock-a leekie soup, haggis, neeps and tatties and a few drams of whiskey. A chosen few will be rehearsing the ‘Address to the Haggis’, a rousing poem directed at a steaming plate of sheep’s stomach stuffed with offal and grain; ‘The Immortal Memory’, a personal account of why this bard’s words are still relevant today; and of course no Burn’s Supper would be complete without a rendition of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ a cautionary ghost story.
I will be celebrating tomorrow night in Ullapool Youth Hostel at the annual Ochil Mountaineering Club Burn’s Supper. The agenda is a hill walk during the day, a quick scrub up and then a communal meal for about fifty members. The club is pretty talented so there is no doubt the evening will be a success.
The major problem for everyone will be the drive to Ullapool in the storm that is currently raging across Scotland.

How to catch a haggis

Unknown's avatar

Published by Moira Mcpartlin

Moira McPartlin’s debut novel The Incomers, published by Fledgling Press in 2012, was shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award. Over the next seven years Moira wrote her speculative fiction, Sun Song Trilogy novels (also published by Fledgling Press). The novels, set in 2089, reflect many issues we face today. Moira’s last novel, Before Now: Memoir of a Toerag, is written entirely in the Fife dialect and was published by her own imprint, Trilleachan Press, in May 2021. In 2021 she became a writing fellow at Hawthornden Castle. In 2022 she was appointed the Scriever for The Federation of Writers (Scotland), and in 2024 was the recipient of a Bridges Award, a residency at Cove Park, Argyll. Her short stories and poetry have been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies. Moira’s latest publication, A Thing So Delicate: The Hidden Voices of Scotland’s Mass Concrete Viaducts, is a collaboration with her husband, Colin. It is a hybrid about the social history surrounding the building of Scotland’s Victorian mass concrete viaducts. This includes creative nonfiction, prose, poetry, and photography. Moira is listed on the Scottish Book Trust Live Literature Database.

Leave a comment