NOW here is a scene currently being re-enacted around the world – an enthusiastic speaker waving a dirk in the air while reciting the colourful Address to a Haggis at a Burns Supper while the chef stands nervously by hoping his ear isn’t about to be accidentally cut off.
Even the chap sitting next to the speaker at the table is looking a bit dubious, although the lady on the right thinks it is simply delightful.
This is the Glasgow Haggis Club’s Burns Supper at Central Hotel in January, 1955, with Past President James Dunlop ready to trench its gushing entrails bright.
The Glasgow Haggis Club, is one of the world’s oldest Burns clubs, being formed in 1872, and still meets today as far as I know. Perhaps few speakers these days go to the bother of wearing white tie, but otherwise the format of a Burns Supper remains the same. And nothing wrong with that.
The cheerful lady on the right is Mrs Flora Tebb who was principal of the former Glasgow High School for Girls for 21 years.
The first supper was held at Burns’s Cottage by his friends on July 21, 1801, the fifth anniversary of his death. The first still existing Burns Club was founded in Greenock that year, and gradually it became more common to hold the memorial dinners on the anniversary of his birth, January 25.
Hopefully the chef pictured here will be getting his traditional dram.
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