I have the haggis to prove it

Sally Toms introduces herself as the new Editor of Scotland Magazine

Scotland is a place that easily captures the imagination of children. And like so many people, my love for the country began on childhood holidays.

On one such holiday I was bought a little toy ‘haggis' by my parents. It bore no resemblance to an actual haggis (meat products do not make very attractive toys for little girls); this haggis was a stuffed animal that looked a bit like a large round guinea pig. It was covered in grey fur with little orange plastic eyes and it came with a book about his haggis adventures.

From then on I firmly believed that these creatures were real and that packs of these shy, shortlegged animals roamed freely throughout the Highlands.

Nowadays I'm reminded of my haggis delusion every time I buy one vacuum packed from Macsween's, but it was a nice idea while it lasted.

I'm revealing this embarrassing little anecdote not to demonstrate how gullible I really was at that age, but rather to make the point that because there were so many other things in Scotland that were completely alien to me, it simply never struck me as odd.

In fact it seemed perfectly plausible that an animal called a haggis could exist when Scotland had so many other cultural oddities (or so it seemed to me at the time): bagpipes; tartan; fierce looking cows; the Loch Ness monster; men in kilts strong enough to toss a tree trunk up in the air, etc.

I listened wide-eyed to dramatic tales of murder and revenge, clans, battles and exiled monarchs, of remote island communitie...

To read the rest of this article you can do any of the following.

• By : Sally Toms
• In : Editor's View
• Issue : 29
• Page : 3
• Words : 572