HAGGIS
[To the Editor of THE SPECTA'TOR.I Sin,—There is nothing peculiarly Scots in the custom of using the paunch of a sheep or other animal as a cooking pot. Very possibly it was the first means of boiling meat discovered by primitive man before his pottery was of a strength to bear much fire. Boiling either in. a paunch or a piece of raw hide was common in the Balkans up to fairly recent times. It was the usual method of the border. cattle and sheep-stealers up till well into the 'nineteenth century. My Montenegrin guide knew all about it, and described the process to me. He promised to cook a meal for me thus but for some reason or other did not do it.
When raw hide was used he told me to he sure to leave the hairy side outside. Vuk Vrchevich in his Narodne Pripovi- jecti (Ragusa, 1800) tells of a. cattle raid in the Herzegovina and details the subsequent cooking of a meal.
Having driVen the cattle to a safe place the weary and very hungry raiders kill a beast. But roasting over hot wood ash, though the results are excellent, is a slow job. They therefore " slaughtered a young ox ; that they had neither bread' nor 'salt was no hardship for the heyduks.
But what shall they boil the meat in ? . . . Each one set to work. One did the flaying ; the. second sought. for wood.; the third struck a light with flint and steel and blew on the dry leaves ; the fourth tended the fire ; the fifth washed the paunch of the ox ; the sixth cut up the meat into little bits ; the seventh poured water into the paunch, the eighth sought for .a bent branch on which to hang the paunch." The . meat was boiled over the fire in the paunch. This they ate so soon as cooked, and spitted a quarter of the ox and roasted it and ate this afterwards. The quickly cooked parts, such as the liver, kidneys, lungs and other trifles were generally put in the paunch. The nearest approach to such a meal that I made was when, while meat was roasting, we spitted bits of liver on a ramrod and for sheer hunger ate them so soon as warmed through. The heyduks probably did not wait for their paunch meal to be well cooked.
The Scots Highlanders of old boiled meat in bits of raw hide also. I read an account in Froissart of the capture of a Highlanders' camp from which its owners had so lately fled that they had left the meat still cooking in pieces of hide over many a fire. But I have not at the moment the precise reference. The bagpipe is. the national musical instrument of Bulgaria. And it is found in many much more primitive lands.
That the modern Scots have elaborated and flavoured the haggis to their own taste is not surprising. But that other folk should have made use of a convenient ready-made bag is only to be expected. Cave man may have been the first to dO so.—Yours, &c., M. EDITH DURHAM.
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