This past week has been devoted to Scotland's national poet, Robert Burns, one of Literature's finest poets, though sadly incomprehensible, even to his fellow-countrymen. Certainly to his Orcadian fellow-countrymen, if last Friday's lesson was anything to go by.
"What do we know about Robert Burns?" "He was a womanising nymphomaniac," announced Graeme.
Burns wrote hundreds of excellent poems, collected thousands of songs, farmed, worked as an Exciseman, toured Scotland, drank a lot and fathered a remarkable number of illegitimate children. Put in this context, his early death seems more inevitable than tragic.
I can't say that Burns' love-songs were a great hit with the kids on Hoy (they're a little young) and poor Iona, bless her, was struggling with 'To a haggis' -
Is there that owre his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricasee wad mak her spew
Wi' perfect sconner,
Looks down wi' sneering, scorfu' view
On sic a dinner?
But anyone that makes fun of the French snobbery about food is a pal o' mine, so Burns get ma vote!
Tam o'Shanter was a great success though and we spent a happy day deconstructing it, illustrating it and planning a film of it. I gave Donald a drawing of Burns' byre to colour in: "What breed of kye is that? What's that wee beastie on the stall?" It was a stoat, which I was foolish enough to tell him was the same colour as my hair, so the beastie is now labelled 'Ms Hainsworth.'
The weather had turned truly dreadful. Housemate Emma had a friend from Hartlepool staying for a couple of days who was due to leave Friday as he had to go to a wedding on Saturday. Every ferry was cancelled and he finally left at midday today. He should have docked by one but the last I heard he was still at sea at half past two. So it was with some trepidation that 10 of us set off for Flotta for their Burns Night Supper. I organised this little jolly, and I was terrified it was going to be awful, as, once we set off at 7.20p.m., there was no possibility of leaving till 2a.m. And, given the weather, there was a serious risk of being stuck there for many hours more. I don't have a vast circle of friends here and I thought it was about to be reduced by 9! But it was a real laugh. Flotta is a small island halfway between Mainland and Hoy. It has a population of 100 and a school with 6 kids in it. Its main claim to fame is that it is a major employer, as is it an oil terminal. It was the workers' boat, a brand-new catamaran called the Flotta Lass that took us across. It went to Hoy first, where Mabel (Scottish dancing teacher extraordinaire and now an accomplished performer of Tam o' Shanter thanks to me: it was because of Mabel that the lesson went so well) Graeme and his grandpa got on. Granpa abandoned Graeme as soon as he arrived, so he sat with us all evening and led us clueless idiots in the dancing. What a star! I feel this auspicious event deserves a little poem:
We set off for Flotta
To celebrate the poet
I was invited by a bloke on the ferry who failed to turn up
(Wouldn't you know it)
So I never got to see him
In his kilt and his sporran
But I ate three helpings of haggis
And got severe indigestion.
After enough haggis and clapshot
To make a girl sink,
They powdered the floor till it was like an ice-rink.
Like Burns' witches and warlocks
We lapped and we flang
And we slipped in the powder
And got the moves wrong.
We dashed the White Sergeant
Wi' Graeme, aged 13 and a quarter
(Ma date fer the neet
On the island of Flotta.)
When we were not dancing (or, in my case, groaning, as I ate far too much - but it was worth it) Graeme entertained us with scurrilous gossip about just about everyone in the room. He also told us that the guys who were running the bar (cheap beer! another first for Orkney!) had made a 'tourist' video about Flotta and put it on YouTube. It's quite funny - just type 'Flotta' into the YouTube search thingy. Anyway, a good time was had by all and the whole thing cost six quid. You might also like the following website:
http://www.wallydug.demon.co.uk/haggis/leaflet.html
"What do we know about Robert Burns?" "He was a womanising nymphomaniac," announced Graeme.
Burns wrote hundreds of excellent poems, collected thousands of songs, farmed, worked as an Exciseman, toured Scotland, drank a lot and fathered a remarkable number of illegitimate children. Put in this context, his early death seems more inevitable than tragic.
I can't say that Burns' love-songs were a great hit with the kids on Hoy (they're a little young) and poor Iona, bless her, was struggling with 'To a haggis' -
Is there that owre his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricasee wad mak her spew
Wi' perfect sconner,
Looks down wi' sneering, scorfu' view
On sic a dinner?
But anyone that makes fun of the French snobbery about food is a pal o' mine, so Burns get ma vote!
Tam o'Shanter was a great success though and we spent a happy day deconstructing it, illustrating it and planning a film of it. I gave Donald a drawing of Burns' byre to colour in: "What breed of kye is that? What's that wee beastie on the stall?" It was a stoat, which I was foolish enough to tell him was the same colour as my hair, so the beastie is now labelled 'Ms Hainsworth.'
The weather had turned truly dreadful. Housemate Emma had a friend from Hartlepool staying for a couple of days who was due to leave Friday as he had to go to a wedding on Saturday. Every ferry was cancelled and he finally left at midday today. He should have docked by one but the last I heard he was still at sea at half past two. So it was with some trepidation that 10 of us set off for Flotta for their Burns Night Supper. I organised this little jolly, and I was terrified it was going to be awful, as, once we set off at 7.20p.m., there was no possibility of leaving till 2a.m. And, given the weather, there was a serious risk of being stuck there for many hours more. I don't have a vast circle of friends here and I thought it was about to be reduced by 9! But it was a real laugh. Flotta is a small island halfway between Mainland and Hoy. It has a population of 100 and a school with 6 kids in it. Its main claim to fame is that it is a major employer, as is it an oil terminal. It was the workers' boat, a brand-new catamaran called the Flotta Lass that took us across. It went to Hoy first, where Mabel (Scottish dancing teacher extraordinaire and now an accomplished performer of Tam o' Shanter thanks to me: it was because of Mabel that the lesson went so well) Graeme and his grandpa got on. Granpa abandoned Graeme as soon as he arrived, so he sat with us all evening and led us clueless idiots in the dancing. What a star! I feel this auspicious event deserves a little poem:
We set off for Flotta
To celebrate the poet
I was invited by a bloke on the ferry who failed to turn up
(Wouldn't you know it)
So I never got to see him
In his kilt and his sporran
But I ate three helpings of haggis
And got severe indigestion.
After enough haggis and clapshot
To make a girl sink,
They powdered the floor till it was like an ice-rink.
Like Burns' witches and warlocks
We lapped and we flang
And we slipped in the powder
And got the moves wrong.
We dashed the White Sergeant
Wi' Graeme, aged 13 and a quarter
(Ma date fer the neet
On the island of Flotta.)
When we were not dancing (or, in my case, groaning, as I ate far too much - but it was worth it) Graeme entertained us with scurrilous gossip about just about everyone in the room. He also told us that the guys who were running the bar (cheap beer! another first for Orkney!) had made a 'tourist' video about Flotta and put it on YouTube. It's quite funny - just type 'Flotta' into the YouTube search thingy. Anyway, a good time was had by all and the whole thing cost six quid. You might also like the following website:
http://www.wallydug.demon.co.uk/haggis/leaflet.html
5 comments:
Brilliant, Diana, - more intelligible poetry than Burns!! (Are you a proponent of pararhyme a la Wilf Owen?) Your Burns nicht sounds great, although I would not have survived any sea trip, however short! Again, superb pics. Give up teaching and do snapping.
I love your poem. Write more. We need one in every post...
Loved the poem and hope the indigestion wasn't too severe.
Burns Night on Westray was, apparently, a damp squib as all the pipers had headed off for Shetland and Up Helly Aa.
And I'm totally with you about French food snobbery. My mother (a French teacher and arch-Francophile) went through a phase of refusing to make gravy with Sunday dinner because "the French never had it". My Dad and I finally got fed up and learned to make it ourselves.
Hang on, I've been had, haven't I?
You are indeed living dangerously--and after seeing that illustration of a haggis and learning that you ate three--three!--helpings, I know that island travel by airplane and ferry is the very least of it! ". . . breed of kye . . ."--is that Burns-speak?
Thanks one and all for your kind remarks, tho' regarding photos, I have to confess that 'man blowing up bicycle tyres with bagpipes'was not one of mine. Haggis is very filling and I ate virtually nothing all weekend. I do love it though.
Malc - wouldn't you say 'bhoy' is the Orcadian equivalent of 'duck'?
V - 'breed of kye' is Donald-speak. In 80 years time, anthropologists will be beating a path to his door to record the last known speaker of the Hoy dialect.
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