I m Bruce Fummey and I'm on a windswept hillside in Scotland.
It's exactly the kind of place that you d go looking for wild haggis.
Of course, there was a time when hillsides like this would have been awash with haggis hunts
Now the hills are empty, but because many of the
viewers of this channel are from the wider Scottish diaspora and haven t visited Scotland
I thought I should take a moment to tell you the history of one of our most important animals.
In Gaelic, Cu nan maraig-ghallda
You may call it, the haggis hunting dog.
If you re interested in the people places, and animals in Scottish history then click the
subscribe button at the bottom right of the screen In the meantime, let me tell you a story
We live in a world of processed foods, factory farmed chicken and supermarket butchery.
We live in a world where much of our food comes wrapped in plastic
instead of a sheep s stomach. We live in a world where a chain named McDonalds
doesn t even serve a haggis burger. The impact on the environment and our
health has been so well documented that I don t even have to go into detail.
I'm prepared to bet that, in the lead up to Burns night,
most of you will go into your local butcher,
worse still a supermarket.. and head home with a factory farmed haggis
that's never seen the Scottish hills. It s never run wild in the heather.
I even saw Marks & Spencers advertising English bred haggis. Can you believe it?
There are people out there swapping full flavoured haggis
that s lived out its life snuffling about in the whins and the bracken
for a tasteless pudding reared on an industrial estate in Cleethorpes.
Now, somebody's going to comment that Cleethorpes is a seaside town it doesn't
have an industrial estate. You re missing my point.
Beach reared haggis will never taste the same. They evolved to live in the hills, eat heather
and grow those overdeveloped right legs to give you succulent meat with a beautiful
herbal taste sensation. That s my point.
OK, for the benefit of the internationals let me explain.
Haggis evolved to run around these Scottish hills. Now look at me just now.
I have to either stand squint or bend at one knee to stay upright.
This is why haggis evolved to have long right legs and short left legs.
This allows them to run round the mountain efficiently and upright,
as shown in this cave painting recently discovered in Kilmartin Glen in Argyle.
There s nothing unusual about the evolutionary process; kangaroos have long and short legs,
but this form of quadrupedal arrangement known in Gaelic as .
Neo-chomhnard, in Scots as Near cowpit is unique to the Highlands.
Now there s still some carbon dating to be done but this incredible cave painting may
alter scientists previous understanding of exactly when the evolutionary line of haggis
split from the mealy pudding. The other thing it shows is just how early
humans had domesticated and, indeed intentionally bred haggis hunting dogs.
You see the challenge for bipedal humans in hunting near cowpit quadrupeds
is that humans are good at running in a straight line on the flat,
but round these hills was another thing all together.
So our ancestors bred a special type of dog to have two long legs and two short legs.
To this day the process still isn t totally understood,
but in the same cave as the haggis chase picture archaeologists also found
a primitive painting of a double helix. It seems that Scots
understood DNA more than 10000 years before Crick and Watson
used their X-Ray microscope in 1952.
But prehistoric Scots had overlooked one thing.
They had bred haggis hunting dogs with two long left legs and two short right legs.
The dogs could, indeed run at speed round mountains
but, as we can see from their Palaeolithic artwork,
they would run one way round the mountain, whilst the haggis would run in the other direction.
If the haggis hunting dog didn't catch the haggis as it passed, then it had to run
all the way round the mountain again. Anyone that s tried to find a parking
space in a one-way system knows exactly how frustrating that is.
Their search for a solution created two great leaps forward
and a hop to the side... obviously.
One way to make sure that the dog was at the right place to catch the haggis
was to ensure they ran at each other at exactly the same height of the mountain.
Thus, around 8000BC Brythonic speaking prehistoric Scots
invented contour lines. But how to know at what
height the haggis were to be found? Well evidence suggests that our
Goidelic speaking prehistoric forefathers bred a new type of haggis hunting dog,
this time with two long right legs and two short left legs.
These dogs would run the same way round the mountain as the haggis,
smoking them out
and chasing them into the path of the long left legged haggis hunting dogs
coming in the other direction. Bingo!
By the Bronze age people were catching more haggis than you could shake a stick at.
Don't get me wrong people were still shaking sticks at haggis,
but by this stage it was largely a ceremonial act performed at solstice festivals.
Many of the early standing stones have carvings of hunters
shaking sticks at half cowpit animals. You can see some
in the National Museum of Scotland However this success brought it s own problems.
Not only the depopulation of haggis, but the competition between the Brythonic
speaking hunters using left legged haggis hunting dogs and the Goidelic speaking
right legged haggis hunting dog hunters. This is what led to the haggis hunting dog
race riots described by Tacitus in the first century AD.
The other problem with haggis hunting dogs was when they needed to go up and down mountains.
You see for a long left legged haggis hunting dog to climb a mountain
it had to use that longer left leg to propel itself
up the mountain as it ran along, and vice versa. Change
This is why you ll often see paths in the Highlands that are clearly clockwise spiral paths
carved out by long right legged Haggis hunting dogs.
You ll also see paths established by left legged haggis hunting dogs,
with spirals running the other way. Sometimes they gave haggis hunting dogs whisky.
Palaeontologists have discovered canine remains with differing leg
lengths at the bottom of several Scottish hills. Now further work has to be done, but it s seems
that haggis hunting dogs are left pawed, preferring to use their left legs for propulsion.
This may be why the first haggis hunting dogs developed had long left legs.
However, it seems that long right legged haggis hunting dogs have tried to turn round
take an anti-clockwise route up a mountain, tipped over,
rolled down the mountain and perished. It s believed that this
is what led to their extinction. Even left legged haggis hunting dogs are now rare.
Of course many of you will never even have heard of them
because nowadays so few people practise traditional hunting methods of old,
and this is my appeal to you today. You see when you go to a
supermarket and buy factory farmed haggis, not only are you encouraging the breeding
of haggis in cramped conditions or worse still on English beaches.
Not only are you cheating yourself of the rich tasting, delicate texture of wild haggis,
you re also leading to the slow extinction of the haggis hunting dog.
CR You can help save the haggis hunting dog today,
by clicking the link in the description below to buy a coffee.
Now the funds will initially come to me, but I can assure you,
the next time I see a haggis hunting dog, I ll pass those funds on to its owner.
For more information on Scotland s history click the video coming up on screen now.
In the meantime tha mi
Tha mi an dochas gum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.