33% of US Tourists Think That Haggis Is an Animal

(Photo: Tess Watson)

A survey of American tourists in Scotland found that 33% of visitors thought that haggis is an animal and that 23% thought that they could catch one:

The company said it had interviewed one tourist who thought the haggis was "a wild beast of the Highlands, no bigger than a grouse, which only came out at night". Another claimed it sometimes ventured into the cities, like a fox.

I regret to inform my fellow Americans that there is no such magical animal. No, that great Scottish delicacy must be painstakingly assembled. Haggis consists of the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep ground up, then boiled in the sheep’s stomach.

I’ve eaten haggis only once, but it was wonderful. No, you will not be able to merely catch and eat a haggis. There’s a lot of prep work involved. But it’s worth it.

Have you eaten haggis? On a scale from good to awesome, how was it?

-via Foodbeast


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That sheep's bladder thing isn't a haggis. What you've been eating is the infamous "false" haggis that was invented in 1844 to make up for the shortage of the true haggis after it was almost hunted to extinction in the aftermath of the outbreak of the Burns Night craze. The common or garden variety haggis is, in fact, a shy little globular animal that lives in the highlands and whose planitive, squealling bleats can be heard over the lonely hills as it roams from distillery to distllery to beg a wee dram. It's much prized for its bright tartan pelt, which is used to make bag pipes and its platypus-like beak that was once the basis of the sporran industry.
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