This is a story about making peace with a squishy edible ball of sheep innards, and a song I rewrote to help me through the process.

I have a confession to make. I was afraid of haggis, almost deathly so. You could say I harbored an irrational fear of the stuff. Yes, haggis.

And yes, me. The guy who’s eaten a lot of sh*t and then some. The guy who’s eaten bugs, balls and innards, tongues, goat jaw bones, and all manner of bits and bobs. And that’s the stuff I was aware of. I’m sure I’ve unknowingly eaten cat and dog and maybe even someone’s pet hamster.

But I gotta be honest: before my recent visit to Scotland, the thought of haggis kinda’ freaked me out. Culinary fear of the ground unknown.

I’d had bad dreams — bad dreams about haggis. Haggis was a mystery. I was so afraid of it that I couldn’t even bear looking up to see what it actually was.

(By the way, the official definition of haggis, if you’re wondering: a traditional pudding made of the heart, liver, etc., of a sheep or calf, minced with suet and oatmeal,seasoned, and boiled in the stomach of the animal.)

And all of this made me feel a wee sheepish.

My History with Haggis

Maybe it’s the word. Haggis. It just doesn’t sound right, does it? Haggis. It’s onomatopoetic, like something hanging down, dripping, dragging. Haggis. Like a post-disembowlment draping of innards on a clothesline. I look at the word and it does weird things to me. Haggis. It makes my skin creep, it gives me the willies. Before I got to know haggis, I always — perhaps unfairly — associated it with this photo (be sure to read the caption).

Then there’s the silly film So I Married an Axe Murderer. “Harriet, Harr-i-et, hard-hearted harbinger of haggis,” Mike Myers’ character Charlie MacKenzie would crow during his stand-up routine.

Haggis, you know there’s a problem with you when you have harbingers.

How Then, The Haggis?

Then I visited Scotland. There in Edinburgh, I was introduced to deep-fried haggis logs. Deep fried haggis logs!?!? Why not serve deep-fried antichrist? Actually deep fried logs of just about anything ought to frighten us, but these particular digestive hijackings looked like something we men could never in a million years imagine happening to us.

Yes, that. You know what I mean. And if you don’t, may I introduce you to Lorena Bobbit. Yes, that. Haggis.

There’s a popular rendition of haggis called Haggis, Neeps and Tatties. Basically a poo-shaped pile of haggis sided with piles of mashed turnips (the neeps) and mashed potatoes (the tatties). Haggis, neeps and tatties. The sound of that dish, at once childlike and pornographic. I pull the blanket up over my head. Haggis.

Holy poop, it’s haggis!

I was so stricken with fear that I sought to shield myself. If I were to lose my haggis virginity, perhaps there was a preferred method. I would set off to find it, to seek the haggis with which I might make peace.

I asked our first taxi driver in Edinburgh where to eat it. “You could buy haggis at the butcher, but it wouldn’t taste like much,” he framed his recommendation. “It’s about where you get it and how you prepare it. It’s not going to taste interesting to you…”

Sounded fair and balanced, like a good FOX News episode. Innocuous enough. (I kid)

“Hmmm,” I said.

That’s when he suggested, “You can get it with a whisky sauce.”

Now you’ve got my attention.

Later, a friend recommended a restaurant that served something she called a “Haggis Tower.” Haggis Tower? Sounds like an office building crying out for its own demolition. A tower of innards, probably pulsing. The Leaning Tower of Haggis. Why on Earth would anyone want a god-forsaken pile of such a thing. Haggis.

Eventually, after multiple consultations with taxi drivers, tour guides and five-star hotel concierges, Audrey and I opted for the Bard’s Haggis at 1780 pub, a mini mountain of the stuff on a pile of mashed potatoes, all drizzled in whisky sauce. I hesitated for a moment, dark bits staring back at me. Then I ate it.

It wasn’t that bad.

Honestly, it was pretty good. Actually, Audrey and I scarfed it, devoured it like it was our last meal. (I’m certain there was a drug in it.) Or perhaps the truth: just about anything tastes good with whisky cream sauce, and even better when you wash it down with a pint of freshly-pulled Scottish Ale.

In some parallel universe, haggis is probably even good for you — if you are a shepherd who regularly runs marathons with your sheep in the face of fierce winds blowing across the Scottish highlands.

But enough, I said. There’s a lesson in all this haggis. I thought long on it all, and I came to this: It’s easy to be hard on haggis. Haggis takes it on the chin. Haggis is the red-headed stepchild of ground offal. But all that notwithstanding, haggis is really not that bad. Most of all, you’ll never really know for yourself until you try it.

I registered another life lesson on fear, this time from haggis.

Haggis. Sounds like hell, looks like purgatory, and depending on how its cooked, it can taste like Heaven.

Daniel Noll plans a forthcoming novel about the around-the-world travels with his wife entitled “What Haggis Taught Me”

An Ode to Haggis
Finally, I promised to you, in the title, an ode. I’m not sure if you’ve heard that song about Alice. We once saw a rather terrible rendition on a ferry from Stockholm to Estonia many years ago; since then, I’ve never been able to fully purge the tune from my head. (But I digress). Anyway, I decided to rework the song a bit and came up with this. Perhaps you’ll want to listen to the original song to get an idea of the tune.

Eating Lotsa Haggis

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Disclosure: Our trip to Scotland and the Blogmanay campaign are brought to you by Edinburgh’s Hogmanay and is sponsored by VisitScotland, ETAG, Edinburgh Festivals, Haggis Adventures and Skyscanner. The campaign bloggers were sourced and managed by iambassador. As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely our own.