Och, aye! Here's to the haggis: Kelvin Club celebrates Scottish national day
Only the Scottish could come up with piping in the haggis — a ceremony paying tribute to a pudding made of sheep's heart, liver and lungs.
And members of Melbourne's Kelvin Club didn't skimp on their adulation on Monday.
Jimmy Shaw addresses the haggis at the Kelvin Club's annual St Andrew’s Day lunch.Credit:Luis Ascui
They stood and clapped as the shot put-sized dish was paraded around the club's dining room on a silver platter, accompanied by swordsmen, waiters and a bagpiper playing a rousing folk tune.
It was St Andrew's Day and COVID-19 be damned, the Scots – and honorary Scots – present went all out to celebrate Scotland’s patron saint and national day.
Kelvin Club manager Harry Newton said the venue's annual Saint Andrew’s luncheon dates from at least 1946, when the club moved into a former radio studio in Melbourne Place, a lane off Russell Street in Melbourne's CBD.
The club is named after renowned scientist William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, who did most of his work at the University of Glasgow.
Offally good: The haggis took centre stage at the annual St Andrew's Day lunch.Credit:Luis Ascui
The club's 2020 haggis ceremony was one to remember.
Club guest Jimmy Shaw wielded a sharp knife over the pudding as he recited Robert Burns' poem Address to a Haggis. Mr Shaw later said he memorised the poem "when I was a wee boy".
In the poem, Burns extols the dish as "the Great Chieftain o' the Puddin-race", i.e. king of puddings, and asserts that any farmer who eats one will make mincemeat of his opponent in a fight.
The rest of the Kelvin Club lunch was like an explosion at a Scottish theme park.
A piper and kilts aplenty at the Kelvin Club.Credit:Luis Ascui
In a nod to the Scottish independence movement, diner Michael Glover cheekily raised the toast, not to Queen Elizabeth II, but to anyone "you want to attach your loyalty to".
The haggis was served as an entree accompanied by atholl brose – a whisky liqueur. A main course was tweed kettle salmon and the dessert was cranachan, made of cream, oatmeal, whisky and honey.
There was even a toast — with martinis – to recently deceased Scottish actor Sean Connery, most famous for his turn as James Bond.
Mr Newton said it was "a fun day that has a bit of pomp and ceremony" following the club reopening just weeks ago. It had been closed, except for a three-week interlude, since March 23.
A few wee drams were served to mark the occasion and the club's reopening.Credit:Luis Ascui
He said the club, founded in 1865, had lost 70 per cent of its food and beverage income compared to the lead up to Christmas in previous years but would survive thanks to the loyalty of its 450 members.
Ceremony convener Ken Shewan of St Kilda – who migrated from Aberdeen in Scotland 40 years ago, and who declared that he liked to eat haggis – said he used to dine at the Kelvin Club two or three times a week, and had missed it dearly.
"It's fantastic to catch up with people I haven't seen since pre-COVID days," he said.
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Carolyn Webb is a reporter for The Age.