Burns Supper 2007
Every year on the 25th of January, people in Scotland celebrate the birth of their bard, the poet Robert Burns. Around the country celebratory, ritualistic dinners are held, replete with poetry, speeches, song and, of course, whiskey. The meal must include haggis, tatties and neeps (meat sausage, potatoes and turnips). The speeches must include Burns’s Address to the Haggis, a toast to the Lassies, a reply from the Lassies, and most central “the Immortal Memory”. This last is a speech about the bard himself.
Friends of mine in Edinburgh are connected in one way or another to a debating society called the 717 Society, fashioned loosely after the Speculative and other historic Scottish blethering groups. The Society holds a Burns Supper every year on the Friday closest to January 25. I chose to film the one at the house of the founder, David Campbell. It was also the year, 2007, which fell 300 years after the Act of Union combined the parliaments of England and Scotland and created Great Britain. No where is Scottish cultural identity more manifest than on Burns night. It says everything about a culture when it’s main holiday is the birth of a poet.
The film was made for private distribution because I doubt anyone beyond the Society would be interested in such a film. Copies are available, however, in case anyone is.
