Today I want to share my guide to Burns Night in London with you. Whether you go to a dinner or attend a ceilidh, it’s a great time to celebrate Scottish poet Robert Burns and his legacy.
Burns Night in London
My family is Scottish. My mother’s mother grew up in Glasgow.
I grew up eating shortbread and plum pudding at Christmastime, associating important family gatherings with live bagpipe music, and thanking my mother for not naming me Euphemia (my grandmother’s first choice).
I listened to stories about sheep, dogs, and sheepdogs, knew that when my grandmother called me a ‘wee girdle’ in her thick Glaswegian accent she was really saying ‘wee girl’, and learned to appreciate the writing of Robert Burns, Scotland’s most beloved poet.
My grandmother loved Burns. She gave talks on his works at her garden club in Ohio and kept a book of his poetry with her annotations in the margins.
She quoted the “Selkirk Grace” to my cousins on the rare occasions they complained about their food at dinner.
When I wrote a paper on Burns’ poetry for my 8th grade English class, my 92-year-old grandmother was still as excited as ever about Scotland’s national bard.
Burns Night Dinner in London
And so it was that I found myself hunting down a venue to celebrate Burns Night in London.
I knew people gathered for dinner on January 25th to celebrate Robert Burns’ birthday, eat haggis, sing songs, and drink whiskey, but for all my family’s love of Scottish traditions I had never actually done it.
Last night I went with four friends to a pub in Hampstead for a dinner for Burns Night in London.
We drank whiskey and other Scottish drinks. We stood to sing a rowdy “Auld Lang Syne”. We watched the piper pipe in the haggis and listened to our kilt-clad kinsman as he addressed the fabled meat.*
We stifled laughs as the woman across from us got drunk to the point of reciting poetry in front of the crowd.
We looked curiously on as the man next to us sat through the entire meal with a stuffed toy bird perched inside his button-down shirt, then later forgave him when we learned he was a famous actor on a children’s television show about birdwatching.
Above all, we had a great time celebrating Burns Night in London. It was a fun time all around, and a great way to celebrate the poet’s birthday. I’m sure my grandmother would have approved.
*Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race!
Aboon them a’ yet tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’a grace
As lang’s my arm.
-“Address to a Haggis”, Robert Burns, 1786
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