Dishes of Meat

Fair fa’¹ your honest, sonsie² face,

Great chieftain o’ the puddin race!

Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,

Painch,³ tripe, or thairm.⁴

Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace

As lang’s my airm.

—Burns: Address to a Haggis.

The name haggis was commonly thought to derive from the French hachis, which is the form used by King James’s Scottish cook in The Fortunes of Nigel, but a more likely derivation, as we now know, is simply hag, from hack, to chop.⁵ The name was presumably converted into French in the same way as Ayrshire embroidery became broderie anglaise (sic).