312 Notes on Sport and Travel 



II 



fisher ; no, not in all this round world, as I myself, 

 who have tried many, can truly and heartily say. 

 Pity that so fair a land, and so true and trusty a 

 folk, should be stained with delusions unworthy the 

 fantasies of a maid that eateth chalk ! 



Of the delusions of the North Britons concerning 

 their food we have nowadays but little need to 

 speak, they having as fair meat and good cooks as 

 any in the world. Indeed I think their women 

 have naturally a happy knack and dexterity in 

 cookery, which they may have derived from their 

 great and long connection with the French nation, 

 who were perforce constrained to cloak their foul 

 meat with fair sauce. From this, also, it arises that 

 many dishes which the Scotch believe to be national 

 and peculiar are French and foreign, as the Haggis, 

 which word is a corruption of the French hacJiis, or 

 hash, probably from the meat being minced small 

 with a hachette, or chopper.^ This, in the North, is 

 boiled in the stomach of a sheep ; but in the ancient 

 receipts for it, both in the French and English 

 tongues, the mawe or stomach of a fallow-buck is 

 ordered to be used, stuffed with his umbles and fair 

 spices, and no mention made of mutton. In Master 

 Lacy's Wyl Buck his testainetit, Imprinted at London 

 by Willyam Copeland, we have a most exquisite 



1 The food of the Highlanders was not thought much of by their 

 Southern compatriots, if we may believe the old song : — 

 ' There's naught in the Hielands but syboes an' leeks, 

 An' lang-leggit gallants gaun wanting the breeks.' — Ed. 



