Longing for banned haggis more than just tripe

0 Comments | USA TODAY, January, 2008 | by Elizabeth Weise

Free the haggis!

Thousands of Americans had to make do without the real thing Friday night when they sat down to what should have been a filling meal of boiled sheep's stomach stuffed with minced sheep lung, heart, liver and oatmeal.

Jan. 25 was the 248th anniversary of the birth of Scottish poet Robert Burns. (He wrote Auld Lang Syne, among other things.)

It's also the high holy day of haggis-eating worldwide. Thousands of "Burns Night" dinners are held wherever people of Scottish ancestry have landed. These evenings of food, whiskey and song traditionally reach their high point with the ceremonial carrying in of the haggis -- preceded by a recitation of Burns' Ode to a Haggis and a bagpiper, if at all possible.

But American lovers of...