Burns Supper

Saturday night  (Jan 25), we were blessed to be able to attend the Burns Night Activity at Bingham Ward, and it was great. A Burns supper is a celebration of the life and poetry of the poet Robert Burns, the most famous Scottish poet, who was born on 25 January 1759. His birthday is widely celebrated in Scotland. We enjoyed a very traditional evening starting with the "Piping" of the haggis when everyone stands as the haggis was paraded around to bagpipe music.

This was followed by a recitation of the Address to a Haggis, a Burn’s poem, which starts:

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie {jolly} face,

Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!

Aboon {above} them a' ye tak your place,

Painch {stomach}, tripe, or thairm {intestine}:

Weel are ye wordy {worthy} o' a grace

As lang's my arm.

Just before we ate, someone said the "The Selkirk Grace" (attributed to Robert Burns):

Some hae meat and canna eat,

And some wad eat that want it;

But we hae meat, and we can eat,

And sae let the Lord be thankit.

The dinner was haggis, neeps (mashed turnips) and tatties (mashed potatoes) with cheese, crackers and shortbread for dessert. The one traditional drink that was missing was Scotch whisky.

A recent convert and her YSA daughter with their haggis, neeps and taddies. 

After dinner we had the Toast to the Lassies, a poem from a man about women, amusing but not offensive. This was followed by a Toast to the Laddies , a poem from a woman about men, also humorous but not offensive.

 This was followed by Ceilidh dancing. Several of the Elders participated as partners with each other.   

Three Elders along with the Bishop and his granddaughter during the Ceilidh.

 In a very nice gesture, the six young missionaries were brought up and asked to read Scottish sayings  such as “It’s a bra bricht moonlicht nicht the nicht” (It is a nice, bright moonlit night tonight).

They were then  given certificates signed by the Bishop declaring them to be honorary Scots. It was a wonderful evening.

Several of the Ward members came dressed in their kitls.

As our Stake President would say, "Good stuff!"

50th Anniversary of the Kirkcaldy Ward Chapel

The Ceilidh Band

 The Kirkcaldy Ward is one of the Wards in our Stake, and the first meeting their Chapel was 50 years ago on Sunday 12 January 1964. To celebrate, the ward held a series of events during the three days ending with Sunday 12 January 2014. We drove down Friday evening for the Ceilidh with a live three piece band courtesy of one of the members of another Ward.  A Ceilidh (a Gaelic word) is Scottish folk dancing; our American square dancing has its roots in the Ceilidh. It was also the YSA activity for that Friday night, so we also got to hang out with them.

The Pipers

The Ceilidh opened with two pipers marching in and piping for about 10 minutes, which was wonderful. They repeated it after the break for the band, but this time with three pipers. We danced a couple of times, and had fun. Towards the end, we danced the Virginia reel (which it is generally considered to be an English country dance, even though it has Scottish origins).

The main refreshment for the night was "stovies", and was part of a competition with our Stake President as the judge. There were plenty of stovies with oatcakes for everyone during the break. From what we saw, stovies can be most anything, basically what we would call a stew: potatoes, onions and meat of some kind in gravy with whatever else you want thrown in. We quite liked them.

Stovies - each was labeled with a unique name

We went back down Saturday afternoon for an open house. They had fantastic displays of ward history including a timeline along one wall of the cultural hall, a video of the youth interviewing some of the longtime members about their conversion and testimony and two service projects that you could join in and help out. It was really well done and concluded with the burial of a time capsule made by the Primary

children.

Timeline - this pictures shows 20 of 50 years.

Part of the displays for the open house and one of the two service projects

Burying the Time Capsule

 On Sunday we attended the Special Sacrament meeting. The Bishop and Stake President Watson were the speakers. Our Mission President and his wife were also there, as he is a former Bishop of the Ward. Interestingly, the final three hymns, “Gently Raise the Sacred Strain”, “Redeemer of Israel” and “Praise to the Man” were all written by William W. Phelps, an early member of the Church with Scottish heritage (1792-1872). The tune for “Praise to the Man” is the traditional Scottish folk tune "Scotland the Brave".  Following Sacrament meeting, there was the always popular "munch and mingle", with lots of tasty food. It was a wonderful and meaningful weekend.