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Haggis Hurling Haggis hurling is claimed to be a traditional Scottish sport. It is said that the haggis would be prepared for lunch for the man of the family who was out working the croft or cutting peat, by his wife. Scotland is known as a land of rivers and bogs, so walking from the crofthouse to the place of work could often entail a long way round to cross a river or low lying ground. In these cases the wife would throw the cooked haggis to the husband, who would catch it using the front apron of his kilt. If he dropped it, he either went hungry; or spent the afternoon scraping his lunch off a rock; or spent the afternoon scraping bits of peat off his lunch. According to the Guinness Book Of Records, the present World Record for Haggis Hurling is held by Alan Pettigrew of Saltcoats. He threw a 1lb 8 oz Haggis 180 feet 10 inches on the island of Inchmurrin on Loch Lomond in August 1984. There are a number of rules associated with modern haggis hurling:
But.... is haggis hurling a joke or is it real? It turns out that the answer is both. In 1977, one Robin Dunseath placed an advert in a Scottish national newspaper announcing that at the Gathering of the Clans that year in Edinburgh there would be a revival of the ancient Scottish sport of haggis hurling. The response was unexpected: large numbers of people wanted to take part, and many who did take part then took the sport back to the United States, Canada and Australia, where competitions were established by people who believed they were reviving a traditional Scottish sport extinct since the early 1800s. The funds raised by the hoax, and from the book that followed about the sport and it's supposed history, The Complete Haggis Hurler went to charity. The results since have been amazing. Scottish haggis hurling societies have developed wherever Scots have traditionally settled. And having let the Genie out of the bottle, Robin Dunseath found he couldn't persuade it to go back in. He eventually owned up to the hoax that lay behind the sport, only to find his creature had developed a life of its own, and that while haggis hurling may not actually be a traditional Scottish sport, it soon will be... |
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