Burns Night 250 Review: “Cock Up Your Beaver”, From Peniston, England, to East Breast, Scotland

The Mimosas Witnesses Burns Night 2009 took place at Lake Tahoe, complete with silly hats, vegan haggis, copious amounts of good Scotch, dancing, many songs & cigars. Some unique moments in this year’s festivities, the mandatory reading of Burns’ epic “Tam O’Shanter” was sung to about two dozen different tunes, from “New York, New York” to “O Tannenbaum” to “Modern Major General”. It didn’t help comprehension of the great poem, but it was loud. Even tho I had made several of the speeches & toasts already, I lost the foot-roshambo & had to also do the “Address to the Lassies”, the contents of which I still feel shivers of remorse about (I believe the final declaration was “Why don’t you lose some weight?”) The Reply from the Lassies was done in every-other-word fashion from Miss Williams & Mrs Eley-Nelson, & turned out far more elegant & coherent.

The next day, The New York Times had an article about unfortunately-named places in Britain (& road signs that say things like “BUTT HOLE ROAD”), the meanings of which are on the wrong side of history. They provided this handy map. This is relevant to our favorite Burns Poem, which Mr Tomas recited at Burns Night, captured for posterity on YouTubes.