​Haggis for Heroes initiative celebrates Burns in Ukraine - Angus Robertson

​Scotland’s national bard Robert Burns is celebrated every year around the world. According to the biggest ever recent study Burns, there are more than 2500 contemporary Burns Suppers and Burns Night events, spreading across six continents and nearly 150 countries.

‘Raising a glass to Robbie Burns’: Ahead of Burn Night on 25 January , Claudia Bolling - House and Collections Officer at the Abbotsford Trust, holds - Robert Burns' glass tumbler, diamond-point engraved by the poet

​Usually Burns suppers are ceremonial events held in warm beautiful surroundings with poetry, song and dance. For some this year, however, Burns night will be marked very differently: in the cold and damp of the Ukrainian front-line of resistance to Russia’s war of aggression. Special supplies have been provided for Ukrainian troops with a “Haggis for Heroes” initiative, which involves Haggis, Neeps, Tatties, shortbread and Burns poetry packaged for delivery, following a suggestion by the Ukrainian refugee Yuri Kamaran who lives in Clackmannanshire.

Organisers at Cafe Ukraine in Dollar say: “Giving haggis on Burns Day is about more than giving Ukrainians a taste of Scotland's national dish. It is a gesture of friendship and solidarity that encapsulates the spirit of Rabbie Burns, an internationalist and poet who used the power of verse and song to speak out against injustice and speak up for freedom. So please give what you can this Burns Day 2024. And raise a glass to toast a free and peaceful Ukraine”.

Scotland and Ukraine has been united for some time during Burns season, not just because President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Robert Burns share the same birthday, but with the parallels between the national bards of both countries.

Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861) was a Ukrainian poet and writer, folklorist and ethnographer. To many his literary heritage is the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature.

Just like Robert Burns, statues have been erected to Shevchenko around the world.

Just as Scots celebrate Robert Burns Day every year, Ukrainians celebrate Taras Shevchenko with a concert of his poetry put to music and sung by choirs or solo singers. In the past at these events, when the Ukrainian anthem was banned by Moscow, Ukrainians would stand to sing Shevchenko’s Zapovit (Testament) as a substitute. ‘Testament’ is among the Shevchenko poems that was translated by Scotland’s first Makar Edwin Morgan, echoing ‘Scot’s Wha Hae’ by Burns:

Stand and break the chains,

Baptize freedom with the hated

Blood from hostile veins.

And then in that great company

The new brothers of the free,

Keep my memory, and put in gently

One good word for me.

As Scots and Ukrainians mark the legacy of Robert Burns and Taras Shevchenko, the power of poetry continues today with Scotland’s current Makar Kathleen Jamie curating a collective poem in solidarity with the people of Ukraine:

Dear people of Ukraine,

May your sunflower seeds blossom

into life, tall and unshakable

for the wee ones, the young yins, the bairns.

May they come again:

quiet evenings, tea, lazy chatter, love

lorgaidh aodainn neòinein-ghrèine an solas,

tha dòchas ann fiù ’s an dorchadas

(may the faces of sunflowers find the light/ because there is hope even in darkness).

For now, the world watches

fhad ’s a leigeas eòin-iarrainn sìol an gràin

(as iron birds scatter the seed of their hatred),

The world watches

you, bonny fechters –

your resistance and defiance is your future.

Spring is here. Dear people of Ukraine,

your courage humbles us. Haud fast. Haud fast.

- And send them homewards, tae think again.

Slava Ukraini