Burns Night celebrations in Brussels
Posted on 27. Jan, 2010 by Nick Griffin in EU News
ABOUT two dozen nationalists – MEPs and assistants – from Britain, France, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Flanders and French-sepaking Belgium, had a great time at our Burns Night party (one day late owing to work commitments).
Starting at about eight o’clock, everyone enjoyed the home-made cock-a-leekie soup, together with various wines brought by guests and a supply of British real ale and cider.
We then moved on to the main event of the evening, the haggis and tatties (we were saddened by the impossibility of obtaining swedes in Belgium), served after a brilliant recitation of Burn’s traditional Address to the Haggis, delivered by our Andrew Douglas.
Guests were supplied with printed sheets of the Address, both in Burn’s orginal Ayrshire dialect and in English translation. Everyone was too busy listening and laughing to think to take a photo, but the sight and sound of Andrew, resplendent in full kilt, waving his dirk above his head before slashing the haggis (the first of two fair giant specimens) open at the appropriate moment was much appreciated by our foreign guests.
Later in the evening, after several hours of good conversation, laughter and general pan-European (but anti-EU!) merriment, Front National parliamentary group leader started the Austrians singing. Bruno himself sang an alternately stirring and ‘disgraceful’ pre-French revolutionary song against the King of England, which was countered by Nick Griffin with a Napoleonic era English song written by one of the 15th Hussars the evening after they defeated a superior French force at the Spanish town of Sahagun (below) on December 21st 1808.
Three hundred were taken, the rest of them fled.
Their Colonel, likewise, he was taken in the field;
‘Twas the Fifteenth Hussars made those Frenchmen to yield.”
Was how one of the verses went.
All such nationalist joshing was received in very good spirits by all concerned.
As the guests left, all were eagerly proposing doing something similar on one or other of the special days in their own national calendars – we of course, have Saints George, David and Patrick as the ‘excuses’ for similar events in future.
An email of thanks from one of the assistants this morning summed it up:
“Not only did we have a wonderful evening, but I also thank you for bringing a human side to working relations here that no-one has before.”
