Auld Lang Syne

Robert Burns sent this song to a publisher in 1788 with a note saying it was "an old song, of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript, until I took it down from an old man's singing". He was not being modest about his own work. He genuinely presented himself as the person who wrote the words down, not the person who made them up, and he praised the unknown poet who did.

That claim is only partly true, and scholars have argued about it ever since. Something very close to the first verse and chorus was already in print seventy-seven years before Burns picked up a pen. The verses about daisies and paddling in the stream look much more like him.

Origins

A ballad called "Old Long Syne" appeared in James Watson's Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems in 1711, opening "Should Old Acquaintance be forgot, and never thought upon". It is often credited to the courtier poet Sir Robert Ayton, who died in 1638, and it is not a friendly song at all. It is a jilted lover complaining about a "disloyall maid" who has gone cold on him. Allan Ramsay printed another song with the same opening line in his Tea-Table Miscellany in the 1720s.

So the opening line and the phrase "auld lang syne" were common currency in Scotland well before Burns. What he added, or at least what appears first in his version, are the memory verses: two friends running about the hillsides pulling daisies, paddling in a burn from morning until dinnertime, then separated by broad seas and many weary miles. Those images carry the song, and most editors treat them as Burns's own even while accepting that he really did collect the frame from oral tradition.

Burns sent the words to James Johnson for the Scots Musical Museum, where they were printed in 1796, the year Burns died. That printing used a different tune from the one the world sings now. In 1799 the publisher George Thomson paired the words with the old air "Can Ye Labour Lea" in his Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs, and that pairing is the tune everybody knows.

Meaning & Interpretation

"Auld lang syne" translates literally as "old long since", which in normal English means something like "times long past" or "the sake of old times". The song is a toast between two people who have not seen each other in years. Each buys their own drink, they compare what has happened since, and they shake hands over it.

The tone is not really sad. It is a deliberate act of remembering, with a drink in hand, which is why it works at closing time, at farewells, at funerals, and at midnight on 31 December. The question in the first line is rhetorical. No, old acquaintance should not be forgot, and the rest of the song is the proof.

What do the Scots words mean?

auld lang syne - old long since, meaning times long past, or for the sake of old times auld - old jo - dear, sweetheart, a term of affection for a friend or lover tak a cup o kindness - take a friendly drink together twa - two hae - have braes - hillsides, sloping ground pu'd - pulled gowans - daisies mony a weary fit - many a weary foot, meaning a long tiring journey sin - since pint-stowp - a pint tankard or pewter drinking measure, so "ye'll be your pint-stowp" means you will pay for your own drink paidl'd - paddled, waded burn - a stream or small river frae - from dine - dinnertime, the middle of the day braid - broad fiere - friend, comrade, companion gie's - give me guid-willie waught - a goodwill draught, a hearty friendly swig of drink

Did Robert Burns write Auld Lang Syne?

Partly. Burns always said he collected it, and a version of the first verse and chorus was published in 1711, long before he was born, so he was telling the truth about the song having older roots. The verses about the braes, the gowans and the burn have no known earlier source and read like his writing, so the usual verdict is that Burns rebuilt an old fragment into the song we have. Both descriptions, collector and author, are fair.

Why do people sing Auld Lang Syne at New Year?

It was already a Scottish parting song, sung at the end of gatherings, and Hogmanay is the biggest gathering in the Scottish year. Scottish and Ulster emigrants carried the habit to North America, Australia and beyond. The bandleader Guy Lombardo sealed it for American listeners from 1929, when his orchestra began playing it at midnight in New York on national radio broadcasts every New Year's Eve for decades. It has since attached itself to graduations, retirements and last nights of all kinds, and in Japan a version of the tune is played in shops at closing time.

Why does everyone only sing the first verse?

Burns's song has five verses and a chorus, and the middle ones are in broad Scots that most singers cannot manage at speed. The first verse and the chorus are the parts that repeat the title phrase, so they are the parts people learn. At a Scottish New Year the last verse usually gets sung too, because it is the one with the handshake in it.

When do you cross arms during Auld Lang Syne?

Not at the start. The Scottish custom is to sing the song with hands joined normally, then cross your arms in front of you and take the hands of the people on either side at the final verse, "And there's a hand, my trusty fiere". Crossing arms from the first note is common outside Scotland but reverses the point, since the gesture is meant to answer the line about offering a hand.