Today’s Poem: Auld Lang Syne

The Old Long Since

George Henry Boughton, Party For New Year's Day In New Amsterdam, 1870 (Wikimedia Commons)

Auld Lang Syne

by Robert Burns

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?                                    ◦ old long since

Chorus: 
            For auld lang syne, my jo,              ◦ jo = joy
            for auld lang syne,
            we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,
            for auld lang syne.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stoup!         ◦ stoup = flagon, beaker
and surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes,      ◦ braes = hills
and pou’d the gowans fine;                ◦ plucked fine daisies
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin’ auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,          ◦ paddled in the stream
frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d    ◦ braid = broad
sin’ auld lang syne.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!      ◦ fiere = frined
and gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak’ a right gude-willie waught,  ◦ good-will draft
for auld lang syne.
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It’s New Year’s Eve Day, so why not? Why not “Auld Lang Syne,” the New Year’s classic by Robert Burns (1759–1796)? Yes, it’s oversung. Yes, it’s as overfamiliar as “Jingle Bells.” Yes, it’s typically sung drunkenly on New Year’s Eve, with only the first verse and chorus known and the rest mumbled or hummed. But . . . it’s Burns, and traditional, and fun. So why not?

The poem was written in 1788, building on a 1711 ballad by James Watson (which itself probably built on older folk songs), and Burns always intended it to be sung. By 1799 it had found the old tune to which it is have ever since been set. As with Burns’s famous “To a Mouse,” which we previously featured here at Poems Ancient and Modern, “Auld Lang Syne” mixes in Scottish dialect words, giving just enough English that the English reader can follow along.

Or so, at least, the lyrics were intended. Soon, however, the popularity of the song led to a sanding-off of the Scottish. Not the title words, of course, as they were fixed in everyone’s memory of the song: “Auld Lang Syne,” the “old long since,” for time past. But English speakers weren’t catching “my joy” in “my jo,” and so it’s typically sung these days as “my dear.”

“Gude-willie waught” turned to “good-will draught,” and “We twa hae paidl’d in the burn” got transliterated to “We two have paddled in the stream.” Burns’s Scottish original, however, is worth reading, just for its own sake here on New Year’s Eve — lest, in truth, the old-long-since sink in the waters of forgetfulness. The ballad meter, alternating four- and three-foot lines rhymed on the short lines, takes its memorability from the slow stresses in a row of the last line: for àuld . . . làng . . . syne. We know instinctively — or the music soon teaches us — to treat these as three individual feet, though they have no unstressed syllables between them.

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