Auld Lang Syne

"Auld Lang Syne" (: note "s" rather than "z") is a popular song, particularly in the English-speaking world. Traditionally, it is sung to bid farewell to the old year at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve. By extension, it is also often heard at funerals, graduations, and as a farewell or ending to other occasions; for instance, many branches of the Scouting movement use it to close jamborees and other functions.

The text is a Scots-language poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 but based on an older Scottish folk song. In 1799, it was set to a traditional tune, which has since become standard. "Auld Lang Syne" is listed as numbers 6294 and 13892 in the Roud Folk Song Index.

The poem's Scots title may be translated into standard English as "old long since" or, less literally, "long long ago", This book was purchased at Burns Cottage, and was reprinted in 1967, and 1973. "days gone by", "times long past" or "old times". Consequently, "For auld lang syne", as it appears in the first line of the chorus, might be loosely translated as "for the sake of old times".

The phrase "Auld Lang Syne" is also used in similar poems by Robert Ayton (1570–1638), Allan Ramsay (1686–1757), and James Watson (1711), as well as older folk songs predating Burns. Matthew Fitt uses the phrase "in the days of auld lang syne" as the equivalent of "once upon a time" in his retelling of fairy tales in the Scots language.

History

Text

Robert Burns sent a copy of the original song to the Scots Musical Museum in 1788 with the remark, "The following song, 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." Some of the lyrics were indeed "collected" rather than composed by the poet; the ballad "Old Long Syne" printed in 1711 by James Watson shows considerable similarity in the first verse and the chorus to Burns's later poem, and is almost certainly derived from the same "old song".
To quote from the first stanza of the James Watson ballad:

It is a fair supposition to attribute the rest of the poem to Burns himself.

There is some doubt as to whether the melody used today is the same one Burns originally intended, but it is widely used in Scotland and in the rest of the world.

Singing the song on Hogmanay or New Year's Eve very quickly became a Scots custom that soon spread to other parts of the British Isles. As Scots (not to mention English, Welsh and Irish people) emigrated around the world, they took the song with them.

Melody

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The tune to which "Auld Lang Syne" is commonly sung is a pentatonic Scots folk melody, probably originally a sprightly dance in a much quicker tempo. The song originally had another melody, which can be traced to around 1700 and was deemed "mediocre" by Robert Burns. The famous melody was first used in 1799, in the second volume of George Thomson's ''Select Songs of Scotland.''

Older versions of the original song which use other melodies have survived in isolated Scottish communities. The American folk song collector James Madison Carpenter collected a version of "Auld Lang Syne" which appears to be distantly related to the original folk song version from a man named William Still of Cuminestown, Aberdeenshire in the early 1930s. William Still can be heard singing the song on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website.

Lyrics

The song begins by posing a rhetorical question: Is it right that old times be forgotten? The answer is generally interpreted as a call to remember long-standing friendships. Alternatively, "Should" may be understood to mean "if" (expressing the conditional mood) referring to a possible event or situation.

George Thomson's ''Select Songs of Scotland'' was published in 1799 in which the second verse about greeting and toasting was moved to its present position at the end.

Most common usage of the song involves only the first verse and the chorus. The last lines of both of these are often sung with the extra words "For the sake of" or "And days of", rather than Burns's simpler lines. This makes the song strictly syllabic, with just one note per syllable.

Settings and quotations of the melody

English composer William Shield seems to quote the "Auld Lang Syne" melody briefly at the end of the overture to his opera '' Rosina'' (1782), which may be its first recorded use. The contention that Burns borrowed the melody from Shield is for various reasons highly unlikely, although they may very well both have taken it from a common source, possibly a strathspey called "The Miller's Wedding" or "The Miller's Daughter". The problem is that tunes based on the same set of dance steps necessarily have a similar rhythm, and even a superficial resemblance in melodic shape may cause a very strong apparent similarity in the tune as a whole. For instance, Burns' poem "Comin' Thro' the Rye" is sung to a tune that might also be based on the "Miller's Wedding". The origin of the tune of "God Save the King" presents a very similar problem and for just the same reason, as it is also based on a dance measure. (See the note in the William Shield article on this subject.)

In 1792, the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn arranged Auld Lang Syne as one of over 400 Scottish folk song arrangements commissioned by George Thomson and the publishers William Napier and William Whyte; his arrangement may have helped popularise the song. Ludwig van Beethoven also wrote an arrangement of Auld Lang Syne ( WoO 156/11) published as part of his ''12 Scottish Folksongs'' (1814). Both of these classical versions use the original brisk strathspey rhythm.

In 1855, different words were written for the Auld Lang Syne tune by Albert Laighton and titled, "Song of the Old Folks". This song was included in the tunebook, '' Father Kemp's Old Folks Concert Tunes'' published in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1860. For many years it was the tradition of the Stoughton Musical Society to sing this version in memory of those who had died that year.

Songwriter George M. Cohan quotes the first line of the "Auld Lang Syne" melody in the second to last line of the chorus of “You're a Grand Old Flag”. It is plain from the lyrics that this is deliberate; the melody is identical except the first syllable of the word "forgot".

John Philip Sousa quotes the melody in the Trio section of his 1924 march " Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company".

English composer of light music Ernest Tomlinson wrote a ''Fantasia on Auld Lang Syne'' (1976), which in its 20 minutes weaves in 152 quotations from pieces by other popular and classical composers.

In the Sacred Harp choral tradition, an arrangement of it exists under the name "Plenary". The lyrics are a ''memento mori

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