At midnight on New Year’s Eve, revelers across the globe will sing “Auld Lang Syne,” but not everyone knows the lyrics to the New Year’s song or its origin.
As the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, across the globe will sing “Auld Lang Syne,” a song about “old acquaintance be forgot” and, well, other lyrics people may not recall from the New Year’s song.
The song’s origins date back to an 18th-century Scottish ballad, with Auld Lang Syne eventually becoming a New Year’s celebration staple. Experts explained the song’s lyrics, origin and staying power. What does “auld lang syne” mean?
Roughly translated, the phrase means “old long since,” or “for old time’s sake.” The song title is actually in Scots language, which is similar to English, according to Scotland’s national tourist board.
“‘Auld Lang Syne’ can be literally translated as ‘Old Long Since,’ but the literal English does not give a sense of what it means to a user of Scots, where it refers to a shared past underpinning the current relationships of a family, community or professional/social association,” Professor Murray Pittock, a literary historian with the Centre for Robert Burns Studies at the University of Glasgow, told CBS News. “As such it is more evocative, nostalgic and communally unifying than any simple English equivalent.” What are the song’s origins?
Today’s song comes from a publication by Scottish poet Robert Burns. The poet was trying to preserve Scottish language and culture after Scotland and England formed the United Kingdom, according to Scotland’s national tourist board.
