As 2022 passes the torch to 2023, the world prepares once again to mumble through the traditional New Year’s Eve song,
As 2022 passes the torch to 2023, the world prepares once again to mumble through the traditional New Year’s Eve song, “Auld Lang Syne.” So without further ado, here’s a timely explainer of the song title’s meaning, the lyrics, and how it came to be one of the most famous tunes in the English-speaking world and beyond.
“Auld Lang Syne” was first written down by Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns. Burns never claimed authorship of the poem, but rather said he transcribed it after listening to an “old man” singing it. “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,” Burns was quoted as explaining.
The work is likely a composite of old Scottish folk songs that Burns collected and knit together for posterity in 1788. Comparable efforts may have been made before his. Britannica notes that “Poems with similar words existed before the time of Burns. Sir Robert Ayton, who died in 1638, wrote Old Long Syne, a poem that was first published in 1711 and is sometimes cited as Burns’s inspiration.”
Likewise, several existing melodies were applied to the Burns poem before the familiar tune we know today was published by George Thompson in a 1799 compilation of Scottish songs.
