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Show Robert Burns' Auld Lang Syne New Year Boon "HULD LANG SYNE" has be-come be-come such an integral part of our modern New Year's eve that no celebration, however gay, would be complete without it. The music sheets for those nostalgic nos-talgic strains simply say "Robert Burns Scotch Air," and Robert Burns generally is supposed to have written it after he had settled down on a farm and taken himself a wife, following the sweeping success suc-cess in 1778 of the second edition of his "Poems." Well and good, but Auld Lng Syne was not exclusively exclu-sively Burns' product, nor did he claim It to be. In a letter to George Thomson, a publisher, Burns explained: "It is an old song of olden times, which has never been in print. I took it down from an old man's singing." Modern scholarship has discovered discov-ered that Burns was wrong when he told Thomson "Auld Lang Syne" never had been in print. Its refrain, at least, was printed obscurely long before Burns heard his "old man singing." In Watson's collection of songs (published in 1711), these verses were attributed to Francis Sempill, who died in 1682. Further, the original song often has been credited to Sir Robert Aytoun (1570-1638). Aytoun was one of the earliest Scots to use the Lowland dialect as a literary medium. med-ium. Multitudes of Americans de-sfended de-sfended from non-British stock are perpetually mystified by this dialect, dia-lect, nor does it seem to make much sense in the standard English translation which comes out "Old Long Since." Regardless of its original author or origin, it was Burns who gave "Auld Lang Syne" its immortality. And though the bells now welcome the New Year with joyous peals symbolizing mankind's hope for a bright future, the nostalgia of "Auld Lang Syne" summarizes an inherent reluctance to leave the security and friendships of the past and embark upon a future which, however promising, may not be more pleasant. Thus, it remains a part of the English speaking heritage heri-tage to "Drink a cup of kindness yet For Auld Lang Syne." |