Auld Lang Syne: A Song History

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Robert Burns did not invent “Auld Lang Syne” from nothing. A song called “Old Long Syne” was already in print in James Watson’s Choice Collection of 1711, and the poet Allan Ramsay published his own version in the Tea-Table Miscellany in 1723.[1] Burns first mentioned his version in a December 1788 letter to his correspondent Mrs Dunlop, and later told the editor George Thomson that he had written it down as an old man sang it.[2][3] Scholars are divided over that claim and over how much of the text is old and how much is Burns’s own work.[1]

Hand-colored lithograph of Robert Burns seated beside a young woman under a tree by a stream

Nathaniel Currier, Robert Burns and His Highland Mary, hand-colored lithograph, 1846. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). The print shows the poet, not a scene from this song.

The song first appeared in James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum in 1796, the year Burns died, set to an older and more reflective melody than the one we know.[1][2] In 1799 Thomson printed the words in his Select Collection with a different tune from the family of “The Miller’s Wedding,” a melody William Shield had already used in the overture to his 1782 opera Rosina.[4] Thomson’s pairing is the one that went around the world.[2]

In Scotland the song belongs to Hogmanay, as well as to weddings, ceilidhs, and Burns Suppers, often sung in a circle with arms crossed and hands joined.[3] Its American New Year’s Eve role owes much to Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians, who played it at midnight from New York’s Roosevelt Hotel beginning on December 31, 1929, and kept the custom going on radio and later television for close to fifty years.[5][6]

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Sources

  1. Open Book Publishers (M. J. Grant): "Auld Lang Syne: Context and Genesis," in Auld Lang Syne: A Song and its Culture.
  2. University of Glasgow: "The first appearance of Auld Lang Syne is studied by UofG academics".
  3. National Trust for Scotland: "Auld lang syne".
  4. Open Book Publishers (M. J. Grant): Chapter 3, in Auld Lang Syne: A Song and its Culture.
  5. Atlas Obscura (April White): "How Auld Lang Syne Became a New Year’s Eve Tradition".
  6. Canadian Music Hall of Fame: "Guy Lombardo".