Should Auld Lyrics Be Forgot

Old things are passed away, and behold made new.--II Corinthians 5:17

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What a moment--and it will happen tomorrow.

On New Year’s Eve we will wait for it together, watching as the clock tells us that something has changed. Collectively we will see it unfold, an old year giving way to something bright and new.

Synonymous with this momentous event is the background music: “Auld Lang Syne.”

No other song will do.

It will play at parties and in barrooms and living rooms across the city. And as it plays we will offer toasts and embrace one another and sing along. Like the townspeople gathered in the home of George Bailey in the closing scene of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” we will feel connected and good.

What a moment indeed.

And singing “Auld Lang Syne” pulls the heart into it, like hearing the national anthem at a football game or on the Fourth of July.

Even people who don’t know the words can mumble and stumble through the melody--and they will, loudly, with much sincere emotion.

As he has for four years now, Tom Hall, leader of the band Flat Top Tom and his Jump Cats, will play a New Year’s gig, this year at Clancy’s in Glendale. Of course the band will play “Auld Lang Syne.”

“The evening wouldn’t be complete without it,” Hall said.

People expect it. Never mind that “half of them are drunk and faking their way through it,” he said.

But what does “Auld Lang Syne” really mean? Asking the question is like being the kid in the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Nobody asks, but lots of people wonder the same thing.

Billy Crystal probably spoke for a large though silent section of the population when he asked the question in “When Harry Met Sally.”

Should we forget these old acquaintances or shouldn’t we? And while we’re at it, what exactly is a lang, and what, pray tell, is a syne?

Actually the title is the easy part. “Auld Lang Syne” literally means “old long ago” in Scots dialect.

OK, maybe the meaning is plainly revealed in the verses that follow--the verses that nobody this side of Loch Ness knows, much less sings. Like maybe the writer of the song actually answers the question. So take a shot:

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp,

And surely I’ll be mine,

And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet

For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes

And put the gowans fine;

But we’ve wandered mony a weary foot

Sin’ auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidled i’ the burn,

From morning sun til dine,

But seas between us braid hae roar’d

Sin’ auld lang syne.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere,

And gie’s a hand o’ thine;

And we’ll take a right guid-willie waught

For auld lang syne.

Now. That clears things up, right?

Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet and most famous son, usually receives credit for penning “Auld Lang Syne” in 1788. But according to Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Burns himself admitted that he took some of the lyrics from an old man he heard singing them--clearly an old man whose cup was filled with stronger stuff than kindness.

John Brugaletta, professor of English and comparative literature at Cal State Fullerton and editor of the South Coast Poetry Journal, understands Burns much better than the average American.

Translated into today’s English, “Surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp, and surely I’ll be mine,” essentially means: “Surely you’ll buy your own pint of beer and I’ll buy mine,” Brugaletta said. A “guid-willie waught” is a good swig.

He says the rest of the song can be loosely translated this way:

The two of us have run about the slopes

And pulled the daisies together,

But we’ve wandered many a weary foot

Since way back then.

The two of us have paddled in the stream

From morning sun until dinner,

But seas between us broad have roared

Since way back then.

Shake my hand, friend

And I’ll shake yours

And we’ll take a very hearty swig

For old long ago.

To put it simply: “They had fun together when they were young and now moved far apart,” Brugaletta said.

But whether you understand them or not, it’s not the words that gave “Auld Lang Syne” a stranglehold on the sentimental New Year’s Eve spot in our hearts. We could as well play Barbra Streisand’s “Memories” or “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday,” by G.C. Cameron from the “Cooley High” soundtrack.

Both are worthy candidates--and written in language clear to today’s Americans.

But the power of song--any song--is not so much in the lyrics or the melody. Whatever magic it possesses to make us misty-eyed is of a far more personal nature.

Music is time and place revisited.

Years come and go. We change. Our world takes on new and different shapes.

But music is like some prehistoric fossil. It reminds us of who we were and what we felt.

Decades later McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” takes some of us back to eighth-grade graduation, with all the excitement and all the uncertainty. And hearing Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” brings childhood memories of watching older brothers and sisters and wondering if they knew the answer.

Music brings the moments back, carried on the notes, hidden between the riffs and phrases. It’s the same with “Auld Lang Syne.”

Burns didn’t put the moments there. No songwriter can. Life itself holds this responsibility. Life bestows on each of us cups filled with joy and sadness, happiness and grief, and this is the time of year when we want to drain those cups and put them away, gone with the year that was, ready for what lies ahead.

The misty eyes are not for the beauty of Burns’ words but for the beauty of life and the sorrow of watching it melt away.

Tomorrow when the clock strikes 12, we will sing with thoughts of our own lives, not Scotland, not Robert Burns, not a guid-willie waught.

What a moment.