Features - The Songs of Robert Burns

AULD LANG SYNE

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne?

Chorus
For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint stowp!
And surely I'll be mine
And we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes
And pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary fitt,
Sin' auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl't in the burn
Frae morning sun till dine:
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne.

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere!
Andgie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right gude-willie waughs
For auld lang syne.

Flagnote: The greatest name in Sots-song is that of Robert Burns - he gave us our National Anthem 'Bruce's Address at Bannockburn' (Scots Wha Hae); an international song of Brotherhood in 'A Man's A Man For A' That' and the universal parting song 'Auld Lang Syne' which is particularly associated with Hogmanay. Burns never claimed the song as his own and wrote to his publisher George Thomson - 'The air is but mediocre but the following song, the old song of the olden times, and which has never been in print, not even in manuscript, until I took them down from an old man's singing, is enough to recommend any air'. However he admitted to Johnson that the two verses beginning respectively 'We twa hae run aboot the braes' and 'We twa hae paidl'd in the burn' were his own. Today the song is only associated with one man - the byornar Robert Burns.