Should old acquaintances be forgot?  Depends on the acquaintance and if he – or she – is old, long, and sighs.

Not only is it bad enough that New Year’s Eve comes at the end of a year, a most traumatic time for many, usually the last we hear of it is sung to a song written a couple hundred years ago in a language not many understand derived from poems written a couple hundred years earlier still in a language fewer use.  But sing it we do.  Even if we don’t have a clue to what we’re singing.

Somewhere, sometime, somebody translated most of the song.  We don’t know how accurate the translation is but we’ve been singing it that way since Guy Lombardo led his Pennsylvanians into the New Year that was 1930.  The Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote the lyrics as we know them in 1788.  He wrote more 500 poems and this is the one we remember at least once a year.  His inspiration may or may not have come from even earlier songs and poems dating to the 1500s.  Those earlier songs would seem to have or have not themselves inspired by yet even older Scottish folk songs of love and friendship.  It’s odd that even those whose careers rely on interpreting literature can’t agree on what the words mean.  The version Burns put to paper appears to be of friends recently parted.  Some say the lyrics refer to battles fought for king and country and some for God and honor.  Some have interpreted them to speak of a bond among men and some to a relationship between a man and a woman.  And those are of the lyrics we understand.

And no wonder there is confusion.  There’s not even consensus of what the title means.  We tried to research what those three little words really are and what they really mean.  The problem with “auld lang syne” is that it sounds suspiciously like English so most people feel they know what the words are and what they mean.  Odd long sign.  All sung high.  Old dang sign.  Old long high.  Odd dang high.  The first four references we checked gave us four different translations:  old long ago, time long past, old times’ sake, and times gone by.  So we gave up.  They mean whatever you want them to mean. 

We take them to mean that one should remember the year just ending and wish every friendship grows a year older by the end of next year.  The memory of every moment spent is a gift for the moments yet to come.  Every day gone by is an opportunity to welcome a new day.

Should old acquaintance be forgot? 
Oh dear let’s never mind. 
We’ll beg a cup the kind you brought
and pay you back some other time.

Hey, Happy New Year!

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?