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Revellers sing link arms while singing “Auld Lang Syne.”<\/p>\n
Revellers sing link arms while singing “Auld Lang Syne.” \u200bTHE-CNN-WIRE (TM) & \u00a9 2025 CABLE NEWS NETWORK, INC., A TIME WARNER COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Edinburgh, Scotland (CNN) \u2014<\/strong> As \u201cAuld Lang Syne\u201d takes its annual spin around the globe on New Year\u2019s Eve, its chorus belted out by revelers young and old, Edinburgh\u2019s Poet Laureate Michael Pedersen says the song\u2019s enduring power lies not in tradition alone, but in its uncanny ability to bind people together.
Pedersen, a prize-winning Scottish poet and author who is the current Writer in Residence at the University of Edinburgh and the city\u2019s Makar, or Poet Laureate, told CNN that the song\u2019s customary rendition at midnight on December 31 was never formally ordained \u2014 it simply felt right.
\u201cFor generations, it\u2019s been sung at New Year because it\u2019s perfect for it,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing in the song that dictates it should be sung then. People just had an emotional compass for it. They gathered outside town halls and sang it, and it drifted \u2014 like a great, beautiful glacier of song \u2014 into that New Year position.\u201d
Despite its popularity, few would claim to know all the words to the song, first written down by Robert Burns in 1788<\/a> \u2013 but that has done little to dent its appeal.
The phrase \u201cauld lang syne\u201d translates loosely to \u201cold, long since,\u201d though Pedersen says a modern equivalent would be \u201cfor old times\u2019 sake.\u201d At its heart, he said, the song is \u201ca tale that looks back at childhood friendship, rekindled with a handshake and a goodwill drink.\u201d
\u201cIt\u2019s a song of reunion, not parting,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s about celebrating happy days gone by and the glorious bonfire in the belly when you come back together.\u201d
As a Scotsman, watching the song circle the planet each year feels like \u201csending out the Scottish bat signal,\u201d Pedersen said.
\u201cAuld Lang Syne is very much born in Scotland, though it\u2019s become the ultimate international citizen,\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone has made it their own. What a beautiful expression of art and humanity \u2014 to write something national and deeply personal, and have people project their own lives into it.\u201d
Part of its staying power, he argues, is physical. The song isn\u2019t just sung \u2014 it\u2019s performed.
\u201cIt happens at such beautiful moments: the end of the year, weddings, big gatherings,\u201d he said. \u201cYou join hands, you form a circle, you create a physical expression of friendship. Most people hum through the verses and come in strong on the chorus, and it pulls us all together. It\u2019s a mellifluous, song-sized hug that\u2019s survived the centuries.\u201d
As for the choreography, Pedersen says the arm\u2011crossing moment comes later than many think.
\u201cTraditionally, you hold hands for the first five verses,\u201d he said. \u201cThen on the fifth, everyone crosses their arms, still holding their neighbors\u2019 hands, and runs in and out of the circle. Of course, culprits and rogues will run in at various points \u2014 that\u2019s part of the beauty, the calamity of it.\u201d
The question of authorship remains one of Scottish literature\u2019s most enduring debates. Robert Burns claimed he merely wrote down a version he heard in a coaching inn, later adapting it to fit a tune.
\u201cWe have no evidence of how much he adapted,\u201d Pedersen said. \u201cIt could have been a word or two, or a massive Burns rewrite.\u201d
Burns\u2019 publisher, George Thomson, altered the music again after the poet\u2019s death, producing the melody known today.
\u201cEven now, critics argue over whether Burns was leading us astray, and it was his all along,\u201d Pedersen said.
\u201cHe was known to avoid attributing some of his own work \u2014 sometimes because it was too heretical, sometimes because he wanted to see how people reacted without his fame behind it. It remains a beautiful, mellifluous mystery.\u201d
Pedersen has now added his own contribution to Scotland\u2019s New Year canon with \u201cBoys Holding Hands,\u201d a poem inspired by Burns and written, he said, from a lifelong devotion to friendship.
\u201cI\u2019ve always worshipped at the altar of friendship,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to write my own poem about joining hands in celebration of friendship, inspired by Burns. \u2018Boys Holding Hands\u2019 is that piece \u2014 taking your pal\u2019s hands in celebration of all the times you\u2019ve had and all the times you\u2019re going to have.\u201d
The poem, he said, is also a gentle challenge to the emotional constraints placed on men.
\u201cThere\u2019s a real bravado to masculinity that causes us to trap a lot of our emotions in our belly and dissolve them like a piece of gristle until they\u2019re voiceless,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to let all that soppy, sumptuous sentimentality spill out to make ourselves better, more equipped, more loving human beings.\u201d
The-CNN-Wire
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