This week’s poem is the traditional celebration of friendship and good times sung at New Year parties across the world that is generally attributed to Robert Burns.
And surely ye’ll be your pint stowp!
Robert Burns (1759—1796)
And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak a cup o’kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
Poem 248. Auld Lang Syne
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!
Chorus
For auld lang syne, my dear,
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.
For auld, &c.
We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
Sin’ auld lang syne.
For auld, &c.
We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin’ auld lang syne.
For auld, &c.
And there’s a hand, my trusty fere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.
For auld, &c.
This poem celebrates a long-standing friendship—it doesn’t really reference the turning of one year into another when you look at the words closely, but it has become irrevocably associated with New Year celebrations, though it is also sung at the end of Scout jamborees, weddings, ceilidhs, Burns suppers, and at the end of the annual Trades Union Congress conference and the Last Night of the Proms.
Burns didn’t write this: he recorded it in the Scots dialect of the old man who sang it to him, so it’s a bit opaque in places. The first verse asks if a long friendship and all the history associated with it can ever be utterly forgotten, the chorus responding that a “cup o’ kindness” (a toast) is taken to commemorate the friendship and its long history.
In the second stanza (ignoring the chorus), the singer expresses his belief that each will pay his way (“ye’ll be your pint stowp!”) or buy a round as we would say now, and together will enjoy a drink in memory of the times they have shared.
In the third stanza, the singer recalls their mutual childhood spent running around the hills and picking flowers, commenting that the two have travelled long and far since then.
The fourth stanza compares the two boys’ youth paddling in the burn from daybreak until dinner time (“Frae morning sun till dine”) with the breadth of the seas that have divided them since.
The last stanza is where the singer embraces his friend, and they take a further draught together to recement the friendship.
I like it because I have sung it myself at New Year and I have never really thought much about what it meant, or who wrote it—like most other people, I supposed it was written by Burns. Reading it in a bit more detail, I have learned that it celebrates friendship in general as much as it celebrates the changing of the years.