I was at the Library of Congress yesterday searching for song histories. I
found a book of reproductions of autograph manuscripts. Just letters,
inscriptions, notes, things like that, from people like the Venerable Bede,
John Locke, Geoffrey Chaucer, and so on. The contents were completely off my
research path, but it was so interesting a book that I stopped to take a look
through it.
In one of those incredible circumstances where the resource comes to the
researcher, I found in this book a letter of Robert Burns'. And the letter
was about Auld Lang Syne! Just days before he died, Burns wrote to George
Thomson, who was in the process of editing his book of "Scotish Airs", the
following:
"One Song more, & I have done. - Auld lang syne - The air is but mediocre;
but the following song, the old Song of the olden times, & which has never
been in print, not even in manuscript, untill I took it down from an old
man's Singing; is enough to recommend any air-"
And then he goes on to write out the poem. It's very difficult to read and I
haven't transcribed it yet, though I intend to, and then compare it to what's
in the SMM. (Lucky the Library lets you xerox stuff.)
There was some commentary to the letter, which clung to the belief that Burns
wrote the song and was just too modest to admit it. I think that's a long
shot: it seems to me that the simplest explanation is most often the correct
one: Burns was telling the truth, and indeed took it down from an old man's
singing.
--Cynthia Cathcart
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