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Welcome to Fascinating Facts and Tantalizing Trivia

A Hartson Dowd Column

December 31, 2006

DECEMBER 31^st, the last day of the year, is celebrated in many ways.  For some it is a time to attend midnight church services.  For others it is a time to gather in a public place and count down the final seconds of the old year.

December 31 -- New Year's Eve

In Scotland, December 31 is known as Hogmanay, (the welcoming of the New Year), it was the custom to clean the house, return to the rightful owner anything that was borrowed, pay all debts, mend all clothing and tune all instruments.

Hogmanay (pronounced [ˌhɔgməˈneː] — with the main stress on the last syllable - hog-muh-NAY) is the Scots word for the last day of the year and is synonymous with the celebration of the New Year (Gregorian calendar) in the Scottish manner. Its official date is the 31 December. However this is normally only the start of a celebration which lasts through the night until the morning of the 1 January or, in many cases, 2 Jamuary, which is a Scottish Bank Holiday.

There are many customs, both national and local, associated with Hogmanay. The most widespread national custom is the practice of first-footing which starts immediately after midnight. This involves being the first person to cross the threshold of a friend or neighbour and often involves the giving of symbolic gifts such as salt (less common today), coal, shortbread, whisky, and black bun (a fruit pudding) intended to bring different kinds of luck to the householder. Food and drink (as the gifts, and often Flies cemetery are then given to the guests. This may go on throughout the early hours of the morning and well into the next day. The first-foot is supposed to set the luck for the rest of the year, so it is important that a suitable person does the job. A tall, handsome, and dark-haired man bearing a gift is strongly preferred. According to popular folklore, a man with dark hair was welcomed because he was assumed to be a fellow Scotsman; a blonde or red haired stranger was assumed to be an unwelcome Norseman..

An example of a local Hogmanay custom is the fireball swinging which takes place in Stonehaven, Kincardineshire, in north-east Scotland. This involves local people making up balls of chicken wire, tar, paper and other flammable material to a diameter of about a metre. Each ball has 2 m of wire, chain or non-flammable rope attached. The balls are then each assigned to a swinger who swings the ball round and round their head and body by the rope while walking through the streets of Stonehaven from the harbour to the Sheriff court and back. At the end of the ceremony any fireballs which are still burning are cast into the harbour. Many people enjoy this display which is more impressive in the dark than it would be during the day. As a result large crowds flock to the town to see it.

Another example of a pagan fire festival is The Burning of the Clavie that takes place in the town of Burghead in Moray.

The Hogmanay custom of singing Auld Lang Syne has become common in many countries. Auld Lang Syne is a traditional poem reinterpreted by Robert Burns which was later set to music. Outside Scotland a common mistake is to sing "For the Sake of Auld Lang Syne" instead of "For auld lang syne".

"Auld Lang Syne" is usually sung each year on New Year's Eve (Hogmanay in Scotland) in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and English speaking Canada at midnight and signifies the start of a new year. Also, in many Burns Clubs, it is sung to end the Burns supper.

It is used as a graduation song and a funeral song in Taiwan, symbolizing an end or a goodbye. In Japan, too, it is used in graduation, and many stores play it to usher customers out at the end of a business day. Before the composition of Aegukga, the lyrics of Korea’s national anthem were sung to the tune of this song. In the Indian Armed Forces the band plays this song during the passing out parade of the recruits.

In the Philippines, it is well known and sung at celebrations like graduations, New Year and Christmas Day. Also, before 1972, it was the tune for the Gaumii salaam anthem of The Maldives (with the current words).

In Portugal, France, Spain and Germany this song is used to mark a farewell. It is also used in the Scout movement for the same purpose, but with lyrics that are a little different.

It has also been used on other occasions as a farewell. One occasion that falls in this category was in October 2000, when the body of former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau left Parliament Hill in Ottawa for the last time, going to Montreal for the state funeral.

The song is also the official corps song for the Kilties drum and bugle corps..

Whatever its source, the Auld Lang Syne tune has been used all over the world in various contexts, for example:

The University of Virginia's alma mater (The Good Old Song), and the anthem of Alpha Kappa Psi, the largest professional business fraternity in the U.S., are both sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.

In Japan, the Japanese students' song Hotaru no hikari (Glow of a Firefly) uses the Auld Lang Syne tune. The words are a series of images of hardships that the industrious student endures in his relentless quest for knowledge, starting with the firefly’s light, which the student uses to keep studying when he has no other light sources. As noted above (under usage) the melody is also played in many stores shortly before closing time.

The tune is used for the Dutch football song, Wij houden van Oranje (We love Orange).

In France, the melody is used with French words and the parting song is entitled Ce n’est qu’un au revoir ("This is only goodbye (not farewell)").

In Denmark, the song is known by the Danish 1927 translation of the song entitled Skuld gammel venskab rejn forgo. Also, former Danish Rock group Gasolin popularized the melody in 1974 with their pop ballad Stakkels Jim ("Poor Jim").

In South Korea, the melody was sung as a national anthem, Aegukga until the composer Ahn Ik Tae composed a new melody to the existing lyrics.

Lyrics

As detailed above - "auld lang syne" literally means "old long since" - but a more idiomatic English translation would be something like "long ago", "days of long ago", "in olden days", or even "once upon a time"..

Robert Burns forwarded a copy of the original song to the Scots Musical Museum with the remark, “The following song, an old song, of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript until I took it down from an old man's singing, is enough to recommend any air.” At the time it was very fashionable to claim that one's own work was "traditional" and one should probably take Burns' statement with a pinch of salt, and even if some lines of the lyrics were indeed "collected" rather than composed by the poet, it is a fair supposition to attribute the poem as a whole to Burns himself.

There is some doubt if the tune used today is the same one Burns originally intended - but no doubt the melody itself is traditional in the purest sense of the word.

The complete lyrics, as Burns wrote them, are as follows -

Burns’ verse above is taken exactly from Songs from Robert Burns, published in Great Britain by Collins Clear-Type Press in 1947, and sold at Burns’ Cottage.

Most traditional use of the song involves only the first verse and the chorus - with the last line changed to "and days of auld lang syne".

Singing the song on Hogmanay or New Year’s Day very quickly became a Scots custom, which soon spread to other parts of the British Isles. As Scots (not to mention other Britons) emigrated around the world, they took the song with them.

• Bandleader Guy Lombardo is often credited with popularizing the use of the song at New Year’s celebrations in America, through his annual broadcasts on radio and TV, beginning in 1929.

The song is sung in a famous scene at the end of It's a Wonderful Life, a movie traditionally shown during the weeks before Christmas in America.

Hartson S. Dowd

hsdowd@telus.net