Hosted by journalist and broadcaster Jackie Bird, each episode of our Love Scotland podcasts tells some of the thrilling stories behind the Trust’s people and places, showcasing how everything we do is for the love of Scotland.
What really killed Robert Burns?
Transcript
Three voices: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; David Purdie [DP]
[MV]
Love Scotland – brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland, presented by Jackie Bird.
[A piano plays ‘Auld Lang Syne’]
[JB]
Hello and welcome. One of the Trust’s most popular locations is Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Ayrshire. Visitors from around the globe come to see the humble origins of Scotland’s national poet, and a man whose words have inspired paupers and presidents. Burns left an impressive archive of work, but his life ended much too soon. He died in 1796 at the age of 37. At the time, his death was attributed to alcoholism, an unsubstantiated diagnosis that stuck. But in recent years, and with advances in medical knowledge, that assumption on a man who undoubtedly liked a drink has been challenged.
My guest today is among those who have applied not just their great admiration of the poet but their clinical expertise to analyse Burns’s physical symptoms. Professor David Purdie is a doctor of medicine, an author, public speaker and a Burns expert – to the extent that he’s a co-author of the Burns Encyclopedia. David, welcome to the podcast.
[DP]
Thank you; good to be here.
[JB]
Well, we are recording this just off Princes Street. We’ve got some bagpipe musical accompaniment. I don’t know if that will help or hinder. I’d love to find out firstly – Burns certainly enjoyed the grain and the grape. He wrote vividly about it. Now, many artists have their demons. You lecture on Burns all over the world. How prevalent is the notion that he was an alcoholic who died of alcoholism?
[DP]
It was a regrettable fact, I think, that he died twice. He died physically at the age of 37, as you’ve mentioned, in Dumfries. And then he was assassinated post-mortem in an unsigned obituary in what is now the Edinburgh Evening News, the evening newspaper here in the city of Edinburgh, saying that he had died a hopeless alcoholic, ‘useless to himself and to his family, being perpetually stimulated by alcohol’. This, as I say, was unsigned, and many of us have tried very hard to find out who actually wrote these words because they are simply fake news.
In brutal summary, the poet was no teetotaller but, like all sensible men and women, he confined his enjoyment of the grape and the grain to the social and evening hours with his friends and did not let it intrude on his domestic duties to his wife Jean Armour, the family or to his professional business as an officer of the Scottish Excise Service (the forerunner of our beloved HMRC), and for his military duties. Because for the last two years of his life, he was a soldier in the Royal Dumfries Volunteers.
[JB]
Yes, so set the scene for us. Give me a pen portrait of the last few years of his life – what he was doing, what he was writing, where he was going.
[DP]
Well, he lives in Dumfries for the last five years of his life. He has given up farming. It’s a place called Ellisland, 7 miles above Dumfries on the valley of the River Nith. And because of promotion within his duties for the Excise Service (the taxation service at the time), he was now on a foot walk as it was called within Dumfries, looking after the taxation revenues for the city and for the country in that town. Because remember, there was no VAT in those days; that taxation was raised at source. So, he’s working in Dumfries, he’s living there with his wife and the kids, having his children educated at the Dumfries Academy. He has a wide circle of friends from all over the county of Dumfries and the wider Borders, and all over Scotland, and frequent guests from England as well. He’s a highly convivial, sociable, witty man and has a wide circle of acquaintances.
And he’s still writing, of course. He’s still collecting songs and writing poetry because remember he never stopped these two central activities. Not just our greatest poet but also our greatest songwriter – and our greatest song collector, along with Walter Scott and others. He saw to it during this time, and for years before that, that he would collect all the available folk songs of the country. The traditional song heritage of Scotland is very broad and deep, and thanks to him and to others we have that treasury with us today.
[JB]
Your assertion is that in working as a poet full on, and as an Exciseman, he could not have carried out that sort of work if he was an alcoholic.
[DP]
That’s right. It was only after the publication of this unsigned obituary and its repetition in the first biography of Burns by Dr James Currie, himself a reformed alcoholic. That biography was written, I have to say, for the benefit of Mrs Burns and the family, but he could not resist repeating what had been first led off in evidence by that obituary.
[JB]
But why didn’t the family step in and say this is not the truth?
[DP]
They did, they did. But who’s going to listen to a lady in her early 50s by that time, against the power of the press and the power of the voice of well-known authors and writers? It was picked up – as fake news is picked up – repeated, amplified; and still across the world today you’ll find people who believe this. Whereas we know, as you’ve suggested, from the evidence of friends and colleagues, that we would have known – the country would have known – if he had been indeed an alcoholic, because the Excise Service maintained disciplinary records which were found years later, and so did the Royal Dumfries Volunteers. The disciplinary records of the army are still to be found, and in both of them, one of my colleagues consulted carefully to find out: did his name appear on a charge sheet for being incapable or in any way affected by alcohol? And the answer was no – Burns’s name does not appear in the charge sheet of the Excise Service of Dumfries.
[JB]
Indeed, wasn’t he heading for promotion as an Exciseman?
[DP]
Indeed, he was. Good for you. Absolutely, he was and in fact one of my colleagues figured out that had he lived another 18 months, he would have been appointed Supervisor of Excise at Port Glasgow upon the Lower Clyde. In fact, against his name appears congratulatory approval from his superiors as to his work as an Exciseman.
[JB]
It’s very interesting you talk about fake news, and it’s so resonant with what we know of today. I found a piece when I was researching this in the Hampshire Chronicle – so it shows you the spread; it was obviously a syndicated piece. Let me read a bit to you. Again, it was a few months, I think, it was published after Burns had died and after the obituary had initially appeared. It said:
‘He had genius starting beyond the obstacles of poverty, which would have distinguished itself in any situation. His early days were occupied in procuring bread by the labour of his own hands in the honourable task of cultivating the earth. But his nights were devoted to books and the muse, except when they were wasted in those haunts of village festivity and in the indulgences of the social bowl to which the poet was too immoderately attached in every period of his life.’
That diagnosis is being perpetuated.
[DP]
Yes, yes. It’s got legs, hasn’t it? It suits a lot of readers of that material. They thought he was a poet, they thought he was a songwriter. He was highly convivial but of course he was addicted to alcohol, episodically perhaps but perhaps permanently, as the obituary we mentioned already said.
There’s another error in that. The Hampshire people were being told that he lived in poverty. Gosh. That’s another problem we face from time to time, for those who don’t know much about his biography. Burns and his family were never without domestic and agricultural servants in their houses and on the farms.
[JB]
Isn’t that the joy of history that you can transpose something that happened centuries ago to today and you can see this same thing. What do they say? History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. The fact that it was a good story and perhaps they weren’t going to let the facts get in the way of the good story of the tragic death of this man. We’re talking about this biography that took the story and ran with it, by James Currie. Had he had any relationship with Burns? Because he became the biographer and he also got help in that from Burns’s brother Gilbert.
[DP]
Yes, Gilbert is culpable to a degree here. Gilbert did not speak up strongly enough about the actuality of the poet’s life and his habits. He was rather perhaps dissuaded from that by the fact that James Currie was writing, as we mentioned earlier, for the family and the children. Burns was not a wealthy man. He left debts; they were not substantial, but they were debts. The book was written with the idea of supporting the family through difficult times, their breadwinner having been taken from them.
But just to come back to what you said earlier about the response to this, one of the great responses came from the Kirk. Burns was no friend of the Calvinist church. Burns regarded Calvinism as the suspicion that somewhere somebody might be happy! He took them on regularly in his writings, in prose and verse. But one of the ministers in Dumfries, James Grey, was also the Rector of Dumfries Academy. In a subsequent biography of Burns, he had a letter inserted into the biography to say, ‘Where’s this coming from’? As the lawyers say, cui bono – to whose advantage is it to peddle this story that the poet was an alcoholic, that he died of drink? ‘For the five years that he lived in this town,’ said the Reverend Grey, ‘and where I was educating his sons with others at the Academy, I saw him almost every day. And never once in that experience did I observe him affected by alcohol.’ Who is doing this? Where is this coming from? Cui bono – to whose advantage? Some of us are not alone, I know, in believing that there might well have been a political sideline to this.
[JB]
Political sideline?
[DP]
Yes, indeed. We now know there was a very active secret service, operational in Scotland and in England, at a time of great national emergency. Remember, we are at war with post-Revolutionary France. War was declared in 1793, three years before Burns died. Burns joins up; he joined the Royal Dumfries Volunteers, a TA regiment formed for the Home Defence while the regular army was abroad. It was in there that we now know that there was no problem with him as regards the problem of alcohol. The records of the Royal Dumfries Volunteers are very fulsome, and many young men in that battalion are censured by the military police for over-indulgence in alcohol. Burns’s name does not appear among those.
[JB]
Before we continue then with the case for the defence – Burns’s defence, if you like – can I read this to you? I only found this recently and it’s a lengthy article about Burns written in 1879, so 80-odd years after he died, by someone called Robert Louis Stevenson. [Oh yes!] And he wrote:
‘It is the fashion to say he died of drink; many a man has drunk more and yet lived with reputation and reached a good age. That drink and debauchery helped to destroy his constitution and were the means of his unconscious suicide is doubtless true, but he had failed in life and lost his power of work.’
Why would Robert Louis Stevenson write that?
[DP]
I don’t know. Maybe your correspondent didn’t mention, or forgot to mention, that that essay was rejected by the Cornhill Magazine as being over-censorious and probably inaccurate. [Really?] But I’m surprised because Robert Louis Stevenson himself – and I’m looking over towards the university who as a student there studied law, engineering and literature – he was no teetotaller himself. Very interesting to hear him letting fly at Burns with whom he shares the podium of Scottish literary history. That is highly inaccurate, but I don’t know what might have motivated him to do so, because we know that he – well, I believed – he was an admirer of the poet and a regular reciter of some of his works.
[JB]
Well, let’s talk in detail about the fight back on the ground by people who knew him, or who felt that they had the evidence to question that obituary and the subsequent accusations of alcoholism. Sir James Crichton-Browne, who was he and what was his part in it?
[DP]
Sir James Crichton-Browne was a psychiatrist, one of the first psychiatrists in the country. Sir James Crichton-Browne was one of the first of my colleagues to say, ‘wait a second; wait a second’. For the reasons that we have hinted earlier: the fact that he continued to write at a very high quality right to the end and he didn’t fall off in terms of output and quality and quantity; and the fact that he was not censured by his employers for any problem with alcohol. He said, ‘Wait a second. Let us just examine this.’ He went looking into the poet’s history and spoke to people who had known him and found the median point, I think it was, in the poet’s history of his arrangements with the grape and the grain of the alcohol, if you like. Sure, he’s no teetotaller but he didn’t let it interfere with the duties of his life domestically or professionally.
And so, we’re very grateful to Crichton-Browne for setting the record straight. Unfortunately, he didn't have so much a wide audience as he might have had and that the canard had been set – the hare had been set running and the story was out. And of course, it fitted – as we may have mentioned earlier – that we’ve had a poet. Yeah, sure he was a farmer. He was a highly convivial, witty man surrounded by friends and acolytes; men and women would come to listen to him talk. He was an excoriating critic of certain government institutions of the time, which may be relevant by the way, but he was also a brilliant conversationalist and extrovert and had a wonderful dry, acerbic sense of humour.
[JB]
Let’s talk about the physical symptoms though that would have emerged, I’m sure, if he was an alcoholic or a functioning alcoholic, or had a problem. There was a portrait painted about 11 months before he died. That doesn’t seem to show – obviously, it’s a portrait – but it doesn’t seem to show any of the outward signs, does it?
[DP]
Yes, good for you. You’re right, there was a portrait about 11 months before his death, which was in the summer of 1796. And Jackie, you can’t make a diagnosis from a painting, especially a posed painting – it’s a lateral view of a man of 36 years who looks perfectly fit and well. And that probably is the case. Because what did kill him came upon him very quickly and was merciless.
[JB]
I’m going to stop you there because we’re going to take a break [Ok!] and we’re going to leave our audience on tenterhooks. When we come back, we will talk about what you believe actually killed Robert Burns. We’ll be back in a moment.
[MV]
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[JB]
Welcome back to the Love Scotland podcast with my guest, Professor David Purdie. Now, David, we left part one on a bit of a cliffhanger, but before we begin your diagnosis of what killed Robert Burns, there’s something else I wanted to ask. He must have been tended to during his final days. Was there any evidence from those who looked after him as to what was wrong with him?
[DP]
Evidence would require symptoms and signs and changes at his domestic activities or appearance. It was noted that he had slowed down. It was noted that he was complaining repeatedly of what we call a migratic polyarthralgia; in layman’s terms, that is repeated pains in the joints – hands and feet, possibly elbows and hips as well. He was noted to be losing weight, remarkably fast. And so, it was just assumed that he had one of the many infectious diseases, which slew so many of our people – men, women and especially children – in that era of the 18th century. You’ve only got to look at our graveyards, at the dates going back to that point, to see that survival was not easy. I think it was assumed that he had developed some infectious disease, and that was what was slowly taking him from us. That was still the case until the time that he died in the summer of 1796.
[JB]
Over the years, when people have been looking for clues, they have tried to delve back into his medical history. Note keeping was not as good as it is now but there are some potential clues in his early jobs.
[DP]
Yes, he was a robust child and young man. The first sign of trouble came in 1781 when he was 21 and was in Irvine, not far from the family farm at Mossgiel in Central Ayrshire, to learn flax dressing. They were growing flax on the farm and the Burns family wondered if they might move along from just the harvesting of the flax to this preparation for the production of linen. And he developed what we think was acute rheumatic fever. Rheumatic fever is unusual today, but I can still remember it as a medical student afflicting patients when I was a student at Glasgow back in the 60s and early 70s. Rheumatic fever was dangerous not just initially but because of the long-term consequences, because it can affect the heart and in particularly the valves of the heart in the longer term.
Now, what happened then in Irvine was that he fell ill and he was visited by the local GP or a physician/surgeon as he styled himself at the time. If I meet that man in an afterlife – if there is an afterlife – I will meet him, and I will demand to know why he didn’t write down the diagnosis. But we do know what he thought the diagnosis might have been. We had to work it out retrospectively from the treatments given to Burns. He was given cinchona bark, which was later to be used for treating malaria. He had a fever; we know that because antipyretic drugs were given to him. He had a lot of pain because analgesics were given to him, and he was given a general stimulant. But my dear colleague did not write down the diagnosis.
[JB]
What would Burns’s symptoms have been then?
[DP]
Almost certainly joint pain, fever, probably sore throat, headache, heavy sweating. Clearly an infectious process was going on and that is why the GP was called in and these are the treatments given. We have his notes …
[JB]
Because he saw the doctor about five times when he was in his twenties.
[DP]
Yes, he did. That was not inexpensive in those times. I mean, Burns was not a pauper, as was mentioned by one of your correspondents a little earlier. No, the family was not rich but they could afford the services of a physician. Five or six visits were made and never once did he write down the diagnosis. Maybe he didn’t know what it was. Maybe he thought it was malaria. Malaria was still endemic in these islands in the 18th century. I’ve often wondered about that myself.
There’s no diagnosis, but then again he was released, discharged, went back to the farm and carried on as normal. There was no sign of any sequela from these events, from this presumed rheumatic fever, until much later in his life, when we began to observe, and it began to be observed in him, that something was wrong with his heart.
[JB]
He was also a farmer. There was some suggestion that he could have picked up some sort of infection on the farm?
[DP]
There was a meeting at the college here in Edinburgh – the Royal College of Physicians. We had a meeting of the Historical Society within the college some time ago. We reviewed the symptoms of Burns, the signs observed in him by others, and the ultimate outcome.
[JB]
So, you all got together to discuss this? When was this?
[DP]
Not just Burns either. We lose our poets young. There was a discussion about three poets: Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Burns and Robert Fergusson.
[JB]
The new Dead Poets Society!
[DP]
Indeed! We lost Burns at 37; Fergusson at 24 [dear me], almost certainly of a head injury; and Stevenson died of a stroke in Samoa at the age of 44. Scotland has not done well with longevity among our great writers. However, what we have from them is wonderful and worth conserving.
In the college that day, we reviewed all the symptoms and the signs and the history of it all, and there was a general consensus – although we will never be utterly sure, because there was no post-mortem – we do not have …
[JB]
Should there have been a post-mortem? Would there have been ordinarily?
[DP]
No, no. In a rural town like Dumfries? No. There would have been certainly an enquiry by those around him in modern times – a PM for a young man dying of an unknown cause like that with rapidity. A tissue diagnosis would have been established. We do not have what the profession calls a tissue diagnosis in the case of Burns, and that’s the problem.
[JB]
There was also a suspicion that it could have been something as mundane as toothache. Now, he famously wrote an address …
[DP]
He did, that’s right. We are coming back to the heart problems, consequent on the acute rheumatic fever years and years earlier. The problem which occurs through toothache is apical root abscess. An apical root abscess is a highly infectious and very dangerous condition in the root of a tooth, where bacteria spill from the tooth into the bloodstream. And if you’ve got a heart which is affected by the long-term effects of rheumatic fever, then there’s going to be a problem. We think that the heart problem was what’s called mitral stenosis.
The mitral valve is one of the great valves within the heart itself, which propels the blood out from the ventricles into the other chambers of the heart and eventually around the body to supply us with oxygenated blood. If that valve is damaged, it is very prone to attack by bacteria if they get into the bloodstream. And that is what we think happened with Burns. This damaged heart, the mitral valve’s damaged and then an apical root abscess or something similar – any other infection – delivering bacteria into the bloodstream, it would settle on that valve and begin the process of what we think was the terminal event.
And the terminal event was acute endocarditis. The very name endocarditis tells you that it was the endocardium, the inner lining of the heart not the outer lining –the pericardium – but the inner lining of the heart, including the valve, which got infected and then led to the terminal events of his life: the rapid loss of weight, the continuing fevers, the polyarthralgia, the pain in the joints and the weight loss.
[JB]
He was, as you know, a prolific letter writer. And he wrote to Mrs Dunlop, saying ‘I have lately drunk deep of the cup of affliction. The autumn robbed me of my only daughter.’ So, he was in emotional distress. ‘And at a distance too, and so rapidly, as to put it out of my power to pay the last duties to her. I had scarcely begun to recover from that shock,’ he writes, ‘when I became myself the victim of a most severe rheumatic fever’. So, he knew he was ailing. And the symptoms, as you discuss, but the treatments – they don’t sound too great. He was sent to the coast to immerse himself in Scottish waters.
[DP]
Not for the first time either.
[JB]
No wonder we can hear an ambulance on its way!
[DP]
Wherever that ambulance is going, it’s not taking patients down to the Water of Leith or to the Firth of Forth for treatment. But in those days, it was. And it was not just the bathing in the Solway, in the freezing waters of the Solway, that was prescribed for him. Prior to that, he had been prescribed bathing in a great tub of cold water on his farm at Ellisland, which was four years before he died. [Dear, dear]
He had begun to experience what’s called PND in the profession. PND is paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnea. In English, that is a tremendous sensation of drowning, of shortage of breath, of suffocation, at night. It is paroxysmal – it comes on without warning. It’s nocturnal – during the night hours. And dyspnea, which means just shortage of breath. He was instructed to douse himself in a barrel of cold water outside his door if this happened. That is a classic symptom of mitral stenosis, or the narrowing of the heart valve, which we think was the root of the final problem with his heart. I think that was probably the origin of the last phase of his illness. The heart began to get trouble, first of all with the valve and then with the infection of the inner lining of the heart, which was the terminal event.
[JB]
You talked about the lack of tissue samples. However distasteful this sounds, if we exhumed Burns’s body today, do we have the wherewithal to help determine how he died?
[DP]
No. We don’t. His bones have been unearthed once or twice. First of all, when he was moved from his initial resting place in St Michael’s Kirkyard in Dumfries to the mausoleum where he lies now. And then in 1834, 40 years after he died, when his faithful and beloved wife Jean Armour Burns died, she was laid beside him in the mausoleum. Because this was the age of phrenology, the poet’s skull was taken out to be examined by a phrenologist. The bumps on the skull being thought at that time to be indicative of the owner of the skull. He was pronounced – surprise, surprise – to be a man of literature by the phrenologist. But there’s nothing of the soft tissue which survived which might help us to diagnose what we have been speculating to have been the case of the cause of his death.
[JB]
So, your diagnosis is rheumatic fever led to a weakened heart and that’s eventually what killed him?
[DP]
Yes, it was endocarditis that slew him in the end.
[JB]
Is it at all possible that because you are a scholar and such a great admirer of Burns that you could be revisioning history?
[DP]
No, no. Good try but no! I’m sufficiently a physician, I hope, to take a balanced view. The poet was no teetotaller, not at all. Sometimes he over-did it, there is no question of that. Sat with his friends in the evening hours in the taverns of Dumfries or Ayr or wherever, but he was no alcoholic. His behaviour and what was observed about him do not support that.
There’s one final twist to the tale. And that is that endocarditis, as we have mentioned, the final event, is an infection of the inner lining of the heart by bacteria which is susceptible to penicillin. And it was almost 80 years after our poet died that another farmer’s son was born in Ayrshire, another Scotsman of genius – in fact our greatest ever medical researcher – called Alexander Fleming, who would make that most momentous of medical discoveries and would receive in 1946 a well-merited Nobel Prize for Medicine.
[JB]
If only he’d been born a few decades earlier. Hundreds of songs, hundreds of poems – such a legacy at such a young, young age to die. What do you think his work, his output, could have been had he lived?
[DP]
You’ve just articulated the absolute reason to show why he was not a hopeless victim to alcoholism or anything else. The output went on right to the very end. The very last song that he wrote, ‘O wert thou in the cauld blast’, one of his finest songs – of which there are 360 by the way – was picked up by Felix Mendelssohn himself. And one of the greatest arrangements of the Burns songs is that very last song, just days before he died in the house in Dumfries. That was the last of them.
You summed it up very well. He left us with just under 400 poems, ranging from 230 lines of Tam o’ Shanter to a two-line obituary, a universal epitaph, but it is one which I have used myself several times in saying farewell with an epitaph and a eulogy to those who have gone from us. And I commend it to anyone listening who might have to give a eulogy. Just two lines:
‘If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is not, he made the best of this.’
The nation’s debt to him is beyond calculation.
[JB]
Well, that is a perfect note on which to end. Professor David Purdie, thank you very much for joining us and sharing your insights professionally and personally into the life and death of Robert Burns. Thank you.
And whether you’re a die-hard Burnsian or brand new to the Bard, a day immersing yourself at Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway will open your eyes and ears to an enduring hero of Scotland’s literary heritage. Details are on the website nts.org.uk
And if you have any of Scotland’s stories you’d like to hear more about, then do get in touch. You’ll find the details on the programme page wherever you get this podcast. That’s all from Love Scotland. Why not click on the button to subscribe and you’ll never miss an episode. We’ll be back very soon. Thank you for listening. Goodbye!
[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions, on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland. Presented by Jackie Bird.
For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.
An icon of Scottish culture, Robert Burns is best known for his beautiful, moving and humorous poetry. Born in 1759, he died just 37 years later – an early passing attributed to alcoholism.
However, recent advances in medical knowledge have raised questions about the accuracy of this diagnosis. Professor David Purdie, co-author of The Burns Encyclopaedia and a doctor of medicine, has used his clinical expertise to analyse Burns’s physical symptoms. His research touches on a character assassination in the immediate aftermath of Burns’s death, the truth of his alleged alcoholism, and new theories as to what really caused the poet’s death.
This episode was released in July 2023.
For Auld Lang Syne: the history of a global anthem
Transcript
Five voices: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Mairi Campbell [MC]; Gerry Carruthers [GC]; second male voiceover [MV2]
[MV]
Love Scotland, brought you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.
[JB]
Hello. Today, we’re going to talk about a piece of music that’s often described as the song everybody sings but nobody really knows. Beloved in the country of its roots and tucked into the knapsacks of nostalgia of Scots who went off to make their mark on the world, it’s now a global anthem.
Its words of friendship and yearning are simple, and yet they have surpassed and outlasted far more complex depictions of these themes in other songs. It’s been performed by everyone from Beethoven to Jimi Hendrix, and its powerful poignancy has been deployed to jerk those tears in movies stretching from Charlie Chaplin to Sex and the City. I could go on giving you the song’s impressive pedigree, but instead, let’s allow the music to do the talking.
[MC]
Should auld acquaintance be forgot?
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot?
And auld lang syne.
[JB]
Wonderful. And that’s the first time one of my guests has sung their hellos! Welcome to singer and musician Mairi Campbell. That was lovely. Hello there.
[MC]
Thank you, thank you.
[JB]
Welcome to the Love Scotland podcast. Mairi has performed the song in – well, I can’t tell you how many venues and around the world, but there’s one hugely eventful performance that we’re going to talk about later. And also the fact that, Mairi, you built an entire show around the song. So, welcome to the podcast. Now, Mairi is chatting to us from Edinburgh. In the studio with me is Professor Gerry Carruthers from the University of Glasgow. Gerry, take it away!
[GC]
Hello, I’m not going to sing that, but I’m looking forward to a chat about Auld Lang Syne.
[JB]
Gerry is the editor of the Oxford University Press multi-edition of Robert Burns. Did I get that right?
[GC]
More or less.
[JB]
OK, that’s good. That’s good enough for me. Now, today we’re going to be discussing the roots and the evolution of this remarkable song. In case you didn’t know, you can see a couple of copies of the earliest versions in Robert Burns’s own hand at the National Trust for Scotland Burns Birthplace Museum in Ayrshire. Now this song, it has a complicated history. Before we pressed record on this podcast, we’re all having a bit of a ding dong about origins of various tunes and words. But before we delve into it, I would like to ask you both what I hinted at in the introduction. There are songs with similar themes. Can you both articulate what is so special, not about the song generally and why it’s become so popular globally, but what is so special to each of you? I’ll start with Mairi. If you could just sum it up?
[MC]
What’s special about this song is it seemed to attach itself to me since the 1990s, when I was surprised to even be learning it with Dave Francis, who had suggested that we learned it together in our wee band called The Cast at the time. And just how the song has grown on me and walked alongside me in my life. I’m just very grateful for the song and the mystery of what’s occurred around it and for me, in relation to my life and this song.
[JB]
Ok, Gerry?
[GC]
Well, I should say that I grew up hating this song and everything around Hogmanay, especially as a teenager, when of course Hogmanay was particularly uncool. My ears began to be opened to Auld Lang Syne by two punk rock versions. That didn’t really make me think, but it does make me think later on that what fascinates me about Auld Lang Syne is that in some ways it is a work of genius, and I guess we might discuss that. But even though it’s a work of genius, a lot of the ways in which it becomes a world song, a world anthem, has to do with a whole series of historical accidents. And ultimately, that’s what fascinates me.
[JB]
OK, well, I called it a Burns song and the world knows of it as a song by Robert Burns. That is not entirely true. Gerry, can you give us the background to it?
[GC]
Let’s work back, Jackie, from Burns. It’s certainly true that Burns makes a universal anthem when he’s working on it 1787/88. He makes it a song appropriate to an age of emigration, people parting probably never to meet again.
[JB]
But where does he find the lyrics?
[GC]
That is quite a convoluted story. We can go back all the way to the Bannatyne manuscript in 1568, which is a collection of poems and songs put together by a man who’s hiding from the plague in Edinburgh. And in there, there’s a lyric called ‘Old Kindness for yet’, and that’s the deep roots. Then when we get into the 18th century, there are a number of songs like ‘Auld lang syne my Jo’. And when Allan Ramsay, one of Burns’s great Scots language predecessors, puts together his Tea-Table Miscellany, he has a song that begins: ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot, though they return with scars?’
And the point about that is that this is a song that comes out of the English Civil War – or the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, we should call it. It’s about comrades parting, having been in battle, perhaps coming back together and sharing a glass together. And Burns’s genius is to take that lyric, to alter it, to adapt it and make it something that in the late 18th century really rings a bell with people, because that’s the beginning of the agricultural revolution, all kinds of dislocation, people emigrating, etc etc.
But there are many, many songs, both in terms of the tune and the lyric, that are a bit like that, including a whole body of Jacobite songs, because Burns is into Jacobitism and the notion of the Jacobites having to go their separate ways and hopefully come back one day and pick up the cause again. All these resonances are in there. So lyrically, it’s very complicated and part of Burns’s genius is he likes that. So that when he puts it together for the Scots Musical Museum in the first instance, for one of his song editors James Johnson, he says, ‘I took this down from an old man singing it’ and he signs it Z. Z in the Scots Musical Museum is where Burns is indicating that he’s collected it. Some of the material is pre-existing, but he is the man who makes it into a new lyric, so it is a Burns song.
[JB]
Mairi, what about the music? The melody that you delightfully sang for us there, that’s not the original, is it?
[MC]
No, it’s not the original. From what I understand, he learned this tune from the old man or, as you say, maybe it’ll have been an existing traditional tune no doubt, because that’s what he generally used for his lyrics. And then he took the song to his publishers. Publisher suggested they changed the tune to the one we know today. But what I am unsure about is exactly where that original melody came from. Gerry, I believe that maybe you do know it. It’s got a name – ‘A Miller’s Tale’, you said? That’s the first I’ve heard of it. That’s really interesting. I did wonder if there was a connection to Beethoven, because when I listened to that tune, I think it’s quite Beethoven-y. [De-dum-de-dum-di dah-dee] There’s a grandeur about it. I have wondered.
[JB]
You’re nodding …
[GC]
Beethoven does a setting for Thompson, so you’re spot on with that, Mairi. And the other thing, which I don’t need to tell a singer like your good self, is that these tunes in some ways can’t be pinned down definitively. Burns offers two tunes to Thompson, and one of the ones that he offers to Thompson, he thinks isn’t up to much – and that’s the one that’s come back into vogue via the folk or trad revival.
[JB]
Well, let me stop you there, because we have Mairi singing again. This is a recording of it, and this is the original tune that Burns … and the word that I researched was he said it was mediocre. Hmm. See what you think.
[MC]
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my jo
For auld lang syne
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne.
Now, I don’t think there’s anything mediocre about that. I think that fits the words perfectly. I think there’s a melancholy about that.
[GC]
Yes, and Mairi sings it gorgeously. Notoriously, Robert Burns’s tutor John Murdoch said he had a tin ear, and maybe occasionally he did, to think that that tune could be discarded. It’s a wee bit of a mystery why Burns didn’t think all that highly of it, but at that time, Burns is working through several dozen folk tunes, several dozen lyrics. He’s obsessed with the whole thing, and he hasn’t quite worked it all through.
[JB]
You say that he was sending his work to his publisher. What were those manuscripts used for? What was that fledgling music industry in those days?
[GC]
Well, he gets together with James Johnson for a collection called the Scots Musical Museum, which begins 1787 and goes on until after Burns’s death. Burns sets himself a kind of mission. He wants to collect and even restore what he fears might be the soon-forgotten musical heritage of Scotland. So, he’s a man on a mission, and he’s very quickly writing lyrics, adapting them to tunes. He doesn’t write tunes, really, yet he will suggest new tunes, he’ll take tunes that he knows, fiddle tunes, dance tunes, etc etc, strathspeys. And he’s rapidly sending this to James Johnson.
A few years later, by the early 1790s, he’s working with a second editor, George Thomson, who often gets a bum rap from Burnsians because they say, oh, he’s the man that makes it all classical, working with Beethoven and all these guys. The truth is that actually those drawing room settings in some ways historically are more authentic. And it’s later on we become more folksy, especially after jazz, especially after rock music, the 60s. Modern trad music tends to prefer some of the pared-down arrangements, the simple arrangements that we have with the James Johnson settings. But actually, I’ll let you into a wee secret: both the trad stuff and the classical stuff are brilliant. I’m glad we’ve got both … and the punk rock versions.
[JB]
Well, Mairi, you are a classical musician; you’re also a traditional musician. What do the various melodies evoke for you, and how do they do it?
[MC]
Good question. I have played the Beethoven and the Haydn arrangements of Auld Lang Syne and it’s nice to hear you say, Gerry, that you appreciate both of them and that’s right. It’s fascinating how both tunes have accommodated their times that they met.
The classical music is interesting one – lots of de de dee da da da da, little counterpoints – drawing room music, I would say. As a dance band player as well, having played 30 years of playing at New Year’s Eve with the ceilidh band at Hogmanay, everyone’s full, they form a circle: ladies and gentlemen, take your hands please for Auld Lang Syne. If I went into the original version of Auld Lang Syne at that point, there would be an uproar in the room as I meander through 5 verses! And so, in fact, at one point, we did that once upon a time. And somebody had said, well, I want your version because it’s your version. And I said, are you sure? And they said, Oh yes, oh aye. So we did it, sang it. But somebody came and complained. They were awfully put out because they couldn’t get the chance to run in and out and up and down and make a big hoo hah. So, I just think they both have their place.
[GC]
It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, about the most familiar version. I think we’ve all suffered a wee bit from Auld Lang Syne tune fatigue. We’ve all got a bit fed up with it, and that’s part of the reason that the less popular tune has recently become more popular. But if you go back to the more standard tune, it’s interesting to note of course that’s the one that features in films. And even though it’s more jaunty, very often it will be counterpointed with sad scenes. It’s been used, as Mairi says, for people to go a bit riotous after the bells. But at the same time, Wee Willie Winkie or whatever it’s sung in that most popularly known tune, but counterpointed with a sad scene.
[JB]
That’s Shirley Temple’s rendition in the movie Wee Willie Winkie, I think that’s 1937 or something like that, but not a dry eye in the house. Let’s talk about money. I take it Burns would have been paid for his work, but in terms of royalties for this song, who gets the royalties?
[GC]
No one, because it’s essentially out of copyright. It’s probably the second most sung song in the world after Happy Birthday. But it was a matter of pride for Burns when he was compiling the material for the Scots Musical Museum that he would not accept a penny. This was a man on a mission.
[JB]
Oh, he didn’t get paid? There are good decisions in your career, and there are bad decisions in your career. But not only that, he died before it really became popular.
[GC]
Yeah, it would have been a mystery to Burns perhaps, the extent to which the song went viral, went worldwide. He’s never entirely happy with it. He does two different versions for the Scots Musical Museum. He’s tinkering with it in letters to people like his confidante Mrs Dunlop, and he’s havering on about it to George Thompson before sending him material. Very often with Burns, with songs, with poems even, there are outtakes, there are extended versions; there’s things he might have put on the album! He’s a creative artist who doesn’t necessarily pin things down, and one of the problems of the Burns movement very often is both the man and the work they want certainty. Burns himself quite likes a lack of certainty, and some of that isn’t anything other than his creative development and uncertainty as he goes through the years.
[JB]
Well, you said that he did write about it to Mrs Dunlop, his patron. He wrote in 1788 and he asks her ‘is not the Scotch phrase auld lang syne, exceedingly expressive’, and added that ‘as an avid collector of traditional Scottish music and song that had thrilled through my soul’. He knew there was a bit of magic there. Mairi, when you’re performing it, do you perform all the verses?
[MC]
Yes, yes, I do the five verses. Think of it as two friends speaking to each other in a bar over a drink and when you think of it like that, it’s good.
We twa hae run about the braes, remembering the old days
And pou'd the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
Sin’ auld lang syne.
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.
Yeah, it’s a beautiful song to sing all 5 verses.
[JB]
And in terms of those words, let’s take the easy bit first … or is it! ‘Auld Lang Syne’, what does it mean?
[GC]
It’s almost impossible to translate.
[JB]
So not the easy bit first!
[GC]
Not the easy bit. It’s become a bit in the brain that no one can say precisely what it means, but it means something like ‘since days of old’. But clearly, it’s more emotionally charged than that, and the phrase itself has become almost a standalone trope or metaphor or thing that defines a state.
[JB]
Mairi?
[MC]
Well, it’s funny because it has been explored and it means, as far as I am aware, ‘time since past’. In When Harry Met Sally, there’s a lovely scene in it when he talks about Auld Lang Syne. What does it mean? What does this song mean anyway? Should auld acquaintance be forgot? Does that mean we should forget all the acquaintances? Or does it mean if we happen to forget them, we should remember them? Well, maybe it just means we should remember that we forgot them! Well, anyway, I love that, because actually a lot of people don’t know.
[JB]
It must confuse the living daylights out of a lot of people who are not actually conversant in Burns and 18th century.
[GC]
It does, if they think about it, but both the lyric and both tunes – certainly the most popular tune – they’ve become kind of like memes. They’ve become things that people relate to as a whole. They don’t necessarily need to know what it means in any detail. The lyric itself is all about big human nature and big universal nature – seas and the landscape and so on. And those are the buttons that really pushes. And then some of the particular stuff about ‘willie waulks’ and so on, people just sing that – it gives it a wee bit of novelty, and it doesn’t take too much trouble to work out what those things literally mean. People don’t need to know that if they’re singing it and they’re charging their glasses and toasting one another; it’s all in there. It’s a brilliantly immediate song and lyric in all kinds of ways.
[MC]
I agree. I think the language is confusing and a lot of folk don’t understand it, which we’ve made a bit of a humorous point out of. And it comes back to, Gerry, when you were saying about in the Burns societies and that element of Burns, you have a sense that you ought to know what it’s all about. You should know and people hide the fact that they don’t really know. But when you bring that out like in my show Auld Lang Syne, which is a little music theatre show, I really make a point of that, of really not understanding because I didn’t understand what the words meant. I didn’t. I had to say today, if you know, what does ‘ye’ll be your pint-stowp’ actually mean?
[JB]
What does that mean?
[MC]
Well, it means ‘you buy your pint and I’ll buy mine’.
[JB]
How Scottish!
[MC]
I know. And then I was like, what does ‘a richt gude-willie waught’ mean, and what’s a willie waught? And he said it’s not a richt-gude willie waught. It’s a richt gude-willie waught. And it means goodwill. We’ll take a deep drink or draught of goodwill. And then he was like, I would be singing pooled and Dave says don’t say pooled, you should say poooooooled.
[GC]
And of course, the willie waught is about toasting one another. It’s not meanness per se. It’s like you both invest in getting the drink for each other as a token of friendship, as a token of love. The whole song is, as we keep saying, about love, about friendship. It’s the worldwide anthem of friendship, if not of love itself.
[JB]
Let’s take a break. That’s a good point to take a break when we talk about the worldwide fame of it. But before we do, can I just ask, was it immediately popular? Did it storm to the top of the Georgian Hit Parade?
[GC]
No, it didn’t. It was a fairly obscure text sent by Burns to Johnson, and it sits there somewhat inert until Thompson gets his hands on it. And actually, it begins to take off probably about the 1820s in any real meaningful way, because that’s when Burns becomes more respectable than he’d been. That’s when his music begins to be much more received in the European romantic context. So, it’s a slow burner.
[JB]
And he’s long gone, as I said. Let’s take a break. We have a homegrown song. It’s getting a bit of a following. When we come back, we’ll talk about how that following went global and why.
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[JB]
Welcome back to the podcast. I’m joined by singer and musician Mairi Campbell and, from the University of Glasgow, Burns scholar Professor Gerry Carruthers. Gerry, when did Auld Lang Syne begin to go global and why?
[GC]
Part of the reason is from about the 1810s, the 1820s, people are looking at Burns as a writer who has been set in his songs by the likes of Beethoven and Haydn, as we’ve said, and it’s quite difficult to trace exactly what’s going on. But at some point, this has to do with empire; it has to do with the Anglophone world as well as Europe. We have it taking off somewhat in America, so that we know by the time of the American Civil War, it’s very much seen as a song that is associated with home. And indeed, for a time, the Union side in the Civil War, the bands aren’t allowed to play it, and it’s finally struck up again …
[JB]
Why aren’t they allowed to play it?
[GC]
There’s a kind of fear – it’s strange – but there’s a fear that this will make the troops too homesick and not be concentrating on the cause. When the Confederates finally surrender, that’s one of the first tunes that struck up, Auld Lang Syne. The idea is you can all go home now. We know that by that time in the United States, partly but not exclusively due to the expat Scots community, Auld Lang Syne has got a real coinage. It’s got a real popularity. That, and also from about the 1820s/1830s in Europe, we know that people are appreciating it. Those are two strands.
And also, obviously enough in Scotland, it’s taking on more and more momentum through the 19th century as the Burns cult develops.
[JB]
Mairi, do we know when it was first associated with Hogmanay?
[MC]
Well, I wonder if it was to do with Guy Lombardo at this point, the Canadian–Italian bandleader who had a band called the Royal Canadians and he was doing great and he was working down in New York. They asked him if he had something he could bring to Hogmanay, and he arranged the version of Auld Lang Syne that he was familiar with from his hometown in Ontario, which had been settled by Scots. And he arranged it, and they played it in New York. And it’s one that became recorded on television in 1950s, I think before that, from 1929, I think it was in the radio. But it really became a fixture, a Hogmanay fixture – beautiful arrangement that the band did. For at least 30 years, that was a regular. I think that’s when it really became a fixture. Would you say that?
[JB]
Gerry, can you add to that?
[GC]
Yes. I think Mairi’s spot on. There’s a wee bit of happenstance. It’s partly Guy Lombardo; it’s partly the fact that it’s in circulation in North America anyway. And then the fact that, really more than anyone, Guy Lombardo’s dance band brings that together with Hogmanay celebrations in the age of radio, the age of TV, Times Square.
In many ways, this is a song that has to do with the new media, and that’s what propels it worldwide.
[JB]
Is it the case, though? Again, so many urban myths surrounding it, that one of the main sponsors of the radio show back in 1929, the Hogmanay show, was Robert Burns Panatelas. And that’s what gave him the idea to use Auld Lang Syne.
[GC]
That might or might not be true.
[JB]
This is Gerry’s nice way of saying you’re havering, which is another good Scots word that’s probably included in Burns history.
[GC]
I think it’s just the genesis and the ongoing fame and the increasing fame of Auld Lang Syne. It’s covered in all kinds of unknowable bits, and we know that culture often works like this. You know how do football fans all suddenly learn the same chant? How do they know to do that together? Auld Lang Syne is something the same. There’s about 200 different routes that underlie its popularity and its transmission. That’s one of the things that makes it quite wonderful. That’s one of the things that makes it a phenomenon.
[JB]
It was also used as a bit of background music in a Charlie Chaplin film, in The Gold Rush, and that’s back in 1925. Guy Lombardo took it and ran with it in terms of Hogmanay ,but it had been associated because that was a New Year scene then. And it’s the sentimentality, Mairi, isn’t it? It’s the old and the new. It just fits New Year.
[MC]
It fits New Year and it fits the marking of the end of something, the marking of the end of a gathering, the marking of the end of the year, the closing of something. It’s played in Japan in shopping stores at the end of every single day of the year to let the customer know that the establishment will soon be closing. I think having a song which marks a closing, you don’t need that many. Maybe there’s something about that one where people go, well, that’ll do, and they’ve somehow, just like Gerry’s saying, it’s gathered its own momentum.
[JB]
But I can understand it catching on in the English-speaking world. But it’s big in Japan. It’s been translated into Arabic and Czech, Esperanto, Maori, Russian, Swahili, Urdu, Vietnamese, and it goes on and on and on. What is the power of the song that has enabled that to happen?
[GC]
One of the things simply has to do with the medium, and that is the fact that all of those places you’ve just mentioned Jackie are hearing the song on the radio. So, even without understanding the lyric or having the lyric somewhat explained to them, we’ve got the tune pushing those buttons. Not because they absolutely push those buttons, but because it has gone viral through the age of radio.
It’s also the case that in places like Soviet Russia, Burns becomes more and more a poet of the people. And it’s also the case that vary widely across the world – in Asia, in North America and Europe – Burns has that association as a poet of the people and therefore his oeuvre is consumed. It’s published, it’s re-published and all these things have come together in a way that’s very difficult to pin down. So that becomes, as we keep saying, the world anthem that it becomes.
[JB]
Now, Mairi, as I said, you’ve performed it countless times, including one very special event. I’ll let you tell the story … and don’t skimp on the name dropping.
[MC]
Well, yes. So, the recording that I mentioned that Dave and I first made in 1993 was made on a tape and off it went into the world in 1993. About six years later in 1999, we got a call from the producers on the Presidential Lifetime Achievements Award in America who were asking us if we would come to sing Auld Lang Syne for Sean Connery’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
It came out the blue, but apparently one of the producers had our tape in her car and the production team were trying to figure out, shall we honour Sean Connery’s James Bond story, or shall we go with the Scottish one? And so it was between myself and Shirley Bassey, apparently.
[JB]
You’re indistinguishable, you two!
[MC]
Yes, there’s another name-drop: Shirley Bassey. Anyway, in the end they chose us and so we were invited to this grand event. It was quite an extraordinary weekend. I was slightly in No Man’s Land or No Woman’s Land, maybe. My mother had only died just six weeks before that, and my baby was 8 months old. And so we were in this maelstrom of living life, at this particular juncture. And then on top of that came this event: fly out to Washington, sing this song. It was really thrilling. And Sean Connery was there. And George Clooney and Stevie Wonder and Bill Clinton, among many, many others. It was an A List celebrity moment.
[JB]
And am I allowed to remind you? Yes, you’re nodding. You forgot the words.
[MC]
Correct, correct. It all was a bit, went a bit over. It was too much; it was a wee bit too much and my professional holding evaporated in the moment. Just one of those real things that that you get, which I wasn’t expecting because I’m not someone that tends to have nerves really. But once I was on that stage, the producers had said just sing the first verse and the last verse and that was fine.
But what I did was I went into verse three, ‘We twa hae run about the braes, And pou’d the gowans fine’. And as I spoke those words, this great black tunnel came towards me and I knew I was going to lose the words. I knew it. I could feel it. I just lost it.
But I kept singing. Of course I had to make it up. I had to make all the words up, and I was in the middle of the chorus. Who doesn’t know the Auld Lang Syne chorus? Auld lang syne, my Jo; for auld lang syne. And I’m off on these little meanderings – making it all up!
[JB]
The joy of old Scots. The fact that you were in America and few people knew, but yeah, like a trooper!
[MC]
I had two things happen to me that helped me through that moment and probably only lasted for 30 seconds. But 30 seconds is a long time when you’re in that space. First thing was keep singing. They don’t understand the words anyway, right? And then the second thing that happened was there was this voice that came from somewhere. And it was like the voice of my mother, and I do think it actually was. And she was saying fling out your arms and feel your feet; feel your feet, fling out your arms. It was so much for me, so I did that. I opened my body up and I threw my arms out. And I felt my feet and I just saved myself and came back. The words came back. Dave meanwhile, bless him, was still playing the old chords. He just kept going and I finally hooked back into what was required.
[JB]
But isn’t that lovely of your mum and how she helped you through, and no one did notice. You went down a storm. Let me move on a few years because there was someone in the audience who was going to take your performance of that song and run with it. Tell me about that.
[MC]
Matthew Broderick was one of the presenters that night and his wife is Sarah Jessica Parker. So, another 10 years. You see, every 10 years we get a good gig. We get one of those fancy gigs, actually a little bit over 10 years since the last one …
[JB]
Anyone listening to this – you can contact Mary on …
[MC]
We’re ready! Back in 2008, Sarah Jessica Parker’s production team for the show for Sex and the City: The Movie contacted us and said we’ve got your song in a queue. It might be used, we’re not sure. But just to let you know, it might be happening.
And that was in about September. And then the following spring we saw the film was being launched in London and everybody was there. It was a red carpet affair, but we hadn’t heard anything at that point so we weren’t sure. I phoned up the record company and I said, oh, by the way, any idea what’s going on? And they said your song’s in the movie, so that was amazing. That was amazing. So after that there was a whole, it all worked out beautifully. It was all great, but it was a surprise. It was a surprise but a very nice surprise.
[JB]
Well, I’ve spoken to artists in my time who have also been told that their song’s been chosen to be in a movie, and they’ve paid their money, they’ve got their popcorn and they sat down – and it’s either not made the final cut or there’s a line of it in the background. You got, what, 3½ minutes? Was it almost 3½ minutes? It’s a pivotal point in the movie and it’s your version. And I suppose not only the brilliance of your version, Mary, but the fact that it was fitting for the most emotional pivot point of that movie.
Gerry, you’ve studied not only the Burnsian scholar bit of this, but also which of its uses in a movie, in a song or whatever, has most enhanced its fame?
[GC]
I think it’s quite portable in a lot of ways, Jackie. It becomes a kind of filmic trope, and you see this in the Chaplin Gold Rush film. You see it in It’s a Wonderful Life where it’s played where the individual at that point is outside the circle and it’s calling them back in. And it works every time. And without lambasting directors and producers and writers of film, I would say it’s quite a cheap right to do that. And it works because it’s part of this universal worldwide vocabulary of culture.
So, it’s a very easy thing to do in a sense, but also because it helps anchor New Year. You see Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush, where, as I say, he’s outside the circle. And the idea is let’s bring you back into the love, let’s bring you back into the light. And that’s almost always the way in which it’s used. So, this is a repeated trope that does genuinely tug on the heartstrings, but at the same time it’s a bit of a cliche in terms of filmic language I would suggest.
[JB]
The Internet means, of course, that the music industry has changed and much more fragmented. There are and will be fewer – there will still be global music superstars – pieces of universally known music because we can all make our choices now. Will Auld Lang Syne sustain? I’ll ask you both. Gerry, you go first.
[GC]
Yes, I think it absolutely will because the essential structures of festivity of both the Burns Supper, which is something we get a lot, Hogmanay – while these things endure, Auld Lang Syne will remain one of the great world hits. I don’t think there’s any possibility unless society and culture change radically worldwide that will lose its place, he said confidently.
[JB]
We could be doing with a bit of the sentiment of the song, that’s for sure. Mairi, what do you think?
[MC]
Yeah, I agree. I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere unless it’s banned …
[JB]
… or cancelled! Why would they cancel Auld Lang Syne?
[MC]
No, I think it’s like Gerry says, the societal things are in place. It has its place in our events that we like to hold. Yeah, I think it’s here to stay as well.
[JB]
Well, let’s hope so. Something that the world can share. And the theme of friendship is a good note on which to end. Mairi Campbell, thank you for your words and your music. And thanks to Professor Gerry Carruthers.
And just to mention that this is the last edition of the podcast in the series. We’ll be back again very soon. In the meantime, why not visit the Burns Birthplace Museum, which has more than 5,000 artefacts, including those Auld Lang Syne manuscripts. You can get details of opening times on our website at nts.org.uk and that’s also where you’ll find details of the Your Scotland campaign.
Now, the National Trust for Scotland is a charity and if you’d like to make a donation, we’d be very grateful. It’ll help ensure your Scotland, whether it’s your heritage or your wild places, from manuscripts to mountains, continue to be cared for, for generations to come. That’s all from me. Until next time, goodbye.
[MC]
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne
And here’s a hand, my trusty fere!
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.
For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.
For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
Jackie gathers two companions to discuss the ‘song that everybody sings’: Auld Lang Syne. With lyrics penned by Robert Burns in 1788, but origins dating back further, it is now a global anthem of friendship, celebration, yearning and nostalgia.
Mairi Campbell, a Scottish musician whose version appeared in the Sex and the City film and has since created a show inspired by the song, is the first of Jackie’s two guests. Also joining the conversation is Professor Gerard Carruthers, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Francis Hutcheson Chair of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow.
With just a few weeks to go until people sing Auld Lang Syne on Hogmanay, Mairi and Gerard reveal their personal connections to the song and its words, how it came to international significance, and how it has evolved since its very early origins.
This episode was released in December 2023.