Decrypting "Auld Lang Syne"

What the hell is "Auld Lang Syne"? Well, there's two answers to that question, depending on what you mean by it.

First off, the song. The song is an old Scottish folk ballad, restored and added to by Scots poet Robert Burns. Experts debate how much he added and modified, but certainly portions of it pre-exist him by hundreds of years. He never claimed to be the original author, and there are personal documents of his that reference his admiration for the original author or authors.

The second answer is to the question of what exactly the phrase "Auld Lang Syne" means.

It's Scottish dialect, fairly old, or should I say "auld"?

Right, "auld" is "old" , "lang" is pretty much the same as "long" and "syne" maps to "since".

The phrase literally means "Old long since" and is a traditional phrase used in Scottish writing, particularly poems and fairy stories, largely the same way we use "Once upon a time" or "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away".

So the opening line means "If we should forget old friends and days of long ago..." followed by an exhortation to drink to them anyway. Those Scots with their deep-friend Mars bars and public houses, a people with a great history as poets, warriors and cirrhosis patients with blocked arteries.

There you have it. Now go dazzle your friends and drinking buddies with your knowledge of folksong lyrics.