The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #16346   Message #364739
Posted By: GUEST,Bruce O.
28-Dec-00 - 04:24 PM
Thread Name: Auld Lang Syne
Subject: RE: Auld Lang Syne
I don't know which "Auld Lang Syne" the above post refers to, but I greatly doubt it in either case.

Someone posted the lyrics that Robert Burns sent to George Thompson in a letter of Sept., 1793, on a news group recently. In the heading Burns said the song was the original that he had gotten from the singing of an old man. Except for minor spelling and punctuation changes that's the one Thompson published with the tune currently used for "Auld Lang Syne". The text in Burns' handwriting in the interleaved 'Scots Musical Museum' and in the 'Scots Musical Museum', #413 (where the tune is a version of old "Auld Lang Syne") differ only in the placement of one verse. So by Burns' own statement not a word of the song is by him.