Editor’s note: “The Spoken Word” is shared by Lloyd Newell each Sunday during the weekly Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square broadcast. This week’s broadcast includes previously recorded music and a message recorded in Scotland in June 2022. This will be given Sunday, Jan. 1, 2023.

Here in this cottage in the Scottish lowlands during the late 1700s, the poet Robert Burns was born and lived his early life. The Burns family were tenant farmers. Here they worked the land, ate their meals together and gathered by the hearth at night to read. In their village of Alloway, Scotland, about 60 kilometers or so south of Glasgow, young Robert’s poetic imagination was kindled. From this humble beginning, Burns rose to fame and left an enduring legacy as the national poet of Scotland.

The best-known poem attributed to Burns is “Auld Lang Syne.” However, it did not appear in print until shortly after his death, at age 37, in 1796. And Burns himself reported that he heard the words “from an old man’s singing” (see “Letters of Robert Burns,” selected by J. Logie Robertson, published in 1887, page 337). Whether Burns composed the poem, adapted it or simply recorded it, “Auld Lang Syne” has been associated with Burns ever since.

The poem was soon paired with a traditional folk tune, and today it is sung as a part of New Year’s celebrations around the world. And yet, because of its origins in the Scots language, not everyone is familiar with the significance of the phrase “auld lang syne.” In modern English it literally means “old long since” — or, in other words, days gone by, times that have long since passed but we remember with fondness.

And so as we sing, year in and year out, we ask ourselves:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And auld lang syne?

In our rush for the new and different, the latest and greatest, the song asks, will the “old long since” be forgotten? The old friendships, the relationships, the memories of days gone by — can we hold on to the old as we also embrace the new that lies ahead? The truth is, we need remembrances of the past. They ground us in the present and help move us confidently into the future. Just as the people and the beautiful land of Scotland shaped Robert Burns, we are shaped by the people and places we have known, our old long since. So as we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new, let the “auld lang syne” never be forgotten.

Tuning in …

The “Music & the Spoken Word” broadcast is available on KSL-TV, KSL Radio 1160AM/102.7FM, KSL.com, BYUtv, BYUradio, Dish and DirectTV, SiriusXM Radio (Ch. 143), the tabernaclechoir.org, youtube.com/TheTabernacleChoir and Amazon Alexa (must enable skill). The program is aired live on Sundays at 9:30 a.m. on many of these outlets. Look up broadcast information by state and city at musicandthespokenword.com/viewers-listeners/airing-schedules.

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