one hundred
eighty-four; to Thomson's about sixty-four. Some examples will make
clear the nature of his services.

_Auld Lang Syne_, perhaps the most wide-spread of all songs among the
English-speaking peoples, is in its oldest extant form attributed on
uncertain grounds to Francis Sempill of Beltrees or Sir Robert
Aytoun.[2] That still older forms had existed appears from its title
in the broadside in which it is preserved:

"An excellent and proper new ballad, entitled Old Long Syne. Newly
corrected and amended, with a large and new edition [sic] of
several excellent love lines."

[2] The melody to which the song is now sung is not that to which
Burns wrote it, but was an old strathspey tune. It is possible,
however, that he agreed to its adoption by Thomson.

It opens thus:

Should old acquaintance be forgot
And never thought upon,
The Flames of Love extinguished
And freely past and gone?
Is thy kind Heart now grown so cold
In that Loving Breast of thine,
That thou can'st never once reflect
On old-long-syne.

And so on, for eighty lines.

Allan Ramsay rewrote it for his _Tea-Table Miscellany_ (1724), and a
specimen stanza will show that it was still going down-hill:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
Tho' they return with scars?
These are the noble hero's lot,
Obtain'd in glorious wars;
Welcome, my Varo, to my breast,
Thy arms about me twine,
And make me once again as blest
As I was lang syne.

The remaining four stanzas are worse. Burns may have had further hints
to work on which are now lost; but the best, part of the song, stanzas
three and four, are certainly his, and it is unlikely that he
inherited more than some form of the first verse and the chorus.

AULD LANG SYNE

Should auld acquaintance be forgot [old]
And never brought to min'? [mind]
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne? [long ago]

For auld lang syne, my dear.
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp, [will pay for]
And surely I'll be mine;
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes, [two have, hillsides]