Burns Night: Tartan, Haggis, and a Global Legacy

Ah, Burn’s Night, that annual spectacle of tartan-wrapped sentimentality when the Scots remind everyone of their heritage. Beyond haggis, neeps, and tatties, there is, of course, The Address itself:

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great Chieftain o’ the Puddin-race!

Perhaps not Robert Burns’s maximum opus for surely that superlative must go to ‘Auld Lang Syne’, which, according to the BBC, might owe its hand-linking tradition to Freemasonry, because apparently, no ritual is too obscure to claim credit.¹“Why do people link hands to sing Auld Lang Syne?” bbc.co.uk, 31 December 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59838057.

Yet this Masonic link, fascinating though it may be to conspiracy theorists, does little to explain how a song in a language most cannot understand became a global anthem. Some in England, with our proud tradition of suppressing Scots culture, must find it particularly galling that a song in a language we once actively tried to discourage is now belted out at events from Tokyo to Times Square.

The British Empire, as ever, had a hand in it. The Highland Clearances forcibly scattered Scots far and wide, and the Empire’s global sprawl helped carry Burns’s words to the far corners of the earth. The displaced Scots, being irritatingly capable and frequently well-educated, took the poet’s musings with them, introducing his work to cultures far more receptive than their own rulers ever were.

And so, ‘Auld Lang Syne’ took on a life of its own. It is sung at Japanese graduations, showcased Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone, and became a New Year’s Eve anthem thanks to Americans, who will adopt anything with a tune. Even the Boy Scouts sang it at their first World Jamboree in 1920, spreading its sentimental cheer to even more corners of the globe.

The song’s enduring appeal, we are told, lies in its universal themes of friendship, kindness, and equality. Burns’s disdain for social injustice and emphasis on humility over power apparently still resonate. More relevant than ever in these disturbing times.

While the BBC may try to tie the song’s endurance to Masonic hand-holding, the reality is simpler: Burns captured something deeply human. That his work outlasted the Empire that unwittingly spread it is both ironic and fitting, a small triumph for poetry over pomp.²Inspired by ‘THEY JUST CAN’T HELP THEMSELVES.’ Iain Lawson. 2 Jan. 2022. https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2022/01/02/they-just-cant-themselves/

• 1
  “Why do people link hands to sing Auld Lang Syne?” bbc.co.uk, 31 December 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59838057
• 2
  Inspired by ‘THEY JUST CAN’T HELP THEMSELVES.’ Iain Lawson. 2 Jan. 2022. https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2022/01/02/they-just-cant-themselves/