auld lang syne

Illustration accompanying an 1842 publication of Robert Burns’s version of Auld Lang Syne

27 December 2023

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?

The song, lyrics by Robert Burns, is traditionally sung at midnight on New Year’s Eve, but what does auld lang syne mean and where does the phrase come from? Burns wrote the lyrics to the song we sing today, but he did not originate the phrase.

Auld lang syne means “times long past” or “consideration/remembrance of old friendships.” The first two words in the phrase are easy to deduce; auld is simply a Scots variant of old and lang a variant of long, but syne is a stumper for most people. Scots is, depending on your perspective, either a dialect of English spoken in Scotland or a language closely related to English that is spoken in Scotland. (Linguistically, there is no distinction between a dialect and a language; the distinction is political.) Scots is not the same as Gaelic, which is a Celtic language, whereas both Scots and English are Germanic languages.

Syne is a shortened form of the Middle English adverb sitthen, meaning “then,” “after,” or “since.” This shortened form was common in Scotland and the north of England. An early appearance of the word is in the poem Patience written by an anonymous poet, dubbed either the Pearl poet or the Gawain poet after two other poems in the manuscript in which it is found. The manuscript dates to c. 1400 and the poem is believed to have been written c. 1380 in the region around what is now Chester in the north of England. The poem is about Jonah, and the passage in question happens when he is on shipboard during a storm, as he is being thrown into the sea and swallowed by the whale:

Tyd by top and bi to þay token hym synne;
In-to þat lodlych loʒe þay luche hym sone.
He watz no tytter outtulde þat tempest ne sessed.

(Bound above and below, they took him then;
Into that turbulent sea they soon threw him.
He was no sooner tossed overboard than the tempest ceased.)

Syne was also often combined with lang, sometimes written as one word, langsyne, meaning literally “long since” or idiomatically “long ago.” It appears as early as 1513 in a poem “Full Oft I Mvse and Hes in Thocht” by the Scottish poet William Dunbar:

Had I for warldis unkyndnes
In hairt tane ony havines,
Or fro my pleasans bene opprest,
I had bene deid langsyne, dowtles;
For to be blyth me think it best.

(Had I for worldly unkindness
In [my] heart taken any despair,
Or from my delight been oppressed,
I would have doubtless been dead long-since;
For to be happy I think it best.)

The full phrase auld lang syne appears by 1666 in a note associated with a letter from Archibald Campbell, the Ninth Earl of Argyll to John Maitland, the Second Earl (later Duke) of Lauderdale:

I have biden Lady Mother take something out of her owne head, for I have no mor in my head to say, but deare lord father, farewell for old long syne.*

Your owne pritie man,
Johne Lauderdaill

Deare swit lord father, remember my new yirs gift.

The footnote reads:

* This is a song he is much taken with. He dances all dances to that tune, and repeates the words on all occasions.

The editors of this nineteenth century edition state this undated note was enclosed in a letter from Argyll to Lauderdale of 28 March 1666 and that the note itself is in the hand of Argyll’s wife, Mary Stuart, and the footnote is in Argyll’s hand. The “father” is probably her husband, Argyll, as her actual father was no longer living. But that leaves a mystery as to why it is signed with Lauderdale’s name and who it is that is “taken with” the song. Unfortunately, the editorial notes in the edition raise more questions than they answer.

But regardless of the above, it is clear from the note that by 1666 the phrase auld lang syne was a lyric in a song and that the phrase, at least in Mary Stuart’s mind, was associated with New Year’s Day. The date of the associated letter, 28 March, is only three days after the New Year, which was celebrated in March in England and Scotland at the time.

The identity of the song that Mary Stuart refers to is unknown. But we do have a song of that title that was printed c. 1701, some forty-five years later. The broadsheet ballad, the surviving copy of which was printed in 1711, is found in Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Ry.III.a.10(070), the opening lines of which are:

An Excellent and proper New Ballad, Entituled,

OLD LONG SYNE,

Newly correct and amended, with a large and new Edition of several excellent Love Lines,

To be sung with its own proper Musical Sweet Tune.

Should Old Acquaintance be forgot,
    and never thought upon;
The flames of Love extinguished,
    and fully past and gone:
Is thy sweet Heart now grown so cold,
    that loving Breast of thine;
That thou canst never once reflect
   on Old long syne.
On Old long syne my Jo,
   on Old long syne,
That thou canst never once reflect,
   on Old long syne.

Other poets, such as Allan Ramsay (1686–1757), created variations on this anonymous poem, the most famous of which is by Robert Burns (1759–96), whose version we sing today.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

“Broadside Ballad Entitled ‘Old Long Syne’” (c. 1701). The Word on the Street (blog). National Library of Scotland. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Ry.III.a.10(070).

Dunbar, William. “Full Oft I Mus and Hes in Thocht.” The Poems of William Dunbar, J. Kinsley, ed. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1989, 67, lines 31–34. Exeter Medieval Online.

“For the Earle of Argyll” (28 March 1666). Letters from Archibald, Earl of Argyll to John, Duke of Lauderdale. Edinburgh: 1829, 36–37. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Middle English Dictionary, 2018, s. v. sin, adv.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2017, s.v. auld lang syne, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. langsyne, adv. (and n.); syne, adv. and conj.

“Patience.” The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, revised edition. Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron, eds. Exeter: U of Exeter Press, 2002, lines 195, 229–30. London, British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x

Image credit: John Masey Wright (artist) and John Rogers (engraver), c. 1841. Wikimedia Commons. In Allan Cunningham, ed. The Complete Works of Robert Burns, vol. 1 of 2. London: George Virtue, 1842, 206. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

yule

The Yule Log (1966). The Yule Log is a television program broadcast by WPIX (New York) television on Christmas Eve from 1989–89 and from 2001–present. It consists of a film loop of a log burning in a fireplace with audio of Christmas music. The original film loop was filmed at the New York City mayor’s residence, Gracie Mansion. By 1969 that film had degraded and new version was filmed in a California fireplace. The original loop was only 17 seconds long; the second version runs for six minutes. The overall show is several hours in duration, and viewers often take pleasure in spotting the splice where the film loops and starts over.

25 December 2023

Yule comes from the Old English geola. The word probably originally referred to the winter solstice and the associated celebration of the days growing longer. The Old English word is cognate with, but apparently not descended from, the Old Norse jól, a pagan solstice celebration. In later Old English use, the period for which we have written evidence, geola came to refer to the Christmas season, and more specifically to the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany, the “twelve days of Christmas.”

The English term is attested to as early as 726 by Bede in his De temporibus ratione (About the Reckoning of Time):

XV. De Mensibus Anglorum

[…]

Primusque eorum mensis, quem latini januarium vocant, dicitur giuli; deinde februarius, solmonath; […] november, blodmonath; december giuli, eodem quo januarius nomine, vocatur […] Menses giuli a conversion solis in auctum diei, quia unus eorum praecedit, alius subsequitur, nomen accipiunt.

(15. About the English months

[...]

And the first of their months, which the Latins call January, is called Yule; then February, Solmonath; [...] November, blodmonath; December, Yule, by the same name as January. […] The Yule months derive their name the change of the sun in the length of the day, because one of them precedes [that change] and another follows.)

While one would normally assume that Bede knew the English names for the months, it seems unlikely that two months would bear the same name. And we don’t see a standalone geola used as the name of the month except for here and in later works that are relying on Bede. Instead, the extant texts that don’t have Bede as a source use the phrases se ærra geola, literally before Yule, for December and se æfterra geola, literally after Yule, for January. There are also uses of geolmonaþ to refer to December. We also see geohholdæg, literally Yule-day, used to refer to Christmas Day or to one of the twelve days of Christmas. (There are other inaccuracies in this passage from Bede. He plays fast and loose with the facts in this passage, which is something of a polemic that attempts to denigrate pagan practices. For instance, he gives the origin of solmonaþ as a “month of cakes” that are offered to the gods. This explanation spurious; we don’t know the origin of the name. The obvious conclusion would be that it means “sun-month,” but that makes little sense for February. Also, it is here that Bede gives the spurious explanation that Eostre (Easter) is the name of a pagan goddess. Here and elsewhere, Bede is simply not a reliable narrator.)

That’s the origin of yule. It has always referred to the period around the winter solstice/Christmas, with various specific applications depending on the circumstances.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Bede. De temporibus ratione. In Opera de temporibus, Charles W. Jones, ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Medieval Academy of America, 1943, 211–212.

Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. geola, iula, n.; geohhol, gehhol, geol, n.; geol-monaþ, iul-monaþ; geohhol-dæg.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. Yol, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. yule, n.

Zoëga, Geir T. A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, (1910). Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 2004, jól, n.

Image credit: WPIX television, 1966. Wikimedia Commons. Fair use of a single, low-resolution frame from a television program to illustrate the topic under discussion.

lawrencium

Albert Ghiorso (center left) adds lawrencium to the periodic table. Looking on, left to right, are Robert Latimer, Torbjørn Sikkeland, and Almon E. Larsh

22 December 2023

Lawrencium is a synthetic chemical element with atomic number 103 and the symbol Lr. It is named in honor of Ernest Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron and founder of the laboratory that made the first claim of the element’s discovery. The most stable isotope of lawrencium has a half-life of only eleven hours. It has no uses beyond pure research.

The discovery of lawrencium was announced on 12 April 1961, but the announcement was overshadowed by Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space aboard Vostok 1 which happened on the same day, and US-Soviet competition would make the naming of the element controversial throughout the Cold War. A wire service report on the discovery from that day reads:

A new chemical element has been discovered by United States atomic scientists, it was announced Wednesday.

The discovery was made by a group at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at the University of California. They have suggested that the new element 103 be named Lawrencium, with the chemical symbol lw [sic] in honor of the late Ernest C. Lawrence, Nobel prize winning inventor of the cyclotron and founder of the laboratory.

The initial discovery was made by Albert Ghiorso, Torbjørn Sikkeland, Almon E. Larsh and Robert M. Latimer of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1963 the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) accepted the name lawrencium but changed the symbol to Lr.

The initial discovery was not, however, without controversy. The data published by the Berkeley team was insufficient to confirm the element’s existence, and that confirmation came over the next few years from Soviet scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia. IUPAC initially credited the Berkeley team as the sole discoverers but in 1997 revised that assessment and gave credit for the discovery to both the American and Russian teams. The name and symbol remained unchanged.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Ghiorso, Albert, et al. “New Element, Lawrencium, Atomic Number 103” (13 April 1961). Physical Review Letters, 6.9, 1 May 1961, 473–475 at 475. American Physical Society.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 3—Rivalry of Scientists in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries.” Foundations of Chemistry, 12 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09452-9.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. lawrencium, n.

United Press International. “Atomic Scientists Find New Element.” Houston Chronicle (Texas), 12 April 1961, section 2, 5.3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Boxing Day

Boxing Day shoppers at Toronto’s Eaton Centre mall, 26 December 2019

20 December 2023

Boxing Day is 26 December, the day after Christmas. It is celebrated in Britain and many of the Commonwealth countries, including Canada, but not in the United States. The name arises out of the old practice of giving servants a box of money and gifts on that day. The name Boxing Day appears in the mid eighteenth century, although the practice of distributing gifts to servants and apprentices is older.

The practice of distributing money to the poor on 26 December, St. Stephen’s Day on the Roman Catholic calendar, dates to medieval times, but that is not the origin of the later practice or the phrase Boxing Day.

As for the history of the term itself, the verb to box, meaning to place things in a container, and corresponding noun boxing date to the mid sixteenth century. We also see the phrases Christmas box and butler’s box by the sixteenth century, but the earliest uses of these come out of gambling. At the holidays, aristocratic gamers would put aside a portion of their winnings in a box to give to the butler. We see Christmas box in this context in a sermon on the evils of usury that was printed in 1558:

Marie, as nedefull may we count them amoong vs, as amoo[n]g gamners, is ten and fowr for a Christmas box, that in smal processe of play (if the banks be not the bigger) is like to rob all ye boord.

And in another sermon on usury in 1591 we see butler’s box:

Now, you long to heare what the Vsurer is like. To what shal I like[n] this generatio[n]? They are like a Butlers box: for as all the counters at last come to the Butler; so all the mony at last commeth to the Vsurer, ten after ten, & ten after ten, and ten to ten, til at last he receiue not only ten for an hundreth, but an hundreth for ten. This is the onely difference, that the Butler can receiue no more than he deliuered: but the Vsurer receiueth more than he deliuereth.

And there is this 1628 witticism by John Taylor. Taylor (1578–1653) dubbed himself “The Water Poet.” He was a Thames waterman by trade, but a very successful poet and writer on the side. Widely read in his own day, he is virtually forgotten today. Literary elites like Ben Jonson criticized his language as vulgar and common, but that didn’t seem to affect his popular appeal. He made this comparison of parliament to a butler’s box:

One asked a fellow what the Westminster Hall was like; Marry, quoth the other, it is like a Butlers Box at Christmas amongst gamesters, for whosoeuer loseth, the Box will be sure to bee a winner.

But by the time Taylor had written this, the use of Christmas boxes had spread and no longer was just a practice among gamblers. The earliest reference to servants in general, in this case apprentices, getting a Christmas box appears in Randle Cotgrave’s 1611 French-English dictionary:

Pillemaille, as Palemaille; or such a box as our London Prentices beg withal before Christmas.

And by the middle of the next century we start seeing uses of Boxing Day in reference to the day after Christmas. The earliest I’m aware of is in testimony given in a London criminal trial on 17 January 1743. Three men had been accused of mugging a man, and the witness’s testimony helped exonerate them as none of them matched the witness’s description of the mugger:

Tuesday in Christmas Week, about Eight in the Evening, I was coming over this broad Place, and saw a Man come up to this lame Man, and knock him down—It was the Day after Boxing Day—It was a black, well-set Man, in his own Hair, that knocked him down, and then he took him by the Collar; with that he cried out, You will throttle me. I saw him take a Stock off his Neck, and put it into his Pocket, and then I heard him say, He has took my Stock, my Clasp, and my Money.

And the London General Advertiser newspaper ran this ad on 25 December 1747:

This Day is Publish’d,
Price 6d. each Plain, 1 s. Colour’d,
CHRISMASS [sic] GAMBOLS, representing
The Humours of Christmas and Boxing Day, in two Plates neatly Engrav’d.

Today, Boxing Day is chiefly celebrated by shopping at post-holiday sales—a practice that is also celebrated in the United States, although the term Boxing Day isn’t used there.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Cotgrave, Randle. A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. London: Adam Islip, 1611, s.v. pillemaille. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

General Advertiser (London), 25 December 1747, 3/1. NewspaperArchive.com.

Old Bailey Proceedings Online. “Trial of Richard Stroud, Henry Stroud, Edward Taylor. Violent Theft: Highway Robbery” (t17430114-29), 17 January 1743.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2021, s.v. Boxing Day, n., box, n.2., box, v.2., boxing, n.1.; March 2020, s.v. Christmas Box, n.; September 2018, s.v. butler’s box, n.

Smith, Henry. The Examination of Usury in Two Sermons. London: R. Field for T. Man, 1591, 30–31. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

A Speciall Grace, Appointed to Haue Been Said After a Banket at Yorke. London, John Kingston for Nicholas England, 1558, n.p. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Taylor, John. Wit and Mirth. London: Henrie Gosson, 1628, item 15, sig. B3r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Image credit: Anonymous photographer, 2019. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Christmas / Xmas

Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and children, 1848

18 December 2023

Christmas has a rather straightforward and obvious etymology. It is Christ’s mass, the religious service and festival associated with Jesus’s birthday. The word dates to the late Old English period. The Old English cristesmæsse isn’t found in any extant text written prior to c. 1000, but it’s likely to be older and those older uses simply didn’t survive.

One of the earliest uses is by Wulfstan, the Archbishop of York (d. 1023). The word appears in a short piece of his entitled Be cristendome (About Christianity) that outlines the payments a good Christian makes to the Church:

And leohtgescot gelæste man be wite to Cristes mæssan and to candelmæssan and to eastron, do oftor se, ðe wylle.

(And one should pay the light-fee as payment at Christmas and Candelmas and Easter, or more often if one desires.)

The leohtgescot (light-fee) was a contribution to keep the lights burning in the church, the medieval equivalent of paying the church’s electrical bill. (Yes, the irony of a text titled About Christianity being about tithes and offerings is not lost on the astute reader. Those modern televangelists begging for money are simply the latest in a long tradition.)

The abbreviation Xmas is not an attempt to remove the Christ from Christmas. The X got its start as the Greek letter chi, the first letter in Christ’s name. It was common practice in medieval manuscripts to abbreviate Christ’s name with an X or XP, the P or rho being the second letter. For example, in the entry for the year 1101, copied c. 1121–31, in the Peterborough manuscript of the Old English Chronicle we find:

Her on þisu[m] geare to xpes mæssan heold se cyng heanrig his hired on westmynstre.

(Here in this year at XP’s mass King Henry held his court in Westminster.)

The abbreviated form Xmas appears later. The OED has a 1551 citation for X’tenmas and a 1660 citation for Xtmasse, showing that the X is indeed an abbreviation of Christ. That dictionary has a citation for Xmas itself from 1721.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Dictionary of Old English: A to G Online, University of Toronto, 2007, s. v. cristes-mæsse, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2020, s. v. Christmas, n.; Xmas, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. X, n.

Peterborough Chronicle for the year 1101 (Bodleian Library MS. Laud Misc. 636, fol. 74r). Digital Bodleian.

Wulftan. “Be Cristendome.” In Arthur Napier, ed. Wulfstan. Sammlung Englischer Denkmäler in Kritischen Ausgaben, vol. 4. Berlin: Weidmannsche, 1883, 310–11 at 311. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Unknown artist, 1848. Public domain image.