Auld Lang Syne a time" in his retelling of fairy tales in the Scots language. Robert Burns sent a copy of the original song to the Scots Musical Museum with the remark, "The following song, an old song, of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript until I took it down from an old man." Some of the lyrics were indeed "collected" rather than composed by the poet; the ballad "Old Long Syne" printed in 1711 by James Watson shows considerable similarity in the first verse and the chorus to Burns' later poem, and is almost
Auld Lang Syne dance measure. (See the note in the William Shield article on this subject.) In 1855, different words were written for the Auld Lang Syne tune by Albert Laighton and titled, "Song of the Old Folks." This song was included in the tunebook, "Father Kemp's Old Folks Concert Tunes" published in Boston, Massachusetts in 1860. For many years it was the tradition of the Stoughton Musical Society to sing this version in memory of those who had died that year. Songwriter George M. Cohan quotes the first line of the "Auld Lang Syne" melody in the second to last line of