Auld Lang Syne by Robert Burns

Auld Lang Syne

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

CHORUS:
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-stoup!
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,
and pou’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin’ auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,
frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin’ auld lang syne.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gies a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willie-waught,
for auld lang syne.
--Robert Burns

According to the very interesting Wikipedia article, Burns claimed to have "collected this traditional song", but everybody assumes that's a euphemism for "used some old lines I found somewhere and wrote a poem around them." If you're curious, the article also has a line by line translation and pronunciation guide.

I first heard of this song in a storybook about a mermaid who, unlike all the other mermaids, had a TERRIBLE singing voice. One night, having been pretty much shunned by all the other mermaids, she tried to sing along with the people on a cruise ship (who were singing this song). They all thought that the horrible noise was some alarm saying that the ship was sinking, so they got into the lifeboats and rowed away. There was one little girl left behind, who became friends with the mermaid, and possibly some other sea creatures. At the end of the book, the mermaid saves another cruise ship by sounding an alarm that they were about to crash into an iceberg. She found her purpose in life, and lived happily ever after (or something). Mom--does this book still exist? Or have you purged the picture books already?

So it's New Year's Eve! Grandma's birthday is tomorrow, and Baby still isn't here. As much as I'd like to meet her (and be done with being pregnant), it's probably a good thing she didn't come this weekend. I decided on Saturday that maybe some good hard work would encourage her, so Peter and I went out into the side yard. I pulled weeds, sifted gravel out of the dirt, and leveled ground for Peter to put paving stones down on (I traded my extra set of too big stairs for the pile of paving stones in my next-door-neighbor's yard -- which was a good trade, since I had been secretly coveting the stones for months now, and at the same time, I was annoyed that the guy who made the current set of only slightly too big stairs didn't take the old set of extremely too big stairs away with him). Well, a few more feet of the side yard looks presentable now, but the muscles in my lower back and hips were not impressed. Yesterday when I woke up, they were VERY sore, and they had NO strength (just standing made them go all exhausted-twitchy). I realized then how stupid I'd been -- if I had gone into labor, I don't think there would have been a whole lot of pushing going on. So my job now is to go walking and exercise them enough so they don't go all stiff, but not so much that they're too tired to do what they need to.

PS: Yes, I know the illustration is a hundred years out of date, but I thought it was appropriate.