A night out with Robert Burns The greatest poems

Andrew O'Hagan on 'Auld Lang Syne' The last three minutes of the old year and the first two minutes of the new one provide a caesura of pure sentiment in the average Scots household: a perfectly encapsulated delirium of happy sadness and lost time.When I think back over nearly forty of those five-minute intervals, I see a procession of departed relatives and rosy-cheeked First Foots -- coal in hand, whisky bottle under the arm, tears forming in the corners of eyes -- waiting at the front door to grasp a hand and take a cup of kindness. One year, an old gentleman called Robbie Proudfoot came to the house. A recovering alcoholic from a village near Stranraer, he stood in our living-room with a glass of dandelion-and-burdock and toasted all the handsome drinks -- 'the right gude-willie-waught' -- of former days and we drove through the snow to a hall in Irvine. In that Drill Hall stood all the recovering alcoholics of Ayrshire, passing those dangerous hours after the Bells in the company of one another, and they danced and sang in an absence of drink. It happened a long time ago, as did everything in its turn, and 'Auld Lang Syne' brings the colour of those nights back to life, a song with a precise gift for mellowing our regrets and putting out a hand to all that is human and passing. From the Hardcover edition. Excerpted from A Night Out with Robert Burns: The Greatest Poems by Robert Burns All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.