Perhaps it's a Scottish thing: when I took up the Great Highland Bagpipes almost 30 years ago I was becoming immersed in things Scottish (my surname is Scottish) and I was often around those who speak in "braid Scots" (broad Scots -- whether it's a dialect of English or a sister tongue is an old debate) and later, as a result of our Gaelic classes, Scottish Gaelic.
But there is a Scottish tradition of "remembering" at the New Year. One Hogmanay (Scottish New Year) tradition is to gather at midnight, hold hands in a circle and sing "Auld Lang Syne" ("Old Long Since," or "Long, Long Ago"). For Seattle's Gaelic community there is a similar tradition: closing events (including Hogmanay celebrations) with the equally longing "Chi Mi Na Morbheanna", literally "I [Will] See the Great Mountains [of home]."
Both songs speak of separation by insurmountable distances, the latter from the Highland Clearances that sent so many Scots to North America -- it is recorded that some Scots emigrants wept when they sighted Nova Scotia because it looked so much like home.
Interestingly, although Robert Burns' Auld Lang Syne is sometimes touted as merely a song of a long-separated friend, it isn't. In Scots the word "jo" means "sweetheart." In the Scots chorus of Auld Lang Syne:
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
Further evidence is in an earlier song, pre-Burns:
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.
CHORUS:
On Old long syne my Jo,
in Old long syne,
That thou canst never once reflect,
on Old long syne.
But I digress.
For me the annual remembrance had started in Advent with the carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem", in particular the lines "Above thy deep and dreamless sleep / The silent stars go by." Two conflicting images always presented: one a middle-eastern scene, the other an image of Midland, winter '67-'68. The only "deep and dreamless sleep" there was in my own mind -- once I lost all contacts with Midland friends in the early 70s I had only memories to draw on.
New Year/Hogmanay still brings me back: where are my old friends, what have they achieved? Questions with no answers. And "Chi Mi Na Morbheanna" brings a fine contradiction: the home I remember has no mountains, no hills. But the song is really about coming home to the people who live(d) there.
This summer I saw that the Midland I held in memory is unsurprisingly long since gone. Now I have new memories of it today. Though many of my classmates and other folks there now say, "It's a great place to be -- from" I missed it('s people) for a long, long time.
But as a result of this visit the triggers of such remembrances are gone, and maybe that's a good thing. I know I can never go home again, but I'll forever remember fondly the Midland where I once lived, auld lang syne.
