Robert Burns wrote the version of “Auld Lang Syne” most associated with New Year's Eve.
Burns, Scotland's national poet, sent a version of the song to the Scots Musical Museum in 1788. He said that the words were based partly on an older song, so he is best understood as the author of the famous literary version rather than the inventor of every line or the melody.
The song's theme is remembering old friendships and shared experiences, which helped make it suitable for farewells and year-end gatherings. Its New Year's association became especially strong in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as Scottish emigrant communities carried it abroad. Burns's poem is written in Scots, and some lines have different wording in modern performance versions. The tune usually heard today was paired with the lyrics later than Burns's publication, another reason the song has a layered rather than single-origin history.