ABSTRACT
Auld Lang Syne is the most ubiquitous Scottish song in the world. It also acts as a synecdoche for the mythologisation and invention of Scotland and Scottish musical history. The language of Scottish Gaelic is one of the main surviving Goidelic languages usually grouped along with Irish Gaelic and Manx. The key social event in Scotland in the early modern period which had a profound impact upon Scottish life was the religious Reformation of the mid-to-late sixteenth century. The influence of the Reformation in Scottish musical life was to start to divorce spiritual life from vernacular life, including music. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Scotland, traditional music was of course most often found as dance music. The relationship between traditional music and the nation has always been close and problematic, and it is therefore important to understand how the romantic nationalism of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries affects everyone own understanding of traditional music today.
