good morning Hank it's Tuesday I'd like
to tell you a story today about why I
still like learning new things even
though I am long out of school and don't
like need any new certificates or
degrees in order to do my job
insofar as I even have a job so I was
thinking about the song auld lang syne
recently you know the one that goes
should auld acquaintance be forgot and
never brought to mind etc I started
reading up on it and found out that
there are parts of the song that are at
least 400 years old but the version of
auld lang syne we have today comes from
the great Scottish poet Robert Burns who
claimed he got it from an old man but
burns probably wrote at least three of
the verses himself originally Burns had
a different tune in mind for the song
but then auld lang syne got grafted onto
a different Scottish folk melody and it
became a popular New Year song in
Scotland and then Scottish people
emigrated to Ireland in the Americas and
elsewhere and it became the world's New
Years song anyway the first record of
the song is written on the back of a
letter that Burns wrote in 1788 to a
woman named Frances Dunlop side-story
burns and Dunlop had a fascinating
friendship she was almost 30 years older
than him and she once wrote him I have
heard Voltaire read all his manuscripts
to an old woman and printed nothing but
what she would have approved
I wish she would name me to her office
Byrnes didn't but he did really value
mrs. Dunlap's opinions and her
friendship in fact he wrote her more
letters than he wrote anyone else they
also had really big disagreements
including about the sexuality in Burns's
work she once wrote him indecency is
below you
their biggest disagreements though were
political and in that divisive age as in
this one political disagreements were
often personal in fact mrs. Dunlop was
so angry with Byrnes for his celebration
of the American and French Revolutions
that she didn't write him for two years
and then when Byrnes lay dying at the
age of 37 he wrote her one last letter
with what a biographer called the last
use he made of his pen in that letter he
told mrs. Dunlop he was speedily headed
for quote that born from whence no
traveler returns and he said how much
their friendship had meant to him and
that quote the remembrance yet adds one
pulse more to my poor palpitating heart
mrs. Dunlap's kind reply was read aloud
to Byrnes just days before he died and
so at the end of his life eight years
after first writing or at least editing
the words to auld lang syne he was still
trying not to forget old acquaintances
so that was all interesting and fun to
learn but that is not the point of the
story the point of the story is that I
was thinking about Bern
auld lang syne and mrs. Dunlop and her
disapproval of his sexually explicit
poetry and that made me wonder about the
Burns poem coming through the Rye which
was originally sung to a tune very
similar to the one we now associate with
auld lang syne these days that song is
perhaps most famous for inspiring the
title to JD Salinger's novel The Catcher
in the Rye in which the main character
Holden Caulfield miss here's the lyrics
to the song he hears if a body catch a
body coming through the Rye when the
actual lyrics are if a body meet a body
coming through the Rye the actual lyric
is very frankly sexual and Holden's
misinterpretation of it is really
innocent he imagines a bunch of kids in
a field of rye who were near a cliff and
his job is to catch them to keep them
from going over the cliff the cliff of
course is the loss of all kinds of
innocence and Holden wants to protect
these kids in a way that he himself
hasn't been protected he doesn't yet get
that the poem coming through the Rye is
about two adults hooking up with each
other because he's not ready to
understand that but the social order and
arguably one of the adults in his life
treat him as if he is reading the actual
words that Holden so profoundly
misinterprets helped give me a new way
into the book and a new way to
understand Holden's heartbreak he is a
boy who is trying to hold in so much and
also to hold off so much and that is why
I still like earning even at my
extremely advanced age because new
learning can reshape old learning and
because learning is a way of seeing
connection and all the little
connections across time and space are
reminders to me of how deeply connected
we all are even to the fictional even to
the dead Hank I'll see you on Friday