Happy New Year 2014 for Auld Lang Syne & Waterloo Bridge
As 2013 draws to a close. . . and as 2014 draws near ~ it's time to ring out the old, and ring in, and bring in, the new. . .
Happy New Year!
Wishing you all a very happy and prosperous 2014
~ m8ed
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It’s World War II and Colonel Roy Cronin, a British Army officer played by the American actor Robert Taylor stops his cab on London's Waterloo Bridge and reflects on the past: It’s back to 1914 and air raid sirens screech as a group of young girls hurry past, seeking shelter.
One drops her purse and Roy helps the girl and picks it up for her; she is Myra Lester, a beautiful ballet dancer played by the English actress Vivien Leigh. They seek shelter together and a whirlwind wartime courtship follows, resulting in Roy asking Myra to marry him.
Before the ceremony can be performed, however, Roy is called to the front and not long after Myra is fired from the ballet for breaking curfew. Hard times follow and after seeing a notice about Roy’s death in a newspaper she faints. After an illness, and unable to find work, she finds herself broke and hungry, and following in a friend’s footsteps, with no desire to live, she becomes a prostitute.
One year later, Roy (who isn’t dead after all) returns to London, and the first sight that he sees upon getting off the train is Myra, who has come to pick up soldiers. He believes that she has come to meet him, and knowing nothing of her life in the past year, takes her home to his family estate in Scotland to meet his aristocratic mother.
Although Myra tries to convince herself that they can be happy, she soon realizes that her past will ruin Roy's life and, after confessing all to his mother, she runs away.
Roy follows, despite a friend’s revelations about Myra, but she eludes him and kills herself by throwing herself in front of an onrushing truck on Waterloo Bridge, the same place where it all began.
Back to the present (1939), and clutching the good luck charm that Myra had once given him, Roy leaves for the front with his memories.
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Auld Lang Syne (Old Long Ago)
Chorus
For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld Lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!
Should old acquaintances be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o’ auld lang syne?
And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
We twa hae run about the braes
And pou'd the gowans fine,
But we've wander'd monie a weary fit
Sin auld Lang Syne
We twa hae paidl'd in the burn
Frae morning sun till dine
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin auld lang syne
And there's a hand my trusty fiere,
And gie's a hand o thine
And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught,
For auld lang sine
Robert Burns
and he said this at the time (probably because some of his words came from another):
"Light be the turf on breast of the heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment! There is more of the fire of native genius in it than in half a dozen of modern English Bacchanalians"
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Me, as I bid farewell to another satisfying year, I say the same:
Last years words belong to last years language and next years words await another voice. . .
To make an end is to make a beginning!
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Hip hip hip. . .
