Robert Burns, author of Auld Lang Syne

From Robert Chambers, A Book of Days, 1869:

NEW YEAR’S EVE, OR HOGMANAY

As a general statement, it may be asserted that neither the last evening of the old year nor the first day of the new one is much, observed in England as an occasion of festivity. In some parts of the country, indeed, and more especially in the northern counties, various social merry-makings take place; but for the most part, the great annual holiday-time is already past. Christmas Eve, Christmas-day, and St. Stephen’s or Boxing Day have absorbed almost entirely the tendencies and opportunities of the community at large in the direction of joviality and relaxation. Business and the ordinary routine of daily life have again been resumed; or, to apply to English habits the words of an old Scottish rhyme still current, but evidently belonging to the old times, anterior to the Reformation, when Christmas was the great popular festival:

Yule’s come and Yule ‘s gane,
And we hae feasted weel;
Sae Jock maun to his flail again,
And Jenny to her wheel.’

Whilst thus the inhabitants of South Britain are settling down again quietly to work after the festivities of the Christmas season, their fellow-subjects in the northern division of the island are only commencing their annual saturnalia, which, till recently, bore, in the license and boisterous merriment which used to prevail, a most unmistakable resemblance to its ancient pagan namesake. The epithet of the Daft [mad] Days, applied to the season of the New Year in Scotland, indicates very expressively the uproarious joviality which characterized the period in question. This exuberance of joyousness—which, it must be admitted, sometimes led to great excesses—has now much declined, but New-year’s Eve and New-year’s Day constitute still the great national holiday in Scotland. Under the 1st of January, we have already detailed the various revelries by which the New Year used to be ushered in, in Scotland. It now becomes our province to notice those ceremonies and customs which are appropriate to the last day of the year, or, as it is styled in Scotland, Hogmanay.

This last term has puzzled antiquaries even more than the word Yule, already adverted to; and what is of still greater consequence, has never yet received a perfectly satisfactory explanation. Some suppose it to be derived from two Greek words, άιαμηνη (the holy moon or month), and in reference to this theory it may be observed, that, in the north of England, the term used is Hagmenu, which does not seem, however, to be confined to the 31st of December, but denotes generally the period immediately preceding the New Year. Another hypothesis combines the word with another sung along with it in chorus, and asserts ‘Hogmanay, trollolay!’ to be a corruption of ‘Homma est né—Trois Rois lá” (‘A Man is born—Three Kings are there’), an allusion to the birth of our Saviour, and the visit to Bethlehem of the Wise Men, who were known in medieval times as the ‘Three Kings.’

But two additional conjectures seem much more plausible, and the reader may select for himself what he considers the most probable. One of these is, that the term under notice is derived from Hoggu-nott, Hogenat, or Hogg-night, the ancient Scandinavian name for the night preceding the feast of Yule, and so called in reference to the animals slaughtered on the occasion for sacrificial and festal purpose word hogg signifying to kill. The other derivation of Hogmanay is from ‘Au gui menez’ (‘To the mistletoe go’), or ”Au gui ľan neuf’ ‘ (‘To the mistletoe this New Year ‘), an allusion to the ancient Druidical ceremony of gathering that plant. In the patois of Touraine, in France, the word used is Aguilanneu; in Lower Normandy, and in Guernsey, poor persons and children used to solicit a contribution under the title of Hoguinanno or 0guinano; whilst in Spain the term, Aguinaldo, is employed to denote the presents made at the season of Christmas.

In country places in Scotland, and also in the more retired and primitive towns, it is still customary on the morning of the last day of the year, or Hogmanay, for the children of the poorer class of people to get themselves swaddled in a great sheet, doubled up in front, so as to form a vast pocket, and then to go along the streets in little bands, calling at the doors of the wealthier classes for an expected dole of oaten-bread. Each child gets one quadrant section of oat-cake (some-times, in the case of particular favourites, improved by an addition of cheese), and this is called their hogmanay. In expectation of the large demands thus made upon them, the housewives busy themselves for several days beforehand in preparing a suitable quantity of cakes. The children on coming to the door cry, ‘Hogmanay!’ which is in itself a sufficient announcement of their demands; but there are other exclamations which either are or might be used for the same purpose. One of these is:

‘Hogmanay, Trollolay, Give us of your white bread, and none of your gray.’

And another favourite rhyme is:

Get up, goodwife, and shake your feathers,
And dinna think that we are beggars;
For we are bairns come out to play,
Get up and gie’s our hogmanay!’

The following is of a moralising character, though a good deal of a truism:

Get up, goodwife, and binna sweir,
And deal your bread to them that ‘s here;
For the time will come when ye’ll be dead,
And then ye’ll neither need ale nor bread.’

The most favourite of all, however, is more to the point than any of the foregoing :

My feet’s cauld, my shoon’s thin;
Gie’s my cakes, and let me rin!’

It is no unpleasing scene, during the forenoon, to see the children going laden home, each with his large apron bellying out before him, stuffed full of cakes, and perhaps scarcely able to waddle under the load. Such a mass of oaten alms is no inconsiderable addition to the comfort of the poor man’s household, and enables him to enjoy the New-year season as much as his richer neighbours.

In the primitive parish of Deerness, in Orkney, it was customary, in the beginning of the present century, for old and young of the common class of people to assemble in a great band upon the evening of the last day of the year, and commence a round of visits throughout the district. At every house they knocked at the door, and on being admitted, commenced singing, to a tune of its own, a song appropriate to the occasion. The following is what may be termed a restored version of this chant, the imagination having been called on to make up in several of the lines what was deficient in memory. The ‘Queen Mary’ alluded to is evidently the Virgin:

‘This night it is grid New’r E’en’s night,
We’re a’ here Queen Mary’s men;
And we ‘re come here to crave our right,
And that’s before our Lady.

The very first thing which we do crave,
We ‘re a’ here Queen Mary’s men;
A bonny white candle we must have,
And that’s before our Lady.

Goodwife, gae to your butter-ark,
And weigh us here ten mark.

Ten mark, ten pund,
Look that ye grip weel to the grund.
Goodwife, gae to your geelin vat,
And fetch us here a skeet o’ that.

Gang to your awmrie, gin ye please,
And bring frae there a yow-milk cheese.

And syne bring here a sharping-stane,
We’ll sharp our whittles ilka ane.

Ye’ll cut the cheese, and eke the round,
But aye take care ye cutna your thoom.

Gae fill the three-pint cog o’ ale,
The maut maun be aboon the meal.

We houp your ale is stark and stout,
For men to drink the auld year out.

Ye ken the weather’s snow and sleet,
Stir up the fire to warm our feet.

Our shoon’s made o’ mare’s skin,
Come open the door, and let’s in.’

The inner-door being opened, a tremendous rush was made ben the house. The inmates furnished a long table with all sorts of homely fare, and a hearty feast took place, followed by copious libations of ale, charged with all sorts of good-wishes. The party would then proceed to the next house, where a similar scene would be enacted. How they contrived to take so many suppers in one evening, heaven knows ! No slight could be more keenly felt by a Deerness farmer than to have his house passed over unvisited by the New-year singers.

The doings of the guisers or guizards (that is, masquers or mummers) form a conspicuous feature in the New-year proceedings throughout Scotland. The favourite night for this exhibition is Hogmanay, though the evenings of Christmas, New-year’s Day, and Handsel Monday, enjoy like-wise a privilege in this respect. Such of the boys as can lay any claim to the possession of a voice have, for weeks before, been poring over the collection of ‘excellent new songs,’ which lies like a bunch of rags in the window-sill; and being now able to screech up ‘Barbara Allan,’ or the ‘Wee cot-house and the wee kail-yardie,’ they determine upon enacting the part of guisers. For this purpose they don old shirts belonging to their fathers, and mount mitre-shaped casques of brown paper, possibly borrowed from the Abbot of Unreason; attached to this is a sheet of the same paper, which, falling down in front, covers and conceals the whole face, except where holes are made to let through the point of the nose, and afford sight to the eyes and breath to the mouth. Each vocal guiser is, like a knight of old, attended by a sort of humble squire, who assumes the habiliments of a girl, ‘with an old-woman’s cap and a broomstick, and is styled ‘Bessie: Bessie is equal in no respect, except that she shares fairly in the proceeds of the enterprise. She goes before her principal, opens all the doors at which he pleases to exert his singing powers; and busies herself, during the time of the song, in sweeping the floor with her broomstick, or in playing any other antics that she thinks may amuse the indwellers. The common reward of this entertainment is a halfpenny, but many churlish persons fall upon the unfortunate guisers, and beat them out of the house. Let such persons, however, keep a good watch upon their cabbage-gardens next Halloween!

The more important doings of the guisers are of a theatrical character. There is one rude and grotesque drama which they are accustomed to perform on each of the four above-mentioned nights; and which, in various fragments or versions, exists in every part of Lowland Scotland. The performers, who are never less than three, but sometimes as many as six, having dressed themselves, proceed in a band from house to house, generally contenting themselves with the kitchen for an arena; whither, in mansions presided over by the spirit of good-humour, the whole family will resort to witness the spectacle. Sir Walter Scott, who delighted to keep up old customs, and could condescend to simple things without losing genuine dignity, invariably had a set of guisers to perform this play before his family both at Ashestiel and Abbotsford. The drama in question bears a close resemblance, with sundry modifications, to that performed by the mummers in various parts of England, and of which we have already given a specimen.

Such are the leading features of the Hogmanay festivities in Scotland. A similar custom to that above detailed of children going about from house to house, singing the Hagmena chorus, and obtaining a dole of bread or cakes, prevails in Yorkshire and the north of England; but, as we have already mentioned, the last day of the year is not in the latter country, for the most part, invested with much peculiar distinction.

Yesterday afternoon, Rush Limbaugh was taken to a hospital in Hawaii after experiencing “chest pain.” His condition was listed as “serious,” but he was later described as “resting comfortably.”

KITV story

Rush certainly has my best wishes. The country needs him.

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Ann Althouse quotes a Twitter response to certain leftwingers:

“The people calling for Rush Limbaugh to die are the same people who ask to control your healthcare.”

8 more stars will be needed for the Agency’s memorial wall

LA Times:

A bomber slipped into a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday and detonated a suicide vest, killing eight CIA officers in one of the deadliest days in the agency’s history, current and former U.S. officials said.

The attack took place at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khowst province, an area near the border with Pakistan that is a hotbed of insurgent activity. An undisclosed number of civilians were wounded, the officials said. No military personnel with the U.S. or North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces were killed or injured, they said.

A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the CIA had a major presence at the base, in part because of its strategic location.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a message posted early today on its Pashto-language website. The statement, attributed to spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, said the attacker was a member of the Afghan army who entered the base clad in his military uniform. It identified him only as Samiullah. …

A former U.S. intelligence official knowledgeable about the bombing said it killed more CIA personnel than any attack since the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983. Before Wednesday’s attack, four CIA operatives had been killed in Afghanistan, the former official said.

The eight dead were CIA officers, the former official said. “They were all career CIA officials.”

The U.S. official said the bomber detonated his explosives vest in an area that was used as a fitness center.

Don’t even bother with the farce of installing those extremely expensive whole-body imaging scanners. Al Qaeda has already tested them and figured out how to defeat them.

Radio Nederlands Wereldomroep:

A body scanner at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport would not necessarily have detected the explosives which the would-be syringe bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had sewn into his underwear. A Dutch military intelligence source told De Telegraaf newspaper that Al Qaeda has its own security scanners and has been practicing ways of concealing explosives.

The terrorist group has even carried out test runs at smuggling explosives through European airports, the paper reports.

Ferrari V4 Superbike

WebUrbanist posts photos of 20 spectacular motorcycle concept designs.

Unfortunately, most of these will probably never actually be built for sale, and all of them are apparently not street legal.

2:16 video

Not as good as some earlier ones, rather a lot like the year itself.

Arnold Kling explains why liberals so often make no sense, why liberal political propositions are advanced so commonly in complete indifference to the facts. Liberal politics typically operate principally as an identity marker. People express liberal positions as a way of indicating and affirming their own memberships in the community of fashion, as a way of identifying themselves as part of the national elite.

Although empiricism has become a standard philosophy in the West, dogma persists. I believe that the main reason that non-verifiable ideas survive is that they serve as trust cues. People still need to demonstrate their commitment to membership in groups, and recitation of dogma is a low-cost method of doing so.

[Nicholas] Wade [in Before the Dawn] writes,

“Modern states now accomplish by other means many of the early roles performed by religion, which is why religion has become of less relevance in some societies. But because the propensity for religious belief is still wired into the human mind, religion continues to be a potent force in societies that still struggle for cohesion.” (p. 164)

This raises the possibility that political beliefs serve primarily as trust cues. For example, those who favor an increase in the minimum wage are sending trust cues to people on the Left, and those who oppose an increase in the minimum wage are sending trust cues to people on the Right.

The actual consequences of raising the minimum wage are rarely discussed. In other words, political debates often ignore what I call Type C arguments (from empiricism) and turn instead to type M arguments, which accuse one’s opponent of belonging to an outcast group. The reason for this is that people are not trying to persuade each other rationally. Instead, they are using trust cues to indicate that failure to agree implies excommunication from the group.

The Last Psychiatrist makes the same point:

The NYT is a blog pretending to be a newspaper. It’s for adults, or people who want to pretend they’re adults, who remember as kids that reading the Times meant something that they’d now like to apply to themselves. Now it’s Bandwagon of the Month reporting: anyone see any global warming articles recently? Bush is suppressing them, I guess.

So the problems it describes must always be of the form: “the other guys who are not you are bad.” That’s widley perceived as liberal bias, though that’s not accurate. It’s “not you” bias.

Hat tips to Dr. Joy Bliss and Karen L. Myers.

“I want to go to Princeton,” said Amory. “I don’t know why, but I think of all Harvard men as sissies, like I used to be, and all Yale men as wearing big blue sweaters and smoking pipes.”

“That’s it.”

–F. Scott Fitzgerald, Princeton ’17, This Side of Paradise.

Andrew Sullivan will be so proud.

The Yale Freshman Class Council (I don’t think we had one of those in my day) decided to produce a T shirt for the Harvard Game featuring some expression or other of the Yale point of view on the classic athletic rivalry.

There was an opportunity for design suggestions, followed by a vote.

Yale Daily News:

The original design, which won out over five other entries, displayed an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote in the front — “I think of all Harvard men as sissies” — in bold white letters. The back of the long-sleeved, navy blue T-shirt said “WE AGREE” in capital letters, with “The Game 2009” scrawled in script underneath it.

Well, Yale has its own sissies these days, and they are organized and influential.

[T]he term ‘sissies’ is considered offensive and demeaning, and as well as a “thinly-veiled gay slur,” said Julio Perez-Torres ’12, a member of the LGBT Co-op.

After the winning design was announced, FCC President Brandon Levin ’13 said, several students raised concerns about the design to their respective FCC representatives, which they in turn brought to the attention of the FCC Executive Board and Dean of Freshman Affairs Raymond Ou.

The LGBT Co-op first heard about the T-shirts from a member of the Yale College Council, LGBT Co-op Coordinator Rachel Schiff ’10 said. She followed suit by contacting the dean and master of her college — Silliman — to encourage dialogue among the Co-op, administrators and FCC.

Ou said Wednesday that he first heard about the winning T-shirt design when FCC brought the complaints to him. In response, he told the FCC chairs to meet with the concerned students face to face. Shortly after he told FCC to respond to the co-op’s concerns, Ou said, he told Yale College Dean Mary Miller about the issue, and she decided to pull the design.

“What purports to be humor by targeting a group through slurs is not acceptable,” Miller said in an e-mail to the News. …

[The Freshman Class Council] decided to withdraw that design and opt for a different one, featuring a white ‘H’ in the front inside a transluscent white circle, with a white line slashed through it. …

YCC President Jon Wu ’11, who said he has been advising the FCC on the issue, said the problem was that the line of people that approved the shirts did not realize the word “sissies” was offensive.

“None of us realized the connotation,” Wu said in an e-mail to the News. “No member of the Yale community should feel marginalized.”

The liberal tradition of pluralism and tolerance has evolved into a readiness to swoon and surrender in the face of any complaint or demand for concession by any group traditionally held in contempt.

Why even hold a Harvard game? If Yale cannot take the position that being a sissy is something of a negative, that being weak and cowardly and effeminate is undesirable, on what possible basis can the University justify being so rude and insensitive as to try to injure the feelings of the Harvard community by defeating its team in a violent athletic competition?

Yale’s administration, Freshman Class Council, and certainly its LGBT Co-op ought to draft an immediate letter conceding all future football games and other athletic contests to rival schools, apologize for each and every past expression of animosity and contempt, and humbly beg pardon for all the times in which Yale was crude enough to win.

It is becoming actively embarrassing to be associated with that University.

Hat tip to Robert Shibley at PJM.

Newt Gingrich made the following prediction on Meet the Press last Sunday:

[Y]ou’ve got $513 billion in tax increases, $470 billion in Medicare cuts. You have a scale of, I think, bribery in the Senate we have not seen in our lifetime, with various senators getting all sorts of special deals in a way that I think the public is just appalled by. I suspect every Republican running in ‘10 and again in ‘12 will run on an absolute pledge to repeal this bill.

The bill — most of the bill does not go into effect until ‘13 or ‘14, except on the tax increase side; and therefore, I think there won’t be any great constituency for it. And I think it’ll be a major campaign theme. This is a bad bill, written in a horrible way, and the most — the most corrupt legislation I’ve seen in my lifetime.

0:49 video

Gingrich’s repeal pledge went largely unnoticed on the right, but it certainly got the left’s attention.

Leftie bloggers are busily spinning today about how impossible it would be to repeal the health care bill (Steve Benen), and Matt Yglesias has even devised an epithet to apply to people like me: we’re Repealers.

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I think those leftwing bloggers are whistling past the political graveyard.

Look at Rasmussen’s latest poll on Ben Nelson’s standing after the health care vote.

The good news for Senator Ben Nelson is that he doesn’t have to face Nebraska voters until 2012.

If Governor Dave Heineman challenges Nelson for the Senate job, a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows the Republican would get 61% of the vote while Nelson would get just 30%. Nelson was reelected to a second Senate term in 2006 with 64% of the vote.

Nelson’s health care vote is clearly dragging his numbers down. Just 17% of Nebraska voters approve of the deal their senator made on Medicaid in exchange for his vote in support of the plan. Overall, 64% oppose the health care legislation, including 53% who are Strongly Opposed.

Provoking this sensible comment from Jared C. Lobdell.

Recite after me: “The Christmas Day terrorist was subdued by other passengers who left their seats: this was during the approach to the plane’s destination, less than an hour to go in the international flight. Therefore, the TSA now prohibits passengers from leaving their seats during the last hour of an international flight.”

Said Ali al-Shihri aka Sa’id Ali Jabir Al Khathim Al Shihri aka Abu Sayyaf al-Shihr aka Saeed al Shehri aka Said Ali Shari

ABC News reveals that two of the principals behind the failed bombing of Flight 253 were former Guanatanamo detainees, released in the later period of the Bush Administration when that Administration began to buckle under intensive criticism of unlimited detention.

The more prominent released prisoner, Said Ali al-Shihri, was a Saudi al Qaeda travel facilitator, captured with wounds in the leg in Pakistan in the aftermath of the US invasion of Afghanistan, believed to have trained at a Libyan camp north of Kabul.

Since his release, he has been involved in the kidnap-murder of Christian missionary aid workers and the bombing of the US embassy in Yemen.

And a hearty hand of applause for all the counsel and amicus filers in Boumediene v. Bush who started the legal processes leading to the release of these unfortunate victims of American injustice.

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. …

American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an “art therapy rehabilitation program” and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.

Guantanamo prisoner #333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner #372, Said Ali Shari, were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody. Al-Harbi has since changed his name to Muhamad al-Awfi.

Abdulmutallab was concealing a 6″ container of PETN in the crotch of this underwear

As this 2:57 ABC video shows, the quantity of explosive was more than sufficient to destroy an airliner.

All this provokes reflection. They are using underwear to hide bombs, concealing high explosive compounds next to their genitals. What is the government going to do now? Will millions of air travelers be stripped naked electronically or literally?

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Jeff Goldberg, in the Atlantic, discussed airline security policies with Bruce Schneier:

Counter­terrorism in the airport is a show designed to make people feel better,” [Schneier] said. “Only two things have made flying safer: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.” This assumes, of course, that al-Qaeda will target airplanes for hijacking, or target aviation at all. “We defend against what the terrorists did last week,” Schnei­er said. He believes that the country would be just as safe as it is today if airport security were rolled back to pre-9/11 levels. “Spend the rest of your money on intelligence, investigations, and emergency response.”

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If we were smarter, we’d pay more attention to the Israeli example.

The safest airline in the world, it is widely agreed, is El Al, Israel’s national carrier. The safest airport is Ben Gurion International, in Tel Aviv. No El Al plane has been attacked by terrorists in more than three decades, and no flight leaving Ben Gurion has ever been hijacked. So when US aviation intensified its focus on security after 9/11, it seemed a good bet that the experience of travelers in American airports would increasingly come to resemble that of travelers flying out of Tel Aviv.

But in telling ways, the two experiences remain notably different. For example, passengers in the United States are required to take off their shoes for X-ray screening, while passengers at Ben Gurion are spared that indignity. …

Nearly five years after Sept. 11, 2001, US airport security remains obstinately focused on intercepting bad things — guns, knives, explosives. …

Of course the Israelis check for bombs and weapons too, but always with the understanding that things don’t hijack planes, terrorists do — and that the best way to detect terrorists is to focus on intercepting not bad things, but bad people.

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Wikipedia describes Israeli El Al’s security procedures:

Passengers are asked to report three hours before departure. All El Al terminals around the world are closely monitored for security. There are plain-clothes agents and fully armed police or military personnel who patrol the premises for explosives, suspicious behavior, and other threats. Inside the terminal, passengers and their baggage are checked by a trained team. El Al security procedures require that all passengers be interviewed individually prior to boarding, allowing El Al staff to identify possible security threats. Passengers will be asked questions about where they are coming from, the reason for their trip, their job or occupation, and whether they have packed their bags themselves. The likelihood of potential terrorists remaining calm under such questioning is believed to be low (see microexpression). At the check-in counter the passengers’ passports and tickets are closely examined. A ticket without a sticker from the security checkers will not be accepted. At passport control passengers’ names are checked against information from the FBI, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Scotland Yard, Shin Bet, and Interpol databases. Luggage is screened and sometimes hand searched. In addition, bags are put through a decompression chamber simulating pressures during flight that could trigger explosives. El Al is the only airline in the world that passes all luggage through such a chamber. Even at overseas airports, El Al security agents conduct all luggage searches personally, even if they are supervised by government or private security firms. …

Critics of El Al note that its security checks on passengers include racial profiling and have argued that such profiling is unfair, irrational, and degrading to those subject to such screening.