THE FAMILIAR NEW YEAR’S SAYING: “Ring out the old, ring in the new.”
Alfred Tennyson (a.k.a. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson; 1809-1892)
English poet
Famous line from Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850)
Many websites and books say these familiar words linked to New Year’s Eve are from a Tennyson poem titled “Ring Out, Wild Bells.” Technically, that’s incorrect.
The verses that go by that name come from Tennyson’s epic work, In Memoriam A.H.H., his elegiac musings on the death his friend Arthur Henry Hallam (the “A.H.H.” in the title). In Memoriam A.H.H. is essentially a very long poem comprised of 131 short ones that are referred to as cantos. These cantos were not given individual names by Tennyson. The popular title “Ring Out, Wild Bells” are the first four words of the canto that includes the line “Ring out the old, ring in the new.” (Canto CVI, or 106 in Roman numerals). Here’s the part where the famous lines first appear…
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
The tradition of tolling bells to “ring out” the year that is ending and “ring in” the new one predates Tennyson. It’s actually an old custom in England and many countries around the world. However, Tennyson is generally credited for cementing “Ring out the old, ring in the new” into the English language and making it a linguistic tradition associated with New Year’s celebrations.
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A POST-2016 ELECTION TIP FOR GLOOMY DEMS: “Gloom is a terrible way to ring out the old, and despair is of no help in trying to imagine the new.
So let us consider what good might come from the political situation in which we will find ourselves in 2017. Doing this does not require denying the dangers posed by a Donald Trump presidency or the demolition of progressive achievements he could oversee. It does mean remembering an important distinction President Obama has made ever since he entered public life: that ‘hope is not blind optimism.’
‘Hope,’ he argued, ‘is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it.’”
E.J. Dionne Jr.
American political commentator and professor at Georgetown University
In his December 28, 2016 column in the Washington Post
(Cartoon by Phil Hands for the Wisconsin State Journal) |
A PERFECTLY HEARTWARMING MUSICAL VARIATION: “Bring out the old, bring in the new
A midnight wish to share with you
Your lips are warm, my head is light
Were we alive before tonight?
I don't need a crowded ballroom
Everything I want is here
If you're with me, next year will be
The perfect year.”
Don Black
English lyricist
Lyrics from “The Perfect Year,” one of the songs in the musical Sunset Boulevard, with lyrics by Black and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. (First performed in London in 1993.) |
GEORGE’S MUSICAL VARIATION: “Yesterday, today was tomorrow
And tomorrow, today will be yesterday
So, ring out the old, ring in the new
Ring out the old, ring in the new
Ring out the false, ring in the true.”
George Harrison (1943-2001)
English rock musician
From the lyrics of his 1974 song “Ding Dong, Ding Dong” (included on the Dark Horse album) |
THE JAMES JOYCE VARIATION (WITH EXPLANATION): “Wring out the clothes! Wring in the dew! Godavari, vert the showers! And grant thaya grace! Aman.”
James Joyce (1882-1941)
Irish novelist and poet
Lines from his novel Finnegans Wake (1939)
What's Joyce’s version mean? Well, in his book Verbal Behavior (1957), American psychologist B.F. Skinner offered this, er, helpful explanation: “Joyce’s line ‘Wring out the clothes, wring in the dew’ borrows strength from the latent intraverbal sequence ‘Ring out the old, ring in the new,’ as well as from a current theme of women washing clothes in the open air. The line may not be musical, it may or may not evoke emotional or practical responses, but it clearly manipulates verbal strength. It is this verbal play which is reinforcing to the reader and hence indirectly to the writer.” ... Got it? |
