New Year’s Eve at Deerness

In the parish of Deerness in Orkney, early in the nineteenth century, old and young gathered in a great band on the last evening of the year and went round every house in the district. At each door they were let in and sang a New Year song to its own tune, in which Queen Mary, meaning the Virgin, was named. Chambers printed a version pieced together from memory, admitting that some lines had been restored by imagination.