The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Twelve Days of Christmas" is an English Christmas carol which enumerates a series of grandiose gifts given on each of the twelve days of Christmas. It has been one of the most popular and most-recorded Christmas songs in America and Europe throughout the past century.

1 Music origin
2 Lyrics origin
3 Structure and lyrics
4 Urban legend
5 External links

[edit] Music origin

The date of the song's first performance is not known, though it was used in European and Scandinavian traditions as early as the 16th century. In the early 20th century, Frederick Austin wrote an arrangement where he added his melody from "Five gold rings" onwards (The New Oxford Book of Carols).

[edit] Lyrics origin

"The Twelve Days of Christmas" is a children's rhyme that was originally published in a book called Mirth without Mischief in London around 1780. It was originally a memory and forfeit game and it was played by gathering a circle of players and each person took it in turns to say the first line of the rhyme. When it is the first player's turn again he says the second line of the verse and so on.

Years later the game and rhyme were adopted by Lady Gomme (an English collector of folktales and rhymes) as a rhyme that "the whole family could have fun singing every twelfth night before Christmas before eating mince pies and twelfth cake"

[edit] Structure and lyrics

"The Twelve Days of Christmas" is a cumulative song, meaning that each verse is built on top of the previous verses. There are twelve verses, each describing a gift given by "my true love" on one of the twelve days of Christmas.

The first verse runs:

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave (sent) to me

A partridge in a pear tree

The second verse:

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave (sent) to me

Two turtle doves,

And a partridge in a pear tree

...and so forth. The last verse is:

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave (sent) to me

Twelve drummers drumming

Eleven pipers piping

Ten lords a-leaping

Nine ladies dancing

Eight maids a-milking

Seven swans a-swimming

Six geese a-laying

Five golden (sometimes gold) rings

Four colly (or calling) birds

Three french hens

Two turtle doves

And a partridge in a pear tree

The time signature of this song is not constant, unlike most popular music. The introductory lines, such as "On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave (sent) to me", are made up of two 4/4 bars, while most of the lines naming off gifts receive one 3/4 bar per gift with the exception of "Five golden rings", which receives two 4/4 bars, "Two turtle doves" getting a 4/4 bar with "And a" on its 4th beat and "Partridge in a pear tree" getting two 4/4 bars of music. In most versions, a 4/4 bar of music immediately follows "Partridge in a pear tree." "On the" is found in that bar on the 4th (pickup) beat for the next verse.

There are many variations of this song in which the last four objects are arranged in a different order (for example — twelve lords a-leaping, eleven ladies dancing, ten pipers piping, nine drummers drumming). There are also many parodies of this song, or modernized versions.

It has been suggested by a number of sources over the years that the pear tree is in fact supposed to be perdrix, French for partridge and pronounced per-dree, and was simply copied down incorrectly when the oral version of the game was transcribed. The original line would have been: "A partridge, une perdrix."

[edit] Urban legend

There are references on the Internet to the hidden or spiritual meaning behind the items in the song. The claim of hidden meanings is unsubstantiated by any reliable sources.