The Twelve Dels of Christmas: My Festive Tales from Life and Only Fools

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In the earliest versions, the word on is not present at the beginning of each verse—for example, the first verse begins simply "The first day of Christmas". Some authors suggest a connection to a religious verse entitled "Twelfth Day", found in a thirteenth century manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge; [47] [48] [49] this theory is criticised as "erroneous" by Yoffie. Incidentally, it is also observed that the total number of gifts after m {\displaystyle m} days equals m 3 / 6 + m 2 / 2 + m / 3 {\displaystyle m

The gifts include: one feather, two geese, three sides of meat, four sheep, five cows, six oxen, seven dishes, eight ponies, nine banners, ten barrels, eleven goats, twelve men, thirteen hides, fourteen rounds of cheese and fifteen deer. In this rendition, the narrator is a mouse, with the various gifts reduced to mouse scale, such as "nine nuts for nibbling" and "four holly berries". It was a customary thing in a friend's house to play "The Twelve Days," or "My Lady's Lap Dog," every Twelfth Day night.It is probably a corruption of "partridge in a pear tree", though Gilchrist suggests "juniper tree" could have been joli perdrix, [pretty partridge]. Some variants have " juniper tree" or " June apple tree" rather than "pear tree", presumably a mishearing of "partri dge in a pear tree". Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters recorded the traditional version of this song on 10 May 1949 for Decca Records. Irish actor Frank Kelly recorded "Christmas Countdown" in 1982 in which a man named Gobnait O'Lúnasa receives the 12 Christmas gifts referenced in the song from a lady named Nuala.

This version charted in both Ireland (where it reached number 8 in 1982) and the UK (entering the UK chart in December 1983 and reaching number 26). A similar cumulative verse from Scotland, "The Yule Days", has been likened to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" in the scholarly literature. a] However, the 1780 publication includes an illustration that clearly depicts the "five gold rings" as being jewellery. I have not met with the tune of it elsewhere, nor with the particular version of the words, and have, in this setting, recorded both to the best of my recollection. The lyrics given here are from Frederic Austin's 1909 publication that established the current form of the carol.The party was usually a mixed gathering of juveniles and adults, mostly relatives, and before supper — that is, before eating mince pies and twelfth cake — this game and the cushion dance were played, and the forfeits consequent upon them always cried. There are twelve verses, each describing a gift given by "my true love" on one of the twelve days of Christmas.

Featuring different animals discussing or trying to remember the lyrics of the song, it was released on Christmas Day 2005. This wording must have been opaque to many even in the 19th century: " canary birds", "colour'd birds", "curley birds", and "corley birds" are found in its place.The earliest known publications of the words to The Twelve Days of Christmas were an illustrated children's book, Mirth Without Mischief, published in London in 1780, and a broadsheet by Angus, of Newcastle, dated to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. The now-standard melody for the carol was popularised by the English baritone and composer Frederic Austin. Starring Penelope Keith, it imagines the increasingly exasperated response of the recipient of the "twelve days" gifts.

Twelfth Night is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "the evening of January 5th, the day before Epiphany, which traditionally marks the end of Christmas celebrations". Assuming the gifts are repeated in full in each round of the song, then a total of 364 items are delivered by the twelfth day. Husk, in the 1864 excerpt quoted below, stated that the carol was "found on broadsides printed at Newcastle at various periods during the last hundred and fifty years", i. A special Creature Comforts orchestral arrangement of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was made by British animator Nick Park and Aardman Animations.Before the fifth verse (when "Five gold rings" is first sung), the melody, using solfege, is "sol re mi fa re" for the fourth to second items, and this same melody is thereafter sung for the twelfth to sixth items. Les Douze Mois" ("The Twelve Months") (also known as "La Perdriole"—"The Partridge") [36] is another similar cumulative verse from France that has been likened to The Twelve Days of Christmas.