Twelve days of Christmas

[ladyofastolat]

It seems that while everyone who sings The Twelve Days of Christmas agrees on what arrived on the first 8 days, everything goes horribly wrong after that. Lots of people seem to be passionately convinced that their version is "the right one", even as printed books give a variety of different answers. So, once again, when faced with a contraversial issue, I appeal to my friends list on LJ to conclusively prove what it right.

(Just imagine how much easier things would have been in the past if people had been able to recourse to the LJ poll to answer such issues. Can't work out when Easter will be celebrated in your kingdom? Post the LJ Poll of Whitby to find out. Simples!)

But, anyway...



[Poll #1499758]

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Actually, my own poll didn't take into account my own preferred answer. I definitely originally learnt it with 12 lords and 11 ladies, but can never remember which way round the drummers and pipers go. I voted for what felt ever so slightly more "right" to me, but who knows?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm in the same boat, and took the same course. I do notice that my children have quite a different order, though.

But in a different part of the forest, are you for colly birds or calling birds? I learned colly, but I've heard the other one more and more in recent years.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I've always sung "calling birds." I've read that it was originally "colly birds", but got changed in recent decades by people who didn't know what "colly birds" were, but I've only ever sung it, or heard it sung, as "calling birds."

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I don't know what colly birds are. Are they used to herd flying sheep?

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Back in Ancient Yore, land rents were so expensive that some enterprising peasants in deepest Essex trained their sheep to be airborne, and employed intelligent, trained pigeons to round them up. Buoyed by their success, the peasants in question turned their attention to those animals that were so vital to the winter sustenance of the poor: pigs. Their bulk proved a challenge, but the enterprising peasants they were confident that they would get them airborne soon. The expression "when pigs fly," now taken to mean "never," originally meant something very different. "The labouring man will be free from the tyranny of the landlord when pigs fly," was a pure statement of fact, and meant "round about next October, once we've ironed a few little problems."

Understandably, the landlords hated the idea, not only because it would free the peasants from being tied to the land, but because their mansions and castles soon became drenched in the droppings of the flying flocks. And that is the origin of the noble art of falconry: invented first to take down the "collie birds" that kept the flying sheep from straying. This was in many ways the first Battle of Britain, fought between hawk and pigeon, between falcon and lamb, and it was won, as were so many other things in Ancient Yore, by the rich. Never again would the common people of England dream of putting sheep in the air. Most poignantly of all, "when pigs fly" ceased to be a stirring promise of coming liberty, but came to express the graveyard of crushed hopes - "never."

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Alternatively, they're blackbirds, colly meaning "black like coal."

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

oh how pedestrian compared to your history

[phoebesmum.livejournal.com]

I know that it isn't 12 ladies because when I was a kid I was very annoyed that there were fewer ladies than lords.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

I think I used to sing the 'ten lords a-leaping', but have subsequently been corrupted by Brian Sibley's radio play And Yet Another Partridge in which Penelope Keith plays the increasingly derranged recipient of the gifts - and that definitely ends with ominious drumming.

[segh.livejournal.com]

While you're at it, what about the one with the lily-white boys?

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I wish I could remember the whole of the Barry Gold filk song that adapted Green Grow the Rushes, O! to a Lord of the Rings theme.

Hums: One for the One Ring all alone that was destroyed by Frodo.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

We used to sing that at the Oxford Tolkien Society, so some of the more recent members on my Friends list might remember it - or, indeed, some of the many national Tolkien Society people.

It entirely corrupted my singing of the original. The Oxford Arthurian Society sang yet another version, and sometimes did a Communist version as well. Even now, I have to concentrate really hard to get through the entire original song without One Rings and Mother Goddesses and "red fly the banners oh!" sneaking in.

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

RED BURN THE PAGANS-O!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I've probably got the words somewhere. In about five different versions.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

One is one and all is one and ever more shall be so
Two two the horned one working for his living oh
Three three the mother goddess
Four for the Four seasons
Five for the points of a pentagram
Six, six, six - the number of the beast
Seven for the tears on Glastonbury Tor
Eight for the hours of the working night
Nine for the lives of the witches Cat

Ten, Eleven, & Twelve you'll have to ask Parrot_Knight if he remembers as he taught me on a Taruithorn punt trip in fact so that we sang that rather than

I'll sing you one-oh, high fly the nazgul oh
...
One for the One ring lord of all that was destroyed by Frodo

of which off hand only "Three, three the elven rings, and Four for the questing hobbits" stand out.

[firin.livejournal.com]

I can't quite remember ten either, though it may come to me.

11 for the spots on a fly agaric
12 for the signs of the zodiac

I'm pretty sure there was a '13 for the members of a witches' coven' as well.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I've just cheated and looked up the words in an old copy of the Arthurian song book, and apparently ten is "Ten for the heavenly bodies."

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I couldn't remember any of that, but it all seems very familiar when I see it written down. I've dug out an old copy of the Arthurian song book (i.e. I've cheated) to find out 10: Ten for the heavenly bodies. 11, 12 and 13 are as Firin says.

The big revelation for me, though, is that 8 is for the hours of the working night - something confirmed by the song book. I always imagined it as "knight", and had nice visions of the questing knight looking at his portable sundial and downing tools at the end of his working day. "Sorry, damsel, I can't rescue you. It's not my shift, you see, and my king doesn't pay overtime."

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Let's see...

12 for the 12 disciples
11 for the 11 who went to heaven
and 10 for the 10 commandments
9 for the 9 bright shiners
8 for the April rainers
7 for the 7 stars in the sky
and 6 for the 6 proud walkers
5 for the symbols at your door
and 4 for the Gospel makers
3, 3, the ri-i-i-i-vals,
2, 2 the lily-white boys, cloth-ed all in green-o
One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so.

See, writing it, I can manage it without any of the filk versions sneaking it. Singing it is quite another matter. :-)

[segh.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

One's for the grunge upon my splod, it's ruined my cordwangle.
- K. Williams

[muuranker.livejournal.com]

I wonder what some of these _mean_. Always have.

Oh. There's google. http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/green_grow_the_rushes.htm

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Definitely pipers, then drummers, then dancers. I'm not too fussed about the order in which the dancers come on, but you need the horns and percussion to get going before the dancing can begin.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

When we did "dance" at school, it was usually silent, and involved standing around in the hall waving our arms around artistically as we each in our own private way pretended to be a jellyfish trapped in a goldfish bowl, or something. Which is just to say that you don't necessarily need music before dance. The ladies might be wordlessly expressing the torment of being plucked out of their own nice Christmas celebrations and sent off by some stupid true love as an ill-advised present to his love.

[evilmissbecky.livejournal.com]

I truly have no idea. The only one I voted for with any confidence was eleven, because I distinctly remember how awkward a phrase it was...and yet I see I'm the only one who voted for the drummers.

Interesting poll! :-)

[gramarye1971]

My family has little brass Christmas tree decorations of the 12 Days, with the words written on the bottom of each, and so in our house it was always 12 drummers, 11 pipers, 10 lords, and 9 ladies.

[thecatsamuel.livejournal.com]

But my Christmas tree decoration have 12 lords, 11 ladies, 10 pipers and 9 drummers. Though they came from

PS What's the story behind the shiners, stars, lily white boys?

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Yay! Someone agrees with the order that I sing!

No-one really knows the story behind the song Green Grow the Rushes O, but it doesn't stop people from speculating. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Grow_the_Rushes,_O) :-)

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

You don't have a don't care option!

[purplecat]

As a child I sung pipers, drummers, ladies, lords but then I read Jenny Overton's 13 Days of Christmas which went ladies, lords, drummers, pipers...

I've been agnostic ever since