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

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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. In the UK and other commonwealth countries, the 26th December is commemorated as the national holiday Boxing Day, while the 6th January, is seen as the last day you can have your Christmas decorations up by many European countries. 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. On one of these sheets, nearly a century old, it is entitled "An Old English Carol," but it can scarcely be said to fall within that description of composition, being rather fitted for use in playing the game of "Forfeits," to which purpose it was commonly applied in the metropolis upwards of forty years since. However, the melody we most associate with this song is derived from a 1909 arrangement of a traditional folk melody by English composer, Frederic Austin.

The Twelve Days of Christmas’ and what are the Which are ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ and what are the

While not a celebration in itself, these twelve days are embedded into the culture of multiple Christian nations. 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. The singer, having arranged the music for solo voice with piano accompaniment, included it in his concert repertoire from 1905 onwards. However, a 20th-century variant has "my true love gave to me"; this wording has become particularly common in North America. McKellar, published an article, "How to Decode the Twelve Days of Christmas", in which he suggested that "The Twelve Days of Christmas" lyrics were intended as a catechism song to help young English Catholics learn their faith, at a time when practising Catholicism was against the law (from 1558 until 1829).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. 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.

The Twelve Days of Christmas - How Many Presents? The Twelve Days of Christmas - How Many Presents?

The video game StarCraft: Broodwar released a new map named Twelve Days of StarCraft with the song which was adopted a new lyric featured units from the game by Blizzard on 23 December 1999. Nevertheless, whatever the ultimate origin of the chant, it seems probable [that] the lines that survive today both in England and France are merely an irreligious travesty. Salmon, writing from Newcastle, claimed in 1855 that the song "[had] been, up to within twenty years, extremely popular as a schoolboy's Christmas chant". A number of later publications state that Austin's music for "five gold rings" is an original addition to an otherwise traditional melody. It featured one hen, two barley seeds, three grey geese, four pounds of pork, six flayed sheep, a sow with six pigs, seven åtting grain, eight grey foals with golden saddles, nine newly born cows, ten pairs of oxen, eleven clocks, and finally twelve churches, each with twelve altars, each with twelve priests, each with twelve capes, each with twelve coin-purses, each with twelve daler inside.

There are twelve verses, each describing a gift given by "my true love" on one of the twelve days of Christmas. The song has been recorded by the Muppets five different times, featuring different Muppets in different roles each time. Halliwell, writing in 1842, stated that "[e]ach child in succession repeats the gifts of the day, and forfeits for each mistake. This piece is found on broadsides printed at Newcastle at various periods during the last hundred and fifty years. The twelve days in the song are the twelve days starting with Christmas Day to the day before Epiphany (5 January).

Christmas Songs – The Twelve Days of Christmas Lyrics Christmas Songs – The Twelve Days of Christmas Lyrics

a] However, the 1780 publication includes an illustration that clearly depicts the "five gold rings" as being jewellery. This is a traditional English singing game but the melody of five gold rings was added by Richard[ sic] Austin whose fine setting (Novello) should be consulted for a fuller accompaniment. Each verse deals with the next day of Christmastide, adding one new gift and then repeating all the earlier gifts, so that each verse is one line longer than its predecessor. 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". The Ray Conniff Singers recorded a traditional version in 1962, appearing on the album We Wish You a Merry Christmas.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). The theory suggests that each gift represented a tenet of faith, and the song was sung by young catholics as a memory aid to remember various aspects of their religion. Importance [certainly has] long been attached to the Twelve Days, when, for instance, the weather on each day was carefully observed to see what it would be in the corresponding month of the coming year. A large number of different melodies have been associated with the song, of which the best known is derived from a 1909 arrangement of a traditional folk melody by English composer Frederic Austin. John Julius Norwich's 1998 book, The Twelve Days of Christmas (Correspondence), uses the motif of repeating the previous gifts on each subsequent day, to humorous effect.