Twelve Days of Christmas, The

(Unknown c18th century English/Frederic Austin)

This Christmas carol is an English cumulative counting song which is a singing game where the verses are built up on top of each other as the verses go on and then all repeated back every time a new verse is added.

Although the origins of the song are unknown, the version that is best known and has 12 gifts was first printed in 1780 in a children’s book Mirth without Mischief and no melody to accompany it was included. It has been suggested by various sources in the 1800s that it was a game where players chanted the verses from memory and paid a forfeit it is not repeated correctly if they made a mistake. It is listed as No. 68 in the Roud Folk Song Index.

Some areas of England called the song “Ten Days of Christmas” and the area of Newcastle-on-Tyne in northern England has been thought to be where it originated and in 1864 Husk quoted that it was “found on broadsides printed at Newcastle at several periods over the last one hundred and fifty years”, which would take it back to the 1710s.

It travelled across the Atlantic and was also sung in Canada and the United States and listed as a “chain song” in the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature published by the American folklorist Stith Thompson in 1935.

There have been various different suggestions and interpretations as to the origins and meaning of the gifts that are sung in each verse but the gifts popularly sung in the verses are:

A partridge in a pear tree
2 turtle doves
3 French hens
4 collie (now calling) birds
5 gold rings
6 geese a laying
7 swans a swimming
8 maids a milking
9 drummers drumming
10 piper’s piping
11 ladies dancing
12 lords a leaping

Several other countries have their own similar cumulative songs that have been likened to this song including “The Yule Days” from Scotland, which has 13 rather than 12, “Les Douze Mois” from France, aka “The Partridge”.

The musical accompaniment to the song, which is now used as the standard melody, was arranged for solo voice and piano by the composer and baritone singer Frederic Austin, which he then used for his own concerts from 1905. The music he used was possibly from the “traditional melody” which had been recorded in Providence, Rhode Island in 1870. This arrangement was published in 1909 and in a later reprint in 1995 there was a posthumous footnote where he had quoted the song as being in his family but he had “not met with the tune of it elsewhere”. He did, however, add the music to the traditional melody for the line “Five gold rings”, add the word “On” to the start of each verse, change “colly birds” to “calling birds” and re-order the last verses.

It has been performed and recorded countless times by numerous artists and ensembles and can often be heard in parodies.

Chicago Symphony Low Brass Ensemble recordings
VOX 7501 (CD: Christmas with the Symphony Brass of Chicago)
Conductor – Barry Faldner

Sources:

Twelve Days of Christmas, The

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