The Twelve Days Of Christmas: A Song History

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"The Twelve Days of Christmas" is a cumulative counting song in which a true love's gifts pile up, day by day, across the Christmas season.[1] Its earliest known printing is in Mirth without Mischief, a book of around 1780, where it appeared as a rhyme to be recited rather than a song with music.[2] Copies of that little book survive at the British Library and the university libraries of Edinburgh and Leeds.[3] Researchers have suggested it began as a memory-and-forfeit game for Twelfth Night parties, with players dropping out as they slipped on the growing list.[2] The Traditional Ballad Index, which files it as Roud 68, lists versions from southern England, Scotland and Wales, from Canada, and from the United States between New England, Appalachia and the South, with Jean Ritchie's Singing Family of the Cumberlands among the printed sources.[1]

Etching of several partridges resting among tall grasses and reeds, with birds flying overhead

Albert Flamen, Perdix rubra, Perdix rouge (The Red-Legged Partridge), from "Livre d'Oyseaux," etching, 1655–60. Red-legged partridges etched in the 1650s, shown as a nod to the song's first gift; the etching has no connection to the song.

The melody most people know is comparatively recent: Frederic Austin's arrangement of the traditional song for voice and piano was published by Novello in London in 1909.[2][4] Austin reworked both the words and the tune of the folk song he drew on.[2] Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters recorded it for Decca in Los Angeles on May 10, 1949.[5] Burl Ives followed with his own Decca recording in New York in August 1956.[6]

The Ballad Index reports, as a legend passed along with no sources given, the claim that the song was a covert Catholic catechism.[1] Smithsonian, citing David Mikkelson of Snopes, notes that the idea appeared only in the 1990s and lacks any documentary support.[2] The Opies, as the Ballad Index reports, concluded that the song's meaning "has yet to be satisfactorily explained."[1] For dulcimer players, Stephen Seifert has arranged it in Come Let Us Adore Him, a 37-page book of Christmas classics for the dulcimer that comes with an MP3 recording of each song.[7]

Our book that contains the song "The Twelve Days Of Christmas"

Sources

  1. Traditional Ballad Index: "The Twelve Days of Christmas".
  2. Smithsonian Magazine: "12 Facts About the 12 Days of Christmas".
  3. Jisc Library Services: "Celebration of Christmas".
  4. IMSLP: "12 Days of Christmas (Austin, Frederic)".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Decca matrix L 5004. The twelve days of Christmas / The Andrews Sisters ; Bing Crosby".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Decca matrix 100394. Twelve days of Christmas / Burl Ives".
  7. Stephen Seifert: "Come Let Us Adore Him".
  8. Image: Albert Flamen, Perdix rubra, Perdix rouge (The Red-Legged Partridge), from "Livre d'Oyseaux," etching, 1655–60. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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