>The chair of my department recently volunteered me to talk to a local TV
>station about the traditional song, "The 12 Days of Christmas," and other
>than remembering it as a catechetical text (partridge = Christ, 2 turtle
>doves = the Old and New Testament, 3 French hens = faith, hope, and love,
>etc), I seem to remember that the song itself is 16th century rather than
>medieval, though the feast days extend much farther back, of course.
>
>I'm the only medievalist in the state, I think, and so I get all the
>queries about anything "in the olde days," which could mean anything prior
>to the 20th century.
>
>Please respond privately, if you like. I also recently lost my hard drive,
>so if somebody could post the URL to the medieval-relgion archive, I'd
>much appreciate it.
>
>Daniel T. Kline
>Assistant Professor of English
>University of Alaska Anchorage
>Anchorage, AK 99508
>email: [log in to unmask]
>phone: 907/786-4364
>fax: 907/786-4383
Dear Daniel,
I haven't got the <Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes> handy, but you may find
something in that. I gather that the song is originally French, of some
antiquity. In a version from wesern France, the gifts are mostly food: one
boneless stuffing, two breasts of veal, three joints of beef, four pigs'
trotters, five legs of mutton,six partridges with cabbage, seven spitted
rabbits, eight plates of salad, nine dishes for a chapterful of canons, ten
full casks, eleven bosomy maidens, and twelve musketeers with their swords.
It has been proposed that the gifts of the song may refer to penances
exacted for failure to observe points of ritual during the period; it is
attested that in the North of England the song used to form part of a game
of forfeits in which anyone who could not carry the song a line forward and
repeat the preceding lines had to contribute something to the amusement of
the assembly (e.g. a song, or a story). I'l be interested to see what
others can dig up on this topic.
Cheers,
Brian
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