The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)

"The Twelve Days of Christmas" is a traditional and lengthy English Christmas carol. The song is based on the premise that the singer receives one gift per day from his or her "true love" over the twelve days immediately following Christmas Day. Each verse repeats all of the previous gifts listed; thus, one could say that the singer receives 364 gifts total--or one a day until next Christmas, when the process begins all over again.

Music origin
The earliest well-known performance of the song was by English scholar James O. Halliwell in 1842, and he published a version in 4th edition The Nursery Rhymes of England (1846), collected principally from 'oral tradition'. The song had become traditional as early as the 16th century.

In the early 20th century, English composer wrote an arrangement in which he added his melody from "five gold rings" onwards, which has since become standard. The copyright to this arrangement was registered in 1909 and is still active by its owners, Limited.

Origin
The twelve days in the song are the twelve days starting Christmas day, or in some traditions, the day after Christmas (December 26) (Boxing Day or St. Stephen's Day, as being the feast day of St. Stephen Protomartyr) to the day before Epiphany, or the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6, or the Twelfth Day). Twelfth Night is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "the evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the Epiphany, formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a time of merrymaking."

Although the specific origins of the chant are not known, it possibly began as a Twelfth Night "memories-and-forfeits" game, in which a leader recited a verse, each of the players repeated the verse, the leader added another verse, and so on until one of the players made a mistake, with the player who erred having to pay a penalty, such as offering up a kiss or a sweet. This is how the game is offered up in its earliest known printed version, in the children's book Mirth without Mischief (c. 1780) published in, which 100 years later Lady Gomme, a collector of folktales and rhymes, described playing every Twelfth Day night before eating mince pies and twelfth cake.

The song apparently is older than the printed version, though it is not known how much older. Textual evidence indicates that the song was not English in origin, but French, though it is considered an English carol. Three French versions of the song are known. If the "partridge in a pear tree" of the English version is to be taken literally, then it seems as if the chant comes from France, since the red-legged (or French) partridge, which perches in trees more frequently than the native common (or grey) partridge, was not successfully introduced into England until about 1770.

Structure
The song is a, meaning that each verse is built on top of the previous verses. There are twelve verses, each describing a gift given by "my true love" on one of the twelve days of Christmas.

The first verse runs:
 * On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
 * A Partridge in a Pear Tree.

The second verse:
 * On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
 * Two Turtle Doves
 * And a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

The third verse begins to show some metrical variance, as explained below:
 * On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
 * Three French Hens
 * Two Turtle Doves
 * And a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

...and so forth, until the last verse:
 * On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
 * Twelve Drummers Drumming
 * Eleven Pipers Piping
 * Ten Lords-a-Leaping
 * Nine Ladies Dancing
 * Eight Maids-a-Milking
 * Seven Swans-a-Swimming
 * Six Geese-a-Laying
 * Five Golden Rings
 * Four Calling Birds
 * Three French Hens
 * Two Turtle Doves
 * And a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

This version features variant lyrics, as explained below.

The time signature of this song is not constant, unlike most popular music. This irregular meter perhaps speaks for the song's folk origin. The introductory lines, such as "On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me", are made up of two 4/4 bars, while most of the lines naming gifts receive one 3/4 bar per gift with the exception of "Five gold(en) rings," which receives two 4/4 bars, "Two turtle doves" getting a 4/4 bar with "And a" on its 4th beat and "Partridge in a pear tree" getting two 4/4 bars of music. In most versions, a 4/4 bar of music immediately follows "Partridge in a pear tree." "On the" is found in that bar on the fourth (pickup) beat for the next verse. The successive bars of three for the gifts surrounded by bars of four give the song its hallmark "hurried" quality.

The second to fourth verses' melody is different from that of the fifth to twelveth verses. Before the fifth verse (when "five gold(en) rings" is first sung), the melody, using, is "sol re mi fa re" for the fourth to second items, and this same melody is thereafter sung for the twelveth to sixth items. However, the melody for "four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves" changes from this point, differing from the way these lines were sung in the opening four verses.