Annotation:Twelve Days of Christmas (The)
X:1 T:Twelve Days of Christmas, The L:1/8 M:2/4 S:John Bell music manuscript collection c. 1812 (Northumberland) B:Bruce & Stokoe – Northumbrian Minstrelsy (1882) N:The first verse (“On the first day of Christmas”) is the first line of music. N:The second line of music picks up from “The twelth day of Christmas…” Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:G D|G2 GA|(GF) ED|GG BG|d3F|G2 (Bd)|cA (GF)|G3|| D|G2 GA|(GF) ED|GG BG|d4|c2 Ac|BG z2|cc Ac| Bg z2|c2Ac|BG z2|c2 Ac|BG z2|c2 Ac|BG z2|c2 Ac| Bg z2|c2 Ac|d2d2|G2B2|E2 z2|F2 AF|D2 z2| G2B2|E2 z2|F2 AF|D2 EF|G2 (Bd)|cA (GF)|G3||
TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS, THE. English, Air (2/4 time). England, Northumberland. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. The melody is not the tune we now associate with the ubiquitous Christmas song. "This is one of the quaintest of Christmas carols now relegated to the nursery as a forfeit game, where each child in succession has to repeat the gifts of the day, and incurs a forfeit for every error. The accumulative process has always been a favourite game with children, and in early writers from Homer downwards this repetition is often employed. The twelve days, extending Christmas Day to Epiphany, were usually amongst our ancestors the days of the whole year wherein to make merry and fraternize in mirth and good fellowship. The music of the first and last verses only are here given, as each verse not only commemorates the gifts of the preceding days, requiring no slight effort of memory on the part of those who try it. The melody for each gift is the same in all the repetitions, so that the last verse contains the whole of the tune, and the total number of gifts amount to three hundred and sixty five one for each day in the year; the twelve pear trees being in commemoration of the twelve days of Christmas" [Bruce & Stokoe].
