If you are in England, you will know your job as a "true love" during the Christmas season. On twelfth night, aka 6 January or 5 January (see previous post), the twelve days of Christmas “officially” start on Boxing Day. Christmas Day, of course, is not one of the twelve days of Christmas; that would be silly.
Thursday 28 December is therefore the day for 3 French Hens, 2 turtle doves & a partridge in a pear tree. It would have been the day to go out and deliver your first batch of french hens, the first of many. On just that third day, the delivery van would need to accommodate ten birds and the third bloomin’ pear tree.
By the time you get to the twelfth night, my true love has sent me a partridge in a pear tree every day for twelve days. When you add up all the bloody useless gifts (useless apart from the gold rings) my true love sent to me, I have to find room for:
• 12 pear trees (which is the start of an orchard)
• 12 partridges (the tradition implies they are alive but they could be roasted and hanging in a bag from a branch of the pear tree)
• 22 turtle doves (more bird-like than turtle-like)
• 30 french hens (like any other hen except clucks with a slight accent and occasionally appears ‘au vin”)
• 36 colly birds ( a bit like a blackbird - not a “calling bird” which would have made it a parrot or a canary)
• 40 gold rings (40 x Tiffany Lucida 18 carat gold rings at about £600 each = £24,000, though the original meaning may have been for ring-necked pheasants, a bit more likely considering the last four birdy days)
• 42 geese-a-laying (domestic geese lay an average of one egg per week, so plan on about 6 large eggs per day though their laying patterns may synchronise if they are kept together in which case you get 42 in one day)
• 42 swans-a-swimming (small lake, river or moat required)
• 40 maids-a-milking (really need at least 40 cows, preferably 400, to make them of any use for milking; however maids do have other uses or settings, though some that my true love wouldn’t want me to have, except maybe as a source for cowpox vaccination against smallpox)
• 36 ladies dancing (presumably a silent disco until 5 January when the first pipers turn up, followed by percussion tonight on 6 January for driving disco repetitive beats)
• 30 lords-a-leaping (not sure how this would compete with or complement the ladies dancing; what would all those lords and ladies do before the musicians arrive? oh dear....)
• 22 pipers piping (the odds are that these are not bagpipe players)
• 12 drummers’ drumming (various versions shift around the days the people arrive - in some the drummers arrive on day 9 and the lords are the final arrivals)
The delivery on the 12th day of Christmas, 6 January, would be a “logistical nightmare” with 23 birds of six species, in various sizes, some quite large and which, if riled, could break your arm with a beak strike; fifty people and their musical instruments; plus some implied cows for milking.
Which altogether means you need to find room for 12 trees, 184 birds, 140 people and a pocketful of rings (plus the implied lake and cows). We can only hope that the people bring their own packed lunches, and the birds successfully forage for insects and bird seed. Unless they were roasted or deep fried in a special batter.
You can really go off a true love…
No comments:
Post a Comment