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"The Twelve Days of Christmas" is an English Christmas carol that enumerates in the
manner of a cumulative song a series of increasingly grand gifts given on each of the
twelve days of Christmas. The earliest known version of the lyrics was published in
London under the title "The Twelve Days of Christmas sung at King Pepin's Ball",
as part of a 1780 children's book, Mirth without Mischief.
In the Faroe Islands, there is a comparable counting Christmas song. The gifts include: one feather, two geese, three sides of meat, four sheep, five cows, six oxen, seven dishes, eight ponies, nine banners, ten barrels, eleven goats, twelve men, thirteen hides, fourteen rounds of cheese and fifteen deer. "The Twelve Days of Christmas" has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 68. The tunes of collected versions vary. The standard tune now associated with it is derived from a 1909 arrangement of a traditional folk melody by English composer Frederic Austin, who first introduced the familiar prolongation of the verse "five gold rings". |