The December issue of the British edition of "Country Living" has an article on the "12 Days of Christmas" song. The origins of the song are obscure. Ace Collins' Traditions of Christmas, as well as some others, claim that it was a secret teaching tool when Catholicism was suppressed at the time of Henry VIII and later Oliver Cromwell. The most probably origin was as a forfeit in a parlour game: the Victorians were fond of parlour games, and if you lost, you had to pay a forfeit: recite a tongue-twister correctly, for instance, or, in this case, remember all twelve items in the song.
It did have an interesting fact I'd never heard before, that the words "a partridge in a pear tree" is a possible misinterpretation of "a part of a juniper tree."
The other thing I noticed was that they mention the alternative descriptive of the "four calling birds." When I first learned the song, I also recall the line as being "four colley birds. Colley, or "coally," is a synonym for black, so those calling birds may have just been ordinary blackbirds.
"Colley," incidentally, is where the collie dog gets its name. It was renown for herding the "colley" (black-faced) Scottish sheep.
"On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
"12 drummers drumming,
"11 pipers piping,
"10 lords a leaping,
"9 ladies dancing,
"8 maids a milking,
"7 swans a swimming,
'6 geese a laying,
"5 golden rings,
"4 colley birds,
"3 French hens,
"2 turtledoves,
"and a partridge in a pear tree."
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