Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
::Today's soundtrack: Abney Park "Carol of the Bells" ::
When it comes to religion and holidays and traditions and so forth, there are many crazy things people do. Around Christmas time, people sing Christmas songs. One of the most bizarre of these songs is without a doubt, The Twelve Days of Christmas. What the flying fuck is up with that song?
I understand that people give gifts to the people they love at Christmas time. I get that. What I don't get is why somebody would want to besiege their loved one with all of those birds! And people! Can you imagine being on the receiving end of this? Waking up to find your sitting room ravaged by seven swans? Swans are very beautiful, yes, but also very big (we're talking like a ten foot wingspan here, people) and sometimes mean. If you lump the partridge, turtle doves, French hens, calling birds, geese and swans together, that's what? Like 20 birds! What is a person supposed to do with all that? Then with all the lords leaping, ladies dancing, maids milking, pipers piping, and drummers drumming that's like 40 people! What the hell?? Wait... this is like giving someone a white elephant, isn't it? White elephants are beautiful and very rare, but you give them to people you hate because they will go bankrupt caring for it. That's what this is REALLY about, isn't it?
Another weird thing about this song is that no one knows if all of the verses are accumulative or only given once. I mean, do you only get the one partridge and pear tree on the first day or do you keep on getting a new every subsequent night? Therefore you would end up with twelve partridges, twenty two turtle doves, thirty French hens, and so on. But no one knows for sure!
Something else no one seems to agree on is the blasted ORDER of the gifts! The very beginning seems okay, five golden rings and prior are all good and generally accepted as "five golden rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge and a pear tree." It's numbers six through twelve where people are all over the place. No one can decide if it's eleven lords a-leaping or ten, if it's nine ladies dancing or eight... it's very maddening! It doesn't matter where you are from either. I could gather ten random people of the streets of my home town to try to sing it in unison, but it would all fall apart around eight, I guarantee it. How can a song become a tradition if no one can agree upon the lyrics? I don't understand how this could happen!
Just for your reference, this is the version that *I* knew as a child:
Twelve drummers drumming
Eleven lords a-leaping
Ten pipers piping
Nine ladies dancing
Eight maid 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
And it always burns my toast when people make it eleven pipers piping when to me "eleven lords a-leaping" just rolls off the tongue better. You've got all those nice "L"s in there similar to how "seven swans a-swimming" has all that nice "S" used in it. Just seems a shame not to make use of that swell alliteration. Can we all agree that ELEVEN lords a-leaping is indeed the way to go? Please?
But I'll tell you, even as a child I could see the impracticality of these gifts. It was explained to me that it was written in the olden days when people had their own cows that they had to milk and livestock, et cetera. Well, that only explained about half of it. You can cook up the partridge, eat the goose eggs, and it might be nice to have someone do your cow milking for a change, but what about all those ladies dancing? Lords leaping? What practical use could any of that possibly have? And, um, how can you give someone PEOPLE as GIFTS? Are we talking indentured servants here? Slaves? Are the drummers and lords only rented out for the twelve days and then they go back home? NOBODY KNOWS!
I suppose to me, it all comes back to one of my pet peeves: people who celebrate tradition for tradition's sake. In other words, they take part in things without knowing WHY they do it. Traditions, holidays, rituals, et cetera all got started at some point with REASONS. Just know the reasons for doing something. I mean, if I were to show up at your house on December 26 with a partridge in a pear tree, the next day with a couple of turtle doves, and down the line I'm sure you would ask "WHY???" and I would say "because of that song! It's a tradition!" and I'm sure you would reply "But that song makes NO SENSE!!" Then I would have you explain to me how putting a fir tree in your living room makes MORE sense and when you couldn't I would ask where you wanted the drummers to set up their kits.
William the Bloody (a-leaping)
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