Folk Songs

Notes

The Welsh language has more than one version of this cumulative song, which is well–known in English as 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' and has counterparts in French. ODNR, 722, refers to an English text which was published around 1780 as 'the words of a fireside memory–and–forfeits game'. It seems highly likely that the song would at one time have been put to some such use in Welsh, either during the Christmas holiday in general or perhaps on Twelfth Day/Night specifically: after all, several examples are preserved in Welsh of feat songs (including cumulative songs) performed by wassailers as a challenge to the families they visited – the challenged usually being expected to reply in kind. (These songs appear to have been used at both Christmastime and Candlemas – the latter especially, perhaps.) Welsh versions of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' are of course known to have been performed as feat songs; for instance, the list of gifts being sung upon one breath (and therefore with increasing speed as the verses gradually lengthened). Interestingly, another English cumulative rhyme, 'A gaping wide–mouthed waddling frog' is said in ODNR, 181–3, to have been popular in England 'especially at Christmas time'. For additional examples of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' collected in Wales, see JWFSS, i, 175–6, and ii, 283–4. Upon the song in England and France especially, see ODNR, 722–4.