Monday, December 17, 2007
THE popular English carol, The Twelve Days of Christmas, mentions five kinds of bird and a tree.
This motley crew of also-rans have become minor Christmas icons, a supporting cast to the festival’s leading lights; Rudolph, the robin and the turkey. The cumulative song, à la Old MacDonald had a Farm, dates back to the 16th Century. The claim that it was used to promulgate forbidden Catholic teachings seems odd, because the doctrines mentioned in it were held by papists and reformers alike. Perhaps the jingle enabled Catholics to recognise and communicate with each other, a sort of vocal equivalent of the Masonic handshake.
The meaning of some of the symbols is fairly obvious. The three French hens, for example, might represent the Magi or their gifts. The suggestion that the hens stand for the persons of the Trinity seems too blasphemous to be considered. The four calling birds were almost certainly the four evangelists.
Could the partridge in a pear tree refer to Christ on the cross? The bird might seem to be an odd choice for such a role but partridges are secretive, only showing themselves occasionally, and this might recall Christ’s appearances after the Resurrection. Virtually extinct in Ireland nowadays, the bird would have been familiar to everybody long ago. Strictly a ground dweller, no self-respecting partridge would be seen dead in a tree. Perhaps that’s why it was chosen for the song, representing the crucifixion as a travesty of nature. But was there actually a tree in the rhyme originally? It’s been suggested that pear tree is a mistranslation of perdrix, the French for partridge, the original line being something like "a partridge, a perdrix".
The turtle dove is also a rarity in Ireland. About a dozen sightings of it are listed in the Irish Bird Report in a good year and nesting has been recorded. About 75,000 pairs breed in Britain, mainly in England, and the bird is found throughout mainland Europe. This is the most travelled member of the pigeon family and the only one to migrate across the Sahara. Accordingly, it’s most odd that it appears in a Christmas carol; there are no turtle doves in Europe at this time of year.
The dove symbolised the Holy Spirit but in the carol it may represent the Old and New Testaments. The bird has ancient romantic associations, being mentioned in the Song of Solomon, the biblical collection of love poems thought to have been written about 950BC: "..the time of the singing of birds is come and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land".
Turtus was Vergil’s name for this dove but the association with turtles is odd. The name may be onomatopoeic, an imitation of the gentle "turr turr…" song, which resembles the purring of a contented cat, a most soothing sound. The little dove, speckled orange on the back and white underneath, is more often heard than seen and no wonder; it is hunted fiercely in Mediterranean countries. Like the partridge it has become shy and wary, remaining well hidden. Perhaps this is why it features in the carol.
That swans are mentioned in a Christmas song is not surprising; they were eaten in upper-class houses on Christmas Day. Only cygnets were eaten; as John Rutty remarks in Towards a Natural History of the County of Dublin, published in 1779, "the tame swan is most succulent but hard of digestion except when very young". Cygnets had to be captured and fattened in special pits, a labour-intensive and expensive process. When William Strickland brought turkeys from America to Bristol in 1497, the days of swan-upping were numbered. Seven swans rolls nicely off the tongue and seven is a special biblical number. There are seven sacraments and seven deadly sins.
Poorer people ate a goose on the big day. Geese were cheap to raise and manage. They forage for themselves, converting plants and animals, inedible to humans, into tasty goose-flesh. The six geese are laying may refer to the six days of creation as described in Genesis. A goose creates an egg each day. Six would be a typical clutch, fitting the metaphor rather well.
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