[1][2] The carol, whose words were first published in England in the late eighteenth century, has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 68.

The earliest known publications of the words to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" were an illustrated children's book, Mirth Without Mischief, published in London in 1780, and a broadsheet by Angus, of Newcastle, dated to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries.

[4][5] While the words as published in Mirth Without Mischief and the Angus broadsheet were almost identical, subsequent versions (beginning with James Orchard Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes of England of 1842) have displayed considerable variation:[6] For ease of comparison with Austin's 1909 version given above: A similar cumulative verse from Scotland, "The Yule Days", has been likened to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" in the scholarly literature.

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.

[32] These were illustrated in 1994 by local cartoonist Óli Petersen (born 1936) on a series of two stamps issued by the Faroese Philatelic Office.

Its final verse, as published in 1864, runs:[38][39] Le douzièm' mois de l'an, que donner à ma mie?

Twelfth Night is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "the evening of January 5th, the day before Epiphany, which traditionally marks the end of Christmas celebrations".

It is mentioned in the section on "Chain Songs" in Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Indiana University Studies, Vol.

Husk, in the 1864 excerpt quoted below, stated that the carol was "found on broadsides printed at Newcastle at various periods during the last hundred and fifty years", i.e. from approximately 1714.

[46] Some authors suggest a connection to a religious verse entitled "Twelfth Day", found in a thirteenth century manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge;[47][48][49] this theory is criticised as "erroneous" by Yoffie.

[50] It has also been suggested that this carol is connected to the "old ballad" which Sir Toby Belch begins to sing in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

[51] Many early sources suggest that The Twelve Days of Christmas was a "memory-and-forfeits" game, in which participants were required to repeat a verse of poetry recited by the leader.

"[6] Salmon, writing from Newcastle, claimed in 1855 that the song "[had] been, up to within twenty years, extremely popular as a schoolboy's Christmas chant".

Husk, writing in 1864, stated:[53] This piece is found on broadsides printed at Newcastle at various periods during the last hundred and fifty years.

On one of these sheets, nearly a century old, it is entitled "An Old English Carol," but it can scarcely be said to fall within that description of composition, being rather fitted for use in playing the game of "Forfeits," to which purpose it was commonly applied in the metropolis upwards of forty years since.

Scott (1892), reminiscing about Christmas and New Year's celebrations in Newcastle around the year 1844, described a performance thus:[25]A lady begins it, generally an elderly lady, singing the first line in a high clear voice, the person sitting next takes up the second, the third follows, at first gently, but before twelfth day is reached the whole circle were joining in with stentorian noise and wonderful enjoyment.Lady Gomme wrote in 1898:[54] "The Twelve Days" was a Christmas game.

The party was usually a mixed gathering of juveniles and adults, mostly relatives, and before supper—that is, before eating mince pies and twelfth cake—this game and the cushion dance were played, and the forfeits consequent upon them always cried.

These forfeits were afterwards "cried" in the usual way, and were not returned to the owner until they had been redeemed by the penalty inflicted being performed.An anonymous "antiquarian", writing in 1867, speculated that "pear-tree" is a corruption of French perdrix ([pɛʁ.dʁi], "partridge").

William B. Sandys refers to it as a "convivial glee introduced a few years since, 'A Pie [i.e., a magpie] sat on a Pear Tree,' where one drinks while the others sing.

[60] Multiple sources confirm that it is a dialectal word, found in Somerset and elsewhere, meaning "black",[61] so "colly birds" are blackbirds.

[4] According to The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, "Suggestions have been made that the gifts have significance, as representing the food or sport for each month of the year.

"[46] In 1979, a Canadian hymnologist, Hugh D. McKellar, published an article, "How to Decode the Twelve Days of Christmas", in which he suggested that "The Twelve Days of Christmas" lyrics were intended as a catechism song to help young English Catholics learn their faith, at a time when practising Catholicism was against the law (from 1558 until 1829).

Hal Stockert wrote an article (subsequently posted online, in 1995) in which he suggested a similar possible use of the twelve gifts as part of a catechism.

[67][68] Snopes.com, a website reviewing urban legends, Internet rumours, e-mail forwards, and other stories of unknown or questionable origin, concludes that the hypothesis of the twelve gifts of Christmas being a surreptitious Catholic catechism is incorrect.

[71][72][73][74] According to a footnote added to the posthumous 1955 reprint of his musical setting, Austin wrote:[75] This song was, in my childhood, current in my family.

An early appearance of this claim is found in the 1961 University Carol Book, which states:[76][77]This is a traditional English singing game but the melody of five gold rings was added by Richard [sic] Austin whose fine setting (Novello) should be consulted for a fuller accompaniment.

[79] Many of the decisions Austin made with regard to the lyrics subsequently became widespread: The time signature of this song is not constant, unlike most popular music.

However, the melody for "four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves" changes from this point, differing from the way these lines were sung in the opening four verses.

[90] Assuming the gifts are repeated in full in each round of the song, the persona's true love sends her a total of 364 items by the twelfth day.

The former is an index of the current costs of one set of each of the gifts given by the True Love to the singer of the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas".