Monday, 20 December 2010  Five Gold Rings  The Twelve Days of
Christmas are, of course, the twelve days after Christmas.
However, by that time everybody will have stopped singing. So
this post must go up five days before Jesus and Mary began their
stable relationship, thus giving you five days to stride around
sounding clever.  I assume, dear reader, that if you love
anybody truly you have been off spending your savings on
partridges, turtle doves, French hens and the like. This is all
right and proper, but don't whatever you do buy them a pear
tree, four calling birds or five gold rings, for these are all
linguistic illusions.  Diligent and paleomnesiac readers of this
blog will remember that the Old French for partridge was pertis
(meaning fart) and the pear tree of the song is almost certainly
a confused anglicisation of pertis to pear-tree.  Similarly,
there is no such thing as a calling bird; but a colly bird is a
blackbird because colly (from coal) means black.  Finally, the
gold rings. I hope you have