General Discussion Thread

[Solokov]

Reykjavik has erected a monument to the blessed felines!

Christmas Cat on the Prowl in Reykjavík

I made sure to send my neices and nephews new socks (per my sister-in-law's request) this year. Also coal (why yes I am serious) to the nephew who was goofing off his fist semester at college.

[JoB]

Reykjavik has erected a monument to the blessed felines!
Christmas Cat on the Prowl in Reykjavík

City Council president Dóra Björt Guðjónsdóttir will light the Christmas Cat on Saturday at 4:00 PM

BURN IT! BURN IT WITH FIRE LIKE THE SCANDINAVIAN STANDARD IT ... umh ... just isn't, I suppose ...

[Iceea]

A question for Róisín or any other knowledgeable person. It being this time of the year I'm hearing "The 12 Days of Christmas" again (and again...). You know, the partridge in the pear tree song. I got curious what its origins were. When, why, etc. etc.

[Windfighter]

ehehe I have no answer to our question but I'm going to use it as a bad excuse to drop this old video

[Róisín]

To keep it very brief: old time, the festival of Christmas (celebrating the birth and mission of the Christ) was twelve days long - Christmas day was only one of the celebrations of Christmas-tide. Advent ('coming in') was the leadup to the twelve days. That is why, back before Xmas became a mostly commercial festival, people used to put up their decorations on Christmas Eve and leave them up until Twelfth Night, that period being the 'twelve days' referred to. It was supposed to be unlucky to leave them up longer, offending not only god but (at least in England) the Fey. Those who were very religious, and those in church communities, and the well-off, used to celebrate each of the days with small religious observances or small gifts.

A Christian could likely tell you more, I'm just an old Pagan folklore nerd who is interested in everyone's lore as well as her own.

[Purple Wyrm]

A question for Róisín or any other knowledgeable person. It being this time of the year I'm hearing "The 12 Days of Christmas" again (and again...). You know, the partridge in the pear tree song. I got curious what its origins were. When, why, etc. etc.

I can't say what the origins of "The 12 Days of Christmas" are, but I can say what they're not!

There's a story that floats around that the song was written in England during a period of Catholic persecution, and that all the gifts are coded references to the Catholic Catechism. It's a mildly clever idea, but there's zero evidence to support it, on top of which none of the supposed correlations are specifically Catholic, as opposed to Christian in general.

According to Wikipedia...

The best known English version was first printed in English in 1780 in a little book intended for children, "Mirth without Mischief", as a Twelfth Night "memories-and-forfeits" game, in which a leader recited a verse, each of the players repeated the verse, the leader added another verse, and so on until one of the players made a mistake, with the player who erred having to pay a penalty, such as offering up a kiss or a sweet.

[wavewright62]

I can't say what the origins of "The 12 Days of Christmas" are, but I can say what they're not!

There's a story that floats around that the song was written in England during a period of Catholic persecution, and that all the gifts are coded references to the Catholic Catechism. It's a mildly clever idea, but there's zero evidence to support it, on top of which none of the supposed correlations are specifically Catholic, as opposed to Christian in general.

According to Wikipedia...

The best known English version was first printed in English in 1780 in a little book intended for children, "Mirth without Mischief", as a Twelfth Night "memories-and-forfeits" game, in which a leader recited a verse, each of the players repeated the verse, the leader added another verse, and so on until one of the players made a mistake, with the player who erred having to pay a penalty, such as offering up a kiss or a sweet.

I've played drinking games like that... (not recently, for which we can all be thankful).

[thorny]

a Twelfth Night "memories-and-forfeits" game, in which a leader recited a verse, each of the players repeated the verse, the leader added another verse, and so on until one of the players made a mistake

I've played drinking games like that... (not recently, for which we can all be thankful).

We used to sometimes play Minister's Cat while working in the fields.

The Minister's Cat is an Avid Cat who Authors Autobiographies.

The Minister's Cat is an Avid Cat who Authors Autobiographies.
The Minister's Cat is a Bellicose Cat who Bullies Badgers.

The Minister's Cat is an Avid Cat who Authors Autobiographies.
The Minister's Cat is a Bellicose Cat who Bullies Badgers.
The Minister's Cat is a Cautious Cat who Counts Cucumbers.

The Minister's Cat is an Avid Cat who Authors Autobiographies.
The Minister's Cat is a Bellicose Cat who Bullies Badgers.
The Minister's Cat is a Cautious Cat who Counts Cucumbers.
The Minister's Cat is a Devious Cat who Drinks Daiquiris.

-- and so on. (Each line is made up fresh as the turn comes to the player -- every game's going to have different lines. They don't have to make sense; but the silly ones are easier to remember.)

This is probably meant both as a memory test and as a way for children to learn parts of speech -- note every line is adjective-verb-noun.

You could play it as a competitive game; but it can also be cooperative -- if the group can manage to get all the way to z without anybody missing, then everybody's won.

[Windfighter]

that reminds me of a game I used to play when I was younger called "Ett skepp kommer lastat" (A ship comes laden) where the first person said something on A (which for some reason almost always ended up being oranges) and then the next one had repeat that and add something on B, and then you kept going around the circle until someone said something wrong or the last letter was reached.
A variant for when we needed to get to know each other was that we had to load the ship with stuff starting with our names and I always hated that version because my name was/is terrible for such things <.<

[Iceea]

Thank you all for the replies. They were all very informative. It would seem the the game of adding to the rhyme shows up in many cultures. The "I know an old lady who swallowed a fly" also comes to mind.

[Clayres]

that reminds me of a game I used to play when I was younger called "Ett skepp kommer lastat" (A ship comes laden) where the first person said something on A (which for some reason almost always ended up being oranges) and then the next one had repeat that and add something on B, and then you kept going around the circle until someone said something wrong or the last letter was reached.
A variant for when we needed to get to know each other was that we had to load the ship with stuff starting with our names and I always hated that version because my name was/is terrible for such things <.<

We have "Ich packe meinen Koffer und nehme mit..." which means "I'm packing my suitcase and take with me..." and works the same as the Swedish laden ship.

Also,
*patpats Windy*

[wavewright62]

I should also add that there are jump rope chants that work on this principle too -
A my name is Anna and my husband's name is Andy, we live in Alabama and we sell Apples
B my name is Barb and my husband's name is Ben, we live in Boston and we sell Burgers
etc

The all-in-one-breath trope is another good one, I'm specifically thinking of the Passover songs "Who Knows One?" and "An Only Kid".  I've heard both English and Hebrew versions of both of these; the English ones just settle into a chant but the Hebrew ones are sung.
The first one counts up to thirteen, so by the end you get (in one breath):
Thirteen are the Attributes of God
Twelve are the Tribes of Israel
Eleven are the Stars in Joseph's dream
Ten are the Ten Commandments
Nine are the Festivals
Eight are the days to the bris
Seven are the days of the week
Six are the books of the Mishnah
Five are the books of the Torah
Four are the matriarchs
Three are the patriarchs
Two are the tablets that Moshe brought
One is Hashem, one is Hashem, one is Hashem in the heaven and the earth.

A nice memnomic device for all your Judaica needs.

For the Only Kid, you add verses until you end up with:
The Holy One, blessed be he,
destroyed the Angel of Death
who slew the butcher
who killed the ox
that drank the water
that quenched the fire
that burned the stick
that beat the dog
that bit the cat
that ate the kid
my father bought for two zuzim (now take a breath)
Chad Gadya-a-a, Chad Gadya.

[Róisín]

There are also Irish stories of that type, including one that I often tell to the little kids at the Mediæval Fair, 'Munachar and Manachar', in which two brothers grow raspberries in the woods and one of them eats all the crop. His brother goes into the forest to cut a hazel switch (a gad) to smack him with, but the hazel bush will not give him one until, depending on the local variant of the tale, he either has a new knife made or sharpens his rusty old one to a decent edge. In any case he has a knife to sharpen. He finds a stone to do so, but the stone will not consent to sharpen his knife until he wets it with water from the river. The river, however, will not give him water until he persuades a deer to run across it. The deer will not cooperate unless it is chased over the river by a dog. The dog requires first to be given a bone, but the butcher will not give Munachar a bone until he brings him a cake from the baker, who will not bake until he is brought a new bag of flour from the miller.......on and on and on.

Then there is the American 'Hole in the Bucket', the Welsh 'Neat Little House', the English 'Bog Down in the Valley', and many, many more from cultures all across the world.

[thorny]

Then there is the American 'Hole in the Bucket'

I was thinking of that one by the time I was a couple of lines into your post; with the result that I kept expecting your example to loop around in a circle, as 'Hole in the Bucket' does.

[Iceea]

I had an odd sort of apocalyptic, or maybe "alien" intervention, thought about these add-to-the-list type of rhymes, songs, games, stories, whatever.

Suppose you wanted to impart knowledge or instructions to an individual or group that really had no comprehension of what it was about. Using the add-to-the-list method as a memory device could be a very effective way to get that information across.