Grammar Punk Blog

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Nine ladies dancing

I must say this is when the song begins to go off the rails for me—practicality-wise. Nine ladies dancing? With whom are they dancing? There are also version where it is nine ladies in-waiting, which actually makes more sense, in the snooty-snotty rich people way of the rest of the song.

It’s also not lost on me that this song is as much about flow and imagery as literal birds and folk performing for some spoiled little princess-type.

Or maybe that’s just me. I’m just getting the feeling after the fourth or fifth over-the-top gift that his true love is going to be pretty hard to please next year.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, what do you think about all these ladies dancing?

 On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Eight maids a-milking

At some point in the song we have to stop and ask ourselves—say what?

An odd assortment of birds is one thing; certainly gold jewelry is hard to mess up, but cramming 8 poor maids already doing the fairly disagreeable job of milking cows (we can only presume) into it? Well, okay.

I myself have never milked an actual cow, though I’ve gotten close enough to a dairy farm or two to know that I am just happy with my ignorance. All I can say is this guy’s loved one better have a really large living room. And preferably an easy to clean floor…

And I’ve gotta say, it’s got to be getting pretty crowded in there.

Teachers of English, have some fun with this. What other things of 8 might you imagine fitting in this room?

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Seven Swans A-Swimming

The swan, or Cygnus are closely related to geese—I knew there was a reason I’m particularly fond of swans as well.

Swans are the largest members of the duck family and one of the largest flying birds with a wingspan that can reach 10 feet! Like geese they can also be on the protectively cranky side, often making as good a watch dog as a well, watch dog. Seriously, they are one of the few birds that have teeth!

Swans in groups are a bevy or when in flight a wedge. Just in case you were wondering.

Swans are just naturally elegant and regal looking so it’s no surprise they join the list of snooty gifts to be offered to one’s true love. The fact that they also form monogamous pairs that last for many years, not to mention that the males help out when it comes to nest-building and egg incubation puts a clincher on it.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, what do swans say to you?

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Six Geese A-Laying

This one is at least pretty straight forward. I don’t even care what kind of geese they’re talking about—except of course that they
are apparently female since they are “a-laying.” This is one of my favourite verses for two reason: six is my lucky number and I love geese.

Side note: Word, in all its infinite wisdom has just informed me—via squiggly red line—that favourite is heretofore to be spelled with a u. All righty then.  

Love them, I say. Seriously, geese are one of my all-time favourite birds, right in line with hummingbirds—which if you have
been reading this blog you know are at the top of the list. I have had a long-time fascination with geese, particularly delighting in their determined migration at the start of fall every year.

I can’t count how many times I’ve nearly run off the road when a flock of happily honking geese fly overhead, cheering one another on with their exuberant vocalization and frenetically flapping wings. Seriously, have you ever stopped to notice how frantically geese seem to flap their wings? They’re largish birds with a good-sized body to perform the always unlikely-looking feat of flight and I’m sure those wings have to flap overtime to get them in such nice tight formations.

You go geese.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, challenge your students to pontificate on their favorite bird. Then share!

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Five Golden Rings

On August 15, 1971 President Richard Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. During the days of the gold standard the US spent so much money for the war spending they could not borrow any more debt because US gold reserves were totally depleted
due to this spending.

If you pay any attention to the stock market at all you’ve watched the wild fluctuations of gold but still 5 Gold Rings won’t ruin your carpet or cost you an arm and a leg in birdseed!

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Four Colly Birds

Now this one was a bit of a shocker to me…though I think I vaguely remember hearing this before—probably last year when I went through this. IT’S NOT CALLING BIRDS BUT COLLY BIRDS! And what are colly birds you might well ask. Blackbirds. Regular, common, everyday, nothing special blackbirds. Which is actually a true thrush. Confused yet? That’s okay? Your true love is already seriously questioning your taste in gift-giving, not to mention your sanity.

Enervate: to reduce the mental or moral vigor; to lessen the vitality or strength of

This word always bugs me because it is often misused and because it is by its very nature confusing. The silly thing sounds too much like energize or invigorate, both of which are in fact antonyms for the thing.

Enervate owes its definition to the prefix “en” meaning “out of” and nevare meaning nerve. Therefore, someone who is enervated has plumb run out of nerve.

I thought this was a particularly good word for the end of the holiday season. I think we’re all a bit enervated by this time of year, but just think, there are only six more shopping days till Christmas!

Grammar Punk Sentence: N A 3

Feeling completely enervated by the marathon shopping trip, Dani collapsed onto Santa’s lap, ready to surrender the rest of her list to him.

Teachers of English, grammar, and English, challenge your students to write a Grammar Punk sentence that contains 3 words with the letters N and A and the word enervate.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

3 French Hens

I must admit to a similar ignorance of French hens versus the regular kind. So I did some research. Apparently, French hens are Faverolles, a French breed of chicken. And they’re pretty trippy looking, I must say, complete with beard, muffs, feathered feet,
and five toes rather than the more orthodox four per foot.

I do have a chicken story but it involves a particularly horrific experience as a child visiting my grandparent’s farm at precisely the moment of a chicken’s demise…let’s just say I shrieked whenever we passed a KFC for a few years after that.

I’ll have to admit the French hens look to be snooty enough to be given as a gift.

Teachers of English, grammar and writing, challenge your students to write about their barnyard experiences. Then share!

On
the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

2 Turtle Doves

Ah, the ubiquitous turtle dove. Okay, not so ubiquitous, but there are few among us who don’t immediately
begin to hum The Twelve Days of Christmas… when we hear mention of turtle doves. Who knew there was so much more to them?

Perhaps because of Biblical references (especially the well-known verse from the Song of Songs), its mournful voice, and the fact that it forms strong pair bonds, Turtle Doves have become emblems of devoted love. In the New Testament, two turtle doves are mentioned to have been sacrificed for the Birth of Jesus. In Renaissance Europe, the Turtle Dove was envisaged as the devoted partner of the Phoenix. Robert Chester’s poem Love’s Martyr is a sustained exploration of this symbolism. It was published along with other poems on the subject, including William Shakespeare’s poem “The Phoenix and the Turtle”
(where “turtle” refers to the turtle dove).

The turtle dove is smaller and slighter in build than many other doves with a wedged shaped tail with a
dark center and white border and tips.

I can’t say I have ever met a tutrle dove in the flesh as it were, but it’s a bird and I like birds. And I like doves. I live in a neighborhood with lots of trees and therefore, lots of birds, including doves. I love the fact that they are always in pairs, you hardly ever  see a solitary dove. And their lovely mournful coos make me want to sti on a blanket and have a picnic. Or something.

Now you can say you know more about the turtle dove than that it comes second place in the song.

Teachers of English, grammar and writing, talk to us about doves. Or picnics.

Twelve Days of Christmas, Day I

Although the specific origins of the chant are not known, it possibly began 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. This is how the game is offered up in its earliest known printed version, in the children’s book Mirth without Mischief (c. 1780) published in England. The song apparently is older than the printed version, though it is not known how much older.

The earliest well-known version of the music of the song was recorded by English scholar James O. Halliwell in 1842, and he published a version in 4th edition The Nursery Rhymes of England (1846), collected principally from ‘oral tradition’. In
the early 20th century, English composer Frederic Austin wrote an arrangement in which he added his melody from “Five gold rings” onwards which has since become standard.

“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is a cumulative song, meaning that each verse is built on top of the previous verses. There are twelve verses, each describing a gift given by “my true love” on one of the twelve days of Christmas.

The first verse runs:

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

A Partridge in a Pear Tree.

Partridge: a medium-sized, ground-nesting bird with variegated feathers, related to pheasants and grouse.

I won’t belabor this too much with a description of pears, instead I’ll linger on the bird. I love birds; I think we’ve already
established that. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a partridge in the flesh, as it were but its close kin is the smaller quail and I happen to love quails.
There’s nothing like a covey of quail trundling along like little old ladies on their way to market.

I had a small Yorkie who wasn’t aware that he was small, regularly facing off with much larger animals, till he met a family of quail. Unbeknownst to us a family of quail had made their home beneath a large honeysuckle bush in our yard. All I know is that he was endlessly fascinated with that bush, bee lining to it the second he was let outside. Until one day I watched
him disappear under the bush then appear just as quickly—followed in short order by the whole family of quail—right on his tail.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, challenge your students to catalog their own “partridge” tales—using the animal of their choice. Then write about it. And share!