editorial
by Melanie Fire Salamander
The genesis of this issue's theme -- birds and the Craft -- came from staff member Rachel's insistence that "The Twelve Days of Christmas" began as a pagan song. I mean (she argued) it's not Christian -- there is not word one in it about the Nativity. And there are all these birds. What gives?
The other editors turned on her like ravening harpies and denied every bit of it. Pagan! Pagan! We'd never heard of it being pagan. Imagine the raucous laughter of nasty-minded crows pushing around an owl awake in daylight. (Actually, we were relatively nice about it.)
But Rachel's assertion teased me. Birds and Yule. The Yule bird tradition that most readily springs to mind is Great Britain's fight of the robin and the wren, commemorated by the traveling Wren Boys Genevieve mentions in her "Earth Tones" roundup of Yule music. Along with other seasonal stories, we drew in a scholarly piece on bird imagery among the pagan Minoans and a flight of memory by Thea, recalling birds that have furthered her Craft practice. The peace dove figures big this issue, too, an image of concord in a time of threatening war.
Thinking of the "Twelve Days" birds, I turned to Google and found some interesting information. On the urban legends Web site www.snopes.com, I found that Catholics claim this song as a tool for teaching the catechism when their faith had to be hidden. In this theory, "the `true love' mentioned in the song doesn't refer to an earthly suitor, it refers to God Himself." The partridge is Jesus Christ, the turtledoves the Old and New Testaments, the seven swans gifts of the Holy Spirit and so on.
Yeah, right. As www.snopes.com states and supports: "There is no substantive evidence to demonstrate that the song `The Twelve Days of Christmas' was created or used as a secret means of preserving tenets of the Catholic faith, or that this claim is anything but a fanciful modern day speculation."
Snopes.com comes up with some interesting background on the song: "Although the specific origins of the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" are not known, it possibly began as a Twelfth Night `memory-and-forfeits' game in which the 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 a offering up a kiss or a sweet. This is how the song was presented in its earliest known printed version, in the 1780 children's book Mirth Without Mischief. (The song is apparently much older than this printed version, but we do not currently know how much older.)."
Textual evidence shows the song was not English in origin, but French. "Some misinterpretations have crept into the English version.... For example, the fourth day's gift is four `colly birds,' not four `calling birds.' (The word `colly' literally means `black as coal,' and thus `colly birds' would be blackbirds.) The `five golden rings' refers not to five pieces of jewelry, but to five ring-necked birds (such as pheasants). When these errors are corrected, the pattern of the first seven gifts all being types of birds is re-established."
Why the birds? The first time the song was sung, the listeners probably knew. The bird references encode various bird connotations from French folklore. Turtledoves, for example, remain a traditional symbol of lovers, and as the singer's "true love" gave these feathery gifts, the bird phrases are more or less subtle references to romance... that is, sex! The French troubador tradition was a rich tradition, pagan in the sense that it expressed a love for the life of this world, this earth we touch, especially love and sex, and not some future life everlasting.
But no more evidence appears that the song is religiously pagan than it is religiously Christian.
And yet, the song feels deliciously Renaissance, an ambiance that enlivens a lot of Yule traditions, from the boughs of holly (one of the oldest and most truly pagan Yule traditions), to the tree brought inside and dressed, to the mystery plays still sometimes presented around Yule. "Twelve Days" remembers a Renaissance when the Greek gods were referred to as often as saints, a glorious, dirty, raucous time when hints of old pagan traditions jumbled into Christian pageants.
The Renaissance was also warlike. Then as now, the times required singers of love and peace. Widdershins' staff holds a variety of political views but unites on the idea of peace and justice for this world, for the best and highest good. As Shadow Walker describes of her march on Washington, D.C., with the Pagan Cluster, let us hold the peace dove before us as we walk forward into this new year. Let her drop feathers of good sense, good will and concord among everyone we touch this longest night.