When we sing the 12 days of Christmas here in the United State, we sing about ‘four calling birds.”
But in England, it’s” colly birds”. It’s the European blackbird, which is as black as the coal from a colliery. Hernce it’s nickname.
Crows, ravens starlings. grackles, could all be substituted they are all, variously colly. But they don’t scan in the song. We’re stuck then, with calling birds.
Read a whole story about the 12 days in Wednesday’s News-Times.