905: pear tree (from Twelve Days of Christmas) Jun 1, 2017

Now that it's June, Christmas is probably not at all on anyone's mind, though perhaps pears are. Either way, much like many other old jingles and nursery rhymes, The Twelve Days of Christmas has undergone a number of changes and has a significant amount of variation from version to version. An example comes from one of the more famous lines: "a partridge in a pear tree" which has also been found as "some part of a juniper tree" and "the sprig of a juniper tree" by a misunderstanding of the words. That is not to say, however, that "partridge in a pear tree" is any better. This phrase comes from a similar French jingle in which the words 'perdriole' or 'perdrix', depending on the version, feature. Both of those words mean 'partridge', but it is commonly held that some mishearing of the word 'perdrix' lead to the phrase 'pear tree' which only appears in the English version of the song, even though there are many besides just the English and the French.