Composition : 99.99 % silver
Mintage : 10 000

A Partridge

The festive song, "A Partridge in a Pear Tree," has inspired thousands of beautiful images like the one on this coin, as well as endless rounds of holiday mirth. But could this famous holiday imageactually depict an English-French play-on-words? Some songhistorians think this may be the case.

 The "twelve days of Christmas" refers to a traditional time of festivity and gift-giving between Christmas Day (December 25) and the Twelfth Night (January 6) - the evening of the Christian feast of Epiphany.

"A Partridge in a PearTree" was first published in a children's book - Mirth without Mischief - in England in 1780. But it may have originated hundreds ofyears earlier - and somewhere other than England - as a "memory-and-forfeit" game in which successive lines were added to a song for singers to remember and repeat. Those who made a mistake or forgot a line had to pay - perhaps a kiss or a candy to the other singers. Such cumulative, add-a-line songs were popular throughout Europe.In fact, "A Partridge in a Pear Tree" has a distant relative in France, where each line of the French song adds another sumptuous dish to eat, rather than "birds" or "lords" or "milkmaids". Somethink the line "and a partridge in a pear tree" is actually a English-French play on words, because the French word for "partridge" is "perdrix" (pronounced "peardree"). Was the line originally, "And a partridge, une perdrix"? No one knows for sure.

Regardless of its mysterious origins, today the song and the images it conjuresare deeply evocative of the holiday season for millions of people around the world.

A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE - 2013 CANADIAN COINS is categorised COINS AND PAPER MONEY / 08- ROYAL CANADIAN MINT / 25- WINTER and sold by l'Imaginaire, a store and specialised website.