The Twelve Days of Christmas (song) the Faroe Islands, there is a comparable counting Christmas song. The gifts include: one feather, two geese, three sides of meat, four sheep, five cows, six oxen, seven dishes, eight ponies, nine banners, ten barrels, eleven goats, twelve men, thirteen hides, fourteen rounds of cheese and fifteen deer. These were illustrated in 1994 by local cartoonist Óli Petersen (born 1936) on a series of two stamps issued by the Faroese Philatelic Office. "Les Douze Mois" ("The Twelve Months") (also known as "La Perdriole"—"The Partridge") is another similar cumulative verse from France that has been likened to "The Twelve Days of
The Twelve Days of Christmas (song) form of the carol. The first three verses run, in full, as follows: Subsequent verses follow the same pattern, each adding one new gift and repeating all the earlier gifts so that each verse is one line longer than its predecessor: The earliest known version of the lyrics was published in London under the title "The Twelve Days of Christmas sung at King Pepin's Ball", as part of a 1780 children's book, "Mirth without Mischief". Subsequent versions have shown considerable variation: For ease of comparison with Austin's 1909 version given above:<br> (a) differences in wording, ignoring capitalisation and punctuation, are