come from "my mother" rather than "my true love". Some variants have "juniper tree" or "June apple tree" rather than "pear tree", presumably a mishearing of "partridge in a pear tree". The 1780 version has "four colly birds"—colly being a regional English expression for "coal-black" (the name of the collie dog breed may come from this word). This wording must have been opaque to many even in the 19th century: "canary birds", "colour'd birds", "curley birds", and "corley birds" are found in its place. Frederic Austin's 1909 version, which introduced the now-standard melody, also altered the fourth day's gift to four "calling" birds, and this variant has become the most popular, although "colly" is still found. "Five gold rings" has often become "five golden rings", especially in North America. In the standard melody, this change enables singers to fit one syllable per musical note. The gifts associated with the final four days are often reordered. For example, the pipers may be on the ninth day rather than the eleventh. For ease of comparison with Austin's 1909 version given above: (a) differences in wording, ignoring capitalisation and punctuation, are indicated in italics (including permutations, where for example the 10th day of Austin's version becomes the 9th day here); (b) items that do not appear at all in Austin's version are indicated in bold italics. Scotland A similar cumulative verse from Scotland, "The Yule Days", has been likened to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" in the scholarly literature. It has thirteen days rather than twelve, and the number of gifts does not increase in the manner of "The Twelve Days". Its final verse, as published in Chambers, Popular Rhymes, Fireside Stories, and Amusements of Scotland (1842), runs as follows: "Pippin go aye" (also spelled "papingo-aye" in later editions) is a Scots word for peacock or parrot. Similarly, Iceland has a Christmas tradition where "Yule Lads" put gifts in the shoes of children for each of the 13 nights of Christmas. Faroe Islands In 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