Google and Jingle Bells

Google and Jingle Bells

This being the latter part of the 2008 Festive Season I became curious about some of the carol traditions that beset us from about September 15th each year till shortly after twelfth night (January 6). One such festive carol is labeled Jingle Bells and is frequently sung by little ones who may or may not know the words but are highly unlikely to know what a one horse open sleigh is. It was written by James Pierpont in 1857 as a Thanksgiving song.

I reference this ballad because my niece at a very tender age was given to dancing and singing at this time of the year in particular, and one of her favorite songs was “Oats Peas Beans and Jingle Bells” – just a one liner but oftimes repeated as she danced through the house. The singleness of her song did not give me pause till I discovered that I could not shake it from my memory bank. Thus for days after she sang it I would hear it echoing in my sub-conscious awareness of things only faintly understood.

Lord knows I tried. I attempted to erase it to no avail then I tried to enhance it with extra lines, but each time I did that I would come up with the Oats Peas Beans and Barley Grows phrasing to-wit:

Oats Peas Beans and Jingle Bells
Oats Peas Beans and Jingle Bells
Can you or I or anyone know?
How oats peas beans and Jingle Bells Grow

I have learned to live with this haunting refrain occupying my long term memory bank but lately I decided to learn more about both pieces of this revised edition of the old nursery rhyme.

In consulting Google I learn that Jingle Bells are small metal balls with something inside that causes them to jingle when shaken. They may come in a variety of sizes and various metal compositions, and are used to adorn Christmas trees and entry doors among other applications. Contrary to my belief they did not adorn the single horse pulling the one horse open sleigh, but may have adorned the sleigh. For that matter, why do we think that there was a horse attached to the one horse open sleigh? It could have been just sitting there or being pushed by those dashing through the snow.

The Oats Peas Beans and Barley grows refrain on the other hand is not nearly as simple as one might expect. For instance, when properly rendered, it has four verses and four repetitions of the first verse as a refrain. Not everyone knows the remaining three verses. I must confess that I did not, and still do not, nor do I intend to learn them. It is trouble enough just having Oats Peas Beans and Jingle Bells rattling around in my long term memory and surfacing unpredictably when I least, if ever, need it.

The only redeeming feature of all this is that I still hold in my memory bank a visual image of a delightful small niece dancing and singing to her self-inspired Christmas Carol.