We don't go a-leaping anymore. "A-leaping" is a quaint/colloquial expression - the same as saying lords who were leaping. The "Learn Something Every Day" site says these lords are professional Morris dancers, popular at medieval banquets in England. That clears up the lords as professionals compared to yesterday's ladies.
Do you know about "The Hidden Meaning Behind the Twelve Days of Christmas." This is rampant on the internet, and any discussion thread has at least one respondent who claims that the 12 days are each symbolic of Roman Catholic religious tenets in order to preserve the faith during their persecution from 1558 until 1829.
I went to the well-known site SNOPES for their FACT CHECK: The Twelve Days of Christmas. This is where popular claims are investigated and rated with a true or false. This one is rated false.
"Origin: Two common forms of modern folklore are claims that familiar old bits of rhyme and song (such as the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie“) encode “hidden” meanings which have been passed along for centuries, and claims that common objects of secular origin — particularly objects associated with Christmas (such as the candy cane) — were deliberately created to embody symbols of Christian faith. Here we have an article that combines both these forms and posits that a mirthful Christmas festival song about romantic gift-giving actually originated as a coded catechism used by persecuted Catholics."
Snopes finds that there is no documentation or supporting evidence for the claim, and that the claim appears to date only to the 1990s. They outline many flaws - the key one being that the religious tenets supposedly preserved by the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" were shared by the Catholics and Anglicans alike.
I wasn't aware that candy canes hold a (false) religious meaning (red for the blood and white for the Virgin birth) or that the song Ring Around the Rosie is a coded song about the Bubonic Plague (also false). There seems to be such an increase in fake and false news: We have been making fake news and false information for quite a few centuries. During the 21st century it has become widespread, and in the last few years, it has become rampant. Wikipedia covers the topic HERE. At the end, there are 253 references - that's a lot of research. I often look at the last edited date - Jan 2, 3:48. This is a current and active topic.
Are there symbolic and secret meanings in our pictures today? These are fragments of posters on Toronto construction sites - much tearing and layering, making abstract patterns.
