Merry Squidmas! Joyous Cephalopodmas! Happy Holothuridays!
To celebrate this year’s cepholidays, I drafted a little paroditty to observe the ten days of Squidmas. Ten days? Yes, there are ten days to Squidmas, one for each appendage of the eponymous beast. And you will note that this gets us exactly to the New Year’s day (unlike other popular seasonal enumerations).
10 Days of Squidmas
On the first day of Squidmas my Thule love gave to me
A large squid with a sharp beak.
On the second day of Squidmas my Thule love gave to me
Two fertile slugs,
And a large squid with a sharp beak.
On the third day of Squidmas my Thule love gave to me
Three limpets,
Two fertile slugs,
And a large squid with a sharp beak.
On the fourth day of Squidmas my Thule love gave to me
Four crawling worms,
Three limpets,
Two fertile slugs,
And a large squid with a sharp beak.
On the fifth day of Squidmas my Thule love gave to me
Five sucker rings,
Four crawling worms,
Three limpets,
Two fertile slugs,
And a large squid with a sharp beak.
On the sixth day of Squidmas my Thule love gave to me
Six goosenecks clinging,
Five sucker rings,
Four crawling worms,
Three limpets,
Two fertile slugs,
And a large squid with a sharp beak.
On the seventh day of Squidmas my Thule love gave to me
Seven prawns a-swimming,
Six goosenecks clinging,
Five sucker rings,
Four crawling worms,
Three limpets,
Two fertile slugs,
And a large squid with a sharp beak.
On the eighth day of Squidmas my Thule love gave to me
Eight mussels milting,
Seven prawns a-swimming,
Six goosenecks clinging,
Five sucker rings,
Four crawling worms,
Three limpets,
Two fertile slugs,
And a large squid with a sharp beak.
On the ninth day of Squidmas my Thule love gave to me
Nine maties shanting,
Eight mussels milting,
Seven prawns a-swimming,
Six goosenecks clinging,
Five sucker rings,
Four crawling worms,
Three limpets,
Two fertile slugs,
And a large squid with a sharp beak.
On the tenth day of Squidmas my Thule love gave to me
Ten swordfish leaping,
Nine maties shanting,
Eight mussels milting,
Seven prawns a-swimming,
Six goosenecks clinging,
Five sucker rings,
Four crawling worms,
Three limpets,
Two fertile slugs,
And a large squid with a sharp beak.
Links
- 10 Days of Squidmas in an attractive, printable PDF format
- Related: Squidmas Creeps and Cephalopod Awareness Days
- More carols can be found at Cephalopodmas.com
- HPLHS: A Very Scary Solstice
- rathergood.com: Merry Squidmas (bloody)
- Digital Cuttlefish: My Cephalopodmas Present To You and A Squidmas Carol
Notes
Thule: a distant unknown region; the extreme limit of travel and discovery.
Shanting: I took poetic license with this one. Shanting is my own verbification of the word shanty.
Milting: the semen of male fish or shellfish. In the original 12 Days of Christmas, the phrase “to go a-milking” was a euphemism for rolling in the hay. I was originally going to go with Eight mermen milting, but that would have been wrong.
Goosenecks: it used to be thought that barnacles where the eggs of sea geese.
10 Days of Squidmas by Jason Robertshaw is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://cephalopodcast.com/about/.
{ 1 comment }
Ha! This is classic. Thanks.