Tenuous Links Drinks Day 4 - Four Calling Birds

Tenuous Links Drinks Day 4 - Four Calling Birds

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Four Calling Birds,
Three French Hens,
Two Turtle Doves 
And a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

This one gave me a bit more trouble than yesterday’s as I tried to think of different types of calling birds - canaries maybe? I remember drinking quite a lot of honey rum one year in the Canary Islands but I’m sure I can come up with a better tenuous link than that.

Then I read that in the original song, it was actually Four Colly Birds, not Calling Birds. What on earth are colly birds you may well ask? Turns out that colly meant black (as in coaly/coal maybe?) so probably referred to blackbirds or crows which were something of a delicacy at the time (remember the nursery rhyme with the four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie?) Doesn’t sound very appetising but the black bird angle does open up a few more potential drink options;


Black grouse anyone? Or Coal Ila at a push going on the black/coal link?

My final choice of tenuous link drink for today though has got to be a glass of Merlot. The reason? We all know that merlot is a type of grape, but it is also a literal translation of ‘young blackbird’ in French. Not so many people know that. (Including me, much to my shame when my non-French speaking husband pointed this out to me!).