The 12 Days Of Bronte Christmas: Four

The days are flying by as we head ever closer to Christmas Day. I hope you have your cards, presents and wrapping paper ready, for we are now on day four of our twelve days of Brontë Christmas countdown.

As you’ll know if you’ve seen our posts for days one, two or three, we’re following the 12 days of Christmas for inspiration but giving it a Brontë twist. In the original carol we have four calling birds today. In the ancient origins of the song this was actually four colly birds, meaning four blackbirds with their coal-like colouring. Either way, there’s certainly a lot of birds given in the 12 days – in fact 23 undisputed birds are given, and that’s ignoring the people who interpret every day’s gift as referring to a bird (for example they claim that drummers drumming are grouse, although of course everyone knows that grouse are more famous for dancing than drumming.)

Let’s change things slightly and have four coloured dogs – or four painted portraits of Brontë dogs by the sisters themselves. There are also black and white sketches of the dogs but let’s start with two unfinished (yet at least partly coloured) portraits of spaniel Flossy by its owner Anne Brontë.

Anne was very fond of Flossy, a spaniel gifted to her by the Robinson children of Thorp Green Hall – which goes to show how highly regarded she was as a governess there. Next we have another portrait of Flossy, but this time Emily Brontë is the artist:

Finally, our fourth coloured dog is this magnificent portrait, by Emily, of her huge and ferocious mastiff Keeper. It was known for terrorising the local population but was hugely loyal to Emily and even formed part of the mourning party in the church for her funeral (more on that sad occasion on Friday’s post):

So now we can sing together: “On the fourth day of Christmas the Brontës gave to me, four coloured dogs, three French letters, two captive doves, and a merlin in a bare tree.”

I hope you can join me tomorrow when we reach the pivotal day five in our twelve day Brontë Christmas countdown.