12 Days of Christmas: Eight '˜maids' a-milking in Merrion Centre

Thusfar, we’ve not done bad at matching pictures to lines from the famous song but, well, let us just say milkmaids don’t grow on trees (or even sit on stools) these days.

You would be severely challenged to find one, let alone eight. So, we were glad when Richard Furnival from The Shake Bar, Merrion Centre, came to our rescue by providing eight milkshakes from his bar.

The ‘maids’ in question... and don’t look too closely... were good-willing passers-by who were eager to lend a bit of festive cheer.

Richard, who has run the The Shake Bar for eight years, said he was more than happy to help facilitate the picture.

The ‘12 Days of Christmas’ song is known to have appeared in Britain in the 1700s but in 1979, a new theory was proposed, suggesting it was a coded message to help persecuted Catholics remember important aspects of their faith and pass them on to their children.

The ‘eight maids a milking’ was said to correspond to the ‘eight beatitudes’ or blessings of Jesus - in this case they were lessons in life which will ultimately lead to reward, such as ‘blessed are the poor’ and ‘blessed are the merciful.’