However, a 20th-century variant has "my true love gave to me"; this wording has become particularly common in North America. Shannon Chan-Kent, as her character of Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, sings her own version of the song on the album My Little Pony: It's a Pony Kind of Christmas.

The Ray Conniff Singers recorded a traditional version in 1962, appearing on the album We Wish You a Merry Christmas. The best known English version was first printed in Mirth without Mischief, a children's book published in London around 1780. The singer, having arranged the music for solo voice with piano accompaniment, included it in his concert repertoire from 1905 onwards. A classic example of a cumulative song, the lyrics detail a series of increasingly numerous gifts given to the speaker by their "true love" on each of the twelve days of Christmas (the twelve days that make up the Christmas season, starting with Christmas Day).A number of later publications state that Austin's music for "five gold rings" is an original addition to an otherwise traditional melody.

It has also been suggested that this carol is connected to the "old ballad" which Sir Toby Belch begins to sing in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. A radio play written by Brian Sibley, "And Yet Another Partridge in a Pear Tree" was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Day 1977. This is a traditional English singing game but the melody of five gold rings was added by Richard[ sic] Austin whose fine setting (Novello) should be consulted for a fuller accompaniment.Sharp reports that one singer sings "Britten chains", which he interprets as a corruption of " Breton hens". William and Ceil Baring-Gould also suggest that the birds are Breton hens, which they see as another indication that the carol is of French origin.

Starring Penelope Keith, it imagines the increasingly exasperated response of the recipient of the "twelve days" gifts. Jasper Carrott performed "Twelve Drinks of Christmas" where he appears to be more inebriated with each successive verse.Many early sources suggest that The Twelve Days of Christmas was a "memory-and-forfeits" game, in which participants were required to repeat a verse of poetry recited by the leader. It featured one hen, two barley seeds, three grey geese, four pounds of pork, six flayed sheep, a sow with six pigs, seven åtting grain, eight grey foals with golden saddles, nine newly born cows, ten pairs of oxen, eleven clocks, and finally twelve churches, each with twelve altars, each with twelve priests, each with twelve capes, each with twelve coin-purses, each with twelve daler inside. Before the fifth verse (when "Five gold rings" is first sung), the melody, using solfege, is "sol re mi fa re" for the fourth to second items, and this same melody is thereafter sung for the twelfth to sixth items. There are twelve verses, each describing a gift given by "my true love" on one of the twelve days of Christmas.

The exact origins and the meaning of the song are unknown, but it is highly probable that it originated from a children's memory and forfeit game. Peter Kennedy recorded the Copper family of Sussex, England singing a version in 1955 which differs slightly from the common version, [81] whilst Helen Hartness Flanders recorded several different versions in the 1930s and 40s in New England, [82] [83] [84] [85] where the song seems to have been particularly popular. The 1780 version has "four colly birds"— colly being a regional English expression for "coal-black" (the name of the collie dog breed may come from this word).The former is an index of the current costs of one set of each of the gifts given by the True Love to the singer of the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas".