Twelve Pairs Hanging High Lyrics
Twelve knights ride past a tree, each one takes a pear, and yet a dozen are still hanging there. How can that be? The rhyme is a riddle.
Twelve Pairs Hanging High
Twelve pairs hanging high,
Twelve knights riding by,
Each knight took a pear,
And yet left a dozen there.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/twelve-pairs-hanging-high/
- Type
- Mother Goose, Counting Rhymes
- Tune
- Spoken riddle
- Best for ages
- 5 to 10 years
What Does Twelve Pairs Hanging High Mean?
The trick is in the first line. It says pairs, not pears. Twelve pairs of pears is 24 pears. Twelve knights each take one, which leaves 12, and twelve is a dozen. So the riddle works perfectly. Some people tell it with a different answer: one knight was named Each, so only one pear was taken, but the pairs answer is the one the old title, "Pairs or Pears", points to.
History and Origin
The rhyme appears as "Pairs or Pears" in The Real Mother Goose (1916). Riddles that hide a trick in a sound-alike word, here pairs and pears, have long been popular, and many nursery rhymes started out as riddles.
Learning Activities
- Act it out: line up 12 pairs of paper pears and let 12 toy knights take one each. Count what is left.
- Sound-alikes: find more words that sound the same but mean different things, like knight and night.
- Ask a grown-up: try the riddle on someone and see if they work it out.