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Disbelieve it as you like. The anti-Christian secularists certainly do (but then, they disbelieve in Christ himself).

The fact is that this is ancient: from a time when many were not literate, and those that were did not have books. This piece was handed down by oral tradition before it was ever printed.

Even if the specific interpretations are not accurate, it is absurd to seriously argue that this is not heavily symbolic; it is reasonable to therefore consider that it was indeed a mnemonic device.

The arrogant, condescending skeptics, e.g., the leftist Snopes, scoff at the idea that this had anything to do with Christian persecution. Maybe, maybe not. The above explanation does not require persecution as a factor.

What is inarguably true, though, is that the colonization of North America, and establishment of the United States, had a great deal to do with Christian persecution; therefore, the Snopes types who assert that the whole Western world was Christian, and so persecution did not exist, are liars.

People who do not see something like this as obviously symbolic are mired in the tyranny of recency: We have secular media, including books, tapes, documenting everything now, including what some celebrity had for breakfast.

They had none of that - none of that - back then. Oral tradition relied upon stories, and melodies, and often employed symbolism, to make it both artistic and memorable. Music and song were both education and entertainment.

Do you seriously imagine that anyone - even a monarch - received ten leaping lords as any kind of gift? Without symbolism, the song is literally absurd - but it comes from a time when composing and performing such an absurdity, touching on the sacred subject of the birth of the Messiah, would have been considered unsalutary, if not actually blasphemous.

I have been in ministry in the past, so I am familiar with old hymns. I am also a sometime professional chorister who is very acquainted with Renaissance and Baroque choral literature. Symbolism is commonplace in such music, far more than in today’s literal and unpoetic world .