Welcome to h2g2's attempt to decipher the mystery that is the song 'The 12 Days of Christmas'. You've come to the page that is concentrating on the line Eleven Pipers Piping, and here's what our Researchers came up with when we asked them what on earth this line meant.

• Pan pipe bands. What's that all about, eh? A few years ago it was possible to wander round the shopping malls of the world without being bombarded with pan-pipe versions of Christmas carols, Beatles songs and even Beethoven's symphonies, but now pan pipes have replaced even the crassest of piped muzak. It's a conspiracy, we're sure - we just can't prove anything. Yet.

• Apparently the members of the British Royal Family are woken up at their Christmas retreat of Balmoral by pipers playing bagpipes outside their bedroom windows. By all accounts they stand right below the bedroom of the Queen Mother: whoever said being a royal was easy?

• The massed band of the Nempnett Thrubwell Pipers may be lacking in numbers (there are only 11 of them) but they more than make up for it in enthusiasm. One Researcher just wishes they wouldn't practise so early in the morning. By all accounts some bright spark read that there is an island in Scotland that doesn't recognise the Gregorian Calendar, and so is several days behind the rest of the planet. Never ones to miss an opportunity, the Pipers are practising in order to hold 'the First Hogmanay of the New Millennium' early in sympathy¹ with the islanders. Pass the earplugs, please...