h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Question: Are the cows included, or are they sold separately?

There is usually a special offer at Christmas - FREE cow with every maid.

...since the maids could hardly be a-milking if they had nothing to milk. Of course, they wouldn't _have_ to be milking cows, but I suppose it's safest to assume that they are.

Free cows? That offer would probably be very popular...

Eight maids a milking simply implies a lot of cows, a sign of wealth (also implicit is the land to house them).

The true love is showing off, but don't you worry about those birds, take the cows. It's all about cultivating greed.

Well. 8 maids a-milking THE CLOCK! Not cows. It Christmas. It's been 8 days since all the leaping lords' kids have wrecked the house and they are sick of cleaning up after the little buggers.

On top of the normal Christmas tree, they have a partridge, a pear tree, swans, swan poo, partridge poo, leaping lords and leaping lords poo, goose poo, calling birds, French Hens, five gold rings (other clients ringing them on the phone to come clean their turtle dove mess up), and on and on. They hate Ornithology and all the mess it makes. And with each passing day, it gets worse. Progressively worse. They want higher wages and more time off. They have Christmas as well. So they are saying "NO MORE. We want a Christmas too." Milk the clock. Until we get what we want.

That's where the drummers come in on the 12th day. They are trying to whip all the "pipers piping" (crack pipers) and lazy maids into shape.

So. It's really a politcal song. Its the military trying to get the out-of-hand populus under control. Including the maids. Sitting around planning a revolution. Idle hands are the tool of the devil. Something like that.

Milking Maids of the WORLD, UNITE!!

At least it's not the Thirty Days of Christmas...

Why assume they are milking cows? Or even goats? There's nothing said about animals anywhere. And Maid seems to be frequently mistaken for maiden. Who's to say that they aren't chamber maids? Maybe it should read 8 lactating housekeepers....

Perhaps these maids are milking their employer for a perpetual salary. And there are 8 of them - what a wonderful gift.

The cow is then a cash cow.

If you have a problem with that then the local union representative can explain this clearly.

Did I hear negotiation? what does that mean?

Obviously, the male equivalent should be eight-men-a-milking....but then again, we all know another term for that particular activity.
Anyway, I think a suitable idea for what they might be milking...especially in this day and age....is hapless consumers, who are blatantly milked for all they're worth shortly before the 12 days of Christmas.

This could be read in many ways - Having 8 maids a-milking over on the weekend would be quite a nice gift for many lonely single guys (I am not one of those, but I can understand the sentiment).

Maybe they could help with the housework, once a-milking is done (I assume there is not an endless constant supply to keep them that busy) - and would save emergency trips to the shops for milk.

The modern version might be "My true love gave to me a Bingo 5000 Milko-matic Dairy milk extraction device with 8 workstations".

An interesting and logical debate, however, the subject matter has been somewhat lost in the translation.
The twelve days of Christmas was written in a time of political confusion and upheaval, so any political statements had to be made in the context of a religious anthem.
The aforementioned twelve days of Christmas is actually a communist doctrine that lays out the methods recommended for social upheval.
Eight maids a milking is a description of the role of women in the new social order, and the importance placed upon them in the industrial revolution. The manufacture of explosive devises was an important part of womens work in the old country, as their hands were more delicate and slender than those of their male comrades; fitting detonators into confined spaces was naturally easier for women.
Milking refers to the addition of cloudy ammonia into the substrate of an explosive device, the excess runoff of ammonia being carefully trapped in chemical resistant drums, that resemble the old style milk kegs.
A factory in the former USSR was constructed as to Party guidelines, which allowed for eight seats to a workbench...every worker being able to see the productivity or lack thereof of a comrade, and being able to inform the appropriate authorities of the standard of work being achieved.
So in retrtospect the eight mades a milking were an integral part of what my true love ( Stalin ) gave to me ( the people ).
Merry Christmas
Lord Vader

A few hundred years before that women were already being burnt at the stake for nothing more than not conforming to some vague rules that dictated they should behave a certain way, and let the guy's have all the say.

I believe this predates old Karl M. by quite a lot.

Was it Looneytunes who suggested the thing about the breastfeeding? Just a thought...

Well, they did mention laterally-warped...

Necro.