TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...

In the Dec. 14 paper, an item called ‘A secret trick with arithmetic’ starts out with a reference to the old English song about the ‘Partridge in a Pear Tree.’ Reference is made to ‘two calling birds.

IN a remarkable and famous passage in Religio Medici, Sir Thomas Browne says, “ There is a music wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion ; and thus far we may maintain the ‘music of the ...

This is a song by Robert Burns. It was written in 1795 and is read here by Joyce Falconer. This song, which had appeared in a number of eighteenth-century miscellanies, was reworked by Burns and set ...