JINGLE BELLS… are they wrong?
Please, don’t get me wrong too! I’m just an artist, a maker of resonant small silver bells who loves also to play with words… in this case the Latin word CROTAL, which means rattle.
Thus, all “jingle bells”… because they have a pebble or bead rattling loosely inside them to make the sound, are actually Crotals… unlike bells, which have attached clappers. Most ”sleigh bells” are thus also crotals!
So… lets sing this song properly… all together now! “JINGLE CROTALS, JINGLE CROTALS, JINGLE ALL THE WAY!”
While timber rattlesnakes then are Crotalus Horridus, I’m not a killjoy! Not even my sometime pedant would be so foolish as to suggest such un-melodic English as that! I just find such holiday tidbits too delicious to ignore !