Cutting off the fiddler's head

[My Good Babushka]

During the 12 days of Christmas, in Georgian through Victorian England, public money was used to hire fiddlers for every parish dance, usually held in a barn. On the 12th day, the fiddler puts his head on an unmarried woman's lap, a third party asks him whom the maid should marry. The fiddler answers from his whim or from his observations, but whatever he says, it is taken as oracle. If he couples two people with a strong aversion to each other. The mirth dissolves into cries for "cutting off the fiddler's head!"