Performers turn coordination into cacophony

In the carol's imagined household, ten leaping lords argue over dancing partners, while their interest in the milkers threatens to interrupt work the cows still need. Eleven pipers supply music for the dancing but compete with the livestock for sheer noise. An appeal to the police also fails within the comic story. The lords do not know who hired them, having accepted money simply to turn up and dance. The supposedly ex-forces pipers prove equally unhelpful: the joke is that they will not yield to pressure for information. The parent gains more performers while remaining unable to trace the sender or keep the household's competing activities under control.