Feb. 14.]

ST. VALENTINE’S DAY.

This is a festival which lovers have observed and poets have honoured from time immemorial. The observance is much more than sixteen hundred years old, when the Christian Valentine was beaten by clubs and beheaded, at the time of the great heathen festival of love and purification. A few years ago the observance was dying out; but it has lately revived, especially in London.—N. & Q. 4th S. vol. xi. p. 129.

In that curious record of domestic life in England in the reign of Charles II., Pepys’ Diary, we find some notable illustrations of the customs connected with this day.

It appears that married and single were then alike liable to be chosen as a Valentine; and that lady Valentines were honoured not by anonymous verses, but by substantial gifts. Four days after Pepys had chosen Martha Batten for his Valentine, he took her to the Exchange, and there, “upon a pair of embroidered, and six pair of plain white gloves, I laid out 40s.” The question of expense troubled the diarist. When, in 1667, he took his wife for (honorary) Valentine, he wrote down the fact that it would cost him 5l.; but he consoled himself by another fact, that he must have laid out as much “if we had not been Valentines.” The outlay at the hands of princes and courtiers was enormous. When the Duke of York was Miss Stewart’s Valentine, he gave her a jewel of about 800l. in value; and in 1667, Lord Mandeville, being that lady’s Valentine, presented her with a ring worth 300l. The gifts of Pepys to his wife look small by the side of presents made by lovers to ladies. Pepys came to an agreement with Mrs. Pepys to be her Valentine (which did not preclude others from being so) every year, “and this year,” he remarks, in 1668, “it is likely to cost 4l. or 5l. in a ring for her, which she desires.” In 1669, he bought more useful things for his cousin Turner, who told him she had drawn him for her Valentine. Straightway he went to the New Exchange, and bought her a pair of fashionable “green silk stockings, and garters, and shoe-strings, and two pairs of jessimy gloves, all coming to about 28s.” London shops do not now exhibit green silk stockings, but they tempt buyers with gallant intentions; and “Valentine gifts” are in windows or on counters at prices to suit a few and terrify many.

Other old customs have not been revived, but we may learn some of these from old makers of Notes, and specially from Pepys, as to the old methods of choosing, or avoiding to choose, Valentines. When he went early on Valentine’s Day to Sir W. Batten’s, he says he would not go in “till I asked whether they that opened the doors was a man or a woman; and Mingo who was there, answered, a woman, which, with his tone, made me laugh; so up I went, and took Mrs. Martha for my Valentine (which I do only for complacency); and Sir W. Batten, he go in the same manner to my wife, and so we were very merry.” On the following anniversary the diarist tells us that Will Bowyer came to be his wife’s Valentine, “she having (at which I made good sport to myself) held her hands all the morning, that she might not see the painters that were at work gilding my chimney-piece and pictures in my dining-room.” It would seem, moreover, that a man was not free from the pleasing pains of Valentineship when the festival day was over. On Shrove Tuesday, March 3rd, 1663, after dinner, says Pepys, “Mrs. The. showed me my name upon her breast as her Valentine, which,” he added, “will cost me 30s.” Again, in 1667, a fortnight after the actual day Pepys was with his wife at the Exchange, “and there bought things for Mrs. Pierce’s little daughter, my Valentine (which,” he says, “I was not sorry for, it easing me of something more than I must have given to others), and so to her house, where we find Knipp, who also challenged me for her Valentine;” of course, Pepys had to pay the usual homage in acknowledgment of such choice. Then, as Pepys had a little girl for Valentine, so boys were welcomed to early gallantry by the ladies. A thoroughly domestic scene is revealed to us on Valentine’s Day, 1665:

“This morning comes betimes Dickie Pen, to be my wife’s Valentine, and came to our bedside. By the same token, I had been brought to my bedside thinking to have made him kiss me; but he perceived me, and would not, so went to his Valentine—a notable, stout, witty boy.”

When a lady drew a Valentine, a gentleman so drawn would have been deemed shabby if he did not accept the honour and responsibility. On the 14th February, 1667, we have the following:

“This morning called up by Mr. Hill, who, my wife thought, had come to be her Valentine—she, it seems, having drawn him; but it proved not. However, calling him up to our bedside, my wife challenged him.”

Where men could thus intrude, boys like Dickie Pen could boldly go. Thus in 1667:

“This morning came up to my wife’s bedside little Will Mercer, to be her Valentine; and brought her name writ upon blue paper, in gold letters, done by himself very pretty; and we were both well pleased with it.”

The drawing of names and name-inscriptions were remnants of old customs before the Christian era. Alban Butler, under the head of “St. Valentine, Priest and Martyr,” says:

“To abolish the heathens’ lewd, superstitious custom of boys drawing the names of girls in honour of their goddess, Februata Juno, on the 15th of the month (the drawing being on the eve of the 14th), several zealous pastors substituted the names of saints in billets given on this day.” This does not, however, seem to have taken place till the time of St. Francis de Sales, who, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, as we are told in his Life, “severely forbade the custom of Valentines, or giving boys in writing the names of girls to be admired or attended on by them; and to abolish it, he changed it into giving billets with the names of certain saints for them to honour and imitate in a particular manner.”

To the drawing of names—those of the saints gave way to living objects of adoration—was first added, in 1667, a custom out of which has sprung the modern epistolary Valentine. In the February of that year Pepys writes:

“I do first observe the fashion of drawing of mottoes as well as names; so that Pierce, who drew my wife’s, did draw also a motto, ‘most courteous and most fair;’ which, as it may be used, or an anagram made upon each name, might be very pretty.”

The Valentines of chance were those who drew names; the Valentines by choice were made by those who could not open their eyes on Valentine’s morn till the one he or she most desired to see was near. The one by chance sometimes proved to be the one by choice also, and such were true Valentines. N. & Q. 4th S. vol. xi. p. 129, 130.

Pennant, in his Tour in Scotland, tells us that in February young persons draw Valentines, and from thence collect their future fortune in the nuptial state; and Goldsmith, in his Vicar of Wakefield, describing the manners of some parties, tells us they sent true-love knots on Valentine morning.

St. Valentine’s Day is alluded to by Shakspeare and by Chaucer, and also by the poet Lydgate, the monk of Bury (who died in 1440). One of the earliest known writers of Valentines was Charles, Duke of Orleans, who was taken at the Battle of Agincourt. See Every Day Book, vol. i. p. 215.

A singular custom prevailed many years ago in the west of England. Three single young men went out together before daylight on St. Valentine’s Day, with a clap-net to catch an old owl and two sparrows in a neighbouring barn. If they were successful and could bring the birds without injury to the inn before the females of the house had risen, they were rewarded by the hostess with three pots of purl in honour of St. Valentine, and enjoyed the privilege of demanding at any house in the neighbourhood a similar boon. This was done as an emblem that the owl, being the bird of wisdom, could influence the feathered race to enter the net of love as mates on that day, whereon both single lads and maidens should be reminded that happiness could alone be secured by an early union.—Every Day Book, vol. i. p. 227.

Cambridgeshire.

In the village of Duxford and other adjoining parishes the custom of “valentining” is still in feeble existence. The children go in a body round to the parsonage and the farm-houses, singing:

They start about 9 A.M. on their expedition, which must be finished by noon; otherwise their singing is not acknowledged in any way. In some few cases the donor gives each child a halfpenny, others throw from their doors the coppers they feel disposed to part with amongst the little band of choristers, which are eagerly scrambled after.—The Antiquary, 1873, vol. iii. p. 103.

Derbyshire.

The following customs, which have nearly died out, were very prevalent about fifty or sixty years ago:

Valentine Dealing.

—Each young woman in the house would procure several slips of paper, and write upon them the names of the young men she knew, or those she had a preference for. The slips when ready were put into a boot or shoe (a man’s), or else into a hat, and shaken up. Each lassie then put in her hand and drew a slip, which she read and retained until every one had drawn. The slips were then put back and the drawing done over again, which ceremony was performed three times. If a girl drew the same slip thrice, she was sure to be married in a short time, and to a person of the same name as that which was written upon the thrice drawn slip.

Looking through the Keyhole.

—On the early morn of St. Valentine, young women would look through the keyhole of the house door. If they saw only a single object or person they would remain unmarried all that year. If they saw, however, two or more objects or persons, they would be sure to have a sweetheart, and that in no distant time; but if fortune so favoured them that by chance they saw a cock and a hen, they might be quite certain of being married before the year was out.

Sweeping the girls

was another real old Derbyshire custom. If a girl did not have a kiss, or if her sweetheart did not come to see her early on this morning, it was because she was dusty, and therefore it was needful that she should be well swept with a broom, and then afterwards equally well kissed by the young men of the house, and those living near, who used to go round to their intimate friends’ houses to perform this custom.—N. & Q. 4th S. vol. ix. p. 135.

Herefordshire.

In many parts the poor and middling classes of children assemble together in some part of the town or village where they live, and proceed in a body to the house of the chief personage of the place, who, on their arrival, throws them wreaths and true lovers’ knots from the window, with which they adorn themselves. Two or three of the girls then select one of the youngest among them (generally a boy), whom they deck out more gaily than the rest, and placing him at their head, march forward, singing as they go along:

This they repeat under the windows of all the houses they pass, and the inhabitant is seldom known to refuse a mite towards the merry solicitings of these juvenile serenaders.—Hone’s Year Book, 1838, p. 201.

Kent.

The following extract is taken from the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1779, vol. xlix. p. 137: “Being on a visit in a little obscure village in Kent, I found an odd kind of sport going forward: the girls, from eighteen to five or six years old, were assembled in a crowd, and burning an uncouth effigy, which they called an holly-boy, and which it seems they had stolen from the boys, and in another part of the village the boys were assembled together, and burning what they called an ivy-girl, which they had stolen from the girls; all this ceremony was accompanied with loud huzzas, noise, and acclamation.”

Norfolk.

Independent of the homage paid to St. Valentine on this day at Lynn, it is in other respects a red-letter day amongst all classes of its inhabitants, being the commencement of its great annual mart. This mart was granted by a charter of Henry VIII. in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, “to begin on the day next after the feast of the purification of the blessed Virgin Mary, and to continue six days next following.” Since the alteration of the style, in 1752, it has been proclaimed on Valentine’s Day. About noon, the Mayor and Corporation, preceded by a band of music, and attended by twelve decrepit old men, called from their dress “Red Coats,” walk in procession to proclaim the mart, concluding by opening the antiquated and almost obsolete court of “Piepowder.” Like most establishments of this nature, it is no longer attended for the purpose it was first granted, business having yielded to pleasure and amusement. Formerly Lynn mart and Stourbridge (Stirbitch) fair, were the only places where small traders in this and the adjoining counties supplied themselves with their respective goods. No transactions of this nature now take place, and the only remains to be perceived are the “mart prices,” still issued by the grocers. Here the thrifty housewives, for twenty miles round, laid in their annual store of soap, starch, &c., and the booth of Green, from Limehouse, was for three generations the emporium of such articles; but these no longer attend. A great deal of money is however spent, as immense numbers of persons assemble from all parts. Neither is there any lack of incitements to unburthen the pockets: animals of every description, tame and wild, giants and dwarfs, tumblers, jugglers, peep-shows, &c., all unite their attractive powers, in sounds more discordant than those which annoyed the ears of Hogarth’s “enraged musician.”

In the early part of the last century, an old building, which, before the Reformation, had been a hall belonging to the guild of St. George, after being applied to various uses, was fitted up as a theatre (and, by a curious coincidence, where formerly had doubtless been exhibited, as was customary at the guild feasts, religious mysteries and pageants of the Catholic age, again were exhibited the mysteries and pageants of the Protestant age) during the mart and a few weeks afterwards, but apparently with no great success.—Every Day Book, vol. ii. p. 223.

In the parish of Ryburgh it is customary for the children to go round to the houses in the village for contributions, saying:

Northamptonshire.

In this county children go from house to house, on the morning of St. Valentine’s Day, soliciting small gratuities. The children of the villages go in parties, sometimes in considerable numbers, repeating at each house the following salutations, which vary in different districts:[18]

It was formerly customary for young people to catch their parents and each other on their first meeting on St. Valentine’s morning. Catching was no more than the exclamation, “Good morrow, Valentine!” and they who could repeat this before they were spoken to, were entitled to a small present from their parents or the elderly persons of the family; consequently there was great eagerness to rise early, and much good-natured strife and merriment on the occasion.[19]

In Peterborough and in some of the villages in the northern part of the county sweet plum buns were formerly given, and I believe are still made, called Valentine buns; and these buns, I am told, are in some villages given by godfathers and godmothers to their godchildren on the Sunday preceding and the Sunday following St. Valentine’s Day.—Baker, Glossary of Northamptonshire Words and Phrases, 1854, vol. ii. p. 373.

Nottinghamshire.

Drawing lots or billets for Valentines is a custom observed in the neighbourhood of Mansfield, where a few young men and maidens meet together, and having put each their own name on a slip of paper, they are all placed together in a hat or basket, and drawn in regular rotation. Should a young man draw a girl’s name, and she his, it is considered ominous, and not unfrequently ends in real love and a wedding.—Jour. of the Arch. Assoc. 1853, vol. viii. p. 231.

Oxfordshire.

In this county the following rhymes were used:

Also

Also

The Antiquary, 1873, vol. iii. p. 107; Brand, Pop. Antiq. 1849, vol. i. p. 60.

Yorkshire.

“On Valentine’s Day,” says Clarkson (Hist. of Richmond, 1821, p. 293), “the ceremony of drawing lots called Valentines is seldom omitted. The names of a select number of one sex with an equal number of the other are put into a vessel, and every one draws a name, which is called their Valentine; and which is looked upon as a good omen of their being afterwards united.”