For Younger Readers ...........
(and the young at heart ! )
"In the spring a young man's fancy
Lightly turns to thoughts of love .... "
It isn't really spring yet, just the end of winter, but that spring is coming we can be in no doubt. You have probably seen all sorts of signs, - snowdrops and daffodil spikes and buds swelling on trees. And never mind the "young man": all the birds and animals are beginning to strike out their territory, choose mates, build nests and start their families. Have you seen and heard them? Bird songs, rabbits chasing, squirrels racing up and down trees?
Human beings share in this early "awakening", too, and always have. The ancient Romans held their Lupercalia festival on the 15th, February. This was partly in memory of Romulus and Remus, the twin boy babies who had been cared for by a wolf and who had gone on to found the city of Rome. During the festival, two boys carrying goatskin whips chased round the Palatine Hill; girls ran after them and round them, laughing and breathless, hoping to receive a touch from the whip as they believed that would ensure them a happy marriage and children.
The days of pagan Rome and its festivals are long gone, but we have St. Valentine's Day on the 14th, February, just as all the spring life is beginning. The famous poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote a poem describing how all the birds were allocated their mates on St. Valentine's Day. Girls of that time would tie coloured ribbons to their bed heads and hope to dream of their future husbands.
There was a long tradition that the first unmarried man that a girl met on St. Valentine's Day would become her sweetheart and marry her. The custom arose that a shy young man who fell in love with a girl would on St. Valentine's Day send her a nosegay or a card asking her to be his sweetheart. He would not sign it, so the girl had to try to guess who it must be. A mystery!
Nowadays, the shops are full of commercial "Valentine" cards well before the actual day. Did you receive a Valentine card from an admirer this year? Did you send one?
Who was St. Valentine who started all this? The truth is that no-one can be sure!
Was it the Roman priest called Valentinus who was put to death by the Roman Emperor in about 269?
Or was it Valentinus, Bishop of Terni, also martyred in Rome by the Emperor for sticking to his Christian beliefs?
Were there two St. Valentines? Or were they really both the same man?
Claudius had forbidden his soldiers to marry as he thought this made them concentrate better on fighting, but Valentinus, sympathetic to lovers, performed marriage ceremonies in secret. When he was finally arrested, he was thrown into jail, and they say that he fell in love with the jailer's daughter and she with him. On the day that he was led out to his death, he left a note in his cell addressed to her. It was signed, "Your Valentine." But which of the two Valentines was it?
No-one seems to know. Like the sender of that Valentine card on the 14th, February, it remains a mystery!
W.W.W.