ST VALENTINE’S DAY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CV, Issue 12425, 14 February 1901, Page 4

ST VALENTINE’S DAY.

“Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentino! Great is thy name in the rubric. Like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other mitred father in the calendar.” To us, at least, there seems little point in this apostrophe of the gentle Elia, permed less than a century ago. Year by year, hand in hand with Guido Faux, St Valentine has been tottering towards that oblivion into which the centuries crowd, until to-day tods him forlorn, forsaken, full of years, stripped of his wealth of Sentiment, no longer the boon comrade of Eros and his mother Aphrodite, but .beggared save for the dry husks of a few belated import encies and buffooneries, the remnant of 4 the wild oats of his earlier years. It is a curious commentary on modern methods that we should, by a tacit conspiracy of general disuse, Have allowed the observance of sc. ancient a festival to die out. So old, indeed, is it, that its absolute origin, is shrouded in mystery, though it seems generally to be accepted that it grew from some country 'tradition which fixed the fourteenth of February as the ascertained date upon which the birds chose their spring mates. It is in this' spirit that Chaucer, S'hakspcre and Herrick, as well as mere modern muses, refer to the anniversary. Herrick, the typical poet of St Valentine, in his quaintly characteristic " Amatory Odes,” makes direct reference' to the tradition: “ Oft have I heard both youths and virgins say, ■bird's choose their mates, and couple to this day; But by their flight I never could divine When I shall coupia with my valentine.' A practical adaptation, of this process of natural selection in the bird world appears to have existed in that somewhat ambiguous period known as “Early English.” In some districts each bachelor ami each maid received by lot one of the opposite sex as “ Valentine ” for the year. It was a species of mock betrothal, and was further marked by the giving of presents. According to Pcpys, even married people might its among those chosen. From this basis it is easy to 'trace the evolution and degeneration of the Valentine. In its primitive form, it seems to have been a. rather pretty custom, a trifle idyllic, perhaps, according to twentieth century ideas, but still bright and pleasing, a kind of prejustification of the hackneyed .vsertion that “ in the spring the young man'-, fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” But human nature is never content with the unpainted lily or the tingilb gold. For Streplion and his AmaryEis a rose., a written verse, or a woful ballad throaJtily tenored beneath my lady’s chamber window, was sufficient Valentine. But for tho modern youth ; ;i. procc?s was altogether too simple, and the. Valentine of humble origin has taken to itself new, and elaborate forms'.

In recent times the festival has led to the giving of unnecessarily expensive presents, and this “wasteful and ridiculous excess” has had much to do with the languishing of the Valentine. The custom, too, has been discredited because of the growth of the absurd practice of sending ludicrous and vulgar caricatures through the post. So far as we in the colonies are concerned, beyond the inevitable mild regret at the destruction of another, fond association of our youth, the passing of St Valeitine brings but little grief, for our Antipodean topsy-turveydom of seasons had robbed the occasion of all its initial wealth of allegory. It would have been an anomaly of the first water to have perpetuated 1 a “ spring song ” in a February which is but the- equivalent of the Old World’s “ yellow-haired September.”