ST. VALENTINE'S DAY.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 9, Issue 642, 11 February 1887, Page 5

ST. VALENTINE'S DAY.

The fourteenth of February is the day dedicated as the anniversary of St. Valentine, the patron saint of amorous youths and maidens It is not known with precision what this saint did to entitle him to such pre-eminence; indeed, little is known of him at all except that he was martyred at Rome under the Emperor Claudius. But the day has for centuries been set apart for the linking of couples, not in the irrefragable bonds of wedlock, bub in those of the preliminary and tentative courtship. On this day, too, Nature was supposed to sanction by her example the liberty of choice, for on it the birds chose their mates and in the glowing spring sunshine of European woods carolled out at once their joy at the departure of winter and their connubial exultation. There was in olden times a cuai< in in Britain that the first person upon whom a maiden cast her eyes on »hi& morning was fated to be her Vaienine for the year, her privileged squire, 10 claim her band in the dane« and the right to throw over her the mantle of his protection. Scott alludes to this when he embodied the legend in the Fair Maid of Perth. He tells us how Hal of the Wynd when he had beaten I off the midnight revellers who had i attacked fair Catherine's window, did not go home but seated himself in the old Glover's chair and fell asleep- Did not the modest Catherine, when the morning sun had kissed the waters of the Tay, quietly steal downstairs and give her hero the maidenly salute on the cheek which her timidity would not permit if he had been awake, but which she felt was the proper reward for his courage and testimony to his strength ? Who that has read the book has not smiled at the damsel's em harassment when the sturdy Smith, awakening from a pretended sleep, returned with interest the chaste salute, and before the exultant father claimed there and then the privilege which the custom of the times awarded 1 Shakespeare alludes to the same custom. When poor Ophelia goes mad and repeats the rustic rhymes she has heard, she sings : — Good morrow, 'tis St. Valentine's day, All in the morning betirae, And I a maid at your window To be your Valentine. Only in thfs case the maiden wag the pursuer instead of the pursued and hr< curred the penalty of over forward damsels. But, nowadays, we have not so much romance about the matter. Corydon does not seek Phyllis at early dawn by the dewy woodland. Less romantic and more prosaic, he employs the twopenny postman to deliver his Valentine greeting, aud indicates the ardor of his affection and the depth of his pocket by the value of his present. It may be an expensive triumph of art, allegorically representing little birds in their nest, or Cupids aiming their deadly arrows, or it may be that impossible gilt edged monstrosity which Sam Weller sent under seal of bis thumb t? Mary. And the license of the period is taken advantage of not only to give tangible expression to feelings of love but to opposite feelings. Old maids in particular are at this season the butts of illnatured and highly colored allusions to their state of single blessedness. Has any one a peculiarity or a fault, there is sure to be something to be bought which will hit the mark and wound the recipient. In many places, as, for instance, Gore, thes6 missives form the bulk of the extra correspondence entailed by Valentine's day, but in the old Country the tender and genuine valentine — genuine because it is a point of honor not to admit the authorship — forms the bulk of the burden which bows down the weary postman. And it is well that it should be so. The world will be all the better for the old, simple, bashful love making.