Part 39 (1/2)

c2 c2 c2 c2 _B A G F Some to make hay, fiddle faddle-

f2 e2 d2 c3 Some to the farm,

c2 c2 d2 c2 _B A G F Whilst you and I, fiddle faddle

f2 A2 G2 F3 Keep ourselves warm.

CATHERNING.

Catharine and Clement, be here, be here, Some of your apples, and some of your beer: Some for Peter, and some for Paul, And some for Him that made us all: Clement was a good man, For his sake give us some, Not of the worst, but some of the best, And G.o.d will send your soul to rest.

These lines are sung by the children of Worcesters.h.i.+re on St.

Catharine's day, when they go round to the farmhouses collecting apples and beer for a festival. This is no doubt the relic of a Popish custom; and the Dean of Worcester informs me that the Chapter have a practice of preparing a rich bowl of wine and spices, called the ”Cathern bowl,” for the inhabitants of the college precincts upon that day.

VALENTINE'S DAY.

In the western counties, the children, decked with the wreaths and true-lover's knots presented to them, gaily adorn one of their number as their chief, and march from house to house, singing-

Good morrow to you, Valentine!

Curl your locks as I do mine; Two before and three behind; Good morrow to you, Valentine!

They commence in many places as early as six o'clock in the morning, and intermingle the cry, ”To-morrow is come!” Afterwards they make merry with their collections. At Islip, co. Oxon, I have heard the children sing the following when collecting pence on this day:

Good morrow, Valentine!

I be thine and thou be'st mine, So please give me a Valentine!

And likewise the following:

Good morrow, Valentine, G.o.d bless you ever!

If you'll be true to me, I'll be the like to thee; Old England for ever!

Schoolboys have a very uncomplimentary way of presenting each other with these poetical memorials:

Peep, fool, peep, What do you think to see?

Every one has a valentine, And here's one for thee!

Far different from this is a stanza which is a great favorite with young girls on this day, offered indiscriminately, and of course quite innocently, to most of their acquaintances:

The rose is red, The violet's blue; Pinks are sweet, And so are you!

The mission of valentines is one of the very few old customs not on the wane; and the streets of our metropolis practically bear evidence of this fact in the distribution of love-messages on our stalls and shop-windows, varying in price from a sovereign to one halfpenny. Our readers, no doubt, will ask for its origin, and there we are at fault to begin with. The events of St. Valentine's life furnish no clue whatever to the mystery, although Wheatley, in his Ill.u.s.tration of the Common Prayer, absurdly disposes of the question in this way: ”St. Valentine was a man of most admirable parts, and so famous for his love and charity, that the custom of choosing valentines upon his festival, which is still practised, took its rise from thence.” We see no explanation here in any way satisfactory, and must be contented with the hope that some of our antiquaries may hit on something more to the purpose.

Valentine's day has long been popularly believed to be the day on which birds pair. Shakespeare alludes to this belief:

Good morrow, friends: St. Valentine is past; Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?

It was anciently the custom to draw lots on this day. The names of an equal number of each s.e.x were put into a box, in separate part.i.tions, out of which every one present drew a name, called the valentine, which was regarded as a good omen of their future marriage. It would appear from a curious pa.s.sage quoted in my Dictionary of Archaisms, that any lover was hence termed a valentine; not necessarily an affianced lover, as suggested in Hampson's Calendarium, vol. i. p. 163. Lydgate, the poet of Bury, in the fifteenth century, thus mentions this practice: