Magic of Valentine’s day: who will be your future husband or wife?

St.Valentine’s Day is the 14th of February and singularly ominous to lovers. Saint Valentine is said to have been a bishop who suffered martydom under the Roman emperor, Claudius, or else under Aurelian in 271. Like many another semi-Christian custom the day set apart’to the memory of Saint Valentine in the Christian Calender is an old pagan festival, upon which our ancestors believed that the birds chose their mates for the coming year. This, at least, is the commonly received version of our modern custom of “choosing a valentine” on the 14th of February, and of sending a billet-doux or a fancy “valentine” through the mail to some favored one. Valentine is by several authorities believed to be a corruption of galantin (a lover, a dangler) and St.Valentine was chosen as the patron saint of the lovers on account of his name.

In old Rome the 15th of February was the festival of Juno Februata (Juno the fructifyer), and the Roman Church substituted St.Valentine for the heathen goddess. At that festival, called Lupercalia (q.v.), it was customary among other ceremonies, to put the names of young women into a box, from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed. The Christian clergy, finding it difficult or impossible to extirpate the pagan practice and in accordance with their general principle to eradicate the vestiges of pagan superstition by retaining the ceremonies, but modifying their significance, gave it a religious of particular saints for those of the women. The saints whose names were drawn were proposed for imitation to the persons who received the slips of paper whereon they were written, and in many religious houses, where this custom still prevails, each member of the community preserves his billet during the year, as an incitement to imitate the virtues and invoke the special intercession of his holy Valentine.

This innovation, however, namely the substitution of the names of saints for the names of lovers, could not please the young people forever. Though the clergy repeatedly forbade the custom of Valentines and ordered the use of cards with Saints’ names , the old pagan custom could not be abolished. The boys and girls triumphed over the Saints, and in he end the girls triumphed over the boys wresting from them their exclusive privilege of choosing mates.

This old custom of drawing names is to this day observed in many parts of England ans Scotland in the following manner:

A number of slips of paper with the names of an equal number of men and women are shuffled and drawn, so each young man has a valentine in the person od a young maiden, and each maiden draws a young man whom she calls hers. The valentines give each other gifts, and often this little sport ends in love and marriage.

- The first young man or maid you meet on the morning of St. Valentine’s day will be your future husband or wife.

- All who walk on St.Valentine's day should wear a yellow crocus; it is the Saint's especial flower and will ward off all evil in love.

- If you chance on that day to meet a goldfinch or any yellow bird it is extremly lucky.

- If you meet a bird in a scarlet vest on St.Valentine's day, you will follow your love surely wed him or her.

- If a girl receives a valentine and wishes to find out who sent it, let her write her name on the back of it and right below, the names of the persons whom she imagines might have sent it, then say the following verse:

“If he who sent this valentine
Is named above with mine,
I pray good saint that by this line
I may his name divine.”

Place this under the pillow and she will surely see the one who sent it.

- If a maid walks abroad in the morning of St.Valentine’s day, she may decide her future husband’s position by the aid of the birds. If she first sees:

A blackbird: she will marry a clergyman.
A redbreast: a sailor.
A goldfinch: a millionaire.
A yellowbird: a rich man.
A sparrow: love in a cottage.
A bluebird: poverty.
A crossbill: a quarrelsome husband.
A wryneck: she will never marry.
A flock of doves: good luck.

Never sign a valentine even with your own name, it will not be successful.

- On St.Valentine’s Day a popular charm was formerly to place two bay leaves, previously sprinkled with rose water, across the pillow, and repeat this formula:

"Good Valentine, be kind to me,
In dreams let me my true love see.”

So go to sleep as fast as you can, and you will see in your dream the party you are to wed come to your bed-side, and offer you all the modest kindness imaginable.