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reetings from Australia.
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Captain Cook was advanced a
few paces before the Marines when they fired, the Stones flew as thick
as hail which knocked the Lieut. down & as he was rising a fellow
stuck him in the back with a Spear, however he recovered himself shot
the Indian dead and escaped into the Water. Captain Cook was now the
only Man on the Rock, he was seen walking down towards the Pinnace,
holding his left hand against the Back of his head to guard it from
the Stones & carrying his Musket under the other Arm. An Indian
came running behind him, stopping once or twice as he advanced, as if
he was afraid that he should turn round, then taking him unaware he
sprung to him, knocked him on the back of his head with a large Club
taken out of a fence, & instantly fled with the greatest
precipitation; the blow made Captain Cook stagger two or three paces,
he then fell on his hand & one knee & dropped his Musket, as
he was rising another Indian came running to him & before he could
recover himself from the Fall drew out an iron Dagger he concealed
under his feathered Cloak & stuck it with all his force into the
back of his Neck, which made Capt. Cook tumble into the Water in a
kind of a bite by the side of the rock where the water is about knee
deep; here he was followed by a croud of people who endeavoured to
keep him under water, but struggling very strong with them he got his
head up & looking towards the Pinnace which was not above a boat
hook's Length from him waved his hands to them for Assistance, which
it seems it was not in their Power to give. |
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You did see that on the Lupercal,
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse.
Shakespeare: Mark Antony speaking of
Caesar (Julius Caesar, III, ii); he offered him the crown on the day of the Roman Festival of Lupercalia
Dear Lady be cautious of Cupid
List well to the lines of this verse
To be kissed by a fool is stupid
To be fooled by a kiss is worse.
Anon
Birds of a feather
Upon St Valentine's Day will meet all together.
English traditional proverb
St Valentine
Set thy hopper [seed basket] by mine.
Traditional English proverb
Winter's back breaks about the middle of February.
Traditional English proverb
And, cosyn, uppon Fryday is Sent Volentynes Day, and every brydde chesyth hym a make.
Gairdner; Paston Letter, iii, 169
On St Valentine all the birds of the air in couples do join.
English traditional proverb
On St Valentine's Day cast beans in clay,
But on St Chad
sow good and bad.
English traditional proverb
On St Valentine's Day,
Beans should be in the clay.
Huntingdonshire cottagers' form of the English traditional proverb
In Valentine March lays her line.
English traditional proverb
On St Valentine's Day
Will a good goose lay;
If she be a good goose,
Her dame well to pay,
She will lay two eggs
before Valentine's Day.
English traditional proverb
To St Valentine the Spring is a neighbour.
English traditional proverb
For this was on Saint Valentine's Day,
When ev'ry fowl cometh to choose her make (mate) …
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1345 - 1400), Assembly of the Fowls
Saint Valentine, thou art full high on loft,
Which driveth away the long nightes black,
Thus singen smalle foules for thy sake,
Will have they cause for to gladden oft,
Since each of them recovered hath his Make (Mate):
Full blissful may they sing, when they awake.
Chaucer
Seynte Valentine. Of custome yeere by yeere
Men have an usaunce, in this regioun,
To loke and serche Cupides kalendere,
And chose theyr choyse, by grete affeccioun;
Such as ben move with Cupides mocioun,
Takyng theyre choyse as theyr sort doth falle:
But I love oon whiche excellith alle.
English poet monk, John Lydgate (c. 1370 -
c. 1451), from a poem in praise of Queen
Catherine, consort to
Henry V
Muse, bid the moon awake,
Sad winter now declines,
Each bird doth choose a mate,
This day's Saint Valentine's
Michael Drayton, English poet (1563 - 1631)
See Grandpa Pencil's page of poems for Valentine's Day
Hail, Bishop Valentine! whose day this is;
All the air is thy diocese,
And all the chirping choristers
And other birds are thy parishioners.
John Donne (?1572 - 1631); an epithalamium on the wedding of Princess
Elizabeth to
Frederick, Count Palatine of the Rhine (February 14, 1614)
Oft have I heard both youths and virgins say
Birds choose their mates, and couple too, today
But by their flight I never can divine
When I shall couple with my Valentine.
Robert Herrick;
'Hesperides', 1648
Called out in the morning by Mr. Moore, whose voice my wife hearing in my
dressing-chamber with me, got herself ready, and came down and challenged
him for her valentine, this being the day.
Samuel Pepys (1633 - 1703), Diary, February
14, 1660
(Valentine's day). Up
early and to Sir W.
Batten's, but would not go in till I asked whether they that opened
the door was a man or a woman, and Mingo, who was there,
answered a woman, which, with his tone, made me laugh; so up I went and
took Mrs. Martha for my
Valentine (which I do only for complacency), and Sir W. Batten he go in
the same manner to my wife,
and so we were very merry.
Samuel Pepys, Diary, February
14, 1661
This morning comes in W. Bowyer who was my
wife's Valentine ...
Samuel Pepys , Diary, February 14,
1662
This morning came up to my
wife's bedside little Will Mercer to be her valentine, and brought her
name written upon blue paper in gold letters.
Samuel
Pepys, Diary, February 14, 1667
Go, little gloves, salute my Valentine
Which was, which is, which must and shall be mine.
Love to thee I send these gloves
If you love me, leave out the "g"
And make a pair of loves.
Seventeenth-century English verse on a Valentine card
Last Valentine, the day when birds of kind
Their paramours with mutual chirpings find,
I early rose just at the break of day,
before the sun had chased the stars away:
A-field I went, amid the morning dew,
To milk my kine (for so should housewives do).
Thee first I spied – and the first swain we see,
In spite of Fortune shall our true love be.
English poet John Gay (1685 - 1732) (the words are of a rural woman)
Yestreen at the valentines' dealing,
My heart to my mou gied a sten
For thrice I drew ane without failing,
And thrice it was written "Tam Glen".
From a 1790 poem
The weary and all for-spent twopenny
postman sinks beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his own.
Elia (Charles Lamb) quoted by
William Hone, The
Every-Day Book, or a Guide to the Year, William Tegg and Co.,
London, 1878; 1825-26
edition online, p110
Knock the kettle against the van
Give us a penny if you can
We be ragged and you be fine
Please to give us a Valentine.
Up with the kettle and down the spout
Give us a penny and we'll get out.
Children's begging rhyme, England
Good morrow Valentine
I'll be yours
If you'll be mine
Valentine – Valentine
Traditional rhyme, England
Lonely? No one to love? Why not come and drink heavily.
Valentine's Day advertisement in the Cambodia Daily, promoting Phnom Penh's Rock Hard Café
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has
read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that
progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
Oscar Wilde,
anarchist.
The first showing of his last play, The Importance of Being Earnest,
was on February 14, 1895
Have you got the opium, dear?
Groucho Marx to his wife, February 14, 1931 (see below for context)
February 14 is the 45th
day of the year in the Gregorian
calendar, with 320
days remaining (321 in leap years).
Calendar converter Almanacs,
calendars, time, dedicated weeks, etc
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links on this page move address or die, I might allow them to stay here, but the
Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
Feast day of St Valentine of Rome
(Yellow crocus, Crocus mœsiacus, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Excerpted from the Wilson's Almanac Valentine's Day page
This year for Valentine's Day, why not dump the
sentimental cards and the dozen red roses, and do something really
traditional, something that harks back to the origins of this ancient
commemoration?
If you want to get right
into the ancient spirit of Valentine's Day, try these party tricks. First,
go with your friends to a local cave and sacrifice some goats and a dog.
Find two young men of good breeding and smear their foreheads with your
bloody knife, then wipe the blood off with wool soaked in milk. The youths
must laugh during this.
Next, your whole party
should run licentiously around town wearing the skins of said goats, and
infertile townsfolk will come out on the streets to be belted by you with
straps of goat-skin. This will help them have children.
At some appropriate
juncture of your evening, arrange to have the names of all the females
written on billets, put in a container and drawn out one at a time by the
males. This will enable the sexes to pair off as lovers.
Yes, the modern practice
of celebrating Valentine's Day most likely has its roots in the ancient
Roman celebration of the Lupercalia, when all these weird customs were
indulged. The ceremonies started in the cave where it was said Romulus
and Remus, the legendary twin founders of Rome, were suckled by a
she-wolf. Scholars are uncertain, but it could be from the Latin word for
wolf, lupus, that the festival got its name. It could even be there
is a connection with the terms wolf whistle and wolf (a
rakish man), as has been suggested.
The Lupercalia was celebrated on February 15, and it is generally believed that much of its fertility and romantic significance became transferred, over the centuries, to the Feast Day of St Valentine, February 14. (More)
Three Saint Valentines
There were as many as
three St Valentines whose days all happened to be February 14. As with the
Lupercalia, little is known about our Val. Tradition has it that he
was a Christian priest of Rome, later a bishop, blessed with the ability
to restore sight to the blind. He was clubbed, then beheaded, on February
14, around 279 CE in the persecution of Emperor Claudius the Goth.
The evidence of Valentine's existence is scant, but there is little reason to doubt that some such person existed, particularly as the evidence of an early cultus around him is strong. The Catholic Church, however, has little time for our Val today.
One tradition says that Valentine performed secret weddings when Claudius, thinking marriage prevented men from being good soldiers, banned them. It might partly be from this, too, that this day is associated with love.
What does seem quite
certain in our search for the meaning of this day is that in medieval
Europe it was widely believed that birds on this day chose their mates. Chaucer, who died in 1400, refers to this belief in The Assembly of
Fowls:
