It’s Valentine’s Day. This is not a day I have often observed. Working in a florist and then a jewellers, watching harried men in a panic to procure the desired items on their expensive list put paid to any romantic notions I may have had about this increasingly consumer driven ‘celebration’. And yet, it is a day so deeply infused with layers of folklore that it does call my attention.
Saint Valentine was a martyred priest, put to death for his faith. One myth has it that he wrote a note before his execution signing it ‘from your valentine’ thus spawning the cards we gift today. Another story tells that he married couples in secret so their allegiance would be to each other and God before Rome, meaning the men wouldn’t have to fight in Rome’s bloody campaigns. It’s said he cut hearts from parchment and gave them to the men to remind them of their vows, so beginning the heart festooned festival we have today.
Yet this story can only be a recent embellishment as the earliest known representation of the heart symbol we know today can be traced to a medieval French manuscript from 1250CE. In which a man, on one knee, holds up a vaguely heart shaped object to a seated woman.
Some speculate that the heart symbol is derived from the shape of an Ivy leaf, which symbolises fidelity and is widely used in folk magics to bind loved ones together.
However, my favourite origin tale of the symbol you will see everywhere today, and may have gifted to someone yourself, is the medieval graffiti which presents the heart shape as a stylised representation of a woman’s body. The curved top represents either the breasts or the buttocks (when bending over and viewed from behind) and the point encompasses the vulva. I’m not sure a martyred priest would approve but do wonder therefore, if we can claim the heart shape as a fertility symbol.
Indeed, the fertile Eros of this time of year was long standing before St Valentine and his secret marriages. The ancient Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia was celebrated on February 15th and certainly gives us the origins of today’s celebration of ‘Love’.
Even now a brief wander outside lets us see the budding fertility of the year. It is the first stirring of spring. The birds are starting to mate and build nests, and our ancestors would have been beginning to prepare for the long work of the year, moving their bodies in the lengthening light after a long winter. It is not a leap then to imagine the beginnings of flirtations, the first stirring of lust and the desire for a fertile farming year.
Valentine’s day as we know it today is a largely Victorian invention; the gifts of flowers and cards and the saccerine presentation of ‘love’. But it has been through several incarnations over the centuries and one of my favourites was the French practice of single women burning symbols of men who had wronged them and shouting profanities to the sky. It was outlawed as being too unruly. I think if we resurrected this practice in our age of dating apps whole cities would burn…
Here in Ireland, and other Celtic regions, our fertility festival was later in the year. And as with Lupercalia, a lot more earthy. Bealtaine, at the start of summer, now celebrated widely as May Day, was a time for lovers to come together and bless the land with their love making, a time of bonfires, fertility and protection rites. It was also a time for handfasting, where a couple could be bound together in a ‘trial’ marriage for a year and a day, and any child conceived at Bealtaine was believed to be a child of the gods. I’ll bring you more on Bealtaine when the time comes but I want to leave you today with two not quite love poems. Lover poems, written years apart and yet they somehow intertwine in all the stirrings of the day.
Last Night Last night sleep fled a disgruntled lover jealous of your presence still. And so I lay on Imagining I could trace the stars along your back Asterisms of your birth and bravery. The wayward heat of us across an ocean of sheets The to and fro of us of years and hips making me ache to postpone the dawn. Lyrids* Somewhere under Pleiades or just below Orion you kissed me. That old star-God his belt already half undone. The wild heat of us giving breath to the night. Safe in your arms when the sky fell down and broke on your back As I shattered into the blackness beneath you. And we’d just stopped counting.
*Lyrids is a meteor shower occurring in late April every year. That particular year a crystal clear Bealtaine night put on a magical and stunning display , we mistook for planes at first...
Image is of Peony roses which in victorian flower meanings symbolise sublime happiness, photographed with a thimble, a modern, literary symbol of a kiss. May your spring be filled with both. Xx
I've never been much of a one for "day" days, if you know what I mean Siobhán. I suppose as I child I was sucked in by Christmas and birthdays and Easter and all the presents and food and paraphernalia that went with them. But without children in the equation to carry on these traditions, their importance seems to pale as the years pass. And the commercialisation of everything does indeed wear you down.
It may come as little surprise then if I say that in all my days I've never either sent or received a Valentine's card. Unlucky in love, as the saying goes! But I might remember this year's February 14th as it's the day that the good people at Instagram decided to block my account. They seem to think I'm a bot (or something?) and want me to stand on my head and rub my tummy while taking a selfie to allow them to unlock it. I have no intention of doing so and I was contemplating deleting it anyway as I don't particularly like Mr Zuckerberg (who definitely seems like a bot himself). I'll miss having access to your posts though. And there are a few other people who I've been in occasional contact with through the dms that I will also miss and regret not being able to follow/contact in the future. But there's lots to see and do in that big old world out there, and it's all too easy to get distracted by the virtual gobbledygook on the web.
Anyway, I digress. To get back to the subject at hand, I suppose we need special days in our calendars to denote the passage of time and add a little spice and variety to our lives. Causes for celebration and remembrance, focus and distraction, blessing and anticipation. And even the occasional expression of love. You paint an enticing picture of the coming spring (my favourite time of the year). May it bring you lots of warmth, release and light as the world keeps on turning.