From this notion, it has been suggested, arose the once popular practice of choosing valentines, and also the common belief that the first two single persons who meet in the morning of St. Valentine’s day have a great chance of becoming wed to each other. This superstition is alluded to in Ophelia’s song in “Hamlet” (iv. 5):
“To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your valentine.”
There seems every probability that St. Valentine’s day, with its many customs, has come down to us from the Romans, but was fathered upon St. Valentine in the earlier ages of the Church in order to Christianize it.[642] In France St. Valentine’s was a movable feast, celebrated on the first Sunday in Lent, which was called the jour des brandons, because the boys carried about lighted torches on that day.
Shrove-Tuesday. This day was formerly devoted to feasting and merriment of every kind, but whence originated the custom of eating pancakes is still a matter of uncertainty. The practice is alluded to in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (ii. 2), where the clown speaks of “a pancake for Shrove-Tuesday.”[643] In “Pericles” (ii. 1) they are termed “flap-jacks,” a term used by Taylor, the Water-Poet, in his “Jack-a-Lent Workes” (1630, vol. i. p. 115): “Until at last by the skill of the cooke it is transformed into the form of a flap-jack, which in our translation is called a pancake.” Shrovetide was, in times gone by, a season of such mirth that shroving, or to shrove, signified to be merry. Hence, in “2 Henry IV.” (v. 3), Justice Silence says:
“Be merry, be merry, my wife has all;
For women are shrews, both short and tall;
’Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all,
And welcome merry shrove-tide.
Be merry, be merry.”
It was a holiday and a day of license for apprentices, laboring persons, and others.[644]
Lent. This season was at one time marked by a custom now fallen into disuse. A figure, made up of straw and cast-off clothes, was drawn or carried through the streets amid much noise and merriment; after which it was either burned, shot at, or thrown down a chimney. This image was called a “Jack-a-Lent,” and was, according to some, intended to represent Judas Iscariot. It occurs twice in the “Merry Wives of Windsor;” once merely as a jocular appellation (iii. 3), where Mrs. Page says to Robin, “You little Jack-a-Lent, have you been true to us?” and once (v. 5) as a butt, or object of satire and attack, Falstaff remarking, “How wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when ’tis upon ill employment!” It is alluded to by Ben Jonson in his “Tale of a Tub” (iv. 2):
“Thou cam’st but half a thing into the world,
And wast made up of patches, parings, shreds;
Thou, that when last thou wert put out of service,
Travell’d to Hamstead Heath on an Ash Wednesday,
Where thou didst stand six weeks the Jack of Lent,
For boys to hurl three throws a penny at thee,
To make thee a purse.”
Elderton, in a ballad called “Lenton Stuff,” in a MS. in the Ashmolean Museum, thus concludes his account of Lent:[645]
“When Jakke a’ Lent comes justlynge in,
With the hedpeece of a herynge,
And saythe, repent yowe of yower syn,
For shame, syrs, leve yowre swerynge:
And to Palme Sonday doethe he ryde,
With sprots and herryngs by his syde,
And makes an end of Lenton tyde!”[646]