St. Valentine's Eve: bay leaves and love dreams
Long before cards and chocolates, St. Valentine's Day was about choosing a sweetheart, and the night before was a time for small love charms. A French traveler noted around 1700 that on Valentine's Eve, young people in England and Scotland wrote names on slips of paper and drew them by lot to find their "valentine." Some also hoped to see their true love in a dream, with the help of a few bay leaves, a salted egg or a name tucked under the pillow.
Charms for a Valentine's dream
Five bay leaves
In 1755 the London magazine "The Connoisseur" printed a letter, said to be from a country girl, about her Valentine's Eve. She pinned four bay leaves to the four corners of her pillow and a fifth to the middle. A woman called Betty told her that if she dreamed of her sweetheart, she would marry him before the year was out.
A salted egg
To make the charm more certain, the same girl boiled an egg hard, took out the yolk and filled the hollow with salt. She ate it at bedtime and then didn't speak or drink anything. In North Carolina, folklorists of the 1900s recorded the same salted egg as a love charm for any night, not only Valentine's Eve: the future spouse was expected to appear in the dream bringing a drink of water.
Bay leaves and a verse
A later edition of the charm book "Mother Bunch's Closet," printed around 1780, also used five bay leaves: one under each corner of the pillow and the fifth in the middle. Lying down to rest, the reader was to say a short verse seven times, asking for "a valentine endowed with love, that will both kind and constant prove," that is, a loving sweetheart who would stay kind and faithful. The book said this would bring the hoped-for valentine, "or one more excellent," meaning someone even better.
A name under the pillow
In northeast Scotland, young men and women met on the evening of Valentine's Day itself to draw valentines. Everyone's name was written on a slip of paper: the young men drew from the women's names and the women from the men's. Each person kept the slip carefully and put it under the pillow to bring dreams. The folklorist Walter Gregor noted there was much laughter, and now and then a little disappointment.
The first face in the morning
Not every Valentine custom was about dreams. In the 1700s many people believed that the first unmarried person of the opposite sex you met on Valentine's morning would be your valentine. So the night's dream and the morning's first meeting went together: one gave a hint, the other was a little game of chance.
Today
Today, Valentine's Day is about cards, flowers and dinners for two. If you'd like to try something old-fashioned, tuck a bay leaf under your pillow on February 13 and write down your dream the next morning. It won't name your true love, but it may show what you're hoping for.
Related symbols
Sources
- R. Chambers (ed.), "The Book of Days", 1864, vol. 1, February 14 (online transcription)
- J. Brand, "Observations on Popular Antiquities of Great Britain", ed. H. Ellis, vol. 1, London 1849
- "Mother Bunch's Closet Newly Broke Open" (chapbook, 1685), ed. G. L. Gomme, 1885 (Project Gutenberg)
- W. Gregor, "Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland", Folk-Lore Society, London 1881
- "The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore", vol. 6, ed. W. D. Hand, Duke University Press 1961
Dream interpretations are for entertainment.