British Popular Customs, Present and Past. T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

and having put each their own name on a slip of paper, they are all placed together in a hat or basket, and drawn in regular rotation. Should a young man draw a girl’s name, and she his, it is considered ominous, and not unfrequently ends in real love and a wedding.—Jour. of the Arch. Assoc. 1853, vol. viii. p. 231.

Oxfordshire.

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      In this county the following rhymes were used:

      “Good morrow, Valentine!

       I be thine, and thou be’st mine,

       So please give me a Valentine!”

      Also

      “Good morrow, Valentine!

       God bless you ever!

       If you’ll be true to me,

       I’ll be the like to thee.

       Old England for ever!”

      Also

      “Good morrow, Valentine,

       First ’tis yours, then ’tis mine,

       So please give me a Valentine.”

      The Antiquary, 1873, vol. iii. p. 107; Brand, Pop. Antiq. 1849, vol. i. p. 60.

Yorkshire.

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      “On Valentine’s Day,” says Clarkson (Hist. of Richmond, 1821, p. 293), “the ceremony of drawing lots called Valentines is seldom omitted. The names of a select number of one sex with an equal number of the other are put into a vessel, and every one draws a name, which is called their Valentine; and which is looked upon as a good omen of their being afterwards united.”

March. 1.] ST. DAVID’S DAY.

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      March. 1.]

      ST. DAVID’S DAY.

      Various attempts have been made to account for the custom of wearing the leek. Owen, in his Cambrian Biography (1803), considers it to have originated from the custom of cymhortha, or the neighbourly aid practised among farmers. He says that it was once customary in some districts of South Wales for all the neighbours of a small farmer without means to appoint a day, when they all met together for the purpose of ploughing his land, or rendering him any service in their power. On such an occasion each individual carried with him his portion of leeks to be used in making the pottage for the company. Some also are of opinion that the practice took its rise in consequence of a victory obtained by Cadwallo over the Saxons on the 1st of March, 640, when the Welsh, to distinguish themselves, wore leeks in their hats. Shakespeare introduces the custom into his play of Henry V., act iv. sc. 7. Fluellin addressing the monarch says:

      “Your grandfather of famous memory, an’t please your majesty, and your great uncle Edward the plack prince of Wales, as I have read in the chronicles, fought a most prave pattle here in France.

      “K. Hen. They did, Fluellin.

      “Flu. Your majesty says very true: if your majesty is remembered of it, the Welshmen did goot service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps; which, your majesty knows, to this hour is an honourable padge of the service; and I do believe your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon Saint Tavy’s day.”

      This allusion by Fluellin to the Welsh having worn the leek in a battle under the Black Prince, is not, as some writers suppose, wholly decisive of its having originated in the fields of Cressy or Poictiers, but shows that when Shakespeare wrote Welshmen wore leeks. In the same play the well-remembered Fluellin’s enforcement of Pistol to eat the leek he had ridiculed, further establishes the wearing as a usage.—Every Day Book, vol. i. p. 318.

      A contributor to a periodical work, entitled Gazette of Fashion (March 9th, 1822), rejects the notion that wearing leeks on St. David’s Day originated at the battle between the Saxons and the Welsh in the sixth century; and considers it more probable that leeks were a Druidic symbol employed in honour of the British Ceudven, or Ceres. In which hypothesis he thinks there is nothing strained in presuming that the Druids were a branch of the Phœnician priesthood. Both were addicted to oak worship; and during the funereal rites of Adonis at Byblos, leeks and onions were exhibited in “pots with other vegetables, and called the gardens of that deity.”

      In the fifteenth century, the celebration of St. David’s Day was honoured with the patronage of royalty; and numerous entries of payments, such as the following, are recorded in the “Privy Purse Expenses of Henry the Seventh,” a monarch whose liberality is not proverbial:

      “March 1 (1492). Walshemen on Saint David Day, £2.” “March 6 (1494). To the Walshemen towardes their feste, £2.”—Med. Ævi Kalend., vol. i. p. 168.

      From Poor Robin’s Almanack for 1757 it appears that, in former times in England, a Welshman was burnt in effigy on this anniversary:

      “But it would make a stranger laugh

       To see th’ English hang poor Taff:

       A pair of breeches, and a coat,

       Hat, shoes, and stockings, and what not,

       All stuffed with hay to represent

       The Cambrian hero thereby meant:

       With sword sometimes three inches broad,

       And other armour made of wood,

       They drag hur to some publick tree,

       And hang hur up in effigy.”

      To this custom Pepys probably alludes in his Diary for 1667 (Bohn’s Edition, 1858, vol. iii. p. 761):

      “In Mark Lane I do observe (it being St. David’s Day) the picture of a man dressed like a Welshman, hanging by the neck upon one of the poles that stand out at the top of the merchant’s houses, in full proportion; and very handsomely done, which is one of the oddest sights I have seen a good while.”

      Brand, in his Pop. Antiq. (1849, vol. i. p. 105), thinks that from this custom arose the practice, at one time in vogue amongst pastrycooks, of hanging or skewering taffies or Welshmen of gingerbread for sale on St. David’s Day.

      The goat has by time-honoured custom been attached to the regiment of the Royal Welsh (23rd) Fusiliers, and the following extract, taken from the Graphic (No. 171, March, 8th, 1873), shows how St. David’s Day is observed by the officers and men of this regiment:

      The drum-major, as well as every man in the regiment, wears a leek in his busby; the goat is dressed with rosettes and ribbons of red and blue. The officers have a party, and the drum-major, accompanied by the goat, marches round the table after dinner, carrying a plate of leeks, of which he offers one to each officer or guest who has never eaten one before, and who is bound to eat it up, standing on his chair, with one foot on the table, while a drummer beats a roll behind his chair. All the toasts given are coupled with the name of St. David, nor is the memory of Toby Purcell forgotten. This worthy was gazetted major of the regiment when it was first raised, and was killed in the Battle of the Boyne.

Middlesex.

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      St. David’s Day