shire. There children used to visit houses early in the morning and sing:
"Good morrow to you, Valentine;
Curl your locks as I do mine.
Two before and three behind,
Good morrow to you, Valentine."
Apparently the second line referred to a custom whereby the girls of the party dressed up a boy as a girl. "Two or three of the girls," says this account, "select one of the youngest amongst them (generally a boy), whom they deck out more gaily than the rest, and place at their head." The third line is perhaps readily explicable. The boy's hair is to be curled like a girl's, as a taunt to the bachelors of the family visited, and a hint that they should face the responsibilities of matrimony,[1] If this theory is correct, it supplies further evidence that St. Valentine's day resembled Leap-year.
But in other parts of England the rhymes sung have no explicable meaning. Thus in Northamptonshire and Rutlandshire children used to go 'valentining' from house to house, singing:
"Morrow, morrow, Valentine,
First 'tis yours and then 'tis mine;
So please to give a Valentine,
Holly and ivy tickle my toe,
Give me red apple and let me go."
And in Berkshire the rhyme runs:
"Knock the kittle agin the pan,
Gie us a penny if 'e can;
We be ragged and you be vine,
Please to gie us a Valentine.
Up wi' the kittle, down wi' the spout,
Gie us a penny an' we'll gie out (cease)."
- ↑ In Switzerland young boys dress as girls and girls as boys on the Güdismendig or Güggismendig, i.e. the Monday after the Herrenfastnacht, Shrove Tuesday, and following days, in Frei- and Keller-amt, but the significance of the custom is not explained: Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde, Zürich, 1905, p. 128.
