In some places, at this time, and more particularly in London, the lad’s valentine is the first lass he sees in the morning, who is not an inmate of the house; the lass’s valentine is the first youth she sees. Gay mentions this usage on St. Valentine’s day: he makes a rustic housewife remind her good man,-- I early rose just at the break of day, Before the sun had chas’d the stars away; A field I went, amid the morning dew To milk my kine, (for so should house-wives do,) Thee first I spied, and the first swain we see In spite of Fortune shall our _true-love_ be. So also in the “Connoisseur” there is mention of the same usage preceded by certain mysterious ceremonies the night before; one of these being almost certain to ensure an indigestion is therefore likely to occasion a dream favourable to the dreamer’s waking wishes.--“Last Friday was Valentine’s day, and, the night before, I got five bay-leaves, and pinned four of them to the four corners of my pillow, and the fifth to the middle; and then, if I dreamt of my sweetheart, Betty said we should be married before the year was out. But to make it more sure, I boiled an egg hard, and took out the yolk, and filled it with salt; and when I went to bed, ate it, shell and all, without speaking or drinking after it. We also wrote our lovers’ names upon bits of paper, and rolled them up in clay, and put them into water: and the first that rose up was to be our valentine. Would you think it, Mr. Blossom was my man. I lay a-bed and shut my eyes all the morning, till he came to our house; for I would not have seen another man before him for all the world.” Shakspeare bears witness to the custom of looking for your valentine, or desiring to be one, through poor Ophelia’s singing Good morrow! ’tis St. Valentine’s day All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your valentine! Sylvanus Urban, in 1779, was informed by Kitty Curious, that on St. Valentine’s day in that year, at a little obscure village in Kent, she found an odd kind of sport. The girls from five or six to eighteen years old were assembled in a crowd, burning an uncouth effigy which they called a “holly boy,” and which they had stolen from the boys; while in another part of the village the boys were burning what they called an “ivy girl,” which they had stolen from the girls. The ceremony of each burning was accompanied by acclamations, huzzas, and other noise. Kitty inquired the meaning of this from the oldest people in the place, but she could learn no more than that it had always been a sport at that season.