Meaning & Analysis
Based on a folk belief, this proverb asserts that on February 14th, birds choose their mates for the breeding season, marking the date as the start of nature's springtime renewal.
Insights
Human Love and Courtship
The pairing of birds serves as a direct metaphor for human love and courtship. It suggests that St. Valentine's Day is the natural, appointed time for people to seek romantic partners and express affection, mirroring the instincts of the animal kingdom.
Spring and Renewal
The proverb metaphorically connects the act of coupling with the onset of spring. The birds' union symbolizes fertility, renewal, and the reawakening of life after the dormancy of winter, applying this natural cycle to the realm of human romance.
Innate Drive for Partnership
It implies a sense of natural destiny in love. Just as birds are believed to instinctively and universally pair up on this day, the proverb suggests there is an innate, almost fated, rhythm to forming romantic bonds in human life.
Syncretic Origins
The proverb merges the Christian feast day of St. Valentine with older pagan beliefs about the beginning of spring and fertility rituals. This connection was popularized in the Middle Ages, most famously by Geoffrey Chaucer in his poem 'Parliament of Fowls', cementing the link between the date and the mating of birds in the cultural imagination.
Naturalizing Human Courtship
The association of birds mating with a specific day reflects a deep-seated human desire to find order and meaning in the natural world, projecting human concepts of love and partnership onto animal behavior. This anthropomorphism serves to validate human romantic customs as being natural and predestined.
Cultural Evolution
The proverb's endurance, as shown by references from the 15th-century Paston Letters to Shakespeare and beyond, highlights its role in shaping the cultural evolution of Valentine's Day from a religious observance into a secular celebration of romantic love.
Rhetorical Devices
Anthropomorphism
The proverb attributes the human concept of romantic coupling to birds, a form of anthropomorphism that makes their behavior symbolic and relatable to human experience.
Symbolism
Birds serve as potent symbols for lovers, and their 'joining' symbolizes the act of courtship and romantic union, making the natural event a powerful allegory for human relationships.
Imagery
The proverb creates a vivid, pastoral image of birds pairing in early spring, effectively linking the abstract concept of romantic love to a tangible, natural phenomenon.
Transcription
Quotations
And, Cosyn, uppon Fryday is Sent Volentynes Day, and every brydde chesyth hym a make.
Suer thys, should be the day of valentyne When euerye byrd dothe coople.
Valentine's day too, all by couples?
When you hear the birds call for their mates, Ask if it be St. Valentine, their coupling day.
Now o' my faith, old Bishop Valentine . . your Quiristers, Had need to keepe to their warme Fether-beds, If they be sped of loves.
There is an old proverb, that Birds of a feather Upon St. Valentine's Day will meet all together.
Last Valentine the day when birds of kind Their paramours with mutual chirpings find.
Shakespeare Citations
Saint Valentine is past. Begin these woodbirds but to couple now?
Annotations
- Feb. 14
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.