The Cosmo Ballroom was the place to be if you wanted to celebrate Valentine’s in Orkney in 1949. For a few shillings: 6/6 for men; only 5/- for women, you could dance the night away to some fine tunes played by the D. Laughton Band. Included in the price would be a delicious clapshot supper provided by the Atholl Cafe.
Valentine’s day was not the big event for card companies and flower deliveries as it is today. It was said that in the past people in Orkney would send grotesque tokens of love to the intended object of their heart’s desire: pigs tails, old boots, twisted sofa springs, empty beer bottles, charred table legs, broken chimney cans, and knotted pieces of seaweed. Whether or not these customs are true cannot be verified as the senders of such objects were never identified.
The day takes its name from a Roman priest of the 3rd century AD, Valentius, who was killed on 14 February 269AD, having endured prison and torture. There’s very little reliable information about him and because of that in 1969 he was removed from the General Roman Calendar. Various legends grew up around the Saint:
According to legend, St. Valentine signed a letter “from your Valentine” to his jailer’s daughter, whom he had befriended and healed from blindness. Another common legend states that he defied the emperor’s orders and secretly married couples to spare the husbands from being conscripted to serve in war. St Valentine
The sending of cards really took off with the Victorians who were very much into distance relationships and famously recorded in Thomas Hardy’s ‘Far From The Madding Crowd’, with the inevitable disastrous chain of events. ‘Marry Me’, declared Bathsheba to Mr Boldwood, in her Valentine card, not the best of plans to jest with an uptight bachelor farmer.
There are other associations of course with Valentine.
Valentine’s of Dundee, closed in 1994, was established in 1851 by James Valentine (1815–1879), and became Scotland’s leading manufacturer of picture postcards. The photographic collection is now in the care of St Andrews University.
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