According to Bob.
Bob
and me would meet up in the Ram’s Head, once or twice a month, have a couple of
pints, and go out for a bite to eat.
This
one night, we had our usual window seat, and with a full moon hanging over the
fields, I joked how this was all nice and romantic-like, considering it was
Valentine’s Day.
“Romantic?”
he said. “Nah. Valentine’s Day is all about sex, mate, not romance.”
Bob,
he’s never wrong, you know.
“I
thought it was all about love,” I
said, and he looked at me without speaking for a moment.
“Where’s
it come from?” he goes.
“What—Valentine’s
day?”
“Uh-huh.”
I
knew that one. “Saint Valentine.”
And
he nodded, with one of those smug looks which said I was wrong, even if I was
right. “Valentine was a priest,” he said. “This was back in the days when the
Romans liked to throw priests to the lions.”
“You
keep pets, you’ve gotta feed them something,”
I said.
“They
put up with him until they found out he was marrying people against the rules,
so they put him in jail.” Bob sipped his pint, and licked his lips. “In jail,
him and the jailer’s daughter were having it away with each other, so they
decided to execute him.”
“A
bonking saint…” I said.
“Story
is, on the day he was being cut in half and stuff, he sent the girl a letter. On
the front, it read: From Your Valentine. And that was the first Valentine
card.”
“Aww,
sweet,” I said, “but I didn’t know saints could be randy old goats.”
Bob grinned.
“Funny you should say that, because Pope John Paul thought that, as well.”
“What—the John Paul?”
“That’s
the one. He took away Valentine’s sainthood, and dropped him like a sac of hot
testicles.”
“Nooooo…”
“Saint
Valentine is plain Valentine.”
“Well,
you learn something new every day,” I said.
Bob
leaned forwards. “And guess what year they dropped him from the saints list.”
I
shrugged. “Go on…”
“Sixty
Nine.”
All
things considered, that seemed fitting. “It really is all about sex, innit?” I said.
“Well,
why do you think they chose this date for Valentine’s Day in the first place?”
I
didn’t know, but I was sure he was going to tell me.
“The
church was covering up all the pagan celebrations with something of their own,”
he said. “Christmas, Easter, Halloween—they were all dates in the Pagan
calendar.”
“And
Valentine’s Day?”
“It's all about sex,” he said. “Way
before Valentine was on the scene, young Roman shepherds would run up and down
the streets stark-bollock naked, with a pouch made from the ram's nut-sac.”
“Bless
them Romans,” I said. “They knew how to party, didn’t they?”
“This
was a fertility rite thing. Women who wanted to get pregnant had to jump in the
way, and stop the men with the nut-sacs.”
I could
see how that might’ve worked. “And magically they became pregnant.”
“You
got it,” he said. “Pope Miserable Git Whatever-his-name-was put an end to it,
and picked it as Valentine’s Day.”
“I
get it,” I said.
“Noooo,
you don’t,” Bob said. “Where did Rome come from?”
I
shrugged.
“Romulus and Remus.”
I
groaned. God, yeah. I knew that one. The
two babies abandoned and suckled by a wolf.
Bob
said, “That fertility rite festival, with all those women getting pregnant—it
was called Lupercalia.”
This
was all adding up. “‘Luper’, as in wolf,”
I said.
Bob
grinned, and nodded slowly.
And now I got it. “So Valentine’s night is
really Wolf night!”
“Bingo!”
Bob said, and downed his pint. He nodded to the big old moon outside. “So, I’m
hungry—are we gunna go kill something, or what?” he said, and drummed his claws
impatiently on the table.
I
finished my drink. “I thought you said tonight was all about sex?”
“Playing
with your food?” Bob said. “You’re sick, mate.”
I
brushed beer froth from my fur. “Hell, yeah, I know, but don’t spoil my fun n-o-o-o-o-ooow.”
