"Love Birds" Valentines

"I will sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: "The one I love had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.""

  Isaiah 5:1

 

"We'd Make a Swell Pair of Love Birds" valentine

      When, where and why did people begin to associate the depiction of love birds with Valentines? In English and French medieval times it was believed that fowls such as swans or doves began the ritual of choosing their mates around mid February. This was probably because songbirds, like the Song Thrush do begin vocalizing and mating during the middle of February in some parts of England. Chaucer, a famous medieval poet, wrote about the fowl mating rituals, associating these with Valentines Day in his famous work, "The Parliament of Fowls." 

      Because the poem was also written to honor a treaty providing for a marriage between King Richard II of England and Anne of Bohemia, these four ideas became one with the English at that time: poetry, marriage and the courting nature of some fowl during the celebration of St. Valentine's Day.

• Read About Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls and Valentines Day

      There were also three other authors who made poems about birds mating in Saint Valentine's Day around the same years: Otton de Grandson from Savoy, John Gower from England, and a knight called Pardo from Valencia. Chaucer most probably predated all of them, but, due to the difficulty of dating medieval works, we can't know for sure who of the four had the idea first and influenced the others.     

      Chaucer was not the only literary giant to write romantic poetry about 'love birds' in literary English history.  The Song Thrush's characteristic song, with melodic phrases repeated twice or more, is described by the nineteenth-century British poet Robert Browning in his poem Home Thoughts, from Abroad:

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!

      The song also inspired the nineteenth-century British writer Thomas Hardy, who spoke in Darkling Thrush of the bird's "full-hearted song evensong/Of joy illimited", but twentieth-century British poet Ted Hughes in Thrushes concentrated on its hunting prowess: "Nothing but bounce and/stab/and a ravening second". Nineteenth-century Welsh poet Edward Thomas wrote 15 poems concerning Blackbirds or thrushes, including The Thrush:

I hear the thrush, and I see
Him alone at the end of the lane
Near the bare poplar's tip,
Singing continuously.

In The Tables Turned, Romantic poet William Wordsworth references the Song Thrush, writing

Hark, how blithe the throstle sings
And he is no mean preacher
Come forth into the light of things
Let Nature be your teacher

More "love bird" Themed Valentines:

• love birds from "A Passion For Cards"
• love birds - rolled paper heart from "Scrapping Nomad"
• Love Tags + Background Basics: Sheet Music and Love Birds
• Card Making Templates for "Love Birds"
• Be Mine  - Love Birds
• Love Birds from Selma's Stamping Corner
• Happy Valentines Day with Scrapping Cottage

 

"Just Chirping in to say "I'm The Bird For U!"

The Bird's Valentine by Mary F. Butts, 1909

Little love, little love,

Will you go North with me,

When the snow is gone and the buds swell out

On the boughs of the lilac tree?

Little love, little love,

Sing to me for a sign

That all the year, or North or South,

You will be my Valentine.

Little love, little love,

In a garden that I know,

Mock orange flowers are sweet and white

And purple violets grow.

There is a little hidden nook

In the old wisteria vine,

Where I would live the summer through

With my little Valentine.

Little love, little love,

There's a child in that garden fair,

With eyes as blue as the gentian buds,

And curls of yellow hair.

She is sweet as a flower, my little love,

She is longing now for a sign

Of my happy voice and my soaring wings

And my little Valentine.