Drawing Valentines

The old ceremony of St Valentine’s Day was a lottery. Misson, travelling early in the eighteenth century, describes young people in England and Scotland writing their names on slips which were rolled up and drawn by lot, so that each had a valentine, gave balls and treats, and wore the billet on bosom or sleeve for days. Pepys found that being drawn as a valentine obliged you to give a present, and being his wife’s valentine cost him five pounds. A correspondent of the Year Book still found valentines drawn this way in Scottish villages.