No.28

Cattleya Orchid and Three Brazilian Hummingbirds

an outstanding picture by the American painter

Martin Johnson Heade 1819-1904

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Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in; 
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in! 
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.
- James Henry Leigh Hunt

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Valentine's Day - what's it all about?

Manufactured Valentine's Day cards first appeared in England in the 1800s, and by 1835, over 60,000 Valentine's Day cards were being sent in England alone.

There were at least three St.Valentines who were martyrs and whose feast days were February 14th and, to complicate matters, there were more than fifty St. Valentines in the Middle Ages each of whom had their own special day each year. One of those was a Roman priest who, living in pagan times, was put to death for encouraging couples to marry in the Christian church. It's said that before his execution he sent a letter to a young girl he had cured of blindness, signing it "from your Valentine."

Cupid is part of the Valentine's Day tradition thanks to his historical association with classical Greek and Roman love stories. The Roman love god Cupid, Eros in the ancient Greek stories, was the son of the Roman goddess of love Venus, or Aphrodite to the Greeks.

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I don’t know if warts are still a problem for children. When I was young, quite a few boys in my class had warts, usually on their hands.

I remember reading somewhere a number of old “cures” for the problem.

Take an eel, cut off its head, and rub the wart with the blood from the severed wound. Then bury the eel’s head in the ground. As the head rots away, the wart will gradually disappear.

Steal a very small piece of lean meat from the butcher’s, rub it on the wart three times from left to right. Bury the meat immediately and repeat those words - "As you rot, so departs my wart."

Rub the wart with a blackberry, then throw it away. As soon as it is eaten by a bird or animal, the wart will disappear.

Prick the wart with a pin, then stick the pin into the trunk of an ash tree. Recite the following rhyme: "Ashen tree, ashen tree, pray buy these warts from me." The warts will be transferred to the tree.

I‘m remembering that Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer knew how to get rid of warts. They had to go to the cemetery at midnight and wait beside a grave in which a wicked man had just been buried. The devil would appear to take away the dead man and the boys had to recite, “Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, I’m done with ye!”

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Next post here is on Thursday

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