that galantin is derived from Valentin, but the Oxford Dictionary (s.v. gallant) lends no support to this theory.[1]
Ophelia's song tells us nothing of the object of the maid's visit or appearance at the window, and it may have been simply to bring luck to the bachelor chosen by her. But this is unlikely. It seems more probable that on St. Valentine's day unmarried maidens possessed a privilege similar to that allowed them in Leap-year of demanding a bachelor's hand in lawful marriage. In primitive societies matrimony is a duty which society will enforce, if necessary, by drastic methods. But such a custom as Ophelia describes might, it is obvious, degenerate into license, and so if a maid permitted this to occur she appears to have lost her title to demand lawful wedlock. If this theory is tenable it would explain why a bachelor having been accused of seducing a maid under promise of marriage could apparently plead his own act as a defence to his breach of promise. Ophelia's song concludes with these lines:
"Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed."
He answers:[2]
"So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed."
A somewhat similar rule governed the usages on February 24th or 29th in Leap-year. As early as 1606 a bachelor receiving a proposal from a ladye at any time apparently during the bissextile year was bound to marry her or accept her advances[3] under pain of losing benefit of
- ↑ Notes and Queries, twelfth series, Jan. 1919, pp. 24-5.
- ↑ These words are omitted in the Ff., according to Aldis Wright, in the Cambridge Shakespeare, 1892, vol. vii. p. 534. They look like a gloss, but, as is common in popular poetry, the dialogue is clearly given without specification of the speakers. No one ever seems to have suggested that Ophelia ascribes this retort to Hamlet. It must then have been a well-known part of the folk-rhyme.
- ↑ Notes and Queries, fourth s., viii. p. 505. It is not clear that he was bound to marry her.
