Good Questions: Roses are yellow, violets aren't blue: Good questiosn for St Valentine's Day, compiled by William Hartston

WE BEGIN in appropriately topical manner by bringing the romance of St Valentine's Day into perspective. Several inquiries have posed what boil down to two essential questions:

Why is the sending of Valentine's cards not prohibited under the same legislation that criminalises poison-pen letters and other anonymous and threatening postal communications?

Section 11 of the Post Office Act 1953 prohibits the sending of 'a postal packet which encloses any indecent or obscene written communication, etc'. For this purpose, 'indecent or obscene' means offending against the recognised standards of propriety, with indecency at the lower end of the scale and obscenity at the higher end. Offences carry a maximum penalty of 12 months' imprisonment. The accepted definition of 'grossly offensive' is 'calculated to injure or wound the feelings of a reasonable man'. Presumably for this purpose, as with many other Valentine traditions, we may suppose that man embraces woman.

Under the Malicious Communications Act 1988, it is an offence to send anything conveying a threatening message or 'information known or believed to be false by the sender'. Offences carry a maximum fine of pounds 2,500, but it is necessary to prove that the purpose of the sender was to cause distress or anxiety to the recipient.

If you can identify an anonymous sender, consider yourself reasonable, and your feelings are injured or wounded, we think the best bet is to concentrate on the 'information known to be false' clause. The claim that 'Roses are red, violets are blue', for example, is manifestly unjustifiable, and should be replaced by 'Roses come in a variety of shades, including yellow, pink and red, while violets are, more often than not, violet'. While 'sugar is sweet' is less contentious, the overall truth value of the whole statement is low, thus raising considerable doubt over the 'and so are you' conclusion. Logically speaking, therefore, there seems a strong case to be made that the entire message is calculated to cause distress and anxiety.

Finally, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 prohibits the non-provision of services to a person on grounds of gender or marital status. Under certain circumstances, it may provide grounds for complaint against any employer who does not send you a Valentine as long as he or she can be shown to have provided them to other staff members.

Who was St Valentine anyway?

The Book of Saints (A&C Black) lists thirteen Saint Valentines, of whom two have feast days on 14 February. Both were third century Romans, one a priest and physician, beheaded on 14 February 269 and buried on the Flaminian Way, the other a bishop or Terni, martyred around the same time. Some writers believe that these two St Valentines were in fact the same person, though too little is known about either to be sure. He, or neither of them, had any known connection with courting couples.

Other saints with feast days today include Conran (whose existence is doubtful), Zeno of Rome (sometimes alleged to be a brother of Valentine) and Cyril and Methodius (brothers, of whom the first invented the Cyrillic alphabet).

The tradition of St Valentine's Day seems to be due entirely to the date, and here we have two theories: the easy one dates back to an old belief that 14 February was the date on which birds chose their mates (watch the pigeons and you will believe it). Chaucer's Assembly of Fowls contains the lines: 'For this was on Saint Valentine's Day, When ev'ry fowl cometh to choose her make.' Shakespeare refers to the custom in A Midsummer Night's Dream when Theseue says: 'Saint Valentine is past: Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?

Even older, however, is the connection with the Roman feast of Lupercalia, a fertility festival celebrated on 15 February at which young men dressed in goat-hide ran through stadiums lightly flogging the audiences with thongs.

In 1987, the New England Journal of Medicine published a letter from Dr Ritterson which pointed out that the disease brucellosis is spread from goats to humans by contact with freshly killed skins, and the symptoms of brucellosis - depression, loss of weight, dizziness, insomnia and general malaise - are indistinguishable from those of lovesickness. So according to Dr Ritterson, the tradition of lovesick swains on St Valentine's Day was merely the annual outbreak of brucellosis that followed each festival of Lupercalia.

I likened a friend to Helen of Troy. How much of a compliment did I in fact pay and are there similar literary tributes which extol women? (Nicholas E Gough, Easton Town, Malmesbury, Wilts)

'The admirablest lady that ever lived' was Christopher Marlowe's description of Helen in Faustus.

'Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?'

That particular tribute ends with 'all is dross that is not Helena'.

From a more rational viewpoint we should mention the scientific unit of beauty, the millihelen, defined as the amount of beauty required to launch one ship. While we have been unable to confirm the origin of the term, we understand from the psychologist Dr S F Blinkhorn that the concept was known to Winston Churchill, who, as a young man in the 1890s, used to attend balls at Blenheim Palace and vie with a friend to rate the beauty of young ladies on an identical scale. Whether any ever surpassed the 1,000 millihelen mark is unknown. So let us end this Valentine section with some more Marlowe:

'O thou art fairer than the evening air,

Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars,

Brighter are thou than flaming Jupiter,

When he appeared to hapless Semele,

More lovely than the monarch of the sky

In wanton Arethusa's azured arms,

And none but thou shalt be my paramour.'

FEEDBACK

Two interesting contributions to the Theory of Pratts:

'Could I suggest that 'prat' comes from another source more recent than the 1567 date mentioned in your answer,' writes A Gomersall, director of the Science Reference and Information Service of the British Library. 'In 1916 a gentleman by the name of Albert B Pratt invented a gun which was sited in the helmet of a soldier who had the responsibility of firing it. Could I suggest that anyone who puts a gun in a helmet must be a prat or pratt? No one knows whether the gun was ever tested or, indeed, if it was, what happened to the poor soldier who pulled the trigger.'

An additional literary reference is provided by Adrian A Duffy of Livingston, West Lothian:

'I am left wondering whether Anthony Trollope in The Small House at Allington and Last Chronicle of Barset was enjoying an amusing pun in naming a character Fowler Pratt. This feeling is reinforced by the fact that he is an acquaintance of the villain of both novels, Adolphus Crosbie. Of course one should not overlook the fact that there was a third acquaintance who rejoices in the name of Onesipherus Dunn, known as Siph to his friends.'

(Photograph omitted)