Many Valentines Day customs involved ways that single women could learn who their future husbands would be.

Englishwomen of the 1700’s wrote men’s names on scraps of paper, rolled each in a little piece of clay, and dropped them all into water. The first paper that rose to the surface supposedly had the name of a woman’s true love.

In Derbyshire, a county in central England, young women circled the church 3 or 12 times at midnight and repeated such verses as:

                              I sow hempseed
                              Hempseed I sow
                              He that love me best,
                              Come after me now.

Their true loves then supposedly appeared.

In the Year 2000, the custom is sending email, cards, gifts and flowers.