The rise and fall of love
by
Howard Richler
Wise men say
only fools
rush in
but I can’t help
falling in
love with you
(Lyrics from Can’t Help Falling in Love
written by Weiss, Peretti and Creatore)
Falling in Love, Falling in Love Again, Why
Do Fools Fall in Love, When I Fall in Love, ‘Til I Fell in Love with You,…. The
song titles featuring the act of
‘falling in love” are seemingly endless. But hold on a second, lovers.
Isn’t “falling” a bad thing to do?”
My friend David posed this dilemma to me recently and
he inquired whence came the
expression “falling in love.”
So I checked the OED to see if it
could provide an adequate lexicographic
answer to David’s query. The phrase
“falling in love” is first cited in 1423
. At first, though, one didn’t merely tumble “in love” but rather into “love’s
dance.” The citation comes from James
1-The King’s Quire and states, “So fare I falling into love’s dance.” It
took at least one hundred more years for
the phrase to be shortened to “”falling in love.” This phrase has endured ever
since as the quintessential
expression of the dizzy loss of
control of the lovestruck.
The OED has many definitions of the word
“fall”, but two in particular are instructive of the sense implied in “falling
in love.” Fall(noun) is defined as “a succumbing to temptation, a lapse into
sin or folly. It is first used in this sense in 1225. Fall (verb) is defined as
“to yield to temptation, to sin.”
By the way, the concept of a fall into love is hardly
restricted to English. In French and
many other languages love causes a
fall and in the case of Icelandic it
captures you.
Legend has it that the romance associated with Valentine’s Day
descends from a custom in ancient
Rome. On the eve of the Feast of Lupercalia,
which began on February 15th,
the names of maidens were written on pieces of paper and placed in a jar. These slips were then plucked by young men who would partner with their
selection for the duration of the festival.
Valentine’s Day owes its name to Saint Valentine who was beheaded in the
second century A.D for marrying couples counter to the orders of Emperor
Claudius 11.
Etymologically speaking when a young lover is imbued with romance,
the debt isn’t to love, but to Rome. The word “romance” comes from the Old
French term Romans, a derivation of Romanus, “Roman.” The term was used to
refer to the local dialects of Latin(which
later became the Romance languages) and was used to differentiate them
from official Latin. The practice arose in France of writing entertaining stories in the more popular
spoken language and the term romans
was used to refer to these adventurous tales.
It was in this sense that the word was borrowed into Middle English. Because many of these stories in both English and French dealt with courtly
love, ”romance” came to mean simply a
“love story” and eventually developed the sense of a ‘love affair.”
Seeing that William Shakespeare is the greatest word progenitor in the
history of the English language, it is not surprising that several love words
are associated with the Bard.
Shakespeare seems to have coined the term “love affair” in Three Gentlemen of Verona in
1591 where Valentine says “I part with
thee, confer at large of all that may concern thy love affairs.” There is an obscure reference to “love letters” in the OED in 1240 but
Shakespeare popularized the term in
Merry Wives of Windsor when Mrs. Page asks “I ‘scaped love-letters in the
holiday-time of my beauty, and am I now a subject for them?”
Shakespeare’s contemporary Christopher
Marlowe is credited with the first usage of “love at first sight” In Hero and
Leander in 1593: “ Where both deliberate the love is slight; who ever
loved, that loved not at first sight?”
The 16th and 17th
centuries featured some language of love
that has vanished from our lexicon. The word muskin was a term of
endearment for a woman, to halch was to clasp in ones arms,
and an amoret was a term that could refer to a sweetheart, a love sonnet
or a love glance .The 17th century was not noted as an age of gender
neutralization as seen in the term mistress-piece
which denoted a “masterpiece of female beauty.” A synonym for kiss was the term
smick as is noted in the Bagford
Ballad of 1685: You smack, you smick,
you wash, you lick, you smirk, you swear, you grin.”
And whence comes the word “kiss?” “Kiss” is
a widespread Germanic word,
represented by the German küssen, Dutch kussen, Swedish kyssa,
and Danish kysse. It probably goes
back to some prehistoric syllable that imitated the sound or action of kissing.
There is not sufficient linguistic evidence to state whether our ancient
Indo-European ancestors expressed affection to each other through the action of
kissing.
Happy, Valentine’s Day, everybody. Enjoy the dance.
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