Few who have read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings will have forgotten that eerie journey through the woods at night. Gandalf, Frodo and friends sat in the darkness around a campfire, and "the howling of the wolves was now all round them, sometimes nearer and sometimes further off.
"In the dead of the night, many shining eyes were seen peering over the brow of the hill. Some advanced almost to the ring of stones. At a gap in the circle, a great dark wolfshape could be seen halted, gazing at them. A shuddering howl broke from him, as if he were a captain summoning his pack to the assault."
This may have been a sign of great meteorological significance. It is well known, but not always appreciated in this country, that wolves are astute observers of the weather. When they howl and lurk near human settlements, it is a sure sign that a storm is on the way - or as the Greek poet Aratus of Soli put it many years ago:
When through the dismal night the lone wolf howls,
Or when at eve around the house he prowls,
And, grown familiar, seeks to make his bed,
Careless of man, in some out- lying shed,
Then mark! - ere thrice Aurora shall arise,
A horrid storm will sweep the blackened skies.
Even less well known is that it is thanks to a wolf that St Valentine's Day is such a notable event upon our calendar.
Romulus and Remus, the abandoned infant founders of the city of Rome, were suckled by a she-wolf in a cave that was subsequently called the Luper cal. When the Romans held a festival of fertility on February 15th each year, participants gathered near the Lupercal, and the rituals were known as Lupercalia.
Animals were sacrificed to appropriate gods, after which two youths, smeared with the sacrificial blood, raced through the streets with strips of goats' hide in their hands; women who received gentle blows from these accoutrements were guaranteed fertility.
With the coming of Christianity, festivities with Lupercalian connections became associated with the feast of Valentine. In medieval times, however, they acquired a more romantic theme, and shrewd observers of the natural world found in it a justification for their ardour. As Robert Herrick has it:
Oft have I heard both youths and virgins say,
Birds choose their mates, and couple too, today.
None of this amorous frivolity, however, has anything to do with Valentine himself. The good saint, as far as we know, had no interest whatever in affaires de coeur.