Valentine's handkerchief

Taffeta handkerchief, embroidered using four types of stitches and topped on the edges with crochet lace. Floral polychrome motifs, a bird in the upper left corner and two hearts in the lower right corner constitute the frame for the following quatrain: "Bai lenço / Feliz levado nas asas / dum passarinho / Cando vires o meu / amor dá-le um abraço / e um veijinho", which means "Go handkerchief, go happily / In the wings of a little bird / When you see my beloved / Give him a hug and little kiss".

Four spelling mistakes are found in this quatrain. Such kind of errors are characteristic of this type of handkerchiefs, and in early times they were not made intentionally but resulted from the poor literacy in rural areas and resulted from the literal transcription of local oral popular formulae into writing. Nevertheless, since the mid-20th century, when illiteracy started disappearing from rural areas and, the same time, this type of textile production greatly shifted from a local and family based tradition to a semi-mass production supported by the growing touristic demand in the region of the Northwest of Portugal, "traditional" orthographic errors are intentionally made in the texts embroidered in valentine's handkerchiefs, as a sign of their authenticity.