Not what you’re thinking
You never know what you’re going to encounter when you poke around in the law dictionaries.
Did you know, for example, that there was something called a Love-Day?
The Legal Genealogist didn’t know either.
And, no, it’s not what you’re thinking.
This isn’t a 1960s love-in, or anything even remotely related to that train of thought.
It was, instead, a “day on which any dispute was amicably settled between neighbors; or a day on which one neighbor helps another without hire.”1
Now the history of the term isn’t quite as easy to find. It appears, however, to have been around as early as the 13th century — the 1200s or thereabouts — and to have been part of a distinction between an imposed resolution (the kind you get in a lawsuit) and an amicably-agreed-upon resolution (when people agree among themselves). The difference, in other words, between law and love.2
So these were “those days anciently so called on which arbitrations were made and controversies ended among neighbours for the mutual restoring of love and charity.”3
Presumably a better alternative to brawling in the streets … and much better than hiring a lawyer!
SOURCES
- Henry Campbell Black, A Dictionary of Law (St. Paul, Minn. : West, 1891), 735, “love-day.” ↩
- See John H. Baker, Collected Papers on English Legal History (Cambridge, England : Cambridge University Press, 2013), c.25. ↩
- Richard Paul Jodrell, Philology on the English Language (London : Cox & Baylis, 1820), 409; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 16 Aug 2015). ↩
Thank you! Very interesting; I had no idea.
“Loveday” is also a girl’s first name in England in the 1600s and 1700s. My own examples are from Cornwall where it is still used. Having grown up knowing of some footballers with this surname I did not know it could be a first name too. Wikipedia says it was given to babies born on a Love Day – used as you have defined it.
Of course there is the related expression “love job” – work done, usually for a friend, without pay or obligation.
Thank you so much for explaining it.