LEAP YEAR CUSTOM

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 10 January 1936, Page 6

LEAP YEAR CUSTOM

WOMAN’S RIGHT TO WOO ORIGIN OF ANCIENT LAW

According to ancient tradition, tlie present year should have a special .significance for young ladies who have ambitions toward matrimony. It is leap year, and, although typists, shop girls and others may not look forward to the extra day’s work presumably entailed by the inclusion of a twenty-ninth day in February, they may, during the year, if they have the courage to follow old customs, command a man to many them, safe in the knowledge that, according to the same old custom, he must obey.

No satisfactory explanalion has ever been offered (the “New Zealand Herald says) of the tradition that it is woman’s privilege to woo during lea]) year. Some regard is still paid to the custom, even if only as a subject for jokes, although there are no statistics to show that in every fourth year an inordinately large number of males have been taken by women to the altar or the registry office. Indeed, there arc many confirmed bachelors, fearful of the ties of matrimony, who hold that woman invariably plans the capture and so succeeds in making every year a leap year. LAWS OF MIDDLE AGES In the Aliddle Ages, however, tlie custom which is now looked on lightly was embellished with all the majesty of tlie law. The lovely archaic wording of the law .enacted in Scotland in 1288 shows that there was recognition of the rights of women, in at least one respect, before the days of Mrs Pnnkhursl. “It is statut and ordint,” the law laid it down, “that during the rein of hir maist blissit Megcste, for ilk yearc knowne as lepe ycare, ilk mayden ladye of bothe higlie and lowe estait shall hae liberte to bespoke ye man she likes, albeit he refuses to taik hir to be his lawful wyfe, he shall be mulcted in ye sum nne pundis or less, as his estait may he; except and awis gif he can make it appere that he is betrothit nae ither woman he then shall be free.”

A few years later a similar law was enacted in France, and in the fifteenth century the leap year custom of feminine proposals was legalised in Geiloa and Florence.

Nor was this privilege for women overlooked in England. A little book published in London in 1696 had the following reference to tlie matter:—“Albeit it now became a part of the common lawe in regard to social relations of life, that as often as every leap yeare •doth return, the ladyes have tlie sole privilege during the time it continueth of making love either by wordes or lookes, as to them it seemeth proper; and, moreover, no man will be entitled to benefit of clergy who doth in any wise treat her proposal with slight or contumely.” FORERUNNER OF BACHELOR TAX All these ancient statutes and writings seem to show that the Aliddle Ages were not as backward as is popularly supposed. One might almost believe that the legislators of those dim and distant times, like some of their modern fellows, were concerned at decreases in the marriage and birth rates. Unlike Hitler and Mussolini, they scorned such devices as a bachelor tax or an appeal to “keep the cradles full,” and, with a rare sense of psychological values, placed the onus on the ladies so astutely as to make them believe that they had been granted an inestimable boon. Tlie actual origin of leap year, although not of its marriage customs, dates back to the days of Julius Caesar. In 46 B.C. the Roman astronomers, with absolute finality of decision, settled the solar year at 365 days 6 hours. These odd hours were set aside; at the end of every four years there was an extra day which nobody knew exactly what to do with. February had received the most niggardly treatment in the allotment of days, and it was decided to give it an extra day in every fourth year. One does not know whether Caesar’s astronomers had any inkling into the trouble tliev were laying in store for future generations.- The classic instances arise in the case of children born on 29th February. Great play can bfs made with tlie fact that in effect they have to await until the age of 84 before they can claim to have attained their majority.