LEAP YEAR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21539, 11 January 1932, Page 2

LEAP YEAR

WOMEN AND PROPOSALS ORIGIN OF CUSTOM SOME OLD ENACTMENT. As the present year, 1932, is a leap year, no harm can be done —certainly not to backward maidens—by recounting the supposed origin, apocryphal though it be, of the privilege accorded the gentler sex every fourth year of proposing marriage to whom they will. That the present year contains also one more Friday than usual, a fact that was remarked upon recently, should, under the circumstances, foster the leap year custom rather than discomfort the superstitions. Friday, it is true, has fallen into disrepute almost universally; but it is still a living monument to Fngg or Friia, the goddess of love and wife oi Woden.

Years containing 53 Fridays, moreover, are by no means rare, and have passed by in 1920 and 1926, to name two recent occasions, without particular disaster. The earlier of these, like the current year, was a leap year. Available sources of information are

rather poorly furnished in both the extent and detail of their leap_ year knowledge. There seems to be no satisfactory explanation for the term leap year itself. If leap / year contained a day less than the usual year, instead of a day more, some sort of connection between the term leap year and the fact that a day was leaped or skipped , over would be justifiable. But the idea n becomes muddled when the year has an extra day, not a day less. Perhaps it w the extra leap that counts. However, al- I though the sources provide only hazy arguments on this point, they are at one in the story they tell of St. Patrick to account for the privilege accorded to women during leap year.

HOW THE CUSTOM BEGAN. According to one of the better accounts, while St. Patrick was walking the shorM of Lough Neagh after having driven the froga out of the bogs and the snakes out f of the grass, he was accosted by St. Brid- | get. With many tears and lamentations w she told him that dissension had arisen S among the ladies in her nunnery over the ;• fact that they were debarred from the | privilege of “ popping the question.” St. ,■ Patrick, a stern celibate, was so far moved 5 that he offered to concede to the ladies ; the privilege of proposing during one year - in every seven. But at this St. Bridget ;4 demurred. Throwing her arms about ni« * neck she exclaimed: “'Arrah, Pathrick jewel, I daurn’t go back to the gurls wid such a proposal. Mek it one year in four! St. Patrick is alleged to have replied: ; “ Biddy acushla, _ squeeze me that way. again and I J II give you leap year, the ‘ longest one of the lot.” St. Bridget, thus encouraged, bethought herself of her own ; husbandless state, and accordingly popped ; the question to , St. Patrick him- ; self. St. Patrick, however, had taken the vow; of celibacy, so he had to patch up the difficulty as best he could with a kiss and a silken gown. From that period ; onward, according to legend, if a man refused a leap year proposal he had t* pay the' penalty of a silken gown or & kiss.

LEGAL ENACTMENTS. i j In the year 1288 a law is said to have been enacted in Scotland reading as follows:

“It is statut and ordaint that during >, the rein of hir maist blissit Megeste for % ilk yeare 1 known as lepe yeare, ilk mayden V ladye of bothe highe and lowe eatait shall “ hae liberie to bespefce ye man she likes; •; albeit he refuses to taik hir to be his y lawful wyfe, he shall be,, mulcted! in ye sum ane pundia or less, as his estait may k be; except and awis gif he can make it | appeare that he is betrothit ane ither ? woman he then shall be free.” %

One of the source books has the name “ Margaret ’’ after' the words “ hir maist blissit Megeste,” and proceeds at the end of the quotation to discredit the praiseworthy enactment by* remarking that in the year 1228, a leap year, there was > no ‘‘blissit Megeste, Margaret,” at the | time) because Alexander 11, married to Joanna, daughter of the English King * John, reigned over Scotland from 1214 to v 1249. . . *■ f Nevertheless, a few years later a similar law was passed in France, and it is said j also that before Columbus sailed on his i' famous voyage the same privilege was ■» granted to the maidens of Genoa and Florence. , 5 According to a curious .little book, | “ Love, Courtship, and Matrimony,” pub- r lished in London in 1606, the English did ? not need: to have the leap year privilege > forced upon them by statute, 1 but allowed g it to become part of the unwritten law, » “ albeit it nowe become a part of the j common lawe in regard to the relations of j life that as often as every leap yeare „ doth return the ladyes have the sole prm- | lege 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 the benefit of _ clergy who doth in any way treat her proposal with slight or contumely. The ... custom of giving a silk gown or a kiss j as a penalty for the non-acceptance of * y leap year proposal seems to have been jt quite consistently honoured until the last years of: the seventeenth century. k>ow, >’ however, leap year proposals, with their -- forfeits and other trappings, seem to have suffered the same . fate as the whole-; s; hearted observance of Guy Fawke s Day. ■ ) Certain beans are said to grow on the , wrong side of the pod in leap years, and there is an English proverb which says' ' that “leap year is never a good sheep . ~j year,” the truth of which was assailed in . sober terms in England as recently a« . 1920. - 1

JULIAN AND GREGORIAN. Most people know that leap year, taining an extra day in February, was | instituted in the calendar by Julius $ Caesar. When his calendar had been in $ use for more than 1500 years, however, | it was about 10 days behind the solar year, with which Caesar had proposed to fe keep in more or less accurate step. Pope Gregory directed in 1582 that the day jjr after October 4 should be October 15. and <■ that to keep the calendar in order m I; future three times in every 400 years the leap year arrangement should be omitted. $ This is accomplished to-day by not count- * ing as leap years the century years, unless « they .are divisible by 400. Gregorys .j calendar was adopted straight away by y Catholic countries, but Protestant and j Greek Catholic nations were to accept it It was not adopted in England ... until 1752, bv which time it was necessary to' drop' 11 days In there has been a good deal of attention paid to calendar reform, and the’subject was to have been dealt with by the League of Nations in October last. It;, wae shelved, however, in the meantime.