GUARDING FAMILY HONOUR

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15922, 10 September 1923, Page 7

GUARDING FAMILY HONOUR

oTHE LADY OF THE KEYS. When the bridegroom' of Old Rome placed, on his wedding day, with due ceremonies, the keys of the house hold in his bride’s hands, he was paying her a significant compliment, the meaning of which was well understood by them both. For the key ranks high among the early symbols of authority, responsibility, and go verning power, observes a writer in the Westminster Gazette. The gods of the ancient world were themselves called “Key Bearers,” and were often represented carrying the keys with which- they were thought to open and shut the gates of life and death, summer and winter, storm and shine. And all the great, officers of State had their great official keys which were carried before them at public functions to mark their rank, and strike awe into the spectators. As keeper of the domestic keys, and guardian of the family treasures and the family honour, the young matron, in her own way, took her place among those exalted personages. “The Lady of the Keys” played her part also in Middle Christendom, The dame of the Middle Ages carried her keys carefully attached to her girdle; and the very name of chatelaine, or lady of the castle, by which she herself was known, came to be applied also, to the ornamental chaiii from which her keys were suspended, as though it were understood that she and they were inseparable. To resign your keys was equivalent to resigning your wifely duty and privilege; and the dame who, for oise reason or another, wished to repudiate her husband might signify her intentions by the dramatic gesture of plucking her keys from her girdle and throwing them to the ground. Another curious custom, which shows the symbolic impedance of the household keys, was the casting of them, on occasion, into the dead husband’s grave, as a sign that the widow could not be responsible for his debts, and must not be harassed by his creditors.