WOMAN’S LEAP YEAR RIGHTS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue XIX, 7 November 1896, Page 3

WOMAN’S LEAP YEAR RIGHTS.

Probably few spinsters who have been trying to gather up enough courage to take advantage of their customary privilges during leap year are aware that in two countries at least, and more than 600 years ago, laws were passed which gave women the right of proposing marriage, says a writer in the Chicago Tribune. These enactments went even further than this. They also stipulated that if the man whose hand they sought should refuse he should incur a heavy fine.

A searcher among the ancient records of Scotland has recently discovered an Act of the Scottish Parliament which was passed in the year 1288, which runs as follows: — ‘ It is statut and ordaint that duriag the rein of his maist blessit Megeste, ilk for the yeare knowne as Lepe Yeare, ilk mayden layde of baithe highe and lowe estait shall hae liberte to bespeke ye man she likes, albeit gif he refuses to taik hir to be his lawful wyfe, he shall be mulcted in ye sum of ane dundis or less, as his estait may be ; except and awis gif he can make it appeare that he is betrothit ane ither woman, he then shall be free.’ A year or two later a law almost similar to this Scottish enactment was passed in France, and received the approval of the King. It is also said that before Columbus sailed on his famous voyage to the westward a similar privilege was granted to the maidens of Genoa and Florence. There is no record extant of any fines imposed under the conditions of this Scottish law, and no trace of statistics regarding the number of spinsters who took advantage of it or of the similar regulation in France, but the custom seems to have taken first firm hold upon the popular mind about that time. The next mention of it is dated nearly 400 years later, and it is a curious little treatise called ‘ Love, Courtship, and Matrimony,’ which was published in London in 1606. In this quaint work the ‘ privilege ’ is thus alluded to :— ‘ Albeit it now become a part of the common lawe in regard to social relations of life, that as often as every leap yeare doth return, the lad yes have the 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.’ Up to within a century ago it was one of the unwritten laws of leap year that if a man should decline a proposal he should soften the disappointment which his answer would bring about by the presentation of a silk dress to the unsuccessful suitor for his hand. A curious leap year superstition is still to be met with in some parts of New England, and that is that in leap year the ‘ beans grow on the wrong side of the pod.’