"MAYDENS' CHANCE"

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 107, 8 January 1940, Page 7

"MAYDENS' CHANCE"

THIS YEAR OF GRACE 1940, IS LEAP YEAR CURIOUS OLD STATUTE Monday was llie first day of the year 1i) 10. lis chid' claim to distinction here is. of course, that ;t is New Zealand's Centennial year. A secondary claim is that it is a Leap Year, so that it will contain :*(>() days instead of the normal Mo. "Why "Leap Year"? Because, by the insertion ot the extra day, February 2<), a date leaps over a day of the week. For instance. Christmas Day last year was- on a Monday; this year it will be on a Wednesday, leaping over the intervening Tuesday. It is not called I .cap Year from the fact that it confers upon maidens 'the right of leaping at | lliose whom they want as husbands. Of the custom lor women to avoo during Leap Year no satislactory 'explanation lias ever been offered, fn 1288 a law was enacted in Scotland that "it is statute and ordaint that during the rein of hir maist blissit Megeste, for ilk yeare knoAvn as lepe yeare, ilk mayden ladye of bothe highe and lowe estait shall hue liberty to bespeke ye man she likes, albeit he refuses to taik hir to be his lawful Avyl'e, he shall be mulched in ye sum ane poundis or less, as his estait may be; except and awis gif he can make it appeare that he i.: betrothit ane ithcr woman he than shall be free." A few years later a like Jaw was passed in France, and in the loth century the custom was legalised in Genoa and Florence. Cold statistical records, in New Zealand at any rate, do not show that "mayden ladyes of bothe highe and lowe estait" take much advantage of Leap Year, or that there are any more marriages than in ordinary years. Leap Year as it is known to-day first figured in the calendar as long ago as B.C. 4(5, when Julius Caesar reformed the calendar. He Avas troubled by the fact that the solar year consists of approximately six hours over the Mo days. So he took four of these odd six-hour periods and combined them Avith an extra day once every four years. Lven then the calendar did not come quite right, for the solar year is realij' only Mo days o hours 4!) minutes long. So to keep things right there are no leap years at the ends of the centuries, except every fourth The years 1700, 1800, 1900, for instance, Avere not leap years, but 2000 Avill be. Perhaps by then "mayden ladyes" will have long ago asserted their right to choose their OAvn husbands, and the matrimonial significance of the year 2000 AA'ill then be lost. That Avill not Avorry us.