BACHELORS, BEWARE!

Chronicle (Levin), 17 January 1948, Page 4

BACHELORS, BEWARE!

. 1948 is leap year There are' prospects for spinsters and there is" gloom /for the confirmed hachelor in this .new year of 1948. It is a Leap Year— a trick of the calendar introduced by Julius Caesar's mathematicallyminded astronomefs nearly 200u - years ago, and the later source oi a fable that could prove costly or unpleasant to the man who resisted a woman's privilege of, proposing marriage on any of its 366 days. ' ' Caesar's wise men settled the solar year at 365 days 6 hours. However,. the odd hours were no problem to the astronomers, who calculated that at the end of four years they would make a day which could be added to the fourth year. The English term for this interposition was an obvious choice for after February 29 a date "leabs over", a day of the week. 1 . But in myth,- fable, and even -m olden law, Leap Year means mofe than the occasional addition of a. day to the month of February. In earliest English history there are ref erences to a woman's right to • select a husband in this fourth year and in the 13th century Scot4and ordained by Statute, • in -the reign of "Her MOst Blessed Majesty," that in any Leap Year "any maiden lady of both high and low estate is at liberty to bespeak the man she likes." If the gentleman churlishly refused to- accept the opportunity of securing "a lawful Wife," he was to be fined £1 or less, according to his means. His only escape lay in proving that he was ' already betrothed. Sceptics like" to point out that the author of this legislation was a woman — Margaret, known to thetimes as the Maid of Norway and nominal Queen of Scotland from 1285 to 1290. However, she was not alone in her intention. A few years later France accepted a similar decree and as late as the 15th cen- , tury the custom was legalised in Genoa and Florence. Even to the superstitious, Leap Year has now lost its chivalrous - flavour. Marriage statistics of the last generation or two reveal no upward fourth-year trend that migbpt' be the result of an enterprising female population and a community of acquiescent males cowed bv the force of tradition.

It is, perhaps, a concession to a aatchelor's indifference that the nodern version of the tale gives tiim an option of refusing a proposal at the cost oi buying the lady a .white. dress. If he can be kis'Sed while he is asleep it will cost him a pair of white gloves as well, leaving only a modish white hat to complete a smart summer- ensemble. This can then be gained- . easily by simple feminine guile and an appeal to aesthetics. The significance. of Leap Year is not confihed to presenting marriage opportunities. Gaffers in the oldest inhabitants' ch'airs of village inns in Britain still sometimes observe sagely that "Leap Year is not a good sheep year"— a legacy from the not-so-distant days when the calendar ofiTered innumerable omens for farm aq.d harvest. It is also sometimes said, even in New Zealand, that February with 29 instead of 28 days can be depended upon for wild weather. There are, too, a handful of New Zealanders for . whom Leap Year has special significance. They are those born on February 29 and "ruled by the arbitrary Roman calendar to have an anniversary only once in every four years. When' a February 29 was last observed in Auckland in 1944, there were at least two special parties to observe the oecasion. One was atten'ded by three small children born in the same nursing home on February 29, four years before, and the. other by three •adults born 92, 76, and 48 years before, but with calendar agesloH 23, 19, and 12 re'spectively. LeaiJ Year babies, astronorhically speak-4 ■Ing, have to live for 8'4 years'.befofq; they are really adhlt?