LEAP YEAR AHEAD.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5225, 11 January 1928, Page 3

LEAP YEAR AHEAD.

THE JADIJES’ PRIVILEGE.

SOME CYNICAL VIEWS. With the commencement of the year 1928 th” newspapers may );e excused for reminding its spinster readers that the New Yqa'r will also be leap year Bachelors, of whatever age, arc equally entitled to be told, although whether as a warning or not is for them individually to decide. ■Old customs are tumbling in scores nowadays. The bishops propose to remove St. Valentine from the Anglican calendar as a merely mythical person. Some are unkind enough to say the modern miss has no need of a leap-year privilege—that she makes e.very year a leap-year. Certain commentators on twentieth century society will have it that woman never needs to go tot hel.e ngth of “popping the quest’on” herself. Mr Arnold Bennett warns the young man of today to be,ware lest, when he thinks, he is - choosing, ihe is, in fact, being chosen.

Mr H. L. Mencken, who is regarded as the, leading American cynic, sums up tlie situation thus: “Thq average man does not marry because some marble fair one challenges his enterprise. He marries because chance, throws into his way a fair one who repels him less actively than most, and because his delight in 'what he thus calls her charm is reinforced by a growing suspicion that she has fallen in love with him. In brief, it is chivalry that undoes him. The girl, who infallibly gets a husband —• in fact, any husband that she wants — is the one; who tracks, him- boldly, fastens him with sad eyes, and then, when his conscience has begun to torture him,, throws her arms around his neck, bursts into ma.ide,nly tears on Ills shoulder, and tells him that she fears her forwardness will destroy his respect for heri It is Only a colossus who can resist, such strategy. ,

Perhaps it would be otherwise if the gentler sex could rely upon statutory support such as was given in Scotland in 1288, under tlie titular queen Margaret, “the Maid of Norway.” It was then enacted that “it is statut and ordaint that during the rein of hir maist blissit Megeste, for ilk years known as lepe, yeare, ilk mayden ladye of bathe highe and lowe estait shall hae liberte to bespeke ye man she likes albeit he refuses to taik hir to be his lawful wyfe, he shall bq mulcted in ye sum ane pundis or less, as his estait may be ; except and awis gif he can make it appeare that he is betrothit ane ither woman then he shall be free.”

Margaret can scarcely be put forward as the feminist author of the law enacted in her name, for she did not cross the North Sea until 1290 1 , and died in Orkney the same year, aged 17. The custom is believod to have had an earlier origin, although history is silent on the subject. It was perpetuated in France and Northern Italy ip the middle ages, but afterwards ceased to have legal, sanction. 1

The Scottish law was in effect a tax on bachelors, although whether the, fine went to the rebuffed lady or into tlie State’s coffers is not clear. It must have bee,n a godd deal more severe than a straightoiit tax in some cases—that dfi a ’ good-looking and generally eligible bachelor, for example. Its- results do not seem to havQ been put on record, nor yet the reasons for enacting it. Perhaps the Church desired on general principles that the people should be fruitful and multiply, and the State wanted fighting men to defend its /borders. Will it be left to Mussolini, who nffw taxes bachelors, to revive the old Scottish and Italian law in these times ?