Well, it’s that strange phenomenon of the 29 th February once again… Our TVs and radios are filled with “human interest” stories about people with birthdays that only come round every four years, meaning that a father may have had fewer birthdays than his son, or the hoary old chestnut concerning this being the day when women can propose marriage to men. Originally it actually applied to the whole leap year, but it has wisely been restricted to the single day - can’t have women behaving like men for a whole year! The beginnings of this has been variously attributed to Saint Patrick or Brigid of Kildare in 5th century Ireland , although there was never any reference to this before the romanticisation of Celtic Ireland 19th century. The earliest reference is actually to a 1288 law in the name of the infant Queen Margaret of Scotland which imposed fines on a man if a marriage proposal was refused today, with the compensation ranging from a kiss, to £1 (a substant
Dialogues, monologues, sketches, poems, rants, theological and liturgical bits and bobs and miscellaneous other verbal doodles...