THE SIGNIFICANCE OF KISSES—THE KISSING OF HANDS IN RELIGIOUS
CEREMONY AND SOCIAL LIFE, IN ANCIENT ROME, MEXICO AND
AUSTRIA—THE POLITIC ACHIEVEMENT OF A KISS—AN INDIGNANT
CARDINAL—A KISS WITHIN THE CUP—SOMETHING ABOUT LIPS, THE
SWEET PETITIONERS FOR KISSES—DANCING AND KISSING—AN
IRISH KISSING FESTIVAL—ELECTRIC KISSING PARTIES—KISSING
UNDER THE MISTLETOE—NEW YEAR’S KISSING IN OLD NEW YORK—A
WESTERN KISSING BEE.
There is much significance in kisses. To kiss the lips is to adore the
living breath of the person saluted; to kiss the feet or the ground is
to express humiliation; to kiss the garments to express veneration. The
kissing of hands is of great antiquity, and seems to have been equally
employed in religion and in social life. It was thus that the sun and
moon were worshipped from the remotest ages. Job alludes to this custom
when he says: “If I have looked upon the sun when he was shining forth,
or at the moon advancing bright, and my heart have been secretly
enticed, and my hand have kissed my mouth, this also were an iniquity,”
etc. Lucian relates of Demosthenes that, having fallen into the hands of
Antipater and obtained permission to enter a temple in the neighborhood,
he carried his hand to his mouth on entering, which his guards took for
an act of religion, but, when too late, found he had swallowed poison.
Among the Romans, persons were treated as atheists who would not kiss
their hands when they entered a temple. In the early days of
Christianity, it was the custom of the primeval bishops to give their
hands to be kissed by the ministers who served at the altar. This
custom, however, as a religious rite, declined with paganism.
In society, the kissing of hands has always been regarded as a mute form
of compliment, and used in asking favors, in thanking those from whom
they have been received, and in showing veneration for superiors. Priam,
in Homer, kissed the hands and embraced the knees of Achilles in
conjuring him to restore the body of Hector. This custom prevailed in
ancient Rome, but it varied. In the first ages of the Republic it seems
to have been only practiced by inferiors to their superiors; equals gave
their hands and embraced. In the progress of time, even the soldiers
refused to show this mark of respect to their generals; and their
kissing the hand of Cato when he was obliged to quit them was regarded
as an extraordinary circumstance, at a period of such refinement. Under
the emperors, kissing hands became an essential duty, even for the great
themselves; inferior courtiers were obliged to be content to adore the
purple by kneeling, touching the robe of the emperor by the right hand,
and carrying it to the mouth. Even this was thought too free; and at
length they saluted the emperor at a distance by kissing their hands, in
the same manner as when they adored the gods. Solomon says of the
flatterers and suppliants of his time, that they ceased not to kiss the
hands of their patrons till they had obtained the favors which they had
solicited. Cortez found the custom in Mexico, where upwards of a
thousand of the nobility saluted him by touching the earth with their
hands, which they carried afterwards to their mouths.
Kissing the hand is a national custom in Austria. A gentleman on meeting
a lady friend kisses her hand, and does the same at parting from her. A
beggar-woman to whom you have given an alms, either kisses your hand or
says: “I kiss your hand.” The stranger must expect to have his hand
kissed not only by beggars, but by chambermaids, lackeys, and even by
old men.
In Ben Jonson’s play, “Cynthia’s Revels,” Hedon says to his friend: “You
know I call Madam Philantia, my Honor; and she calls me her Ambition.
Now, when I meet her in the presence, anon, I will come to her and say,
‘Sweet Honor, I have hitherto contented my sense with the lilies of your
hand, but now I will taste the roses of your lips;’ and, withal, kiss
her; to which she cannot but blushingly answer, ‘Nay, now you are too
ambitious.’ And then do I reply: ‘I cannot be too Ambitious of Honor,
sweet lady. Will’t not be good?’”
And his friend assures him that it is “a very politic achievement of a
kiss.”
When the gallant Cardinal, John of Lorraine, was presented to the
Duchess of Savoy, she gave him her hand to kiss, greatly to the
indignation of the irate churchman. “How, madam,” he exclaimed, “am I to
be treated in this manner? I kiss the Queen, my mistress, who is the
greatest queen in the world, and shall I not kiss you, a dirty little
Duchess?” Without more ado he caught hold of the princess and kissed her
thrice in the mouth. He was apparently of the mind of Selden, who
thought “to kiss ladies’ hands after their lips, as some do, is like
little boys who, after they eat the apple, fall to the paring.”
It was a custom among the Greeks and Romans to drink from the same cup
as their lady friends, and from the spot where the fair one had touched
the brim. Ben Jonson borrows this idea from a Greek poet when he says:
Or leave a kiss within the cup,
And I’ll not ask for wine.
One of the older poets referring to this custom, writes:
Blest is the goblet, oh! how blest,
Which Heliodorus’ lips have pressed!
Oh, might thy lips but meet with mine,
My soul should melt away in thine.
Of course the poets have had a good deal to say about lips. Anacreon
speaks of “lip-provoking kisses,” and, alluding to the lip of another
fair one, calls it a “sweet petitioner for kisses.” Tatius speaks of
“lips soft and delicate for kissing;” and Lucretius gave it as his
opinion that girls who have large lips kiss much sweeter than others.
The ancient ladies seemed to enter into kissing with such enthusiasm
that they often bit their lovers. Cattalus, in one of his poems, asks:
Whom wilt thou for thy lover choose?
Whose shall they call thee, false one, whose?
Who shall thy darted kisses sip,
While thy keen love-bites scar his lip!
And Horace, in one of his odes, says:
Or on thy lips the fierce, fond boy
Marks with his teeth the furious joy.
When kissing was a common civility of daily intercourse, it is not to be
wondered at that it should find its way into the courtesies of dancing,
and thus we learn that a kiss was anciently the established fee of a
lady’s partner. In a dialogue between Custom and Verite, concerning the
use and abuse of dancing and minstrelsie, is the following verse:
But some reply, what fool would daunce,
If that, when daunce is doone,
He may not have, at lady’s lips,
That which in daunce he woon.
In the “Tempest” this line occurs:
Curtsied when you have and kissed.
And Henry says to Anne Boleyn:
Sweetheart,
I were unmannerly to take you out,
And not to kiss you.
A correspondent having bitterly complained of the lascivious character
of the dancing of the period, Budgell, in the course of his reply,
remarks:
“I must confess I am afraid that my correspondent had too much reason to
be a little out of humor at the treatment of his daughter; but I
conclude that he would have been much more so had he seen one of those
kissing dances, in which Will Honeycomb assures me they are obliged to
dwell almost a minute on the fair one’s lips, or they will be too quick
for the music, and dance quite out of time.”
Sir John Suckling, in his “Ballad of the Wedding,” published some years
before this period, said:
O’ th’ sudden up they rise and dance;
Then sit again, and sigh, and glance;
Then dance again, and kiss.
Brand, in his “Popular Antiquities,” tells us that the custom of kissing
in dancing, is still prevalent in many parts of the country. “When the
fiddler thinks young couples have had music enough, he makes his
instrument squeak out two notes, which all understand to say ‘kiss
her.’” The panting bucolic swains are not slow to claim this privilege
from their blushing partners.
In the “Banquet” of Xenophon, quoted by Burton in his “Anatomy of the
Melancholy,” there is an account of an interlude, or dance, in which
Dionysius and Ariadne were engaged, which was of such a pleasing
character that the account states that “the audience were so ravished
with it, that they that were unmarried swore they would forthwith marry,
and those that were married called instantly for their horses and
galloped home to their wives.”
In Hone’s “Table Book” there is an account of a curious kissing festival
held in Ireland. It is stated that on Easter Monday several hundred
young persons of the town and neighborhood of Potsferry, County Down,
dressed in their best, went to a pleasant walk near the town. “The
avowed object of each person is to see the fun, which consists in the
men kissing the females, without reserve, whether married or single.
This mode of salutation is quite a matter of course; it is never taken
amiss, nor with much show of coyness. The female must be ordinary indeed
who returns home without having received at least a dozen hearty
kisses.”
Some writer of the future, in describing the manners and customs of our
modern age, will doubtless allude to the “electric kissing parties,”
which it is averred exist in New England, and which are thus described:
“The ladies and gentlemen range themselves about the room. In leap year
the lady selects a partner, and together they shuffle about on the
carpet until they are charged with electricity, the lights in the room
having first been turned low. Then they kiss in the dark, and make the
sparks fly for the amusement of the on-lookers. Oh, the shock is
delightful! I have never been but to one electric party, but I
understand that after a young lady has played the game for a while it is
impossible to give her a shock. Probably the gentleman don’t shuffle his
feet hard enough on the carpet. Gracious! I’m afraid I should wear the
soles off my shoes.”
Kissing under the mistletoe is a custom of very remote origin, and a
practice too common to be dealt with here, though it may not, perhaps,
be known that, owing to the licentious revelry to which it gave
occasion, mistletoe was formerly excluded by ecclesiastical authority
from the decoration of the church at Christmas time. Hone tells us that
there was an old belief that unless a maiden was kissed under the
mistletoe at Christmas time, she would not be married during the ensuing
year.
The shepherd, now no more afraid,
Since custom doth the chance bestow,
Starts up to kiss the giggling maid
Beneath the branch of mistletoe,
That ’neath each cottage beam is seen,
With pearl-like berries, shining gay,
The shadow still of what hath been,
Which fashion yearly fades away.
The special custom connected with the mistletoe on Christmas Eve is
undoubtedly a relic of the days of Druidism, and is familiar to most
readers. A branch of the mystic plant is suspended from the wall or
ceiling, and any one of the fair sex who, either from inadvertence or on
purpose, passes beneath the plant, incurs the penalty of being then and
there kissed by any man who has the courage to avail himself of the
privilege.
The Scandinavian tradition is that Balder was killed by a mistletoe
arrow given to the blind Höder by Loki, the god of mischief and
potentate of our earth. Balder was restored to life, but the mistletoe
was placed in future under the care of Friga, and was never again to be
an instrument of evil till it touched the earth, the empire of Loki.
Hence, it is always suspended from ceilings. And when persons of
opposite sexes pass under it, they give each other the kiss of peace and
love, in the full assurance that the plant is no longer an instrument of
mischief.
Quiet it hangs on the wall,
Or pendent droops from the chandelier,
As if never a mischief or harm could fall
From its modest intrusion, there or here!
And yet how many a pulse it has fired,
How many a lip made nervously bold,
When youthful revel went on, untired,
In the Christmas days of old!
A modern English writer says that in Battersea Park on bank holiday he
found kissing to be all the vogue. “But what kissing! Instead of the
rhythmic chant, the graceful dance, or even the sportive chase of the
northern kissing games, here was simply promiscuity of osculation of the
most unabashed description. There was no ring to begin with, only an
imperfectly cleared space in the middle of a great crowd. In this crowd
a young woman would approach a young man—as often as not a perfect
stranger—thrust a chip into his hand, and then bolt across the green.
The man chases her, runs her down, and brings her back with his arm
around her waist, enters the cleared space, and kisses her, sometimes
half a dozen times, before the on-lookers. Sometimes the girl chases the
man, sometimes the man the girl. If they wanted their kisses _sans
ceremonie_ they were caught at once, and kissed without more ado.”
In Diedrich Knickerbocker’s veracious History of New York, it is told
how the good burghers of New Amsterdam, with their wives and daughters,
dressed in their best clothes, repaired to the governor’s house, where
the rite of kissing the women a happy new year was observed by the
governor. Antony, the Trumpeter, who acted as head usher, was a young
and handsome bachelor. “Nothing could keep him from following the heels
of the old governor, whom he loved as he did his very soul; so,
embracing all the young vrouws, and giving every one of them that had
good teeth and rosy lips a dozen hearty smacks, he departed, loaded with
their kind wishes.” The Trumpeter seems to have been a prodigious
favorite among the women, and was the first to exact the toll of a kiss
levied on the fair sex at Kissing Bridge, on the highway to Hellgate.
In the far west they have “kissing bees,” and the rural husking frolic
common to many parts of the country has been described by Joel Barlow,
an early American poet:
The laws of husking every wight can tell,
And sure no laws he ever keeps so well;
For each red ear a general kiss he gains,
With each smut ear he smuts the luckless swains;
But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast,
Red as her lips, and taper as her waist,
She walks the round and culls one favored beau,
Who leaps the luscious tribute to bestow.
Various the sports, as are the wits and brains
Of well-pleased lasses and contending swains;
Till the vast mound of corn is swept away,
And he that gets the last ear wins the day.