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Title: The kiss and its history
Author: Nyrop, Kristoffer
Language: English
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THE KISS AND ITS HISTORY
THE KISS
And its History
BY
DR CHRISTOPHER NYROP
_Professor of Romance Philology at the University of Copenhagen_
TRANSLATED BY
WILLIAM FREDERICK HARVEY
_M.A., Hertford College, Oxford; Barrister-at-Law of the Inner
Temple; Lecturer in English at the University of Lund
(Sweden); sometime Professor of English Literature
at the University of Malta_
LONDON
SANDS & CO.
12 BURLEIGH STREET, STRAND
1901
TO
WALTER BENSON, Esquire
I DEDICATE MY MODEST PART IN THIS BOOK
IN TOKEN OF A FRIENDSHIP WHICH
HAS GROWN STAUNCHER WITH
THE GROWTH OF
YEARS
ἦ μεγάλα χάρις
Δώρῳ ξὐν όλίγῳ· πάντα δἐ τιμᾶντα τἀ πἀρ ϕίλων
THEOCRITUS, _Idyl_ xxviii., 24, 25.
“Surely great grace goes with a little gift, and all the offerings of
friends are precious.”
Je célèbre des jeux paisibles,
Qu’en vain on semble mépriser,
Les vrais biens des âmes sensibles,
Les doux mystères du baiser.
DORAT.
To gentle sports due praise I render,
At which some wits have vainly sneered:
The true delight of spirits tender,
The kiss’s mysteries endeared.
W. F. H.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
The following treatise, which is the work of a Romance philologist of
high European reputation, has not only gone through two editions in
Denmark, but has also been translated into German, Swedish, and Russian.
The popularity which this learned and at the same time charming little
book rapidly acquired abroad, and the favourable criticisms passed on it
by Continental scholars, have encouraged me to present it to my
fellow-countrymen in an English dress. With regard to the numerous
poetical quotations that form so striking a feature of this book, those
which I have translated myself may be distinguished from such as I have
borrowed from standard versions by the appended initials, W. F. H.
INNER TEMPLE, LONDON, _2nd August 1901_.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
Wenn ich nur selber wüsste,
Was mir in die Seele zischt!
Die Worte und die Küsse
Sind wunderbar vermischt.
Oh, could I but decipher
What ’tis that fills my mind.
The words are with the kisses
So wond’rously combined.
HEINE.
Dante, in the fifth canto of his _Hell_, has celebrated the power a kiss
may have over human beings. In the course of his wanderings in the
nether world, when he has reached the spot where abide those who have
sinned through love, he sees two souls that “flutter so lightly in the
wind.” These are Francesco da Rimini and her brother-in-law Paolo. He
asks Francesco to tell him:
“In the time of your sweet sighs,
By what, and how love granted, that ye knew
Your yet uncertain wishes?”
Whereto she replies:
“One day
For our delight we read of Lancelot,
How him love thrall’d. Alone we were, and no
Suspicion near us. Ofttimes by that reading
Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue
Fled from our alter’d cheek. But at one point
Alone we fell. When of that smile we read,
The wished smile, so rapturously kissed
By one so deep in love, then he, who ne’er
From me shall separate, at once my lips
All trembling kiss’d. The book and writer both
Were love’s purveyors. In its leaves that day
We read no more.”[1]
I have had a special object in prefacing my studies on the history of
kissing with these famous verses, for I regarded it in the light of a
duty to caution my readers emphatically, and at the very outset, as to
the danger of even reading about kisses; and I consider that, having
done this, I have warned my readers against pursuing the subject, and
“forewarned is forearmed,” or, “_homme averti en vaut deux_.”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. WHAT IS A KISS? 3
II. LOVE KISSES 29
III. AFFECTIONATE KISSES 79
IV. THE KISS OF PEACE 101
V. THE KISS OF RESPECT 113
VI. THE KISS OF FRIENDSHIP 141
VII. VARIOUS KINDS OF KISSES 161
VIII. THE ORIGIN OF KISSING 177
L’ENVOI 189
I
WHAT IS A KISS?
CHAPTER I
WHAT IS A KISS?
It may perhaps seem somewhat futile to begin with discussing what a kiss
is: that every child of course knows. We are greeted with kisses
directly we enter the world, and kisses follow us all our life long, as
Hölty sings--
Giving kisses, snatching kisses,
Keeps the busy world employed.
W. F. H.
Nevertheless the question is not altogether superfluous. It seems to me
even to offer certain points of interest, inasmuch as it is by no means
so easy as people may imagine to define what a kiss is. If we turn to
the poets we are often put off with the answer that a kiss is something
that should be merely felt, and that people would do well to refrain
from speculating as to what it actually is.
What says this glance? What meaning lurks in this
Squeezing of hands, embrace, and ling’ring kiss?
This only can your heart explain to you.
What have such matters with the brain to do?
W. F. H.
So, for instance, says Aarestrup; but he adds as a sort of explanation--
But when I see thee my fond kiss denying,
And straightway, nathless, mine embrace not spurning,
Then needs must I to tedious arts be turning,
And let crabb’d wisdom from my lips go flying.
Know then the voice alone interprets rightful
And with poetic fire from heart’s depth welleth,
And yet the sweetest of them all by no means!
Whereas the bosom, arms, and lips, and eye-sheens--
How shall I call it? for the total swelleth
Unto a language wordless as delightful.
W. F. H.
which has not brought us nearer to a solution of the question. Other
poets give us an allegorical transcription, couched in vague poetical
terms, which rather refer to the feelings of which the kiss may be an
expression than attempt to define its physiology. Thus Paul Verlaine
defines a kiss as “the fiery accompaniment on the keyboard of the teeth
of the lovely songs which love sings in a burning heart.”
Baiser! rose trémière au jardin des caresses!
Vif accompagnement sur le clavier des dents,
Des doux refrains qu’Amour chante en les cœurs ardents
Avec sa voix d’archange aux langueurs charmeresses!
This definition, which seems to me to be as original as it is beautiful
and apt, deals, however, exclusively with the kiss of love; but kisses,
as we all know, are capable of expressing many other emotions, and it
enlightens us not one whit as to the external side of the nature of a
kiss. Let us, therefore, leave the poets, and seek refuge with the
philologists.
In the _Dictionary of the Danish Philological Society_ (_Videnskabernes
Selskabs Ordbog_) a kiss is defined as “a pressure of the mouth against
a body.” As every one at once perceives, this explanation is very
unsatisfactory, for, from the above statements, we could hardly accept
more than one, viz., the mouth. Now, of course, it is quite clear that
one of the first requisites for a kiss is a mouth. “Einen Kuss an sich,
ohne Mund, kann man nicht geben,” say the Germans, and it is also
remarkable that in Finnish, _antaa sunta_, “to kiss,” means literally
“to give mouth.”
How does the mouth produce a kiss?
A kiss is produced by a kind of sucking movement of the muscles of the
lips, accompanied by a weaker or louder sound. Thus, from a purely
phonetic point of view, a kiss may be defined as an inspiratory bilabial
sound, which English phoneticians call the lip-click, _i.e._, the sound
made by smacking the lip. This movement of the muscles, however, is not
of itself sufficient to produce a kiss, it being, as you know, employed
by coachmen when they want to start their horses; but it becomes a kiss
only when it is used as an expression of a certain feeling, and when the
lips are pressed against, or simply come into contact with, a living
creature or object.
The sound which follows a kiss has been carefully investigated by the
Austrian _savant_, W. von Kempelen, in his remarkable book entitled _The
Mechanism of Human Speech_ (Wien, 1791). He divides kisses into three
sorts, according to their sound. First he treats of kisses proper, which
he characterises as a _freundschaftlich hellklatschender Herzenskuss_
(an affectionate, clear-ringing kiss coming from the heart); next he
defines the more discreet, or, from an acoustic point of view, weaker
kiss; and, lastly, speaks contemptuously of a third kind of kiss, which
is designated an _ekelhafter Schmatz_ (a loathsome smack).
Many other writers have, although in a less scientific manner, sought to
define and elucidate the sound that arises from a kiss. Johannes
Jørgensen says very delicately in his _Stemninger_ that “the plash of
the waves against the pebbles of the beach is like the sound of long
kisses.”
It is generally, however, an exclusively humorous or satirical aspect
that is most conspicuous. In the _Seducer’s Diary_ (_Forførerens
dagbog_) of Sören Kierkegaard, Johannes speaks of the engaged couples
who used to assemble in numbers at his uncle’s house: “Without
interruption, the whole evenings through, one hears a sound as if a
person was going round with a fly-flap: that is the lovers’ kisses.” A
still more drastic comparison is found in the German expression, “the
kiss sounded just like when a cow drags her hind hoof out of a swamp.”
This metaphor, which is used, you know, by Mark Twain, is as graphic as
it is easy of comprehension; whereas, on the other hand, I am somewhat
perplexed with regard to an old Danish expression that is to be found in
the Ole Lade’s Phrases (_Fraser_): “He kissed her so that it rang just
as it does when one strikes the horns off felled cows.” Another old
author speaks of kissing that sounds as if one was pulling the horn out
of an owl.
The emotions expressed by this more or less noisy lip-sound are manifold
and varying: burning love and affectionate friendship, exultant joy and
profound grief, etc., etc.; consequently there must be many different
sorts of kisses.
The austere old Rabbis only recognised three kinds of kisses, viz.:
those of greeting, farewell, and respect. The Romans had also three
kinds, but their classification was essentially at variance with the
Rabbis’: they distinguished between _oscula_,[2] friendly kisses,
_basia_, kisses of love, and _suavia_, passionate kisses. The
significance of these words is clearly expressed in the following
lines:--
Basia coniugibus, sed et oscula dantur amicis,
Suavia lascivis miscantur grata labellis.
But the Romans’ division is by no means exhaustive; kisses are and have
been actually employed to express many other feelings than those
above-mentioned.
That kisses in this book are arranged in five groups, viz., kisses of
passion, love, peace, respect, and friendship, is chiefly due to
practical considerations; for, to be precise, these artificially-formed
groups are inadequate, and, besides, often overlap one another.
A modern French writer reckons no less than twenty sorts of kisses, but
I find in German dictionaries over thirty different designations:
_Abschiedskuss_, _Brautkuss_, _Bruderkuss_, _Dankkuss_, _Doppelkuss_,
_Ehrenkuss_, _Erwiderungskuss_, _Feuerkuss_, _Flammenkuss_,
_Frauenkuss_, _Freundschaftskuss_, _Friedenskuss_, _Gegenkuss_,
_Geisterkuss_, _Handkuss_, _Honigkuss_, _Inbrunstkuss_, _Judaskuss_,
_Lehenskuss_, _Liebeskuss_, _Mädchenkuss_, _Minnekuss_, _Morgenkuss_,
_Mutterkuss_, _Nebenkuss_, _Pantoffelkuss_, _Segenskuss_,
_Söhnungskuss_, _Undschuldskuss_, _Vermählungskuss_, _Versöhnungskuss_,
_Wechselkuss_, _Weihekuss_, _Zuckerkuss_, etc., etc. In German the verb
itself, “to kiss,” is varied in many different ways, _e.g._, in Germany
one may _auküssen_, _aufküssen_, _ausküssen_, _beküssen_, _durchküssen_,
_emporküssen_, _entküssen_, _erküssen_, _fortküssen_, _herküssen_,
_nachküssen_, _verküssen_, _vorbeiküssen_, _wegküssen_, _widerküssen_,
_zerküssen_, _zuküssen_, and _zurückküssen_.
We must give the Germans the credit of being thorough, and in the
highest degree methodical and exhaustive in their nomenclature, for can
we conceive a more admirable word than, for instance, _nachküssen_,
which is explained as “making up for kisses that have been omitted, or
supplementing kisses”? However, on the other hand, it cannot be denied
that they are at the same time awkward and tasteless in their
expressions; a word such as _ausküssen_, which, for instance, is used in
the refrain: _Trink aus! Küss aus!_ seems to me to smack perilously of
the ale-house.
We have now seen what a kiss is; but before proceeding to investigate
the different kinds of kisses, their significance in the history of
civilisation, and treatment in poetry, it still remains for us to reply
to some of the ordinary queries regarding the nature and characteristics
of the kiss.
In the first place we must investigate the kiss in its gustative aspect.
I here confine myself to what Kierkegaard calls “the perfect kiss,”
_i.e._, the kiss between man and woman; kisses between men are,
according to that authority, insipid.
_Küssen, wo smekt dat? see de maid._ Yes, its taste naturally depends
entirely on the circumstances, and experience is here a teacher that
sets every theory at nought; but a few leading features may, however, be
indicated.
When Lars Iversen, in Schandorph’s _Skovfogedbørnene_, has kissed Mette
Splyd, he wipes his mouth and says, when he has got well outside the
door, “That tasted like meat that has been kept too long.” When the old
minnesinger, King Wenceslaus of Bohemia, had kissed his sweetheart he
sang: “Just as a rose that opens its calix when it drinks the sweet dew,
she offered me her sugar-sweet red mouth.”
Recht als ein rôse diu sich ûz ir klôsen lât,
Swenn si des süezen touwes gert,
Sus bòt si mir ir zuckersüezen ròten munt.
As we perceive from both these examples, there is a great distinction
between kisses in their gustative aspect, but, for obvious reasons, I
shall entirely exclude the variety represented by Mette Splyd.
The most frequently employed and, at the same time undoubtedly the most
fitting epithet of a kiss, is that it is sweet. The shepherd in the
French pastorals is fond of asking for a sweet kiss (_un doux baiser_),
and poets innumerable, like Wenceslaus, have sung about the beloved’s
sugar mouth. During the Renaissance such expressions as her _bouche
sucrine_ (sugary mouth) and _bouche pleine de sucre et d’ambregris_
(mouth full of sugar and ambergris) were often employed.
We find this further borne out by two Latin epigrams. One asks:--“What
is sweeter than mead?” and the answer runs: “The dew of heaven. And what
is sweeter than dew?--Honey from Hybla? What is sweeter than
honey?--Nectar. Than nectar?--A kiss.”
Quid mulso præstat? Ros cœli. Rore quid? Hyblæ Mel. Melle hoc?
Nectar. Nectare? Suaviolum.
The second epigram goes through a similar string of comparisons, and
arrives at the same result: “What is better than sugar?--Honey-cake.
Than honey-cake?--The flavour of honey-combs. Than this flavour?--Dewy
kisses”--
Saccharo quid superat? Libum. Quid libo? Favorum Gustus. At hunc
gustum? Basia roscidula.
Kisses are sweet as woman’s gentle breath, which, according to a
Roumanian folk-song, smells of “delicate young wine,” or, as the French
poets say, of “thousands of flowers.”--
Laughing mouth, mouth to caress,
Kissing ere its lips you press;
Sweet for kissing, balmy breath
Like the perfume of fresh heath.
W. F. H.
A woman’s breath, which intoxicates man, is, as it were, the ethereal
expression of her whole being. In the description of the youthful
Blancheflor we are told that her breath is so delicious and refreshing
that he who experiences it knows not pain, and needs no food for a whole
week.
De sa bouche ist si douce haleine,
Vivre en peut-on une semaine;
Qui au lundi le sentiroit
En la semaine mal n’avroit.
Moreover, as the flavour of a kiss depends on the woman’s mouth, let
us, therefore, investigate how a woman’s mouth ought to be fashioned in
order to fulfil its purpose from a philematological point of view. When
the mediæval French poets describe a beautiful and desirable woman they
say of her mouth that it must be “well-formed and sweet to kiss” (_bien
faite et douce pour baiser_). The troubadours likewise in their love
poems praise the mouth that is _ben faita ad obs de baisar_.
If more detailed explanations are wanted they can easily be given. The
lips must, in the first place, be bewitchingly soft; next, they must be
as red as coral:
Los labios de la su boca
Como un fino coral,
or else red as roses:
La bocca piccioletta e colorita,
Vermiglia come rosa di giardino,
Piagente ed amorosa per baciare.[3]
This last simile is one of the most frequently employed. The beloved
one’s mouth is likened to a rose; it has the scent and colour of a
rose:
Hæc dulcis in amore
Est et plena decore,
Rosa rubet rubore,
Et lilium convallium
Tota vincit odore,
sang the wandering clerks in the Middle Ages, the jolly Goliards, and
they extolled the youth who was lucky enough to kiss the mouth of such a
woman:
Felix est qui osculis mellifluis
Ipsius potitur.
And, they went on to say, “on every maiden’s lips the kiss sits like a
rose which only longs to be plucked”:
Sedit in ore
Rosa cum pudore.
The old German minnesingers use the expression _Küssblümlein_
(kiss-floweret), and a bard of the Netherlands sings: “My beloved is my
summer, my beloved is my joy, all the roses bloom every time she gives
me a kiss”:
Mijn liefken is mijn somer,
Min liefken is mijn lust,
En al de rosen bloejen
So dicmael si mi cust.
But all this is only poetry, merely feeble imageries which only give an
entirely weak idea of the reality. How accurate is Thomas Moore when,
in one of his poems, he declares that roses are not so warm as his
beloved’s mouth, nor can the dew approach it in sweetness.
Now if we turn to the other aspect of the case and see what women expect
from a man’s kiss, then the question becomes somewhat more difficult to
treat, inasmuch as so exceedingly few women have treated of kisses in
poetry--a fact which is also in itself quite natural. Runeberg, who
himself has so often sung the praises of kissing without, however, being
versed in their nature:
For my part I’ve ne’er understood
Of kisses what can be the good;
But I should die if kept away
From thy red lips one single day.
W. F. H.
asks his beloved:
Now, dearest maiden, answer me,
What joy can kisses bring to thee?
W. F. H.
But she fails to answer him:
I ask thee now, as I asked this,
And all thy answer’s kiss on kiss.
W. F. H.
Besides, it seems very evident from the last line that the situation did
not admit of the calmer and more sober observation which forms the
necessary condition for a reliable answer to the question. I am,
therefore, obliged to attempt to reply to the question myself; but I
readily admit my deficiency in the essential qualification of being able
to do so in a satisfactory manner. Moreover, the literary material at my
disposal is exceedingly inadequate, and, for that reason, I cannot claim
any universal application for my treatment of the subject.
In the first place it seems indisputable that a woman gives a decided
preference to a man with a beard; at all events a heiduke sings in a
Roumanian ballad: “I am still too young to marry; my beard has not yet
sprouted. What married woman then will care about kissing me?”
Că simt voinic neinsorat;
Nici mustete nu m’a dat:
Cum simt bun de sărutat
La neveste cu bărbat?
To judge from the part the heidukes play in the ballad literature of the
Roumanians and Serbs, they must be very experienced in everything that
has to do with women and love, and their testimony must therefore be
accepted as being sufficiently reliable. Besides, we find the same taste
among women in Northern Europe. In Germany there is said to be nothing
in a kiss without a beard: _Ein Kuss ohne Bart ist eine Vesper ohne
Magnificat_ (a kiss without a beard is like Vespers without the
Magnificat); or, still more strongly, _Ein Kuss ohne Bart ist ein Ei
ohne Salz_ (a kiss without a beard is like an egg without salt). The
young girls in Holland also incline to this point of view: _Een kussje
zonder baard, een eitje zonder zout_ (an egg without salt), and they
have in the Frisian Islands some who share their taste: _An Kleeb sanner
Biard as äs en Brei sanner Salt_ (porridge without salt). Lastly, the
Jutland lassies also take the same view of the matter--in fact they are,
if I may say so, even more refined in their requirements; a kiss is not
only to sound, but it must have some flavour about it--it ought to be
strong and luscious: _At kysse en karl uden skrå og skaeg er som at
kysse en leret vaeg_ (kissing a fellow without a quid of tobacco and a
beard is like kissing a clay wall), say those who express themselves in
the most refined manner; but there are others who are not so particular
in the choice of words, and these latter say straight out: _Å kys jen,
dæ hveken røger eller skråer, de æ som mæ ku kys æ spæ kal i r._,
(kissing one who neither smokes nor chews tobacco is like kissing a
new-born calf on the rump). On the other hand, a person should not be
too wet about the mouth--that they do not like; _e.g._, the scornful
saying: “He is nice to kiss when one is thirsty,” or, as the German
girls say: _Einen Kuss mit Sauce bekommen_ (to get a kiss with sauce).
It apparently follows from this that women are not so simple in their
tastes as men; a kiss by itself is not sufficient, it requires some
condiment or other in addition--and, for the credit of women’s taste,
let it be said--this need not always be tobacco. In a French folk-song
the lover tells us that he has smeared his mouth with fresh butter so
that it may taste better:
J’avais toujou dans ma pochette
Du bon bieur’ frais,
O qué je me gressais la goule,
Quand j’ l’embrassais.
I have already mentioned in my preface how dangerous the mere reading
about kisses may be; but, apart from literature, a kiss is something
which has to be dealt with most cautiously. Now hear what Socrates said
to Xenophon one day: “Kritobulus is the most foolhardy and rash fellow
in the world; he is rasher than if he meant to dance on naked
sword-points or fling himself into the fire; he has had the audacity to
kiss a pretty face.”--“But,” asked Xenophon, “is that such a deed of
daring? I am certainly no desperado, but still I think I would venture
to expose myself to the same risk.”--“Luckless wight,” replied Socrates,
“you are not thinking what would betide you. If you kissed a pretty
face, would you not that very instant lose your freedom and become a
slave? Would you not have to spend much money on harmful amusements, and
would you not do much which you would despise, if your understanding
were not clouded? Hercules forbid what dreadful effects a poor kiss can
have! And dost thou marvel at it, Xenophon? You know, I take it, those
tiny spiders which are not half the size of an obol, and yet they can,
through merely touching a person’s mouth, cause him the keenest pains;
nay, even deprive him of his understanding. But, by Jupiter, anyhow this
is quite another matter; for spiders poison the wound directly they
inflict a sting. O, thou simple fellow, dost thou not know that lustful
kisses are poisoned, even if thou failest to perceive the poison? Dost
thou not know that she to whom the name of beautiful is given is a wild
beast far more dangerous than scorpions; for the latter only poison us
by their touch, whereas beauty destroys us without actual contact with
us, and even ejects from a long distance a venom so dangerous that
people are deprived thereby of their wits. This is the reason why I
advise you, O Xenophon, to run away as fast as you can the very instant
you see a beautiful woman, and with regard to yourself, O Kritobulus, I
deem you will act most prudently in spending a whole year abroad; for
that is the least time necessary for curing thy wound.”[4]
It may perhaps be thought that Socrates’ fear of kissing is a trifle
exaggerated, his idea possibly arising from a certain prejudice derived
from Mistress Xantippe; anyhow, nowadays, we regard the matter from a
far more sober point of view. We ought, nevertheless, to be well on our
guard against the frivolous opinion expressed in so many modern sayings,
that a kiss is a thing of no consequence whatever. The Italians bluntly
assert “that a mouth is none the worse for having been kissed” (_bocca
baciata non perde ventura_), and a French writer of the present day even
goes so far as to compare a kiss with those usually-harmless bullets
which are exchanged in modern duels. _Bah! deux baisers, qu’est que
cela? On les échange comme des balles sans résultat, et l’honneur reste
satisfait_ (Bah! two kisses. What of that? They are exchanged like
bullets that miss the mark, and honour is satisfied).
This frivolous notion must not, however, be deemed peculiar to the Latin
nations: it is to be met with even in the North. In Norway there is a
song:
Jens Johannesen, the Goth so brave,
The maid on her chops a good buss gave.
He kissed her once, and once again,
But each time was she likewise fain,
But each time was she likewise fain.
W. F. H.
As you see, the last line of the verse is repeated as if for the
purpose of duly impressing the moral of the song.
It is said in Als: _Et kys er et stow, den der it vil ha et, ka vask et
ow_ (a kiss is like a grain of dust, which any one who would be rid of
it can wash away). We read as far back as Peder Syv[5]: _Et kys kan
afviskes_ (a kiss can be washed away), but he adds solemnly, and for our
warning: “She who permits a kiss also permits more; and he who has
access to kisses has also access to more.” Even the Germans say: _Kuss
kann man zwar abwischen, aber das Feuer im Herzen nich löschen_ (a kiss
may indeed be washed away, but the fire in the heart cannot be
quenched).
Thus hardly the shadow of a doubt ought to exist as to kisses being
extraordinarily dangerous--or, in any case, capable of becoming so--far
more dangerous, for instance, than dynamite or gun-cotton; in the first
place, at any rate, inasmuch as people are not in the habit of walking
about with such explosives in their pockets, whereas every one has
kisses always at hand, or, more correctly speaking, in their mouths;
secondly, we are rid of dynamite when once it has exploded, but, on the
other hand, we can never actually be quit of a kiss--without at the same
time returning it; for we take back the kisses we give, you know, and we
give, too, those we take back--and, adds the proverb, “nobody is the
loser.” _Einen Kuss den man raubt giebt man wieder_ (One returns a
stolen kiss), say the Germans; and the Spaniards have expressed the same
thought in a neat little _copla_: “Dost thy mother chide thee for having
given me a kiss? Then take back, dear girl, thy kiss, and bid her hold
her tongue.”
¿Porque un beso me has dado
Riñe tu madre?
Toma, niña, tu beso;
Dile que calle.
Marot has treated the same subject in his epigram _Le Baiser Volé_, or
the Stolen Kiss.
About my daring now you grieve,
To snatch a kiss without ado,
Nor even saying, “By your leave.”
Come, I will make my peace with you,
And now I want you to believe
I’m loth your soul again to grieve
By theft of kisses, since, alack,
My kiss has wrought such dole and teen;
Yet ’tis not lost; I’ll give it back,
And that right blithely, too, I ween.
W. F. H.
There is a French anecdote of the present day about a student who took
the liberty of kissing a young girl. She got very angry, however, and
called him an insolent puppy, whereupon he retorted with irrefutable
logic: _Pour Dieu! Mademoiselle ne vous fâchez pas, si ce baiser vous
gêne, rendez-le-moi_ (For goodness’ sake, don’t be cross, young lady. If
that kiss annoys you, give it back to me). It seems to have had a more
amicable settlement in the case of a Danish couple who had resolved to
break off their engagement: “It is best, I suppose, that we return each
other’s letters?” said he. “I think so too,” replied she, “but shall we
not at the same time give each other all our kisses back?” They did so,
and thus agreed to renew their engagement.
This little story shows us that a kiss is something which cannot be so
easily lost, and I hope, not least for the sake of my book, that we
shall concur in the Italian proverb which says: _Bacio dato non e mai
perduto_ (a kiss once given is never lost).
II
LOVE KISSES
A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth and love
And beauty, all concentrating like rays
Into one focus, kindled from above;
Such kisses as belong to early days,
Where heart, and soul, and sense, in concert move,
And the blood’s lava, and the pulse a blaze,
Each kiss a heart-quake,--for a kiss’s strength
I think, it must be reckon’d by its length.
BYRON.
CHAPTER II
LOVE KISSES
“At the time of the world’s creation kisses were created and cruel
love.” Thus begins a Cypriot folk-song, and it is assuredly without the
shadow of a doubt that among all nations which on the whole know
kissing, it gets its sublimest meaning as the expression of love.
In the transport of love the lovers’ lips seek each other. When Byron’s
Don Juan wanders one evening along the shore with his Haidee, they
glance at the moonlit sea which lies outspread before them, and they
listen to the lapping of the waves and the whispering murmur of the
breeze, but suddenly they
Saw each other’s dark eyes darting light
Into each other--and, beholding this,
Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss.
* * * * *
They had not spoken, but they felt allured,
As if their souls and lips each other beckoned,
Which, being joined, like swarming bees they clung--
Their hearts the flowers from whence the honey sprung.
The kiss of love is the exultant message of the longing of love, love
eternally young, the burning prayer of hot desire, which is born on the
lovers’ lips, and “rises,” as Charles Fuster has said, “up to the blue
sky from the green plains,” like a tender, trembling thank-offering.
Que tous les cœurs soient apaisés
Et toutes les lèvres ouvertes,
Qu’un frémissement de baisers
Monte au ciel bleu des plaines vertes!
The love kiss, rich in promise, bestows an intoxicating feeling of
infinite happiness, courage, and youth, and therefore surpasses all
other earthly joys in sublimity--at any rate all poets say so--and no
one has expressed it in more exquisite and choicer words than Alfred de
Musset in his celebrated sonnet on Tizianello:
Beatrix Donato was the soft sweet name
Of her whose earthly form was shaped so fair;
A faithful heart lay in her breast’s white frame,
Her spotless body held a mind most rare.
The son of Titian, for her deathless fame,
Painted this portrait, witness of love’s care,
And from that day renounced his art’s high claim,
Loth that another dame his skill should share.
Stranger, if in your heart love doth abide,
Gaze on my lady’s picture ere you chide.
Say if perchance your lady’s fair as this.
Then mark how poor a thing is fame on earth;
Grand as this portrait is, it is not worth--
Believe me on my oath--the model’s kiss.
W. F. H.
Thus even the highest work of art, yea, the loftiest reputation, is
nothing in comparison with the passionate kiss of a woman one loves.
This is what life has taught Musset, and a half melancholy sigh rings
through his exultation over the omnipotence of love. In turning to the
more _naïve_ speech of popular poetry, we find in a German
_Schnaderhüpfel_ (Improvisation) a corresponding homage to the kiss as
the noblest thing in the world:
My sweetheart’s poor,
But fair to behold.
What use were wealth?
I cannot kiss gold.
W. F. H.
And we all yearn for kisses and we all seek them; it is idle to struggle
against this passion. No one can evade the omnipotence of the kiss, the
best resolutions, the most solemn oaths, are of no avail. A pretty
little Servian folk-song treats of a young girl who swore too hastily.
Yestreen swore a maiden fair,
Ne’er again I’ll wear a garland,
Ne’er again I’ll wear a garland,
Wine again I’ll never drink,
Never more I’ll kiss a laddie.
Yestreen swore the maiden fair,
Clean to-day her oath’s regretted:
If I decked myself with flow’rets,
Then the flow’rets made me fairer;
If I quaffed the wine that’s ruddy,
Then my heart grew all the blither;
If I kissed my heart’s beloved,
Life to me grew doubly dearer.[6]
W. F. H.
It is through kisses that a knowledge of life and happiness first comes
to us. Runeberg says that the angels rejoice over the first kiss
exchanged by lovers.
The evening star was sitting beside a silver cloud,
A maid from out a twilight grove addressed this star aloud,
“Come, tell me, star of evening, what angels think in heaven
When by a youth and maiden the first sweet kiss is given?”
And heaven’s bashful daughter was heard to deign reply:
“On earth the choir of angels bright look down from out the sky,
And see their own felicity then mirrored on the earth,
But death sheds tears, and turns his eyes away from such blest mirth.”
W. F. H.
Only death weeps over the brief duration of human happiness, weeps
because the bliss of the kiss endures not for ever. And likewise, even
after death, lovers kiss. Jannakos and Helena, his plighted bride, die
before their wedding day. They die in a kiss and are buried together;
but over their grave grew a cypress and an orange tree, and the latter
stretched forth its branches on high and kissed the cypress.
The happiest man is the man who has the kiss. In the Greek romance of
_Babylonika_, which was attributed to Jamblicus, who lived in the second
century of the Christian era, three lovers contend for the favour of a
young maid. To one she has given the cup out of which she was wont to
drink; the second she has garlanded with flowers that she herself has
worn; to the third she has given a kiss. Borokos is called on as judge
to decide as to which has enjoyed the highest favour, and he
unhesitatingly decides the dispute in favour of the last.
The same subject is often the theme of folk-poetry, and the verdict
never alters; the joy bestowed by a kiss surpasses all other joys. A
Hungarian ballad runs thus:
As the hart holds dear the fountain,
And the bee the honied flow’rets,
So the noble grape I cherish;
After this songs melting, tender,
Kisses, too, of lips of crimson,
As thine own, O Cenzi mine.
But the wine’s might fires my senses,
And songs wake within me blitheness,
And with love intoxicated,
With thy love, mine own beloved.
And my heart no more is longing
After purple, after gew-gaws,
After what the others long for.
Happy am I in the clinking
Of the goblet filled with rich wine;
Happier still amidst sweet singing;
But my happiness were greatest,
Dared I press my kisses on a
Mouth, and that mouth only thine.
W. F. H.
The same idea is still more delicately expressed in the following
Servian ballad:
Proudly cried a golden orange
On the breezy shore:
“Certainly nowhere happiness
Is found to equal mine.”
Answered a green apple
From its apple tree:
“Fool to boast, golden orange,
On the breezy shore;
For happiness such as I’ve found,
Its like cannot be seen.”
Then said the breezy meadow,
As yet untouched by scythe:
“Too conceited, little apple,
That speech of thine, meseems,
For happiness such as I’ve found,
Its like cannot be seen.”
Then spake a lovely maiden,
Unsullied by a kiss:
“Thou pratest folly, grass-plot,
Instead of sooth, I ween,
For happiness such as I’ve found
Its like cannot be seen.”
But a handsome lad made answer
To every speech they made;
“You’re mad, all mad, to utter
Such words as I’ve just heard,
For no one in the universe
Can be so blest as I.”
“Golden orange by the breezy
Shore I pluck thee now.
Apple, from thy apple tree
To-day I’ll shake thee down.
Grass-plot, I’ll mow thee level
With my scythe-strokes to-day.
Maiden, as yet unsullied
To-day I’ll kiss thy lips.”
W. F. H.
In another Servian lay, the lover sings that he would rather kiss his
sweetheart than be the Sultan’s guest. In Spain the lover wishes he were
the water-cooler so that he might kiss his darling’s lips when she is
drinking:
Arcarrasa de tu casa,
Chiquiya, quisiera ser,
Para besarte los labios
Quando fueras á beber.
The Greeks say that the kiss is “the key to Paradise”; yea, it is
Paradise itself, declares Wergeland:
Nay, bride, thine embrace more than heav’n I prize;
Oh, kiss me once more that to heav’n I rise.
W. F. H.
The kiss is a preservation against every ill. “No ill-luck can betide me
when she bestows on me a kiss,” sings the old trouvère, Colin Muset:
Se de li ai un douz baisier
Ne me porroit nus mals venir.
It gives health and strength, adds Heine:
Yet could I kiss thee, O my soul,
Then straightway I should be made whole.
W. F. H.
It carries life with it; it even bestows the gift of eternal youth--if
one can believe the words of the Duke of Anhalt the minnesinger:
Your mouth is crimson; over its sweet portal
A kindly Genius seems for ever flowing.
If on that mouth a kiss I were bestowing,
Methinks I should in sooth become immortal.
W. F. H.
The Persians, too, had the same idea. The jovial Hafiz laments that
“sour wisdom added to old age and virtue” has laid waste his strength,
but a remedy is to be found for these:
“Come and drink,” the maiden whispered,
“Sin and sweetness, youthful folly,
Lovingly from lips of crimson,
From my bosom’s lily chalice,
And live on with strength redoubled.”
W. F. H.
And if a kiss is no good, then nought avails. In another passage the
same bard says, that were he suddenly on some occasion to feel himself
tormented by agony and unrest, no one is to give him bitter
medicine--for such he detests--but:
Hand me the foaming juice of the vine,
Jest and sing from your heart to mine,
And if these prove not a remedy sure,
Then a pair of red lips you must straight procure.
But if these latter avail not to save,
May I be laid deep down in the grave.
W. F. H.
In the case of lovers a kiss is everything; that is the reason why a man
stakes his all for a kiss. In _Enthousiasme_ Aarestrup says:
Ha, you’re blushing! What red roses
Deck your lips! A man were fain to,
If a chasm yawned before him,
Straightway peril life to gain you.
W. F. H.
And man craves for it as his noblest reward:
From beyond the high green mountains
Lamentations fraught with sadness
Issue, soft as from a girl’s voice.
Then a youth the sound pursueth,
And he sees a maiden shackled
Fast in fetters thick of roses.
Then the fair maid called unto him:
“Doughty youth, come here and help me;
I’ll be to you as a sister.”
But the youth straightway made answer:
“In my home I have a sister.”
“Doughty youth, come here and help me,
For a brother-in-law I’ll choose thee.”
Then the lad again made answer:
“In my home I have that title.”
“Come, young hero, and assist me,
And I’ll be thy heart’s belovèd.”
Quickly kissed he then the maiden
Ere he loosed her from her fetters,
Then went homeward with his bride.
W. F. H.
Thus runs a Servian ballad, and innumerable analogues to it are to be
found in the folk-lore of other countries, in ballads as well as tales.
It is, you know, for a kiss from the princess’s lovely mouth that the
swine-herd sells his wonderful pan.
But women are aware, too, of the witchery that dwells on their lips, and
the power that lies in their kiss. According to a remarkable _saga_
which forms the subject of one of Heine’s poems, King Harald Hårfager
sits at the bottom of the sea in captivity to a mermaid. The king’s head
is reposing on her bosom; but, suddenly, a violent tremor thrills him,
he hears the Viking shouts which reach him from above, he starts from
his dream of love and groans and sighs:
And then the King from the depth of his heart
Begins sobbing, and wailing, and sighing,
When quickly the water-fay over him bends,
With loving kisses replying.
Man is the slave of the kiss; by a kiss woman tames the fiercest man; by
means of a kiss man’s will becomes as wax. Our peasant girls in Denmark
know this, too, right well. When they want one of the lads to do them a
service they promise him “seven sweet kisses and a bit of white sugar on
Whitsunday morning.” “But he will get neither,” they say to themselves.
Now, as we have discussed the kiss and its importance as the direct
expression of love and erotic emotions, we will pass over to certain
more special aspects of its nature.
In the very first place, then, we have the quantitative conditions.
It is a matter of common knowledge that lovers are liberal in the
extreme in the question of kisses, which are given and taken to
infinity, and these have likewise continually the same intoxicating
freshness as at the first meeting. Everything in love is, you know, a
reiteration, and yet love is a perpetual renewing. How inspiriting are
the words of Tove to King Waldemar, as J. P. Jacobsen gives them:
And now I say for the first time:
“King Volmer, I love thee,”
And kiss thee now for the first time,
And fling mine arms round thee;
But should you say I’ve said this before,
And you to kisses are fain,
Then say I: “King, he’s but a fool
Who minds such trifles vain.”
W. F. H.
What has a love kiss to do with the law of renewal? That one does not
arrive at anything by _one_ kiss is expressed with sufficient plainness
in an Istro-Roumanian proverb: _Cu un trat busni nu se afla muliere_
(with a single kiss no woman is caught).
This maxim holds good besides in the case of both men and women. But how
many kisses are necessary then?
There is a little Greek folk-song called “All good things are three.” It
runs as follows:
Your first kiss brought me near to the grave,
Your second kiss came my life to save;
But if a third kiss you’ll bestow,
Not even death can bring me woe.
W. F. H.
But, nevertheless, we may assume without a shadow of a doubt that he was
not satisfied with these three kisses--lovers are not wont to be so
easily contented. The Spaniards and many other nations besides say of
lovers that “they eat each other up with kisses;” but more than three
are certainly required for that purpose:
Take this kiss and a thousand more, my darling,
W. F. H.
sings Aarestrup, but Catullus outbids him, however, in one of his songs
to Lesbia:
A thousand kisses; add five score:
Another thousand kisses more;
Then best forget them all,
Lest any wight with evil eye
Our too close counting might espy,
And dire mishap befall.[7]
W. F. H.
As we see, Catullus’ love has no trifling start over Aarestrup’s, and so
a later poet seems likewise to think that even his demands are quite
ridiculously small. “Nay,” says Joachim du Bellay to his Columbelle,
“give me as many kisses as there are flowers on the mead, seeds on the
field, and grapes in the vineyards, and so that you shall not deem me
ungrateful, I will immediately give you as many again.”
Du Bellay, moreover, bitterly upbraids the poet of Verona for asking for
so few kisses that they can, when taken together, be counted:
In truth Catullus’ wants are small,
And little can they really mean,
Since he could even count them all.
W. F. H.
I must, however, take Catullus’ part to a certain extent; he is not so
precise in his demands of Lesbia as Du Bellay makes out; in another poem
he asks her:
Thy kisses dost thou bid me count,
And tell thee, Lesbia, what amount
My rage for love and thee could tire,
And satisfy and cloy desire?
And the answer runs:
Many as grains of Libyan sand
Upon Cyrene’s spicy land
From prescient Ammon’s sultry dome
To sacred Battus’ ancient tomb;
Many as stars that silent ken
At night the stolen loves of men.
Yes, when the kisses thou shall kiss
Have reached a number vast as this,
Then may desire at length be stayed,
And e’en my madness be allayed:
Then when infinity defies
The calculations of the wise;
Nor evil voice’s deadly charm,
Can work the unknown number harm.
This being the case, it is a divine blessing that, according to the
Finnish saying, “the mouth is not torn by being kissed, nor the hand by
being squeezed”:
Suu ei kulu suudellessa,
Kāsi kāttā annellessa.
But even if the mouth is not exactly torn, yet much kissing may be
almost harmful; but there is only one remedy to be found for this--“you
must heal the hurts by fresh kisses.”
Dorat, who may be regarded as a high authority on philematology,
expressly says:
A second kiss can physic
The evil the first has wrought.
W. F. H.
And Heine, whose authority in these questions should hardly be inferior,
holds quite the same theory:
If you have kissed my lips quite sore,
Then kiss them whole again;
If we till evening meet no more,
Then hurry will be vain.
You have still yet the whole, whole night,
My dearest heart, know this:
One can in such a long, long night,
Kiss much and taste much bliss.
I make use of the last of the verses quoted as a transition to the next
question we have to investigate, viz., the qualitative aspect of
kissing, as I regard it apart from its merely gustative qualities, which
have already been considered.
The love kiss gleams like a cut diamond with a thousand hues; it is
eternally changing as the sun’s shimmer on the waves, and expresses the
most diverse states and moods, ranging from humble affection to burning
desire.
The love kiss “quenches the fire of the lips,” quells and stills longing
and desire, but it also burns and arouses regret. Margaret sits at her
spinning-wheel, and, in tremulous longing, calls to mind Faust’s ardent
kiss:
My peace is gone,
My heart is sore:
’Tis gone for ever
And evermore.
And the magic flow
Of his talk, the bliss
In the clasp of his hand,
And, oh, his kiss!
My bosom yearns
For him alone;
Ah, dared I clasp him,
And hold, and own!
And kiss his mouth,
To heart’s desire,
And on his kisses
At last expire!
Numberless poets have varied the theme of the quenching yet burning
kisses of love.
O’er me flows in streams delicious
Kisses’ rosy and glowing rain,
W. F. H.
sings Waldemar at his meeting with Tove, and Aarestrup laments:
In vain I’m seeking
In ev’ry land,
Thy sweetness burning
Of mouth and hand.
W. F. H.
This “burning sweetness” seems to be an indubitable characteristic of a
genuine love kiss; we even find it again in Heine:
The world’s an ass, the world can’t see,
Thy character not knowing,
It knows not how sweet thy kisses be,
How rapturously glowing.
The emotions consequent on the first kiss have been described in the old
_naïve_, but, nevertheless, exceedingly delicate love-story, of Daphnis
and Chloe. As a reward Chloe has bestowed a kiss on Daphnis--an innocent
young-maid’s kiss, but it has on him the effect of an electrical shock:
“Ye gods, what are my feelings. Her lips are softer than the rose’s
leaf, her mouth is sweet as honey, and her kiss inflicts on me more pain
than a bee’s sting. I have often kissed my kids, I have often kissed my
lambs, but never have I known aught like this. My pulse is beating fast,
my heart throbs, it is as if I were about to suffocate, yet,
nevertheless, I want to have another kiss. Strange, never-suspected
pain! Has Chloe, I wonder, drunk some poisonous draught ere she kissed
me? How comes it that she herself has not died of it?”
Impelled, as it were, by some irresistible force, Daphnis wanders back
to Chloe; he finds her asleep, but dares not awake her: “See how her
eyes slumber and her mouth breathes. The scent of apple-blossoms is not
so delicious as her breath. But I dare not kiss her. Her kiss stings me
to the heart, and drives me as mad as if I had eaten fresh honey.”
Daphnis’ fear of kisses disappears, however, later on, directly his
simplicity has made room for greater selfconsciousness. That a kiss is
like the sting of a bee, or pains like a wound, is a metaphor which many
poets have used, and the metaphor comes undoubtedly near the truth.
With growing passion, kisses become mad and violent:
Thy ruby lips, they kissed so wild,
So madly, so soul-disturbing;
W. F. H.
and such kisses leave marks behind them. Aarestrup’s mistress has
beautiful plump shoulders:
They curve, as of a goddess,
So naked and so bold.
I’ll brand your comely shoulders,
Such guerdon have they earned!
Look where my lips enfevered
Have scars of crimson burned.
W. F. H.
Hafiz’ mistress is afraid that “his too hot kisses will char her
delicate lips.” With continually increasing desire kisses grow more and
more voluptuous, and assume forms which have been celebrated by poets of
antiquity and the Renaissance. Many burning, erotic verses have been
composed on the subject _columbatim labra conserere_, or kissing as
doves kiss.
Kisses at last grow into bites. Mirabeau, in a love-letter to Sophie,
writes: “I am kissing you and biting you all over, _et jaloux de la
blancheur je te couvre de suçons_”; and the classic poets often speak of
the tiny red marks on cheeks or lips, neck or shoulders, which the
lovers’ _morsiunculæ_ have left behind.
Arethusa writes to Lycas: “What keeps you till now so long away from me?
Oh, suffer no young girl to print the mark of her teeth on your neck.”
The Italians use the expression _baciare co’ denti_ (kiss with the
teeth) to signify “to love.” We can only treat these kisses as a sort of
transitional link, of shorter or longer duration, according to
circumstances. They are, as it were, “a sea fraught with perils,” which
in Mlle. de Scudéry’s celebrated letter (_la carte de tendre_), carries
one to strange countries (_les terres inconnues_); but, as these
countries lie outside the regions of pure philematology, I shall not
pursue my investigations further. I will, however, first quote what old
Ovid has written, although I am not at all prepared to assert that his
opinion is entitled to have any special weight, more especially as it
is far from being unimpeachable from a moral point of view:
Oscula qui sumpsit, si non et cetera sumet,
Hæc quoque quæ data sunt perdere dignus erit.
Quantum defuerat pleno post oscula voto?
Heu mihi rusticitas, non pudor ille fuit.[8]
After the foregoing it would seem superfluous to enter into a closer
investigation of--if the term be allowed--the topographical aspects of
kissing. The love kiss is, as you are aware, properly directed towards
the mouth--a fact sufficiently known, and in testimony of which I have,
moreover, brought forward a number of passages from respectable and
trustworthy writers. I shall only add a German “Sinngedicht” of
Friedrich von Logau:
If you will kiss, then kiss the mouth,
All other sorts are but half blisses,
The face--ah, no--nor hand, neck, breast,
The mouth alone can give back kisses.
W. F. H.
Von Logau’s vindication of the mouth as the only place that ought to be
kissed is extremely logical, and, I take it, from a purely theoretical
point of view, unobjectionable; but, practically, the case is quite the
contrary. The royal _trouvère_, Thibaut de Champagne, treats in a
lengthy poem--one of the so-called _jeux-partis_--the question whether
one should kiss one’s mistress’s mouth or feet. Baudouin’s opinion is in
favour of kissing her on the mouth, and he gives his reasons for it at
some length; but Thibaut replies, that he who kisses his darling on the
mouth has no love for her, because that is the way one kisses any little
shepherdess one comes across; it is only by kissing her feet that a
lover shows his affection, and it is by such means alone that her favour
is to be won.
The question of feet or mouth is threshed out minutely by the two
contending parties, who at last agree in the opinion that one ought to
kiss both parts, beginning with the feet and ending with the mouth.
It cannot be denied that Thibaut de Champagne has a far better insight
into the matter than Von Logau, and yet even the old French poet’s point
of view must be characterised as being somewhat narrow.
All the other poets, you must know, teach us that not only the mouth,
but every part of our sweetheart’s body says, “Kiss me.”
Friends, if it only were my fate!
If fate would will it so,
I’d kiss her beauties small and great
From bosom down to toe.
W. F. H.
So sings Aarestrup, and he returns again and again to the same idea in
his _ritorneller_:
When scarce the mouth can longer feel such fooling,
Because thy lips are all too hotly burning,
Press them to bosom’s Alpine snows for cooling.
The arms so white and tender woo caresses;
A lovely pleasance, too, those plump white shoulders!
But through the soul a bosom-kiss straight presses.
Her snow-white shoulders! All what may be said on
Such beauty I have uttered. For my guerdon
Grant me one now to rest my weary head on.
At kisses pressed upon your neck’s fair closes
You thrilled and threw your head back, and I straightway
Planted upon your throat my kisses’ roses.
About my darling I am wheeling, flying,
Like to a gadfly round a lily’s chalice,
Buzzing until in nectar-cup mute dying.
W. F. H.
Allow me also to call your attention to a pretty little myth which Dorat
composed about a “kiss in the bosom’s Alpine snow.” The kiss is a fair
rose, and roses bloom everywhere in these tracks; through witchcraft two
vigorous rosebuds sprouted forth on woman’s white bosom:
Le bouton d’un beau sein est éclos du baiser;
Une rose y fleurit pour y marquer sa trace;
Fier de l’avoir fait naître, il aime à s’y fixer.
But if the object of one’s affection is not within reach, and _oscula
corporalia_ are, for that reason, practically impossible, her image may
be kissed, as a French song naïvely says:
I will make a portrait gay,
Like to thee, set in a locket;
Kiss it five score times a day
Guard it safely in my pocket.
W. F. H.
But if one is not fortunate enough to possess an image of the object of
one’s affection, then anything that has in any way been associated with,
or is reminiscent of, him or her may be kissed. Tovelille exults to King
Volmer:
For all my roses I’ve kissed to death
Whilst thinking, dear love, of thee.
W. F. H.
But F. Rückert sings with pain and mockery:
With fervour the hard stone I’m kissing,
For your heart is as hard as a stone.
W. F. H.
Such _oscula impropria_ are often mentioned by ancient as well as modern
poets. _Propertius_ (I. 16) says:
Ah, oft I’ve hither sped with verse to greet
Thee, leaning on thy steps with kisses pressed.
How often, traitress, turning towards the street,
I’ve laid in secret garlands on thy crest.
W. F. H.
Eighteen hundred years afterwards Dorat writes:
I kiss the kindly blades of grass
Because they have approached your charms:
The sands o’er which your footsteps pass,
And leafy boughs that stretched their arms
To hide our happiness, dear lass.
W. F. H.
Lovers often send each other kisses through the air, as in Béranger’s
well-known song on the detestable Spring:
We loved before we ever met;
Our kisses crossed athwart the air.
W. F. H.
But should the distance be too great for such a platonic interchange of
kisses, certain small, obliging _postillons d’amour_ are employed Heine
uses his poems for that purpose:
O would that all my verses
Were kisses light and sweet:
I’d send them all in secret
My sweetheart’s cheeks to greet.
While the young girl in Runeberg has recourse to a rose that has just
blossomed:
Through the grove amidst the blooming flow’rets
Walked the bonnie maiden unattended,
And she plucked a new-born rose, exclaiming:
‘Lovely flow’ret, if you’d only wings on,
I would send you to my well-belovèd
When I’d fastened just two tiny greetings
Lightly on your right wing and your left wing;
One should bid him cover you with kisses,
And the other send you back to me soon.’
W. F. H.
But however much poets may clothe with grace such kisses sent and
received by post--and it cannot be denied that many of them are
extraordinarily charming from a poetical point of view--they are, and
must be, nevertheless, in reality only certain mean substitutes with
which lovers in the long run cannot feel fully satisfied. “The kiss,”
says the practical Frenchmen, “is a fruit which one ought to pluck from
the tree itself” (_Le baiser est un fruit qu’il faut cueiller sur
l’arbre_). Kisses ought to be given, as they should be taken, in secret;
only in such case have they their full freshness, their intoxicating
power. Heine says of such:
Kisses that one steals in darkness,
And in darkness then returns--
How such kisses fire the spirit,
If with ardent love it burns!
No profane eyes should see them: they only concern the pair of
lovers--none other in the whole world. Secrecy and silence must rest
over these kisses, as over all else that regards the soul of love, so
that the butterfly’s wings may not lose their delicate down.
The strait-laced Cato degraded a senator of the name of Manilius for
having kissed his wife in broad daylight and in his daughter’s presence.
Plutarch, however, considers the punishment excessive, but adds: “How
disgusting it is in any case to kiss in the presence of third parties.”
Clement of Alexandria, one of the Fathers of the Church, endorses this
opinion, and exhorts all married people to refrain from kissing one
another before their servants.
All delicate-minded persons must undoubtedly sympathise with the
ancient ascetic conception in proportion as they unconsciously follow it
in practice. A kiss to or from a woman we love is a far too delicate
pledge of affection to bear the gaze of strangers.
How many engaged couples would, do you suppose, find favour in Cato’s
eyes? How often do they not by their behaviour offend the commonest
notions of decency? Their kisses and caresses, which ought to be their
secret possession, they expose quite unconcernedly to the sight of all.
One evening at a large party I saw a young girl ostentatiously kiss on
the mouth the gentleman to whom she was engaged. Cato would certainly
turn in his grave if he knew that such immodest behaviour was actually
tolerated by people of refinement and position; and how disgusted and
indignant he would be--unless, indeed, he preferred to smile--at the
sight of the duty-kisses after dinner, which are often exchanged between
man and wife at dinner-parties. Ah, yes, when the belly’s full ...! How
warranted is Kierkegaard’s satire on the conjugal domestic kiss with
which husband and wife, in lack of a napkin, wipe each other’s mouth
after meals. On the lips of youth alone you reap the sweetest harvests:
Sur les lèvres de la jeunesse
Tu fais les plus douces moissons.
(DORAT).
The young maiden will only give her love-kiss to her sweetheart, the
stalwart swain; an old suitor is spurned with scorn. The lovely Mara,
white and red, walked by the spring and tended her sheep:
See an old, old suitor comes riding up on horseback,
Shouting: “God’s peace be thine, fair Mara, white and red.
Tell me, canst thou offer me a draught of cold clear water;
Tell me, can the basil ever verdant here be gathered,
And may I snatch a kiss from thee, fair Mara, white and red?”
W. F. H.
But straightway comes the answer from fair Mara, white and red:
“I charge thee, old, old suitor, to horse and ride hence quickly,
No drink is here thy portion from the fountain cold and clear,
And the ever-verdant basil by thee shall not be gathered,
Nor durst thou snatch a kiss from me, fair Mara, white and red.”
W. F. H.
Again, fair Mara, white and red, walked by the spring and tended her
sheep:
See a young and handsome suitor comes riding up on horseback,
Shouting: “God’s peace be thine, fair Mara, white and red.
Tell me, canst thou offer me a draught of cold clear water;
Tell me, can the basil ever verdant here be gathered,
And may I snatch a kiss from thee, fair Mara, white and red?”
W. F. H.
But straightway comes the answer from fair Mara, white and red:
“I charge thee, handsome laddie, to horse and ride hence quickly,
Wouldst thou drink of this cool fountain, thou must hither
come some morning,
For cold and clear’s the water in the hours of early dawn.
Wouldst thou gather from the bushes, thou must hither come at mid-day,
For the flower-trees smell the sweetest about the noon-tide hour.
Wouldst thou kiss the beauteous Mara, then hither come at evening,
At evening sighs each maiden who finds herself alone.”
W. F. H.
In another Servian ballad we find the same glorification of the stalwart
young lover, the same contempt for, and detestation of, old men who go
a-wooing.
High upon a mountain’s slope once stood a maiden,
Mirroring her lovely image in the stream,
And her image in these words addressing:
‘Image fraught to me with so much sadness
Had I known a time was ever coming
When thou shouldst be kissed by agèd lover,
Then amidst the green hills I had wandered,
Gath’ring with my hands their bitter herbage,
Squeezing out of it its acrid juices,
Washed thee then therewith that thou should’st savour
Bitterly wheresoe’r the old man kissed thee.’
‘O my lovely image, had I known that
Thou wert fated for a young man’s kisses,
I had hurried to the verdant meadows,
Gathered all the roses in the meadows,
Squeezing from the roses their sweet juices,
Laved thee with them, O mine image, that thou
Savoured of fragrance wheresoe’r he kissed thee.’
W. F. H.
A kiss must be given and taken in frank, joyous affection. To have
recourse to violence is unknightly, unlovely, and despicable in the
highest degree. This is a sphere wherein the brutal axiom regarding the
right of the stronger can never hold good. An Albanian folk-song tells
us of a young man who is in search of a young maiden with whom he is in
love; he finds her at a brook, and, against her will, kisses her mouth
and cheeks. Filled with shame, the young maiden tries to wash away the
kisses in the brook, but its water is dyed red, and “when the women in
the neighbouring village come thither to wash their clothes, the latter
turn red instead of white. And, in the gardens watered with water from
the brook, scarlet flowers sprout up; and the birds which drank of the
water thereof lost their power of song.”
This ballad shows us, in burning words, how deeply a man outrages a
woman when he kisses her against the dictates of her heart. A Southern
imagination alone can find an expression so sublime and poetical: in
French it runs simply and frankly: _Un baiser n’est rien, quand le
cœur est muet_. In Teutonic countries it is expressed somewhat more
awkwardly. In Denmark people say: _Kys med gevalt er æg uden salt_ (a
kiss snatched by force is as an egg without salt); and in Germany still
less elegantly: _Ein aufgezwungener Kuss ist wie ein Hühneraug’ am Fuss_
(like a corn on one’s foot).
The question of kissing by main force can be treated not only from an
ethical, but also from a juristic point of view. Holberg relates that in
Naples the individual who kissed in the street a woman against her will
was punished by not being allowed to approach within thirty miles
distance of the spot where the outrage had taken place; and a German
jurist wrote in the end of the eighteenth century, a minute and
extremely solid treatise on the remedy that a woman has against a man
who kisses her against her will (_Von dem Rechte des Frauenzimmers gegen
eine Mannperson, die es wider seinen Willen küsset_). The author begins
by classifying kisses; he distinguishes between lawful and unlawful
kisses, and frames the following classification:--
Kisses are either
I.--LAWFUL,
_A._ As spiritual kisses.
_B._ As kisses of reconciliation and kisses of peace.
_C._ As customary kisses; partly,
_a._ By way of salutation.
1. At meeting.
2. On arrival.
3. At departure; partly,
_b._ As mark of courtesy.
_c._ In jest.
_D._ As kisses of respect.
_E._ As kisses on festive occasions.
_F._ As kisses of love:
α. Between married people.
β. Between such as are engaged to be married.
γ. Between parents and children.
δ. Between relations.
ε. Between intimate friends; or,
II.--UNLAWFUL, when they are given--
_A._ Out of treachery or malice.
_B._ Out of lust.
After this particularly happy attempt to reduce kissing to a system, our
jurist maintains the view that all depends on the person who kisses and
the person who is kissed.
If, for instance, a peasant or a vulgar citizen takes such a liberty as
to kiss a noble and high-born lady against her will, her claim against
the aggressor ought to be far greater than it would be in the case of
one of less ignoble descent; but, on the other hand, if Hans steals from
his Greta “an informal, hearty, rustic kiss,” and she complains to the
authorities about it, there will scarcely be any grounds for litigation.
On the whole, says he, a kiss between individuals of the same position
in society is not to be regarded as a tort, and he more closely defines
how he arrives at this conception. It can only be actionable in the case
of a party having some consciously unchaste intention when he kissed, or
in the case of an _osculum luxuriosum_ or _libidinosum_--in such cases
only can a verdict be brought in of what, according to Roman law, is
termed _crimen osculationis_, and in no other case can the wrong-doer be
punished by fine or imprisonment, _propter voluntatem perniciosæ
libidinis_. The punishment, however, should be proportioned in severity
according to the rank of the injured party. In the case of a nun or a
married woman it ought to be most severe; less severe if the lady be
unmarried but betrothed, and mildest when she is neither married nor
betrothed.
But if the unchaste intention cannot be distinctly proved, the woman has
no grounds for complaining of any sort, and, in accordance with the
procedure of the German courts, the kiss is to be considered innocent
till the contrary is proved.
Our jurist thus takes a really liberal view in the case of a “kiss taken
by force”; he may almost be said to regard it as _eine grosse
Kleinigkeit_ (an unimportant trifle).
With regard to the question of a woman’s right to defend herself in
such cases, he is of opinion that she is justified in repulsing the
insulter by a box on the ears, but only if the offence amounts to
_crimen osculationis_, and this box on the ears may not be inflicted
with “the fist of an Amazon,” as, by such requital, she easily loses her
right to take legal action in the matter. She must, above all, be
careful that the box on the ears be not excessive (_die Ohrfeige
proportionirlich einzukleiden_), as otherwise the man can bring an
action against her; consequently the woman ought to use her right of
self-defence with great caution.
Our jurist concludes with considerations of cases when the woman who has
been kissed forfeits all claims, viz., when, for instance, by look or
gestures she says, “I should like to see the man who would dare to kiss
me,” and, by such conduct, obviously exposes herself to the danger.
Holberg has also occupied himself with this question, and tells the
following story in one of his epistles (No. 199):--
“Last week I was at a party where a curious incident happened. A person
stole up to a lady and gave her a kiss unexpectedly. The Vestal virgin
took this _douceur_ in such ill part that, in her wrath, she gave him a
sound box on the ears. He gave a start, and every one expected he was
going to pay her back in the same coin; but, to show his respect for the
fair sex, he made a low bow, and kissed the very hand that had but
lately struck him. All present praised this act of courtesy, on his
part.” Holberg, on the contrary, does not commend the man’s politeness;
like the German jurist, he sees nothing wrong about a kiss--indeed, he
even goes so far as to say that the young man ought to have given the
maiden a box on the ears in return. This coarse way of looking at the
subject from a bachelor’s point of view is wittily defended in the
following rather startling way:
“I candidly confess that if anything of the kind had happened to me I
should have returned the good lady’s salutation in the same way, and
that not out of anger or desire of being revenged, but for the purpose
of showing the courtesy with which one ought to treat a woman; for
kissing the lady on the hand which has boxed his ears is equivalent to
saying: ‘As you are a feeble creature of no importance, and cannot hurt
me, your act deserves ridicule rather than revenge or rage.’ No
sensible woman can be pleased with such a compliment, as there is
nothing worse than being treated like a puppet; and I hope no maid or
matron will take this opinion of mine in ill part, but will rather
regard it as a proof of the justice I have always shown to women by
always taking them seriously. A kiss is nothing but a salutation, and
cannot be looked on as anything else. We are no longer living in the
golden age, when a young lady almost fainted at hearing the word
pronounced.”
English ladies regard the matter from quite another point of view. In
1837 Mr Thomas Saverland brought an action against Miss Caroline Newton,
who had bitten a piece out of his nose for his having tried to kiss her
by way of a joke. The defendant was acquitted, and the judge laid it
down that “when a man kisses a woman against her will she is fully
entitled to bite his nose, if she so pleases.”--“And eat it up, if she
has a fancy that way,” added a jocular barrister half aloud.
Let us next consider how the thing stands when it is apparently only a
question of a kiss snatched by force--for it is, you know, a matter of
general knowledge that a woman’s “No” is not always to be taken
seriously. The refusal may, you know, be merely feigned. The maiden’s
“No” is the swain’s “Yes,” Peder Syv teaches us, and Runeberg, who also
understood women, says:--
Ev’ry girl is fond of kisses,
Though she may pretend to scorn them.
W. F. H.
If one is now convinced that the German proverb which says: _Auf ein
Weibes Zunge ist Nein nicht Nein_ (On a woman’s tongue “no” is not
“no”), what then? Well, but how the point is to be finally settled is
not satisfactorily explained by the authorities within my reach; and
this is the reason why I dare not pronounce an opinion on the question
at issue. But I am convinced that the momentary difficulty will afford
the man the necessary diplomatic qualities as well as the requisite
tact. There is only one thing I can lay down for certain, viz., that if
a man follows his natural simplicity and reserve, and takes the girl’s
feigned “No” seriously, she will only laugh at him afterwards--such,
again, is woman’s nature.
A well-known French _chanson_ deals with a hunter who meets a young
girl out in the forest. Struck by her beauty, he wants to kiss her:
And takes her by her white hand,
Intending to caress her;
W. F. H.
but she begins to cry, and, moved by her tears, he releases her; but he
has hardly got clear of the wood before she begins to laugh at him
heartily, and in derision shouts after him: “When you’ve got hold of a
quail you ought to pluck it, and when you’ve got hold of a girl you
ought to embrace her”:
Quand vous teniez la caille,
Il fallait la plumer.
Quand vous teniez la fillette,
Il fallait l’embrasser.
I quote these verses, for they may possibly afford inexperienced young
men some matter for reflection.
Besides, a woman’s “No” has often a piquancy about it which lovers of a
somewhat more refined class set great store by. Even Martial (v. 46) has
expressed himself in favour of this in a little epigram which begins
thus:
While ev’ry joy I scorn, but that I snatch;
And me thy furies more than features catch.
And Marot, who was likewise much skilled in “_ars amandi_,” even begs
his mistress not to give him her kisses readily:
Mouth of coral, rare and bright,
That in kissing seems to bite;
Longed-for mouth, I pray you this:
Feign deny me when you kiss.
W. F. H.
Dorat has also expressed himself in favour of such. “Promise me nine
kisses,” says he to his Thais, “give me eight, and let me struggle for
the ninth.”
The first eight kisses you accord
Will crown my love’s felicity;
But I shall die in joy’s reward
If for the ninth a struggle be.
W. F. H.
Even if the answer is not a decided negative, yet it can, you know, be
couched in such equivocal words as to be tantamount to neither a
permission nor a refusal. Many girls agree with the Swedish song:
But “yes” ’s a word I will not say,
Nor will I either answer “nay.”
W. F. H.
There is a saying in Jutland that runs thus: “Maren, may I kiss
you?--Guess. You won’t then, I suppose?--Guess once more? You
will?--But how could you guess it then?” This tallies capitally with the
following German saying: “_Zwinge mich, so thu’ ich keine Sünde,” sagte
das Mädchen_ (“Constrain me, so that I shall not commit sin,” said the
maiden). Naturally in this case, there can be no question of any _crimen
osculationis_, for, as the jurists have it, _volenti non fit injuria_.
Let us finally examine all these kisses from an ethical standpoint. We
have all of us, you know, learnt from our earliest childhood that--
He who kisses maidens hath
A very naughty habit;
W. F. H.
and popular belief adds, by way of warning, that it causes sores on the
mouth. Ah, yes, that is certainly very true, but what becomes of our
childish lore in the main when we attain to somewhat riper age? Now,
only listen to the ballad about what happened in the case of the young
Serb, in spite of all he had learnt:
Here, so people told us,
Dwells a youth industrious,
Who from ancient volumes
Late and early studies.
As for books they tell us:
Don’t vault on the saddle,
Buckle not thy sword on,
Drink no wine that fuddles,
Never kiss a maiden.
But the young man harkens
Not to what they tell him:
Keenest sword he seizes,
Hottest wine he drinketh,
Fairest maids he kisses.
W. F. H.
When so learned a man as our Serb succumbs to the tempting kiss, what is
to be said then about all the rest who are less instructed? And let us
remember ere we sit in judgment on any one--and it ought to be regarded
as peculiarly extenuating circumstances--that a woman’s mouth is a
direct incentive to kissing, that it is formed, as you know, for that
purpose, asserts an old troubadour, and created to kiss and smile:--
And when I gazed upon her red mouth sweet,
To match whose charms not Jove himself were meet,
That mouth for laughter and for kisses framed,
I fell thereof so amorous straightway
That I lacked power to do aught or to say.
W. F. H.
The roguish mouth with the white teeth and the moist red,
delicately-shaped lips say to every man who is not made of marble,
“Kiss me, kiss me”:
Her fresh mouth’s playing
Seems ever saying
To kiss I am fain
Again, again.
W. F. H.
How human is Byron’s wish that all women had but one mouth so that he
might kiss them all at the same time:
That womankind had but one rosy mouth,
To kiss them all at once from north to south.
Runeberg has uttered a similar wish, and with a minute account of his
reasons:
I gaze on a bevy of damsels,
I’m gazing and gazing incessant,
The fairest of all I’ll be choosing,
And yet as to choice I’m uncertain;
For one has the brightest of bright eyes,
Another girl’s cheeks are more rosy,
A third one’s lips are the riper,
The fourth has a heart far more tender.
There isn’t a single maid lacking
A something that captures my senses.
There isn’t one there I’d say “no” to,
Oh, would I might kiss the whole bevy!
W. F. H.
Even an ecclesiastic such as Æneas Silvius Piccolomini, when wishing to
describe how beautiful and fascinating a young girl was, writes that
“no one could see her without being seized at once with a desire to kiss
her.” So as not to shock my readers, I may mention that he wrote this
before he was made Pope and assumed the name of Pius II.
It ought now to be taken as proved that women--beautiful women--and
kisses are of a piece. It is at the same time nature’s ordinance, and we
find it verified in all countries and in all ages. Odin himself says,
you know, in Hávamál, where he instructs mortals in the wisdom of life:
Ships are for voyages,
And shields for ward,
Sword-blades to smite,
And maids to kiss.
W. F. H.
And the Greeks sing: “Wine belongs to chestnuts, honey to nuts, and
kisses morning and night to young maids.”
I am inclined to assume that women also agree with this view; certainly
I have no positive enunciation to support my assumption, but I am able
to quote a German proverb which most assuredly points in this direction:
“_Ich kann das Küssen nicht leiden_,” _sagte das Mädchen_, “_wenn ich
nicht dabei bin_” (“I cannot bear kissing,” said the maiden, “when I am
not taking any part in it.”)
Now if, in spite of all I have quoted, some rigid moralist or other will
persist that kissing young maids is always a “bad” habit, and if,
peradventure, a still sterner moralist will maintain it is a sin into
the bargain, I should reply that, in any case, it is one of those sorts
of sin that are venial. The Pope himself will not refuse his absolution,
say the Italians, and they certainly ought to understand things in Rome.
“Kiss me,” runs an Italian folk-song, “the Pope will forgive you; kiss
me and I will kiss you, and the Pope will forgive us both.”
O bella figlia, o bella garzona,
Baciate me, chè il Papa vi perdona;
Baciate me, chè io bacerò vui,
Chè il Papa ci perdona tutti e dui.
If the Pope is so complaisant then, to be sure, a subordinate servant of
the Church such as Aarestrup’s Father Hugo may well say:
Child, a kiss is but a trifle,
If it’s only long and sweet.
W. F. H.
III
AFFECTIONATE KISSES
Seigneur, tu m’as donné les baisers de ma mère,
Je te bénis, Seigneur!
F. E. ADAM.
I bless thee, O Lord, for having given me my mother’s kisses.
CHAPTER III
AFFECTIONATE KISSES
A kiss can also express feelings from which the erotic element is
excluded--feelings that are consequently less ardent and longing, but,
most frequently, far deeper and more lasting.
A kiss is expressive of love in the widest and most comprehensive
meaning of the word, bringing a message of loyal affection, gratitude,
compassion, sympathy, intense joy, and profound sorrow. In the first
place a kiss is the expression of the deep and intense feeling which
knits parents to their offspring. At its entrance into the world the
little helpless infant is received by its father’s and mother’s warm
kiss. In the Middle Ages they kissed the new-born baby thrice in the
name of the Holy Trinity. And the parent’s kiss follows the child
through life. When Hector takes leave of his wife Andromache he lifts
his little son up into his arms, but the child is afraid of his father’s
helmet, “of the gleam of the copper and the nodding crest of
horse-hair.”
And from his brow
Hector the casque removed, and set it down,
All glittering, on the ground; then kissed his child,
And danced him in his arms.[9]
The Evangelist Luke tells the story of the Prodigal Son’s return home.
“But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had
compassion, and ran and fell on his neck, and kissed him.”
The parent’s kiss is like the good angel which shields the child from
all evil. When Johannes in Sören Kierkegaard’s _Forførerens dagbog_
would describe the impression made on him by Cordelia he says, “She
looked so young and fresh, as if nature like a tender and opulent mother
had that very instant released her from her hand,” and he goes on to
say: “It seemed to me as if I had been witness to this farewell scene; I
marked how the loving mother once again embraced her and bade her
farewell; I heard her say: ’Go out into the world now, my child; I have
done all for you. Now take this kiss as a seal upon your lips; ’tis a
seal the sanctuary preserves; no one can break it against your own will,
but when the right man comes, you shall understand him.’ And she presses
a kiss on her lips--a kiss which, not like a human kiss, takes aught,
but a divine kiss that gives all.” The chaste purity, which is
Cordelia’s halo and protection, is, as it were, the reflection of a
mother’s kiss.
It is for this reason also that in the _sagas_ a quite irresistible
power is attributed to the parent’s kiss. When Vildering, the king’s
son, quits Maid Miseri and journeys alone to his parents to tell them
what has befallen him, she implores him to be especially careful not to
let his parents kiss him, “for should that happen, you will forget me
utterly.” In spite of his caution his mother kisses him, and oblivion
covers the past; he forgets his betrothed, who is sitting and waiting
for him in the depths of the forest.
Kisses of affection are exchanged not only between parents and children,
but between all the members of the same family; we find them even
outside the more narrow family circle, everywhere where deep affection
unites people.
When Naomi bade her son’s wife farewell, “they lifted up their voice and
wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law; but Ruth clave unto
her.” When Moses went to meet his father-in-law, “he did obeisance and
kissed him; and they asked each other of their welfare; and they came
into the tent;” and when Jacob had wrestled with the Lord he met Esau,
ran towards him, fell on his neck and kissed him.
The family kiss was also much in vogue with the Romans. Propertius, in
one of his elegies, chides his mistress for inventing quite _ad libitum_
a whole crowd of relations so as always to have at hand some one to kiss
her. This is how that came to pass: In ancient times there was a
so-called _jus osculi_, which allowed all a woman’s relations to kiss
her. There are several curious stories about this peculiar privilege.
The old traditions, which have been solemnly discussed by several
writers, relate that once upon a time women were forbidden to drink
wine; the above-mentioned law must have been instituted so that the
parties concerned should, in a pleasant and practical way, be able to
satisfy themselves about observing the prohibition. This highly
improbable explanation has been defended in a thesis for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy even in the eighteenth century.
The kiss of affection is often mentioned by the early Greeks. Odysseus,
on reaching his home, meets his faithful shepherds, discloses his
identity to them, and shows them, as a certain proof, the cicatrix of a
wound that he had on one occasion received when out hunting:
“But come, another token most manifest will I show,
That the truth in your souls may be strengthened, and my very
self ye may know.
Lo the scar of the hurt, which the wood-boar with his white
tooth drave on a tide,
When with Autolycus’ children I sought Parnassus’ side!”[10]
So saying, the rags about him from the mighty weal he drew,
And they twain looked upon it, and all the tale they knew;
And they wept, and o’er wise Odysseus they cast their hands, they twain,
And kissed his head and his shoulders, and loved him and were fain.[11]
In the same hearty manner the shepherd Eumæus received Odysseus’ son on
the latter’s return from his journey, and lucky escape from the
treacherous plot of the suitors:
And on the head he kissed him, and both his eyes so fair,
And both his hands, moreover, and he shed a mighty tear;
And e’en as a loving father makes much of his dear son,
Who has come from an alien country where the tenth long year is done,
His only son and darling for whom he hath travailed sore,
E’en so the goodly swineherd now kisseth him o’er and o’er
Telemachus the godlike, as one escaped from death.[A]
He gets the same reception from his old nurse and his mother:
But the nurse, e’en Euryclea, beheld him first of all
As the fleecy fells she was spreading o’er the painted seats of the hall,
And, weeping, went straight toward him; and the other maids thereto
Of Odysseus hardy-hearted, all round about him drew,
And they kissed him and caressed him, his shoulders and his head.[12]
* * * * *
Then Penelope the wise-heart from her chamber forth she sped,
Like to golden Aphrodite or Artemis the fair,
And she cast her arms amidst weeping round her son beloved and dear;
And therewithal she kissed him, his head and his lovely eyes.[13]
We have another famous scene of recognition, but of far later date, in
the old French epic of Girart de Roussillon. Girart, after many years’
absence, returns in poverty and sickness to France. He presents himself
to the queen, who recognises him by means of a ring, and, “although it
was Good Friday, she fell on Girart’s neck and kissed him seven times.”
It would perhaps be superfluous to quote more instances of the kisses of
affection. We meet with it in all ages in grave and solemn moments, not
only among those who love each other, but also as an expression of
profound gratitude. When the Apostle Paul took leave of the elders of
the congregation at Ephesus, “they all wept sore, and fell on Paul’s
neck and kissed him” (Acts xx. 37).
When De Malesherbes had solicited for himself the perilous honour of
undertaking the defence of Louis XVI., that monarch got up and, in
order to show his gratitude, kissed him publicly.
Even among persons who are utter strangers to each other, kisses such as
these may be exchanged. The profoundest sympathy with, the warmest
interest in, another’s weal or woe can be instantly created.
The story of Ingeborg Vinding and Poul Vendelbo Løvenørn is well known.
H. P. Giessing relates it, just as he heard it, in the following form:
Poul Vendelbo, the poor student, went one day on the ramparts round
Copenhagen, and walked with two rich noblemen who, like himself, had
matriculated at the university from Horsen’s School. They happened to
notice a singularly beautiful woman sitting at the window of one of the
adjacent houses. One of the noblemen then said half-mockingly to
Vendelbo, “Now, if you could get a kiss from that lady, Poul, we would
defray the expenses of that tour abroad which you are so anxious to
make.” Vendelbo took him at his word, went up to the beautiful lady, and
told her how his whole future possibly depended on her. She then drew
him towards the window, and, in the view of the nobleman, gave him the
kiss he craved. He went abroad, and, returning at last as
Adjutant-General Løvenørn, paid the fair lady a visit. She was none
other than Ingeborg Vinding.
This is the anecdote, equally characteristic of both parties, that Carl
Ploug has so prettily treated in his poem _Et Kys_ (A Kiss).
The professor’s daughter is sitting alone in the sitting-room, and
“humming a song she has learnt by heart.” Then some one knocks at the
door, and in steps young Poul with his audacious request; first she will
refuse him indignantly:
Ere yet a word she uttered
She raised her eyes again.
Their angry flash should wither
That overbold young swain.
But, ah, he stood so quiet,
With such a modest grace,
With features stamped with honour,
And such a noble face.
Once more the maiden’s glances
Looked down, their anger dead,
And with a blush delicious
She spoke him fair instead.
“‘Twas wrong indeed, I take it,
That you should boldly dare
Address a well-born maiden
By stealth with such a prayer.
“But if your looks belie not,
You good and noble are,
And so your path to fortune
I should be loth to mar.”
Then by the hand she leads him
To where the window is,
She blushes and she trembles;
They interchange a kiss.
W. F. H.
It would be superfluous to say more about this poem, which I suppose is
the most popular of Ploug’s essays in epic narrative. How far the
anecdote is historical is uncertain; but with the knowledge we have of
his and her character it cannot, in any case, be regarded as improbable.
Ploug may thus be right when he says:
A kiss has with its gentle flame
Once kindled honour’s beacon high;
A kiss has given Denmark’s fame
A hero’s name that shall not die.
W. F. H.
In early French literature there is a story somewhat akin to this; it
occurs in the old miracle play of “_La Marquise de la Gaudine_.” In her
husband’s absence she has been falsely accused of adultery and thrown
into prison. Nobody dares to undertake her defence when, suddenly, a
knight named Anthenor steps up and offers, with sword in hand, to
undertake the defence of her innocence, having a long time back owed her
a deep debt of gratitude for having, on one occasion, saved his life by
a kiss. He himself tells us naïvely and ingenuously how it happened:
“Once upon a time I found myself, as you are aware, in peril of death;
the king suspected me and believed I aspired to his wife’s favour. Ah,
this was not the case at all, you know. But one day he said he would
believe me if I divulged to him who my sweetheart was. I did not know
what to do, and to save my life I said that the _marquise_ was my
_amie_. He was not, however, content with this, but, as a proof,
demanded that I should take her by the waist in his presence and ask her
for a kiss. She gave it me and thus saved me from the snare the king had
laid. I shall never be able to repay her for what she has done for me.”
The kiss of affection is also bestowed on some person or thing that
excites detestation and abhorrence.
The legends of St Martin tell us how, on coming one day to Lutetia,
followed by a great crowd of people, he caught sight of a leper at the
gate of the city, who was so terrible an object to look at that
everybody turned away from him with loathing. To give those who followed
him a lesson in Christian charity, he went up to the poor sick man,
kissed and blessed him, and on the following morning the latter was
cured as by a miracle.
It is just through overcoming oneself in respect to that which is
intrinsically foul and repugnant that this kiss gets its high
significance and dignity. St Francis of Assisi had bidden farewell to an
existence of luxury, bestowed his wealth on the necessitous, and lived
the life of a beggar, but his conversion was still incomplete; he did
not become ripe for his great work of charity until he had overcome his
repugnance to the leprous. One day, when out riding, he met one of these
wretched sufferers, whose whole body was like a great open wound, and he
reined his horse aside in disgust; but shame overtook him at once, he
leapt off his horse, spoke kindly to the sick man, gave him what money
he had, and kissed both his hands. Such is the account given by the
historical chronicles, but the legend goes on to say that the leper
immediately afterwards vanished: it was Christ Himself who wished, in
this wise, to bestow His benediction on the noble and beautiful life’s
work of the saint.
The kiss of affection also plays an important part in folk-poetry; that
alone has power to cast off spells, that alone breaks all the bonds of
witchcraft and sorcery, and is able to restore man to his original
shape.
In the Scotch ballad of Kempion we are told how the Earl of
Estmereland’s daughter is persecuted by her wicked stepmother, who at
last by magic arts changes her into a snake:
Cum heir, cum heir, ye freely feed
And lay your head low on my knee;
The heaviest weird I will you read,
That ever was read to gay ladye.
O meikle dolour sall ye dree,
And aye the salt seas o’er ye’se swim;
And far mair dolour sall ye dree,
On Estmere crags, when ye them climb.
“I weired ye to a fiery beast,
And relieved sall ye never be,
Till Kempion, the king’s son,
Cum to the crag, and thrice kiss thee.”
O meikle dolour did she dree,
And aye the salt seas o’er she swam;
And far mair dolour did she dree
On Estmere crags, when she them clamb.
And aye she cried for Kempion,
Gin he would but come to her hand.
At last Kempion hears her voice, and straightway rows towards the foot
of the mountain:
Out of my stythe I winna rise,
* * * * *
Till Kempion, the king’s son,
Cum to the crag, and thrice kiss me;
implores the snake; but Kempion dares not. The snake coils in and out,
and the mountain is aflame; at last Kempion summons all his courage:
He’s louted him o’er the lofty crag,
And he has given her kisses three;
Awa she gaed, and again she cam,
The loveliest ladye e’er could be!
The same subject is found in the ballads of other countries. In the
Danish _Jomfruen i ormeham_ the young maiden has been changed into a
little snake, compelled to wriggle in the grass. However, the knight
Jennus comes:
It was the brave knight Jennus;
Forth to the greenwood he hies.
As o’er the grass he rideth,
A little snake he espies.
It was the brave knight Jennus;
Over his saddle he lay.
He kissed the little serpent;
A maiden it turned straightway.
It was the brave knight Jennus;
Troth to the maid he did plight.
He bade them keep his wedding
For both with much delight.
W. F. H.
In another ballad the maiden has been turned by her stepmother into a
lime-tree, and makes her moan:
She changed me into a lime-tree, and
She bade me e’en in the greenwood stand.
She bade me stand and hope for no bote,
Until a king’s son should kiss my root.
Here have I tarried for years full five,
Nor kissed me has any king’s son alive.
Here have I tarried for years now ten,
Nor has a king’s son kissed me since then.
W. F. H.
But at last the hour of her freedom arrives; the king’s daughter has
heard the lime-tree’s lamentation, and she sends a message to her
brother, who comes at once:
He hoisted his silken sail of red,
And o’er the salt sea on he sped.
The knight on his back a red cloak threw,
And fared to the lime-tree without ado.
He kissed himself the lime-tree’s feet,
Which straight became a maiden sweet.
W. F. H.
Corresponding poetical stories of the redeeming power of the kiss are to
be found in the literature of many countries, especially, for example,
in the Old French Arthurian romances (_Lancelot_, _Guiglain_, _Tirant le
blanc_) in which the princess is changed by evil arts into a dreadful
dragon, and can only resume her human shape in the case of a knight
being brave enough to kiss her. This kiss is called _le fier baiser_.
From French the subject migrated to Italian literature, in which it was
taken up and made use of first in _Carduino_, later on in Boiardo’s
_Orlando innamorato_. The hero, after many perilous adventures, reaches
an enchanted castle where a young and beautiful maiden is sitting by a
tomb. She tells him she can be released if he will venture to lift the
stone from the tomb and kiss what then appears. Without giving it a
second thought, the knight opens the tomb, and a horrible serpent with
hissing tongue and venomous breath darts forth. Trembling with fear, he
fulfils his promise, and that very instant the monster is transformed
into a lovely fairy who overwhelms her benefactor with recompenses. This
_motif_ formed the subject of a drama in the last century by Gozzi in
_La donna serpente: fiaba teatrale tragicomica_.
Finally many folk-stories on this subject may be quoted. In the tale of
“Beauty and the Beast,” the transformed prince begged the young maiden
he had carried off on his back for a kiss. “No,” answered she, “how
could I kiss you who are so ugly and have seven horns on your forehead?”
Then the beast went its way, and she saw it no more till one day she
found it lying dead under a bush in the garden, whereupon she wept as
she had never wept before, and cast herself down on the beast and kissed
it. Then it returned to life, and the ugly beast became the handsomest
prince her eyes could see. He then told her that he had been bewitched
by a wicked fairy, and could not be delivered unless a maid fell in love
with him and kissed him, despite his ugliness.
In this case the kiss redeems from death, and likewise death itself is
nothing more than a great kiss of affection. When a human being quits
this earthly life it is God who takes His child in His arms, kisses it,
and carries it away from earth to brighter and more blissful spheres.
This highly poetical and beautiful conception of death has found
expression in Italian, where, instead of the word “die,” one can say,
“fall asleep in the Lord’s kiss” (_addormentarsi nel bacio del
Signore_). And this has got flesh and blood in an old legend of the
saints, where it is told of St Monica that, as she lay dying on her
couch, a little child whom nobody knew came and kissed her on her
breast, and straightway, as if the child had called her, she bowed her
head and breathed forth her last sigh.
The kiss of affection follows man even after death; with a kiss one
takes leave of the lifeless body.
In Genesis we read that when Jacob was dead, “Joseph fell upon his
father’s face and wept upon him and kissed him”; and it is told of Abu
Bekr, Mahomet’s first disciple, father-in-law, and successor, that, when
the prophet was dead, he went into the latter’s tent, uncovered his
face, and kissed him.
In the curious poem of _Ebbe Tygesøns dödsridt_, when the knight’s horse
carries his corpse back to his betrothed, it is said:
She lifted up his gory head,
And raised it to her lips to kiss;
She swooned away, and fell back dead,
In very sooth, as she did this.
W. F. H.
In ancient times lovers always demanded of each other this act of love.
“When the alabaster box, filled with Syrian perfume, has been poured out
over my dead body, then do thou, O Cynthia, press thy last kisses on my
cold lips,” sings Propertius in one of his elegies:
Osculaque in gelidis pones suprema labellis,
Cum dabitur Syrio munere plenus onyx.
_Propertius_ iii. 4, 29, 30.
And the same wish is expressed by Tibullus (I., i. 61, 62):
Flebis et arsuro positum me, Delia, lecto,
Tristibus et lacrymis oscula mixta dabis.
“You’ll weep for me, dear Delia, ere flames have caught my bier,
And mingle with your kisses full many a bitter tear.”
W. F. H.
The death-kiss is something so natural that it is superfluous to point
out its existence amongst different nations. It was not only a mark of
love, but it was also an article of belief that the soul might be
detained for a brief while by such a kiss. Ovid, in his _Tristia_,
laments over his joyless existence in Tomis, whither Augustus had
banished him, and is in despair because, when the hour of death
approaches, he will not have his beloved wife by his side to detain his
fleeting spirit by her kisses mingled with tears.
The kiss is the last tender proof of love bestowed on one we have loved,
and was believed, in ancient times, to follow mankind to the nether
world. Even in our own days, popular belief in many places demands that
the nearest relative shall kiss the corpses forehead ere the coffin lid
is screwed down; in certain parts, indeed, it is incumbent on every one
who sees a dead body to kiss it, otherwise he will get no peace for the
dead.
IV
THE KISS OF PEACE
Salute invicem in osculo sancto.
_Pauli Epist. ad Romanos_, xvi. 16.
Salute one another with an holy kiss.
CHAPTER IV
THE KISS OF PEACE
The kiss, as expressive of deep, spiritual love, also came to figure in
the primitive Christian Church.
Christ has said: “Peace be with you, my peace I give you,” and the
members of Christ’s Church gave each other peace symbolically through a
kiss. St Paul repeatedly speaks of the “holy kiss” (ϕίλημα ἄγιον), and,
in his Epistle to the Romans, writes: “Salute one another with an holy
kiss”; and he reiterates this exhortation in both his Epistles to the
Corinthians (1, xvi. 20, and 2, xiii. 12), and his first Epistle to the
Thessalonians (v. 26), wherein he says: “Greet all the brethren with an
holy kiss.”
The holy kiss has gradually found admission into the ritual of the
Church, and was imparted on occasions of particular solemnity, such as
baptism, marriage, confession, ordination, obsequies, etc., etc. At a
wedding the ceremony was as follows: On the conclusion of High Mass and
after the _Agnus Dei_ had been chanted, the bridegroom went up to the
altar and received the kiss of peace from the priest. After this he
returned to his wife, and gave her the priest’s kiss of peace at the
foot of the crucifix. Reminiscences of this rite still survive in
several churches in England.
The holy kiss played an important part even at the Mass; in the Greek
Church it was imparted before, in the Roman Catholic Church after, the
consecration of the elements. The priest kissed the penitent, and
through this kiss gave him peace; this was the true kiss of peace
(_osculum pacis_). We have a peculiar memorial of this in Old Irish,
where the word _pōc_, which is derived from the Latin _pax_, means
“kiss,”--not “peace.” This change of meaning must, I suppose, be
attributed partly to a misunderstanding of the priest’s words when he
kissed the penitent: _Pacem do tibi_ (Peace I give unto thee), _i.e._,
people understood the kiss as the chief thing, and thought _pacem_
referred to that. The same peculiarity is again to be met with in
mediæval Spanish, where _paz_ has also the meaning of “kiss.” In an
ancient romance which relates how Fernando dubbed the Cid a knight, it
says at the end, “He buckled a sword on his waist, and gave him ‘peace’
(_i.e._, a kiss) on the mouth”:
El rey le ciñó la espada
Paz en la boca le ha dado.
The holy kiss occurs even in the early Christian love-feasts, the
so-called ἀγαπαί, and indeed was often exchanged in the church itself by
all the faithful without regard to sex, which gave the heathen cause for
scandal, and its use was restricted so that only men kissed men, and
women, women.
The kiss of peace was in vogue in France down to the thirteenth century.
We find it in the story about a very unpleasant incident to which Queen
Margaret, the wife of St Louis, was exposed. One day when she was in
church and the kiss of peace was to be imparted, she saw close beside
her a woman in splendid apparel, and taking the latter to be a lady of
rank, she gave her the kiss of peace. It turned out, however, that the
queen had made a mistake; she had kissed one of the common courtesans
who always swarmed about the Court. She then complained to the king, the
consequence of which was that certain ordinances were drawn up with
respect to the dress of women of that class, in order to render all
confusion with respectable women henceforward impossible.
The kiss of peace in the churches seems to have been abolished in the
latter part of the Middle Ages, at different times in different
countries.
In the middle of the thirteenth century a special instrument for
conveying the kiss was introduced into England--the so-called
_osculatorium_ or _tabella pacis_, which was composed of a metal disc
with a holy picture, and was passed round the church to be kissed.
From the English Church the osculatory was gradually introduced into
other churches, but nowhere does it appear to have contrived to rejoice
in any particularly long stay. In various ways it gave occasion to
scandal.
It was provocative of contention and strife in the church itself, when
people of position quarrelled violently as to whom the honour belonged
of kissing it first. Contentions as to precedence at church are, as we
see, of long standing.
It seems also to have served as a sort of profane intermediary between
lovers. When a young and beautiful girl kissed it she had close beside
her a fine young fellow who waited impatiently to take it directly from
her hand and lips. We read in one of Marot’s poems:
I told the maid that she was fair;
I’ve kissed the Pax just after her.
W. F. H.
Through the use of the osculatory, the well-known custom of gallants
such as, from the Greek romances and Ovid, existed in ancient times, was
revived--Huet calls it _elegans urbanitatis genus_--when the lover drank
out of the goblet from the very place which the beloved one’s lips had
touched. Formerly a sort of _pax_ was employed even in Danish churches.
The Catholic priests showed the people “a picture in a book” (of course
the picture of some saint), and this picture was kissed by the
congregation; for which purpose a small fee termed “kiss-money” or
“book-money” was handed to the parish clerk.
Even after the use of the _pax_ had been abolished by the Reformation,
the “book-money,” as a customary due to the clerk, was retained. But at
a congress at Roskilde in 1565, parish clerks were forbidden to demand
this fee.
The holy kiss is still imparted in the Greek Church on Easter Sunday;
all the faithful greet each other in church with kisses, and the words,
“Christ is risen,” the reply to which being, “Verily, He hath risen.” In
the Roman Catholic liturgy this usage has been confined to certain
masses, and the holy kiss is only exchanged among the clergy, not among
the members of the congregation. First, the bishop and archdeacon kiss
the altar, then the archdeacon kneels down and the bishop gives him the
kiss of peace with the words: _Pax tibi, frater, et ecclesiæ sanctæ Dei_
(Peace be with thee, brother, and with God’s Holy Church). The
archdeacon answers: _Et cum spiritu tuo_ (And with thy spirit), after
which he gets up, genuflects towards the altar, and carries the kiss of
peace to the chief canon, whom he kisses on the left cheek with the
words _pax tibi_, and thus it is sent round to all the officiating
clergy with many different ceremonies.
The holy kiss soon spread beyond the walls of the church, and came into
usage even in secular festivities. Thus, during the Middle Ages, it was
the custom to seal the reconciliation and pacification of enemies by a
kiss. The old German poets mention such a kiss under the name of
“Vredekuss,” and so widespread was the custom of the kiss of
reconciliation, that the verb _at sone_, or _udsone_, got the meaning of
“to kiss.” _Sônen_ has still this meaning in Frisian.
In an old French miracle-play St Bernard of Clairvaux says to Count
William and the Bishop of Poitiers, who had had a long-standing feud
with each other, and between whom he had managed to make peace: “In
order to show that your friendship is true and sincere, you must kiss
each other.” Count William then goes up to the bishop, saying: “My lord,
I crave your forgiveness for the wrong I have inflicted on you; I have
erred greatly towards you. Kiss me now to seal our peace, and I will
kiss you with loyal heart.”
Even knights gave each other the kiss of peace before proceeding to the
combat, and forgave one another all real or imaginary wrongs.
In _Covenant Vivien_, Vivien exchanges the kiss of peace with Girart and
six other illustrious warriors before the great fight with King Desramé
begins.
Manzoni has made use of the kiss of peace in the pathetic scene in _I
promessi Sposi_ (The Betrothed), when Fra Cristoforo obtains forgiveness
from the nobleman whose son he has slain. The nobleman receives the monk
in his palace. Surrounded by all his relations, he stands in the middle
of his great hall, with left hand on his sword-hilt, whilst with his
right he holds a flap of his cloak pressed against his chest. Cold and
stern, he gazes contemptuously and with suppressed wrath at the novice
as he enters, but the latter exhibits such touching remorse and noble
humility that the nobleman, there and then, abandons his stiffness. He
raises up the kneeling brother himself, grants him his forgiveness, and,
finally, “carried away by the emotion that prevailed, he threw his arms
round the latter’s neck, and gave and received the kiss of peace.”
After the Middle Ages the kiss of peace disappears altogether as the
official token of reconciliation; solitary instances, indeed, can
certainly be quoted from Catherine of Medici’s Court, but they are
rather to be regarded as studied efforts to re-introduce an old and
abandoned usage. After the murder of Francis de Guise in 1563, his widow
and brother meet Admiral de Coligny; the latter swore that he had not
the least suspicion of the assassin’s plot, whereupon they kiss each
other, and mutually promise to forget all enmities, and henceforward to
live in peace and harmony. This kiss of peace was as powerless to revive
the old custom as Lamourette’s memorable attempt at the time of the
Revolution. On the 7th July 1792, when the quarrel amongst the members
of the Legislative Assembly had reached a terrible height, at the time
when the Austrian and Prussian armies were marching on Paris, Lamourette
got up and made a fervent patriotic speech, in which, in the most moving
terms, he exhorted all the members of the Assembly to sink their
differences. He finished by saying: “Let us forget all dissension and
swear everlasting fraternity”--_et jurons-nous fraternité éternelle_,
and the deputies at once fell into each others arms, and in a universal
kiss of reconciliation every one forgave each other’s wrongs. But this
unity did not last long. The quarrels began again the following day, and
two years afterwards Lamourette himself died by the guillotine; but the
expression, a kiss of Lamourette--_un baiser de Lamourette_--still
survives in the French language as a half ironical term for a
short-lived reconciliation.
V
THE KISS OF RESPECT
Les rois des nations, devant toi prosternés,
De tes pieds baisent la poussière.
RACINE--_Athalie._
The kings of the Gentiles, prostrate before thee, kiss the dust of thy
feet.
CHAPTER V
THE KISS OF RESPECT
Margaret of Scotland, who was betrothed to Charles the Seventh’s son,
the Dauphin Louis (afterwards Louis XI.), one day walked through a hall
where Alain Chartier was sitting asleep in a chair. On perceiving the
sleeping poet, she went up to him and kissed him on the lips. Many of
her suite were astonished at this, “for nature had, so far as Chartier
was concerned, suffered a beautiful and rich mind to take up its abode
in an ugly body.” The princess replied that they were not to marvel at
what she had done, for it was not the man she had kissed, but the mouth
from which so many golden words had proceeded. Margaret’s kiss was
therefore an expression of the respect she had for the poet, and the
admiration and regard inspired by his poetical genius. A little further
back in the Middle Ages we meet with another striking instance of a
kiss as expressive of veneration; but this kiss is of a more humble
nature. We are told that, when the Emperor Otto I. had taken leave of
his pious mother in the church attached to a monastery, the latter
followed him with her eyes as long as she could, and then returned to
the church and kissed the place whereon his feet had stood.
The kiss of veneration is of ancient origin; from the remotest times we
find it applied to all that is holy, noble, and worshipful--to the gods,
their statues, temples, and altars, as well as to kings and emperors;
out of reverence, people even kissed the ground, and both sun and moon
were greeted with kisses.
In the first book of Kings God says to Elijah: “Yet I have left me seven
thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and
every mouth which hath not kissed him” (xix. 18).
In the thirty-first chapter of Job, Job extols his own piety: “If I
beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness; and my
heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand” (26,
27). Here, undoubtedly, allusion is made to the kissing of hands
whereby the heathen were wont to salute the heavenly bodies.
When the prophet Hosea laments over the idolatry of the children of
Israel, he says that they make molten images of calves and kiss them.
Even in remote classical times a similar homage was paid to the gods;
people kissed the hands, knees, and feet, even the mouths, of their
idols. Cicero informs us, in one of his speeches against Verres, that
the lips and beard of the famous statue of Hercules at Agrigentum were
worn away by the kisses of devotees.
Bayle tells us, in reference to this passage, that a physician was asked
one day why it was that a bronze face could, in this manner, be worn
away through being kissed, whereas, on the other hand, kisses did not
leave the slightest trace on the countenance of the most fashionable
courtesan. His answer was that the reason, he supposed, was that statues
were kissed for centuries, but that the woman in question was only
kissed for a very few years, viz., so long as her beauty lasted. This
explanation was, however, considered unsatisfactory, and the physician’s
attention was called to the fact that soft flesh must be far sooner
worn away than hard bronze; besides, lover’s kisses being considerably
more violent than those of mere respect. The physician then urged
another reason, viz., that which kisses wear away from bronze lips is
lost for ever, but that which is worn away from living lips is
immediately replaced by renewal of tissue in the body.
The kiss of veneration came to play a very important part in Christian
society. St Luke the Evangelist tells us that when Christ sat at meat in
the Pharisee’s house there came a woman who had been a great sinner,
bringing with her a vase of ointment. “And stood at his feet behind him
weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with
the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the
ointment” (vii. 38). When the Pharisee wondered at His having allowed
such a woman to touch Him, He rebuked him by the parable of the two
debtors, and added, “Thou gavest me no kiss, but this woman since the
time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou
didst not anoint, but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment.”
Again in the Psalms, “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from
the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they
that put their trust in him.”
C. H. Spurgeon used these lines as the text of a sermon he preached in
the “Music Hall,” London, on the 3rd of July 1859, in which he did his
utmost to make his congregation understand what is meant by saying we
are to “kiss Christ.” “The kiss,” says he, “is a mark of worship; to
kiss Christ is at the same time to recognise Him as God, and to pay Him
divine worship. The kiss is a mark of homage and subjection; we ought
likewise to acknowledge Christ as our King, and promise to follow
blindly His behests. The kiss is a sign of reconciliation; we ought to
show that we are reconciled with God. Lastly, the kiss is the greatest
of all tokens of love; to kiss Christ is therefore only a figurative way
of expressing to love Him with deep and fervent love.”[14]
As the woman that was a sinner showed her reverence for Christ by
kissing His feet, so all saintly men and women henceforward were
honoured in a like manner. They were saluted humbly by kisses on their
hands or feet, and the legend goes that he who kissed the hand of St
Dominic never afterwards committed sin. In many countries, more
especially in Southern Italy, kissing the hands of the priest is still
customary.
The kiss reverential was extended to everything that was holy, or had
been consecrated to sacred purposes.
People kissed the Cross with the image of the Crucified, and such
kissing of the Cross is always regarded as a particularly holy act. In
many countries it is required, on taking an oath, as the highest
asseveration that the witness is speaking the truth, and as a last act
of charity, the image of the Redeemer is handed to the dying or
death-condemned to be kissed. Kissing the Cross brings blessing and
happiness. In the south of France people used formerly, in moments of
difficulty or danger, when no Cross was at hand, to kiss their thumbs
laid in the form of a cross. When devout Catholics salute the Pope by
humbly kissing his slipper, they are fond of explaining away this
greeting. They say that it is not to be taken as any personal homage
paid to the Pope; the kiss having nothing to do with his slipper, but
the cross which is embroidered on it. Therefore Christ it is to whom
they are prostrating themselves. This idea, however, is undoubtedly a
later fancy; the kiss on the slipper ought, I take it, more correctly to
be considered as humble homage to the Pope as primate of the Church, and
such, therefore, must be the view the Pope himself holds, since he has,
times without number, exempted cardinals and other persons of high rank
from kissing his slipper. The number of kings and ambassadors who, in
the course of time, have refused to submit to this ceremony, have
undoubtedly regarded it as a humiliation; and popular conception bears
this out thoroughly. To “kiss the slipper” has become in many languages
synonymous with a low and unworthy cringing. In the old German war-song
against Charles V., we find:
Ah, think the whole imperial race
Through Popery fell in sore disgrace
And German might was riven.
Will you for all their knavery
To slipper-kiss be given?
W. F. H.
People kiss the image of Our Lady. The legend tells us that John of
Antioch even dared to kiss Mary’s mouth, and this kiss gave him wisdom
and great eloquence, and spread a golden glory round his mouth, hence
his surname Chrysostom (golden mouth).[15]
People kiss the pictures and statues of saints. Down in St Peter’s
church in Rome there is a remarkable old bronze figure of St Peter,
which is said to date from the fifth century, and the faithful have, in
all ages, shown the highest veneration to this image, in consequence of
which a great part of the right foot has been gradually kissed away.
Even nowadays the kiss bestowed on the pictures of the saints plays an
enormous part in the Roman Catholic, but more particularly in the Greek
Church. Not only their pictures, but even their relics are kissed; they
make both soul and body whole. St Balbina obtained forgiveness for her
sins by kissing St Peter’s chains, and Pascal’s niece was cured of a
disease in her eyes by kissing one of the thorns of Christ’s Crown. This
cure, the historical authenticity of which is, however, somewhat
doubtful, made a great sensation, and provoked a violent controversy
between the Jansenists and Jesuits.
Besides, there are legends innumerable of sick people regaining their
health by kissing relics; innumerable, too, are the satires which arose
by reason of abuses in respect to cures which were achieved with relics
genuine and false. One of the best known is perhaps the mediæval story
of _The Monk’s Breeches_.
A Franciscan friar was a very intimate friend of a merchant in Orleans
and his wife--especially of the latter. One evening the merchant
returned home unexpectedly from a journey, and the friar, who had tried
to the best of his ability to entertain the wife in the husband’s
absence, for certain circumstances which were capable of being
misunderstood, thought it wisest to disappear as quick as possible; but
in his haste he forgot his breeches. The merchant, however, did not
notice anything; the night was dark, and next morning he even put on the
friar’s breeches instead of his own. On coming back home from his office
in the afternoon--he had long discovered his mistake--he demanded, with
violent and hasty words, an explanation from his wife; but the latter,
who had discovered at once in the morning what had happened, hurriedly
sent a messenger to the friar to consult with him as to what was to be
done. According to their arrangement she answered her husband very
calmly:
“My dear friend, don’t fly into a passion; you ought to thank me instead
of quarrelling with me. You know we have no children, and we have tried
everything--but all in vain. Now I heard that St Francis’ breeches could
work miracles, even of that sort, and that is why I had them fetched for
you. Take them off now, for I expect some one from the monastery will be
coming for them directly.” The poor man in his delight quickly got out
of his breeches, and directly he had done so there came a knocking at
the door. It was the friar, followed by a choir boy carrying holy-water
and a censer. He had come to fetch the precious relic of the monastery,
and inquisitive neighbours flocked in from all quarters. He wrapped the
breeches reverently up in a white hand-cloth, and sprinkled them with
holy-water while the boy incensed them, after which he lifted up the
sacred bundle. Meanwhile all fell on their knees, and after pronouncing
a panegyric on St Francis, he himself carried round the breeches so that
the people who had assembled might kiss them. This they did with deep
piety and emotion, more especially the honest and grateful merchant.
This little story afforded much merriment in the Middle Ages. People
found much enjoyment in its burlesque humour, and never got tired of
hearing it. It occurs as a _fabliau_, a _farce_, and a story, and
belongs to the _facetiæ_ with which the Pope’s Secretary, Poggio, amused
his friends in _Il Bugiale_ (The Lie Manufactory).
Even as regards the great ones of this world the kiss used to serve in
various ways as a mark of humility and reverence. Its use in ancient
times was remarkably widespread; people threw themselves down on the
ground before their rulers, kissed their footprints, literally “licked
the dust,” as it is termed. In the Psalms, Solomon sings of the promised
King: “They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; and his
enemies shall lick the dust”; and the prophet Isaiah says: “Kings shall
be thy nursing fathers, and queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow
down to thee with their face before the earth and lick up the dust of
thy feet” (xlix. 23).
They kissed not only the ground under the powerful, but also their feet,
knees, hands, or the hem of their garments.
Certain Roman Emperors adopted these oriental usages. Thus Caligula
ordered people to kiss his hands and feet, and even in the Middle Ages
the custom of kissing the feet of kings was in vogue.
Nearly everywhere, wheresoever an inferior meets a superior, we observe
the kiss of respect. The Roman slaves kissed the hands of their masters;
pupils and soldiers those of their teachers and captains respectively.
During the Middle Ages the vassal paid homage to his feudal lord by a
kiss on the hand or foot, hence the expression _devoir la bouche et les
mains_. It is well-known what befell Charles the Simple when Rollo, the
Norman chieftain, had to pay him feudal homage. The proud Viking would
not bow down to the king, but laid hold of the latter’s feet and lifted
them up to his mouth, whereat the king, amidst the laughter of the
spectators, tumbled down. Thus the scene is depicted briefly and
graphically in the _Roman de Rou_:--
Quant baisier dut le pie, baisier ne le deigna,
La main tendi aual, le pie al rei leua,
A sa bouche le traist e le rei enuersa;
Asez s’en ristrent tuit, e li reis se dreça.[16]
They also kissed their liege lords on the thigh, and this method of
kissing can be traced down to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries;
but the kiss on the hand was undoubtedly most frequently in use; and it
was the general custom for the vassal at the same time to hand his lord
a present, which is the reason why the word _baise-main_ (hand-kiss)
gradually got this meaning.
If the lord was absent when the vassal waited on him, the latter had to
kiss the door, the lock or bolt, which was regarded as a valid
substitution for kissing the hand. From this arose the expressions,
_baiser l’huis_, (the door), _baiser le verrouil_, (the bolt), which
were used partly as an expression of slavish subserviency, and partly
in an ironical sense of lovers who have been rejected by their
mistresses, and thus constrained to
Kiss the door, and kiss its chains
For ladies’ sake who are within.
W. F. H.
As expressive not only of respect, but also of repentance, children in
former days were made to kiss the rod by which they had been chastised.
Geiler von Keiserberg writes in the sixteenth century: “When children
are thrashed they kiss the rods and say:
Liebe ruot, trute ruot
werestu, ich tet niemer guot.[17]
“They kiss the rods and jump over them, yea they leap over them.” We
have a memorial of this custom in the phrase, “kissing the rod.”
There is still one great power that we have not mentioned, and one who
demands, too, homage by kisses, _i.e._, the devil; but, in order that
the humility shown to him may be as great as possible, he must be kissed
on his behind, _i.e._, on the place where the back ceases to be called
the back. Old pictures of the Sabbath on Blocksberg exhibit to us his
Satanic majesty, in the guise of a goat or cat, sitting on a high seat,
while his worshippers reverently approach and kiss him under his tail.
In several confessions of witches we find this kiss still more closely
described: “The devil has a big tail, and under it a sort of face, but
with this face he never speaks, as the only use he makes of it is to let
his most devoted followers kiss the same; for kissing this face is
regarded as an especially great honour.” This somewhat awkward kiss
occurs, moreover, in several sagas. In _Harehyrden_ the Jeppe gives up
his magic flute to the king on condition that the latter kisses his ass
under its tail. It can also be shown in actual life, and we have some
anecdotes from the Middle Ages which seem to prove that the _podex_-kiss
was used as a derisory punishment. There is also a story told of a merry
knight, once upon a time, compelling a party of monks to pay their
respects to their abbot in the aforesaid less dignified way.
Kisses _in ano_ seem also to have been required of neophytes on their
reception into certain secret societies.
The part this kiss plays in insulting speech ought to be sufficiently
well known. The Romans ere now spoke about _lingere culum_ or _lambere
nates_; the Germans more decently say: _Küss mich da ich sitz’_ (Kiss me
where I sit), or _Er kann mich küssen da wo ich keine Nase habe_ (He can
kiss me where I have no nose). Frenchmen even use the last mentioned
paraphrastic expression. It is told in an old poem about Theodore de
Beza, whose youth was, as you are aware, a very dissipated one, that, on
one occasion, he said of a lady that he would like to kiss her, but he
did not know how he could manage to do so as her nose was far too long.
When the lady learnt this she wittily replied:
... Pour si peu ne tenez,
Car si cela seulement vous en garde!
J’ai bien pour vous un visage sans nez.[18]
We have no knowledge if this offer tempted the rigid Calvinist that was
to be; but the lady was undoubtedly young, and even if he had not found
her face so remarkably beautiful, yet it would have been very different
had the invitation come from an old crone, as the well-known saying,
“_baiser le cul de la vieille_,” implies the deepest ignominy that can
befall a man, at any rate a gambler--viz., to lose without scoring a
point.
There is a Jutland variant of the story about Theodore de Beza: “I was
driving one day with Niels Hundepenge, and we saw at a distance a woman
walking on in front. Says Niels, ‘Peter, there goes a pretty girl; just
see what a figure, and how she steps out.’ When we got up to her we
found she was pock-marked and hideous. Then says Niels, ‘Now, my girl,
if you were only as good-looking in front as you are behind, I should
want to kiss you.’ ‘Well, if you think so,’ replied she, ‘you can kiss
me, you know, where you fancy I am best looking.’”
Allow me, in connection with this, to call your attention to a
peculiarity about the Latin word _osculum_. The first syllable os of
course signifies “mouth,” the two last, on the other hand, mean the
correlative part on the reverse side of the body. This circumstance has
been made use of in a Latin anecdote about a married lady. An
importunate suitor asked her for a kiss, whereupon she replied that
this could not be granted, inasmuch as the first of what he asked
absolutely belonged to her husband, but, as she did not wish to be too
hard on him, he was welcome to have the last:
Syllaba prima meo debetur tota marito,
Sume tibi reliquas, non ero dura, duas.[19]
In modern times the ceremonious kiss of respect has gone clean out of
fashion in the most civilised countries; it is only retained in the
Church, but in all other domains it is practically unknown--so unknown,
indeed, that in many cases the practice would be offensive or
ridiculous.
Kissing the earth is another instance of such kisses that I shall quote.
It plays a part in the old stories about Junius Brutus. Together with
King Tarquin’s sons he journeyed to Delphi to consult the oracle. The
answer they received was that the supreme power would fall to the lot of
him who first kissed his mother. Brutus then made a pretence of
stumbling, and as he fell he kissed the earth, our common mother. A few
years after this, the royal family were expelled from Rome, and Brutus
and Lucius Tarquinius were elected consuls.
People also kissed the earth for joy on returning to their native land
after a lengthened absence. When Agamemnon returned from the Trojan War:
Stepped he forth inwardly glad to the shore of his well-loved country,
Kissing and kissing again his mother earth while the scalding
Tears down his cheeks were coursing, though his heart was
brimming with blitheness.
Even nowadays people feel glad at seeing their native country again
after long absence, but they have another way of expressing their joy,
and, without exaggeration, it would be safe to assert that if any one
returning from a journey wished to emulate Agamemnon, that person would
undoubtedly be put down as mad.
We find in Holberg (“Ulysses of Ithaca,” or “A German Comedy”) a parody
of the old usage, where Ulysses says: “Let us fall down, after the old
hero’s fashion, and kiss our mother earth.” They fall down and kiss the
ground, but Chilian gets up hurriedly and says: “The deuce! I don’t
really understand the use of these ceremonies. Eugh, somebody has been
here before--that I can plainly perceive.”
The old custom now only survives in certain sayings. Frenchmen use the
expression _baiser la terre_ (to kiss the earth), jeeringly, of a person
falling; and the German, _die Erde küssen_ (to kiss the earth), is a
euphemistic way of saying “die.” I may add, for the sake of
completeness, that kissing the earth still occurs sporadically nowadays
in the sense of the profoundest humility mingled with regret. When
Raskolnikow, in Dostojewski’s novel of that name, has confided to Sonja
how he murdered the old usurer’s wife, he exclaims in his despair: “And
what shall I do now?”--“What shall you do now,” exclaims Sonja, and her
eyes flash: “Get up, go hence at once; station yourself at a crossway,
kneel down and kiss the earth you have defiled, bow down thus before all
the people, and say to them: ‘I have committed murder.’ Then God shall
give you new life.” And, finally, when Raskolnikow has determined
publicly to acknowledge his crime and denounce himself as a murderer, he
falls prostrate on his knees in the middle of the market-place, bows
down, and, amidst the laughter and derision of the bystanders, kisses
the dirty ground with ecstasy and delight.
In Europe, at least, we no longer kiss the ground before the feet of the
mighty, any more than we salute them by kissing their hands or feet; a
bow more or less gracious, according to circumstances, serves the same
purpose generally. Nevertheless, at certain courts, such as the Spanish,
English, and Russian, kissing the hand is still customary as a sort of
ceremonial salutation; but its practice is usually confined to certain
solemn occasions.
Individuals of princely rank excepted, the kiss of respect to superiors
is to be regarded as all but extinct; but even in the eighteenth
century, kissing the hem of their garments is mentioned as a salutation
befitting ladies of exalted rank, and in Holberg’s _Politiske
Kandestøber_ (the Political Pewterer), we see how Madame Abrahamsen and
Madame Sanderus even kissed Gedske on the apron.
Kissing, as expressive of admiration, still undoubtedly occurs, but can
scarcely be said to be particularly general; it becomes less and less
common as we approach our own time.
A half-ironical instance occurs in Molière; in _Les Femmes Savantes_
Armande and Philaminte fall into raptures over Vadius’ great learning.
_Du grec! O ciel! du grec! Il sait du grec, ma sœur!_ (Greek! good
heavens! Greek! He knows Greek, sister), says the one, and the other
answers: _Du grec! quelle douceur!_ (Greek! how sweet!). In their
boundless enthusiasm they ask Vadius to let them kiss him as a mark of
their admiration. He accepts this salutation very politely, if not with
any particularly great joy; but when he turns to young Henriette, from
whose lips he is especially desirous of receiving so tender an
expression of admiration, she rejects him quite abruptly with the
remark: _Excusez-moi, monsieur, je n’entends pas le Grec_ (Excuse me,
sir, I don’t understand Greek).
The pedantic Vadius got just what he deserved--a kiss as dry as dust
from two middle-aged, sexless blue-stockings, which nobody begrudges
him. On the other hand, many, perhaps, will read with envy of the
homage received by Benjamin Franklin at the French Court. Mme. de
Campan, in her _Mémoires_, says: “At one of the splendid entertainments
given in Franklin’s honour, I saw how the most beautiful of the three
hundred ladies present was chosen to place a laurel crown on the white
locks of the American philosopher and imprint a kiss on each of the old
man’s cheeks.”
The kiss of admiration and respect has, I suppose, been the longest to
survive in the form of kissing ladies’ hands. Formerly, in many
countries, it constituted a friendly greeting on meeting a lady or
saying good-bye to her; but nowadays this custom has grown obsolete in
most places; nevertheless we have certain literary reminiscences of it.
In Austria people say _Küss die Hand, gnädige Frau_, and _Sârut mâna_ in
Roumania, but still it is comparatively rare that this expression is
followed by actual kisses, as was formerly the case. _Je vous baise les
mains_ is now only used in an ironical sense in France. Ceremonial
kisses, however, still flourish in Spain to a marked degree, not only in
the language of the Court, but also in general conversation. When I was
first presented to a Spanish lady I expressed my gladness at making her
acquaintance by kissing her hand--only, however, by figure of
speech--but her husband at once pointed out to me in a laughing way,
that I had failed to show her proper respect. One can only kiss a
Spanish lady’s feet: _Beso à usted los pies_ or _à los pies de usted_ (I
kiss your feet), as they say.
Before leaving the subject of the kiss reverential I will mention two
different ways in which it has been used. Formerly it was the custom, at
least at the French Court, for pages to first kiss the articles they
were to hand to distinguished personages. Henri Estienne tells an
anecdote about a page who had to carry a letter to the Princess of
Naples. It was expressly enjoined on him to kiss it (_baisez-la_), but
the page pretended he had misunderstood the words, so when he had to
leave the letter he first kissed the unsuspecting princess.
We find another peculiar form of the kiss reverential in the cases when
a person kisses his own hand before offering it to the guest he would
especially honour, or before accepting a present for which he wishes to
show his gratitude in an extraordinarily polite manner.[A]
In an old comedy of Marivaux, “_Harlequin poli par l’Amour_,” a fairy
falls in love with a rustic lout. She carries him off, entertains him in
her castle, and tries in every possible way to gain his love; but he
remains utterly callous to all her blandishments, and behaves all the
time in a most foolish manner. He takes a fancy to a valuable ring the
fairy is wearing; she removes it from her finger and gives it to him,
but when he scarcely says “Thank you” for it, she says to chide him:
_Mon cher Arlequin, un beau garçon comme vous, quand une dame lui
présente quelque chose, doit baiser la main en la reçevant_.[20]
Arlequin takes hold of the fairy’s hand and kisses it; but she corrects
him again, and says: “He does not understand me once, but I like his
mistake. It is your own hand, you know, that you should kiss.”[21]
This usage still prevails amongst old peasants in Jutland, and is termed
receiving something with “kissed hand,” or “kiss hand.” The expression
_Kusshand_ is also employed in German, and is explained thus: “Gruss,
wobei man die eigne Hand küsst und dann nach der zu grüssenden Person
hin bewegt oder sie reicht.” The same sort of greeting is found both in
England and France. Voltaire tells us that children in certain countries
are taught to kiss their right hand when anybody gives them something
good. Even at the present day, in certain places on the Alps, peasants
express their thanks by kissing their hand before taking what is given
to them.
VI
THE KISS OF FRIENDSHIP
Par amistiet l’en baisat en la buche.
_Chanson de Roland._
For friendship pressed a kiss upon his mouth.
W. F. H.
CHAPTER VI
THE KISS OF FRIENDSHIP
The kiss is also employed as a conventional salutation between persons
who only stand on a footing of friendship or acquaintance with each
other. In our northern countries the friendly kiss usually occurs only
between ladies, but in this instance its usage is very widely extended.
With men and women it is properly only allowable when there is a marked
difference in age between both parties, but, on the other hand, it
seldom or never takes place between men, with the exception, however, of
royal personages who, on solemn occasions, are wont to greet and take
leave of each other with more or less sincere kisses of greeting and
farewell. Here we find ourselves again in a sphere in which, alas, we
have sadly fallen away from the good old ways. In former times, to wit,
the friendly kiss was very common with us between man and man as well
as between persons of opposite sexes. In guilds it was customary for the
members to greet each other “with hearty handshakes and smacking
kisses,” and, on the conclusion of a meal, people thanked and kissed
both their hosts and hostesses. In a description of a wedding in the
olden time in the district of Voer in Denmark we read:
“When they had eaten, the parish clerk got up first, put his arms round
the parson’s neck, and kissed him on the mouth, saying: _Tak for mad,
hr. pastor_ (Thanks for your hospitality, sir priest). Then the parson
planted himself against a chest of drawers, and all the women, old and
young, went up to him, one after the other, and kissed him on the mouth.
Some of the old goodies could not quite reach him, for the priest was a
big, tall man, and they had actually to climb on to his boots, though he
stooped down to them slightly.” Peder Havgård said that he would not
have cared much to be in the parson’s place, for it was a mean and poor
country thereabouts, and some of the women were very shabbily-dressed
and dirty-looking.
If we glance outside Denmark it appears that the kiss of friendship is
considerably in vogue. In Iceland it is still a general form of
salutation, although of late years there is said to be a certain falling
off in its use; and every one who travels in South Germany and Austria
can study at the very first railway station the different forms of that
kind of kiss which in those countries is specially used by way of
leave-taking; officers and students, farmers and merchants, all treat
each other to sounding kisses, usually on the cheek. One can observe the
same sort of thing in France, but more especially in Italy. I can attest
from personal experience that it is looked upon as the most natural
thing in the world for people to kiss their intimate friends when saying
good-bye, a shake of the hand being far too cold a leave-taking beneath
the warm sky of Italy.
It is, however, undoubted that, speaking generally, the custom of
kissing, as an ordinary greeting, has immensely declined; in ancient
times and in the Middle Ages it was much more frequent than nowadays.
It was the common practice with the Hebrews for acquaintances, when they
met, to kiss each other on the head, hands, and shoulders; and it was
assuredly with a kiss of pretended friendship that Judas betrayed his
Master.
Even the Greeks in former times used kissing as a common salutation; not
only friends and acquaintances kissed each other, but also persons who
quite accidentally met when they were travelling.
The custom of kissing, however, became less general later on. In a
discourse of Dion Chrysostomus, called _From Eubœa_, or “The Hunter,”
is a story of a rustic coming to the city and meeting two acquaintances
in the assembly, whom he goes up to and kisses. “But,” says the rustic,
“people laughed prodigiously at my kissing them, and, on that occasion,
I learnt that it is not customary for people of the city to kiss each
other.”[22]
Kissing seems to have been much more in vogue with the Romans, amongst
whom it was the usual custom for people to salute each other with a kiss
on the hand, the cheek, or the mouth. Many even scented their mouths in
order to render their kisses more pleasing--or less unpleasant. Martial
laments over this usage in a little epigram to Posthumus:
What’s this that myrrh doth still smell in thy kiss,
And that with thee no other odour is?
’Tis doubt, my Posthumus, he that doth smell
So sweetly always, smells not very well.
This kissing of friends gradually became a veritable nuisance to the
country. Fashion ordained that every one should give and receive such
kisses, but, in reality, every one preferred evading them. Martial, in
another epigram to this same Posthumus, exclaims:
Posthumus late was wont to kiss
With one lip, which I loth;
But now my plague redoubled is,--
He kisses me with both.
and
Posthumus’ kisses some must have,
And some salute his fist;
Thy hand, good Posthumus, I crave,
If I may choose my list.
Under such frightful circumstances people had recourse to shifts which
seem almost as unsavoury as the kisses they would escape:
Why on my chin a plaster clapped;
Besalved my lips, that are not chapped;
Philænis, why? The cause is this:
Philænis, thee I will not kiss.
But such artifices, however, are of very little use; no one escapes the
_basiatores_ (kissers). They prowl about the streets and market-places;
not even the walls of the home, nor even the enforced solitariness of
the most hidden-places served as a protection against them:
There are no means the kissing tribe to shun,
They meet you, stop you, after you they run,
Press you before, behind, to each side cleave,
No place, no time, no men, exempted leave;
A dropping nose, salved lips, can none reprieve,
Gangrenes, foul running sores, no one relieve;
They kiss you in a sweat, or starved with cold,
Lovers’ their mistress’ kisses cannot hold;
A chair is no defence, with curtains guarded,
With door and windows shut, and closely warded,
The kissers, through a chink will find a way,
Presume the tribune, consul’s self, to stay;
Nor can the awful rods, or Lictor’s mace,
His stounding voice away these kissers chase,
But they’ll ascend the Rostra, curule chair,
The judges kiss while they give sentence there.
Those laugh they kiss, and those that sigh and weep;
’Tis all the same whether you laugh or weep;
Those who do bathe, or recreate in pool,
Who are withdrawn to ease themselves at stool.
Against this plague I know no fence but this:
Make him thy friend whom thou abhorr’st to kiss.
All greet one another with kisses; every condition of life, every
handicraft, found a representative amongst the _basiatores_. When a
man, in ancient times, was afraid of meeting his tailor, it was not so
much on account of the latter’s bill as by reason of his kisses.
“Rome,” says Martial, “gives, on one’s return after fifteen years’
absence, such a number of kisses as exceeds those given by Lesbia to
Catullus. Every neighbour, every hairy-faced farmer, presses on you with
a strongly-scented kiss. Here the weaver assails you, there the fuller
and cobbler, who has just been kissing leather; here the owner of a
filthy beard, and a one-eyed gentleman; there one with bleared eyes, and
fellows whose mouths are defiled with all manner of abominations. It was
hardly worth while to return.”
People kissed whenever they met: morning and evening, at all seasons of
the year: spring and autumn, summer and winter. The winter kisses seem
to have been especially unpleasant, and Martial censures them, in the
strongest terms, in his epigram to Linus:
’Tis winter, and December’s horrid cold
Makes all things stark; yet, Linus, thou lay’st hold
On all thou meet’st; none can thy clutches miss;
But with thy frozen mouth all Rome dost kiss.
What could’st more spiteful do, or more severe,
Had’st thou a blow o’ th’ face, or box o’ th’ ear?
My wife, this time, to kiss me does forbear,
My daughter, too, however debonaire.
But thou more trim and sweeter art. No doubt
Th’ icicles, hanging at thy dog-like snout,
The congealed snivel dangling on thy beard,
Ranker than th’ oldest goat of all the herd.
The nastiest mouth i’ th’ town I’d rather greet,
Than with thy flowing frozen nostrils meet.
If therefore thou hast either shame or sense,
Till April comes no kisses more dispense.
That Martial’s epigrams depict the actual state of the case without any
particular exaggeration it may, among other things, be inferred from the
fact that the Emperor Tiberius, according to Suetonius, issued an edict
against these _cotidiana oscula_ (daily kisses).
The friendly kiss was likewise much in vogue in the Middle Ages.
In _La Chanson de Roland_ the Saracen king receives Ganelon with a kiss
on the neck, and then displayed to him his treasures:
Quant l’ot Marsilies, si l’ad baisiet el’ col;
Pois, si cumencet à uvrir ses trésors.
(603).
And Ganelon salutes the Saracen chiefs in the same way, and “they
kissed each other on face and chin”:
“Bien serat fait”--li quens Guenes respunt;
Pois, se baisièrent es vis e es mentuns.
(625, 628).
The friendly kiss is, on the whole, pretty often mentioned in the Old
French epics. “Out of friendship he kissed him on the mouth” is a verse
that frequently recurs:
_Par l’amistiet l’en baisat en la buche._
The kiss of friendship was also exchanged between the opposite sexes. It
was the general custom for ladies to salute with a kiss any stranger
whether he came as an ambassador, expected guest, or a chance passer-by.
In the old French mystery-play of St Bernard de Menton, the Lord of
Miolan is sitting one day with his wife and daughters in the hall of his
castle, when a squire steps in and announces that some strangers have
arrived. The lord of the castle receives them courteously, bids them
welcome in God’s name, and at once orders his wife do her duty to them.
She, too, bids them welcome, and kisses them; at last it comes to the
turn of the little girls, who assure their father that they know their
duty right well, and are even willing to perform it:
A vostre bon commandement
Les bayserons et festoyrons,
Trestons le myeulx que nous pourrons,
Mon seigneur, à vostre talent.
Which may be rendered thus:
As it is your orders dear,
We will kiss and make good cheer,
All, so far as in us lies,
Since your wishes that comprise.
W. F. H.
Whereupon they kiss the strange gentlemen. In the poem of “Huon de
Bordeaux” we are told how Huon’s mother, the Duchess of Bordeaux,
receives the French king’s embassy with kisses. The queen, in Marie de
France’s _Lai de Graelan_, sends an ambassador after Graelan to make his
acquaintance, and, when he arrives, goes to meet him, and kisses him on
the mouth.
In other Romance countries, too, kissing serves as a common mode of
greeting, which fact can be incidentally substantiated by means of
philology, inasmuch as the Latin verb _salutare_ (‘to greet’) both in
Spanish and Roumanian, and partially in French, has acquired the meaning
of ‘to kiss.’
When Abengalvon, in the old _Pöema del Cid_, meets Minaya Alvar Fañez,
he advances smilingly towards him in order to kiss him, and he “greets”
him on the shoulder, “for such was his wont”:
Sonrisando de la boca, ibalo abrazar,
En el ombro lo saluda, ca tal es su usaje.
The expression “to greet on the mouth” likewise occurs many times; but
also the verb _saludar_ (‘to hail’) is also used alone, as in the
Roumanian _sâruta_, to express ‘to kiss.’
Even in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the friendly kiss
flourished in France. When Leo Rozmital, the Bohemian nobleman, paid his
respects to Louis XI. at Meung-sur-Loire, the king led him to the queen,
and both she and all the ladies of her court kissed him on the mouth.
We get further information in a letter from Annibale Caro dated 29th
October, 1544. It is addressed to the Duke of Palma, and describes the
visit of the French Queen Eléonore to the Emperor Charles V. in
Brussels. “When we met,” says he, “the ceremony of reception with
kissing of the ladies was, in the highest degree, interesting; it
seemed as if I had been present at the Rape of the Sabines. Not only the
higher nobility, but even all the rest took each his lady, and the
Spaniards and Neapolitans were the most eager. It gave rise to much
merriment when the Countess of Vertus, Charlotte de Pisseleu, was
observed to lean over her saddle to such an extent, in order to kiss the
Emperor, that she slid off her horse, and kissed the earth instead of
His Majesty’s mouth. The Emperor hurried up to her assistance, and with
a smile kissed her heartily (_e ridendo la baciò saporitamente_).
Directly afterwards Duke Ottavio rode up, jumped quickly off his horse,
and the Emperor himself conducted him to the Queen’s carriage, and there
he was presented to the distinguished ladies. The Duke kissed the
Queen’s hand and was about to remount his charger, but the Emperor
called him back, and told him that he ought also to kiss Mdme.
d’Etampes, who was sitting right opposite to the Queen in the carriage.
Like a good Frenchman, he exceeded the Emperor’s order and kissed her on
the mouth.”
A vast quantity of other evidence goes to show how general was the
friendly kiss of salutation even during the Renaissance, especially
among the upper classes. Henri Estienne satirises it in his _Apologie
pour Hérodote_. “Kisses are allowed,” writes he, “in France between
noblemen and ladies, whether they do or do not belong to the same
family. If a high-born dame is in church, and any fop of her
acquaintance comes, she must, in conformity with the usage prevailing in
good society, get up, even if she be absorbed in the deepest devotion,
and kiss him on the mouth.”
Even Montaigne expresses his disapproval of such a state of things. “It
is,” says he, “a highly reprehensible custom that ladies should be
obliged to offer their lips to every one who has a couple of lackeys at
his heels, however undesirable he may be, and we men are no gainers
thereby, for we have to kiss fifty ugly women to three pretty ones.”
None the less, the friendly kiss held its ground right through the
seventeenth and even a part of the eighteenth century. Molière’s
marquesses kiss each other whenever they meet; for instance, in the
famous eleventh scene in _Les Précieuses ridicules_, when Mascarille
and Jodelet fall into each other’s arms with many warm kisses. In _Le
Misanthrope_ Alceste reproaches Philinte with embracing and kissing
every one, and “when I ask you who it is, you scarcely know his name!”
Vous chargez la fureur de vos embrassements;
Et quand je vous demande après, quel est cet homme,
À peine pouvez-vous dire comme il se nomme.
La Bruyère has, time after time, satirised this foolish custom, which,
especially at Court, seems to have assumed colossal dimensions; but even
in middle-class circles etiquette required men to salute ladies with a
kiss.
In an old comedy entitled _Le Gentilhomme guespin_ a father presents his
son, who is extraordinarily awkward and clumsy. The latter does not know
how he ought to behave to the ladies of the house, so the father in
despair gives him a dig in the ribs, and whispers in his ear: “He’s
bashful. Kiss the lady. One always greets a lady with a kiss.”
... Il est honteux. Là, baisez donc Madame;
C’est toujours en baisant qu’on salue une femme,
Molière has made use of this scene in _Le Malade imaginaire_, where
Thomas Diafoirus pedantically asks when he is introduced to Angélique:
_Baiserai-je?_ (Am I to kiss?).
In England we come across pretty nearly the same state of things.
Erasmus of Rotterdam, in one of his _Epistolæ familiares_, expresses his
great satisfaction with English customs: “When you arrive every one
kisses you; at your departure they bid you good-bye and kiss you; you
come back, then fresh kisses. You are kissed when you meet any one, and
so, too, when you separate. Wheresoever you go everything is filled with
kisses, and if you have only once tasted how delicate these kisses are,
and the deliciousness of their savour, you would want, my dear Faustus,
to be banished to England for time and eternity.” In another passage,
where Erasmus is speaking of the state of the inns in England, which he
mentions in terms of unqualified praise, he winds up as follows:
“Everywhere at the inns one meets with pretty, smiling girls: they come
and ask for one’s soiled clothes; they wash them and soon bring them
back again. When the travellers are about to resume their journey these
girls kiss them, and take as affectionate a farewell of them as if the
latter were their brothers or near relations.”
And Holberg in his letter writes: “In England it is considered
uncourteous to enter a house without saluting one’s hostess with a
kiss.”
Even in the Low Countries the friendly kiss was much in vogue. Adrianus
Höreboord, a professor at the University of Leyden, has, in a Latin
treatise, investigated the question as to whether the custom of allowing
strangers to kiss young girls, widows, and other persons’ wives, on
paying a visit, can be said to be in conformity with the laws of
chastity. Höreboord’s opinion is that such practice is in no way
objectionable: as a kiss can be given without any _arrière pensée_ the
kisses demanded by politeness may be quite chaste.
Erycius Puteanus, the learned Dutch philosopher, on the contrary, holds
that the aforesaid custom is not without danger--at any rate to more
sensually-disposed temperaments. In a letter on the education of a young
Italian girl he writes that he would never suffer any one to kiss his
pupil, adding: “Our Flemish girls never do so; they are not so ardent.
They do not comprehend the language of love in glances and kisses. In
the matter of Italian girls on the other hand, things are quite
different, and I teach my pupil the speech of our country and our
customs, kissing excepted.”
The kiss of friendship was so general in Germany, even in the eighteenth
century, that Klopstock could write to a friend in 1750: _Vergessen sie
nicht zu mir auf einen Kaffee und auf einen Kuss zu kommen_. It seems,
however, soon to have fallen into disuse.
As far back as 1747, Lessing had ridiculed it in a poem:
The kiss with which my friend will greet me
Is not what’s rightly termed a kiss,
But only formal salutation
Because cold fashion bids him this.
W. F. H.
VII
VARIOUS KINDS OF KISSES
Einen Kuss in Ehren
Darf niemand wehren.
_German Proverb._
No one should take amiss
An honest-hearted kiss.
W. F. H.
CHAPTER VII
VARIOUS KINDS OF KISSES
It has been previously shown by numerous examples that kissing occupies
a prominent place in certain ceremonies. It would be easy to multiply
instances of this.
We know from Roman law that the so-called _osculum interveniens_, which
concerned gifts, was exchanged between engaged couples. The law enacts
that, in the event of one of the contracting parties dying before the
marriage, only a moiety of the presents are to be returned, provided a
kiss was exchanged at the betrothal, but, if no kiss had been exchanged,
all the presents were to be returned.[23]
The kiss was regarded as the introduction, as it were, to matrimonial
cohabitation--_initium consummationis nuptiarum_; it was symbolical of
marriage--_viri et mulieris conjunctio_. Certain ancient jurists have
even discussed the question whether a married woman who has suffered
herself to be kissed by a stranger has not thereby rendered herself
guilty of adultery.
The decree of the Roman law which, so far as I know, still partly holds
good in Greece, is met with again in the Latin countries during the
Middle Ages. It was incorporated in the law of the Visigoths (_Lex
Romana Visigothorum_), and migrated thence to the different old Spanish
_fueros_ and the old French law, in which the word _osculum_ was also
used in the learned form _oscle_. It was likewise admitted into the law
of the Lombards, and Italy is most probably the West European country
where _donatio propter osculum_ has been longest retained. We find, even
down to our own times, traces of the same in customary laws.
This is probably the only ceremonial kiss that has received legal
sanction; but wherever elsewhere we may turn our eyes and investigate
old ceremonies, we constantly find the kiss a necessary and important
part.
Its usage was, for instance, general at weddings. Thomas Platter, who
studied at the University of Montpellier at the end of the sixteenth
century, tells us, in his “Diary,” that the majority of marriages took
place in private, without witnesses, through fear of witchcraft; though
the wedding feast, on the contrary, was celebrated in public with a vast
concourse of guests, and with many merry episodes. At the conclusion of
the feast the bride was divested of her bridal array, amidst jokes and
raillery, smart young bachelors having to take off her garters; and when
at last she sat up in bed, clad only in linen, then all the guests, male
and female, came and kissed her on the mouth, and the kisses were
followed by facetious compliments and good wishes.
Moreover, at the later ceremony of dubbing a knight, the newly-made
knight of the Golden Fleece was kissed by the master of the ceremonies,
and had afterwards to kiss all the senior knights present.
At certain academical functions the kiss also formed part of the festal
ceremony; in the seventeenth century the Dean, when degrees were
conferred, kissed all the new doctors and masters.
Even in the guilds we meet with the kiss, though in a somewhat peculiar
form. Hübertz tells us that at the ceremony of admitting a member into
the Guild of Tanners, the candidate chose for his “Kränzjungfer” a girl
who had to be “fairly a maiden.” She painted black moustaches on his
upper lip, and the senior member placed a crown on his head. This done,
he kissed the latter, removed the crown, and decorated him instead with
a “Jungferkranz.” Finally, the senior member made a speech to the new
member, and gave him three boxes on the ears, on which the girl kissed
him, and washed off his moustaches, whilst “Vater” hung a sword to his
waist.
The ceremony of reception into the Guild of Carpenters was followed by a
feast, at which the members, as a sign that they were now grown-up, were
allowed, on the payment of a mark, to kiss the barmaid, who was usually
the innkeeper’s daughter.
It is easily understood that the kiss likewise came to play a prominent
part in many different dances and games.
Kiss-dances were very common during the Middle Ages and even later.
Montaigne describes one that he witnessed at Augsburg in 1580. “The
ladies,” said he, “sit in two rows along the walls of the room. The
gentlemen go away and bow to them; they kiss the latter’s hands, and the
ladies get up, but without kissing them on the hand. Then each gentleman
puts his arm round the lady’s waist, right beneath her shoulder, kisses
her, and lays his cheek to hers.”[24] Whether it is the lady’s check or
mouth that is kissed, he omits to state; but it is certain that kisses
on the mouth were not uncommon.
A Swiss traveller who stayed for some time in France in the middle of
the sixteenth century relates that, when he was in Montpellier, he was
invited to a ball, and there met a very beautiful young lady; but, he
adds, her nose was a trifle too long, and so her partner had great
difficulty in kissing her mouth, “as is the general custom.”
The kiss-dance has not yet died out in Germany; but it appears no longer
to have the graceful forms of the Renaissance period, if we can trust
Fritz Reuter’s description in his _Journey to Belgium_. At a wedding
when the kiss-dance is to be held, the parish clerk cautiously inquires
of the clergyman whether kissing is regarded as unbefitting his
priestly dignity, but when the answer comes short and shrewd, “Kiss
away,” he bows to Mrs Black and--smack!--gives her a couple of hearty
kisses right on her mouth. Madame was thoroughly frightened, but that
did not avail, but every time he swang round with her, she got a proper,
smacking kiss.
But it is evident from _Romeo and Juliet_ that even in England there
were dances in which a gentleman was allowed to kiss his partner. All
know the beautiful words with which Romeo claims his right:
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. (I. 5.)
One can still take the same liberty at Christmastide under the
mistletoe. I know a young English lady who was offended with an American
gentleman who did not dare to avail himself of his privilege, because he
thought that this custom was obsolete in Europe.
Kissing in our time still plays an important part in France in the
refrains of dance songs. _Le Bouquet de ma Mie_ ends with:
Bell’ bergère, embrasse-moi,
Embrasse, embrasse, embrasse!
And in _Ramenez vos Moutons, Bergère_, is sung by way of conclusion:
Tombez à genoux,
Jurez devant tous.
D’être un jour époux
Et embrassez-vous.[25]
There is, I suppose, no doubt that in these games the kiss is given and
taken, as the _dramatis personæ_ are generally children, but what takes
place when adults amuse themselves with these _rondes_, I do not know;
but I consider it probable that the gentleman will demand as his due a
kiss, at any rate on the cheek. There also exists an old _ronde à
baisers_, which is very characteristic and merry. In this it is the lady
who has to take the first step:
Madame, entrez dans la danse,
Regardez-en la cadence,
Et puis vous embrasserez
Celui que vous aimerez.[26]
As the living expression of the warmest and sincerest human feelings
kissing has been credited, in the world of fairy tales and superstition,
with a considerable curative and prophylactical power.
We have seen, in the old sagas and ballads, how enchantments are broken
by means of a kiss; we have seen how holy men in the legends restore the
sick to health by means of a kiss, etc. Kissing has, on the whole,
influenced popular credulity to a large extent, and of the numerous
superstitious notions concerning it I only quote some few:
If you would protect yourself against lightning you should make three
crosses before you, and kiss the ground three times. (Germany.)
If you want to have luck in gambling you must kiss the cards before the
game begins. (France.)
If you have the toothache you should kiss a donkey on his chops.
(Germany.) This very efficacious advice is found as far back as Pliny.
If you drop a bit of bread on the floor you must kiss it when you pick
it up. The same respect is also to be shown to books you have dropped.
(Denmark, Germany.)
According to Danish superstition, it is a bad omen when the first person
you meet of a morning is an old woman; nevertheless, you can ward off
all evil consequences by giving her a kiss. Evil must be expelled by
evil.
People kiss little children when they have knocked themselves, in order
to take away the pain; they must “kiss them well again,” as it is
termed, or, as Englishmen say, “kiss the place and make it well.”
The Greenland mother, who does not understand kissing as expressive of
love, kisses her sick child on the breast, shoulders, hips, and navel to
restore it to health.
As the loving kiss of a living human creature brings life, health, and
happiness, so it is thought, on the other hand, that kisses of a
supernatural being bring destruction.
In Lucian’s _True History_ there is a description of a perilous journey
to the realms of fancy. In one of these the travellers came upon a
remarkable vineyard wherein all the vines at the bottom were green and
luxuriant, but those above had the shape of women. “They greeted us, as
we drew nigh, and bade us halt. Some of us kissed them on the mouth,
and those who were kissed lost their understanding and reeled about like
drunken men. But worse befell those who had suffered themselves to be
embraced by these women; they were powerless to extricate themselves
from the latter’s arms, and we beheld their fingers changed into boughs
and twigs.”[27]
I will here call your attention to the Roumanian song about cholera,
which comes in the shape of an ugly old woman to Vîlcu, and Vîlcu
entreats it thus: “Take my horse, take my weapons, but give me still
some days so I may once more see my children, which are as dear to me as
the light of the sun.” But the old woman stretches forth her bony arms,
folds Vîlcu to her bosom, presses her pallid lips to his, and, in a
death-dealing kiss, takes his life, whereupon she departs with a mocking
laugh. The Roumanian text is here very strong:
Gură pe gură punea,
Buze pe buze lipĭa,
Zilele i le sorbĭa.
Apoĭ cloanza ear ridea,
Cu zilele purcedea,
Si voĭnicul mort cădea.
Even a spectre’s kiss brings death. In an English variant of the ballad
of Leonora, Margaret says to her dead bridegroom, who is knocking at her
door at night: “Come and kiss me on the cheek and chin.”--“Perhaps I
shall come to thee,” he replies, but:
If I shou’d come within thy bower,
I am no mortal man;
And shou’d I kiss thy rosy lips,
Thy days will not be long.
I shall also call your attention, in connection with the foregoing, to a
curious old story of the venomous girl.
A young maiden had from her tenderest years been reared on all the most
deadly poisons. Her beauty was marvellous, but her breath was so
poisonous that it killed everybody who came near her. She was sent to
the palace of Alexander the Great, as the king’s enemies reckoned on his
falling in love with her and dying in her arms. When the king saw her he
at once wanted to make her his mistress; but the shrewd Aristotle
suspected treachery. He restrained the king, and had a criminal who had
been sentenced to death sent for. The criminal was made to kiss the girl
in presence of the king, and he fell prone on the ground, poisoned by
her breath, like one struck by lightning.
This story can be traced to India. It found its way into several
mediæval storybooks and attained great popularity. The monks made use of
it in their sermons, and gave it an allegorical interpretation:
Alexander was the good, trustful Christian; Aristotle was the
conscience; the venomous girl, incontinence, which comprehends
everything that is poisonous to the soul; and the criminal is the wicked
man who pursues the lusts of the flesh and suffers his punishment. “Let
us, therefore, abstain from all such things if we wish to reach
Paradise,” is the moral that the monk draws from it at the close of his
sermon.
In conclusion I will quote several expressions to which kissing has
given rise:
A lady’s hat which was fashionable in England in 1850, and which had no
brim to it, got the name of _Kiss-me-quick_. In contradistinction to
this, the old-fashioned Danish hats with prominent brims were called
_Kiss-me-if-you-can_. We have a modern variant in the Salvation lasses’
_Stop-kissing-me_ hat.
In France, during the last century, there was a colour of
the name of _Baise-moi ma mignonne_, called in England
“heart’s-ease”: _Look-up-and-kiss-me_, _Kiss-me-at-the-garden-gate_,
_Kiss-me-ere-I-rise_ or _Jump-up-and-kiss-me_.
The verb “to kiss” is often used in a figurative sense, _e.g._, the
Italians say of one who likes drinking, “He kisses the flask” (_Bacia il
fiasco_); the Germans say of mean people, “They kiss the farthing” (_Den
Pfennig küssen_); the English too speak of a _penny-kisser_.
This figurative meaning is not, however, confined to jocose expressions
and phrases; on the contrary, it occurs perhaps more frequently in
serious prose.
Our whole life, lived in love to our neighbour and nature, is nothing
more than one long kiss.
Kaalund somewhere says:
A babe was I not long ere this,
But time too swiftly slips;
And that is why I press a kiss
So warmly on life’s lips.
W. F. H.
A similar figurative use is extraordinarily common with the poets. H. C.
Andersen, in _Goose-grass_, says of the lark that it flies past the
tulip and other aristocratic flowers only to light on the sward by the
humble goose-grass, which it kisses with its beak, and for which it
sings its joyous song. The other poets represent the waves as kissing
the white beach, the bees, the scented flowers; and the ears of corn in
the fields as heaving beneath the warm kisses of the sun’s golden rays.
The sun’s kisses are _oscula sancta_; every creature shares in them, for
they are the most beautiful expression of God’s love. Ingemann sings in
a morning hymn:
The sun looks down on hut and hall,
On haughty king and beggar weeping,
Beholds the great ones and the small,
And kisses babes in cradles sleeping.
W. F. H.
VIII
THE ORIGIN OF KISSING
Les coutumes, quelque étranges qu’elles deviennent parfois à la longue,
ont généralement des commencements très simples.
MAX MÜLLER.
Usages, however strange they may sometimes become in the long run, have
generally very simple beginnings.--_Translated from the above._
CHAPTER VIII
THE ORIGIN OF KISSING
With most civilised and many uncivilised nations kissing is the natural
expression of love and its kindred emotions.
How can it be explained that a kiss has succeeded in getting so deep and
comprehensive a significance? How can a trivial movement of the lips
interpret our innermost feelings in so eloquent a way that there is not
a language which has at its command words approaching to it in
argumentative power?
Are we face to face with something primitive, or something conventional
and derivative? Is it as natural to kiss when we are transported with
love as it is to smile when we are mirthful, or weep when we are sad? In
other words, is Steele right when he says, in strict conformity with a
Cypriot folk-song previously quoted, that “nature was its author, and it
began with the first courtship?”
I shall try to answer this question in the following pages, but,
nevertheless, I wish at once to state most expressly that we are now
approaching ground where we know nothing, and where no one can with
certainty know anything. We can only advance more or less likely
hypotheses.
In the first place, it is important to bear in mind that there are many
races of people who are quite ignorant of kissing as it is generally
understood. Thus it is unknown in a great part of Polynesia, in
Madagascar, and among many tribes of negroes in Africa, more
particularly among those which mutilate their lips. W. Reade, in one of
his books of travel, tells us of the horror which seized a young African
negress when he kissed her. Kissing is likewise unknown amongst the
Esquimaux and the people of Tierra del Fuego. Certain Finnish tribes
appear, from what B. Taylor tells us, not to practise it much. In his
_Northern Travel_ he relates that “while both sexes bathe together in a
state of complete nudity, a kiss is regarded as something indecent.” A
Finnish married woman, on being told by him that it was the usual custom
for husband and wife to kiss each other, angrily exclaimed, “If my
husband were to attempt such a thing, faith, I would warm his ears in
such a way that he would feel it for a whole week.”
If the question arises as to what these people substitute for kissing,
the fact is well-known that, amongst uncivilised races, there is an
endless number of different ways of salutation; some smack each other on
the arms or stomach, others blow on each other’s hands, others again rub
their right ear and put out their tongue, etc., etc. Here, however, we
must confine ourselves to the salutations which are suggestive of
kissing.
In many places people are in the habit of saluting with their noses.
This is the so-called Malay kiss, which consists in rubbing or merely
pressing one’s nose against another person’s nose. This nose-salute is
found among the Polynesians, Malays, Esquimaux, certain negro tribes in
Africa--in short, just among the majority of races which are ignorant of
kissing as we understand it.
Darwin thus describes the Malay kiss: “The women squatted with their
faces upturned; my attendants stood leaning over them, laid the bridge
of their noses at right angles over theirs, and commenced rubbing. It
lasted somewhat longer than a hearty hand-shake with us. During this
process they uttered a grunt of satisfaction.”[28] The French _savant_
Gaidoz, who has also described this custom, remarks, “I have many times
observed that cats which are fond of one another greet each other in
this way; and I myself once had a cat which always tried to squeeze its
nose against mine as a mark of affection.”[29]
Everything is in favour of this nose-salute being a very primitive
custom, and its origin may be sought beyond the sense of touch; no
doubt, in the sense of smell.
Spencer has arrived at the following conclusions: The sheep bleats after
her little lamb which has run away. It sniffs at several lambs that are
skipping about near her, and at last recognises her own by means of the
sense of smell, and undoubtedly feels great delight at recognising it.
In consequence of assiduous repetitions of this a certain relation is
developed between the two factors, so that the smell of the lamb excites
joy in the sheep.
As every animal has its peculiar smell, so, too, has every human being.
When the patriarch Isaac grew old his eyes began to get dim, and he
could not see. He wished to bless his eldest son, Esau, but Jacob
deceived him by clothing himself in his brother’s garments, and giving
himself out as the latter. Isaac then said to him: “Come near now and
kiss me, my son.” And he came near and kissed him, and he smelled the
smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said: “See the smell of my
son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed.”
The sense of the smell peculiar to some one we are fond of is capable of
exciting pleasure. Timkowski writes of a Mongol father that the latter
time after time smelt his youngest son’s head. This mark of paternal
tenderness serves with the Mongols instead of kisses. In the Philippine
Islands, the sense of smell is so developed that the inhabitants, by
simply sniffing at a pocket-handkerchief, can tell to whom it belongs;
lovers who are separated send one another presents of bits of their
linen, and, in their absence, keep each other in mind by often inhaling
each other’s scent.
That the delicate perfume that exhales from a woman’s body plays an
important part in love affairs even with modern civilised nations is
too well-known to require more than a passing mention on my part.
Certain races of mankind now actually salute each other by smelling;
they apply their mouth and nose to a person’s cheek, and draw a long
breath. In their language they do not say “Give me a kiss,” but “Smell
me.” The same sort of kiss is also met with among the Burmese; and with
many Malay tribes the words “smell” and “salute” are synonymous. Other
races do not confine themselves to smelling each other’s faces, but
sniff their hands at every salutation.
Alfred Grandidier, a French traveller, says of the nose-kiss in
Madagascar: “It always excites the merriment of Europeans, and yet it
has its origin in an extremely refined idea. The invisible air which is
continually being breathed through the lips is to savages, not only, as
with us, a sign of life, but it is also an emanation of the soul--its
perfume, as they themselves say--and, when they mingle and suck in each
other’s breath and odour, they think they are actually mingling their
souls.”[30]
Then the origin of the nose-kiss, it seems, undoubtedly ought to be
sought--at any rate partly--in the sense of smell. The love of another
human being involves, as a consequence, one’s loving everything
belonging to this other being; and this love is shown _in casu_ by
drinking in his or her breath, whereby, little by little, a peculiar
nose-salutation is very ingeniously developed, which, naturally, is
capable of gradually assuming various conventional forms.
Now we will proceed to the kiss proper--that on the mouth. How can its
origin be explained?[31]
It does not seem very rational to assume that the motion of the muscles
in breathing should of itself be the natural, purely physical reflex of
a feeling of love in the same way as, for instance, certain
half-spasmodic contractions of several muscles in the upper part of the
face can be the immediate expression of wrath.
I do not believe either that the mere contact of the lips with another
person’s face was originally sufficient to express “I love you.”
Naturally, the longing to touch the beloved ones body, to approach it as
closely as possible, is a very essential manifestation of erotic
emotion; but so far as the contact of the lips is concerned, there is
reason for assuming that, originally, without its being the direct
object, it had been, moreover, and perhaps in an equally high degree, a
means of attaining a definite sensual gratification--a gratification
that can be realised by the co-operation of the lips and mouth.
As the nose-salutation partly originates in smell, so the mouth
salutation may, to a certain extent[32] at least, have its origin in
taste, or--which is even more probable--in both smell and taste? These
latter, as you know, are very closely related to each other.
The dog shows his joy at his master’s presence by licking the latter’s
hand. Why is this? It would not, I suppose, be too rash to assume that
he as good as “tastes” him; loving his master, he therefore loves the
taste and smell peculiar to him.
The cow licks her calf, and in this one may presumably see the
expression of a feeling which is to some extent satisfied by this
action. And why so? Undoubtedly by recognising by the tongue (and nose)
the taste (and smell) peculiar to the calf.
Now, is it not exceedingly probable that the human kiss, in its original
form, can, as to its passive element, be accounted for in an identical
way, viz., as a purely sensual assimilation, by means of the nerves of
taste and smell, of another person’s peculiar qualities with respect to
_gustus_ and _odor_? These qualities have probably been much more
conspicuous in primitive mankind than nowadays, just as it is quite
certain that its faculty of taste and smell were far more developed than
ours.
And have we not still, especially in the love-kiss, but also in kisses
between women, very numerous representatives of the primitive kiss,
which I should like to term the “taste-kiss.” I have many times pointed
out, in the preceding pages, the part which taste plays in kissing; and
I shall now add what I have often heard young girls say to a lady they
had kissed amorously: “Your kisses taste so nice.”
From being a natural expression for love the sucking, tasting kiss has,
in course of time, become reduced to nothing more than a simple
inspiratory movement of the lips, which, by analogy, has come to express
many other feelings, such as gratitude, admiration, compassion,
tenderness, etc. It has become at length so degraded as to be used as a
purely conventional salutation.
If this reasoning be correct, then the mouth-kiss, in the course of its
development, presents a perfect parallel with the nose-kiss. Both these
forms of greeting were originally closely allied, but the mouth-kiss had
better conditions for development than the nose-kiss. It has become a
salutation of a considerably higher sort, and whenever savage tribes
come into contact with civilised nations the nose-kiss is gradually
discarded. Such, for instance, was the case in Madagascar. There is no
doubt that savages can express very deep emotions by the nose-kiss. A
French missionary tells the story of how he was received when he went
back to the island of Pomotu: “When we approached the country all the
population assembled on the beach. They had harpoons in their hands, for
they imagined we were enemies; but, as soon as they saw my cassock, they
shouted, ‘That’s the Father, away with the harpoons,’ and when we
reached the shore they all rushed forward to kiss me by rubbing their
noses against mine, according to the custom of that country. The
ceremony was not very agreeable to me, and I was not altogether pleased
at having to take part in it.”[33] Civilised people, on the other hand,
regard the nose-kiss as something highly ludicrous, and I doubt if any
poet has the power of casting a halo of romance over it.
The mouth-kiss, on the contrary, is redolent of the purest and most
delicate poesy. A German minnesinger rhapsodises thus: “The radiant sun
is darkened before mine eyes when I behold the roses that bloom on my
darling’s mouth.”
“He who can pluck these roses may rejoice in the depth of his heart.
Many are the roses I have beheld, but never have I looked on any so
splendid.”
“How beauteous are the roses one gathers in the valley; nathless her
delicate, ruddy lips conjure up thousands that are lovelier still.”
L’ENVOI
Wherefore, methinks, let ev’ry man
Kiss as he knows best, will, should, can;
But I and my beloved know this:--
How we ought properly to kiss.--PAUL FLEMING.
W. F. H.
Printed by
Oliver & Boyd
Edinburgh.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] H. F. Cary’s translation.
[2] From _osculum_ we get the words osculogy, the science of kissing,
and osculogical, that which pertains to kissing; but the Greek
derivations philematology and philematological are perhaps preferable.
[3]
The tiny little mouth, red as a rose
That blossoms hidden in some garden-close,
Pleasant and amorous through being kissed.
W. F. H.
[4] Translated from the Danish Version.
[5] A Danish poet, philologist, and collector of proverbs (1631-1702).
[6] This and most of the following Servian ballads were translated by
Prof. Nyrop into Danish from the German version of O. P. Ritto.
[7] From “Various Verses,” 1893.
[8]
He who a kiss has snatched and takes naught more,
Deserves to lose the kiss he has in store,
How much was lacking to my perfect bliss?
Not modesty but clownishness was this.
W. F. H.
[9] Translated by Edward, Earl of Derby.
[10] William Morris’ Translation.
[11] William Morris’ Translation.
[12] William Morris’ Translation.
[13] William Morris’ Translation.
[14] Retranslated from the Danish of the Text.
[15] We have here a striking example of how legends arise. John,
the Father of the Church, got the epithet “golden-mouth” on account
of his great eloquence; but the people sought another more concrete
explanation, if I may use the term, of that name, the metaphorical use
of which they failed to comprehend.
[16]
And when he had to kiss Charles’ foot--such kissing Rollo spurned--
He thrust his hand forth downward, and to the monarch turned.
He raised the king’s foot to his lips, and overturned the king,
Who quickly rose upon his feet whilst mirth around did ring.
W. F. H.
[17] Which may be freely translated:
Dear, kind rod that’s trusty stood,
Without thee ne’er should I do good.
[18]
... Well, if you chose
With less to be content, don’t stick at this.
I have for you a face without a nose.
W. F. H.
[19]
My first is for my husband, not for you;
But you’re right welcome to the other two.
W. F. H.
[20] My dear Arlequin, a handsome lad like you, when a lady offers him
anything, ought to kiss the hand when he receives it.
[21] Omitted in the last edition.
[22] Omitted in the last edition.
[23] _Si ab sponso rebus sponsæ donatis, interveniente osculo,
ante nuptias hunc vel illam mori contigerit, dimidiam partem rerum
donatarum ad superstitem pertinere præcipimus, dimidiam ad defuncti
vel defunctæ heredes cuiuslibet gradus sint et quocunque iure
successerint, ut donatio stare pro parte media et solvi pro parte
media videatur: osculo vero non interveniente, sive sponsus sive
sponsa obierit, totam infirmari donationem et donatori sponso sive
heredibus eius restitui._
[24] Retranslated from the Danish Text.
[25]
Now down on your knees fall,
And promise straightway
To be wife and husband,
And then kiss away.
W. F. H.
[26]
Madame, join the dancing throng,
Listen to their measured song;
But remember, for the rest,
You shall kiss whom you love best.
W. F. H.
[27] Retranslated from the Danish of the Text.
[28] Retranslated from the Danish Version in the Text.
[29] Retranslated from the Danish Version in the Text.
[30] Retranslated from the Danish Version in the Text.
[31] Naturally, I am not concerned here with the various explanations
given by the poets as to the origin of the kiss. Gressner, in an
idyll of Daphnis and Chloe, has told us how both the lovers observed
the sport of the doves in the grove and then tried to imitate it by
pressing their mouths together as the doves do their beaks.
[32] Besides the passive or receptive element of the kiss, which is
essentially the object of my investigation, there is also, as we have
previously noticed, an active element which must not be overlooked,
viz., the contact and muscular sensation at the pressure. During the
erotic transport, which excites the desire for something further of a
brutal and violent nature, the body trembles with powerful muscular
tension, and a pressure or bite of the mouth is one of the forms by
which the passion of love finds expression. It is difficult, in these
pages, to go further into this aspect of the kiss, which is regarded
by certain philosophers as the main one, which it really is in respect
to certain kisses under certain circumstances; but there are other
kisses which are equally so originally, and in which the passive
element seems to me the most essential. The origin of the love-kiss
ought scarcely to be sought in any single source, whether in the sense
of touch or in that of taste and smell combined. Unquestionably both
these elements co-operate in its production, but under constantly
varying conditions, just as the active or the passive element
predominates, the kiss accompanies and interprets according to the
erotic phase. In what follows I shall confine myself exclusively to
the receptive element in the kiss.
[33] Retranslated from the Danish Version in the Text.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
Inbruntskuss=> Inbrunstkuss {pg 9}
Kuss aus!=> Küss aus! {pg 10}
eine grosse Kleinigheit=> eine grosse Kleinigkeit {pg 64}
Er kan mich küssen da wo ich keine Nase habe=> Er kann mich küssen da wo
ich keine Nase habe {pg 128}
Lucius Turquinius=> Lucius Tarquinius {pg 131}
the same state of thing=> the same state of things {pg 155}
pedanticly asks=> pedantically asks {pg 155}
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The kiss and its history" ***
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