The significance of kisses—The kissing of hands in religious ceremony and social life, in ancient Rome, Mexico and Austria—The politic achievement of a kiss—An indignant cardinal—A kiss within the cup—Something about lips, the sweet petitioners for kisses—Dancing and kissing—An Irish kissing festival—Electric kissing parties—Kissing under the mistletoe—New year’s kissing in old New York—A Western kissing bee.

There is much significance in kisses. To kiss the lips is to adore the living breath of the person saluted; to kiss the feet or the ground is to express humiliation; to kiss the garments to express veneration. The kissing of hands is of great antiquity, and seems to have been equally employed in religion and in social life. It was thus that the sun and moon were worshipped from the remotest ages. Job alludes to this custom when he says: “If I have looked upon the sun when he was shining forth, or at the moon advancing bright, and my heart have been secretly enticed, and my hand have kissed my mouth, this also were an iniquity,” etc. Lucian relates of Demosthenes that, having fallen into the hands of Antipater and obtained permission to enter a temple in the neighborhood, he carried his hand to his mouth on entering, which his guards took for an act of religion, but, when too late, found he had swallowed poison. Among the Romans, persons were treated as atheists who would not kiss their hands when they entered a temple. In the early days of Christianity, it was the custom of the primeval bishops to give their hands to be kissed by the ministers who served at the altar. This custom, however, as a religious rite, declined with paganism.

In society, the kissing of hands has always been regarded as a mute form of compliment, and used in asking favors, in thanking those from whom they have been received, and in showing veneration for superiors. Priam, in Homer, kissed the hands and embraced the knees of Achilles in conjuring him to restore the body of Hector. This custom prevailed in ancient Rome, but it varied. In the first ages of the Republic it seems to have been only practiced by inferiors to their superiors; equals gave their hands and embraced. In the progress of time, even the soldiers refused to show this mark of respect to their generals; and their kissing the hand of Cato when he was obliged to quit them was regarded as an extraordinary circumstance, at a period of such refinement. Under the emperors, kissing hands became an essential duty, even for the great themselves; inferior courtiers were obliged to be content to adore the purple by kneeling, touching the robe of the emperor by the right hand, and carrying it to the mouth. Even this was thought too free; and at length they saluted the emperor at a distance by kissing their hands, in the same manner as when they adored the gods. Solomon says of the flatterers and suppliants of his time, that they ceased not to kiss the hands of their patrons till they had obtained the favors which they had solicited. Cortez found the custom in Mexico, where upwards of a thousand of the nobility saluted him by touching the earth with their hands, which they carried afterwards to their mouths.

Kissing the hand is a national custom in Austria. A gentleman on meeting a lady friend kisses her hand, and does the same at parting from her. A beggar-woman to whom you have given an alms, either kisses your hand or says: “I kiss your hand.” The stranger must expect to have his hand kissed not only by beggars, but by chambermaids, lackeys, and even by old men.

In Ben Jonson’s play, “Cynthia’s Revels,” Hedon says to his friend: “You know I call Madam Philantia, my Honor; and she calls me her Ambition. Now, when I meet her in the presence, anon, I will come to her and say, ‘Sweet Honor, I have hitherto contented my sense with the lilies of your hand, but now I will taste the roses of your lips;’ and, withal, kiss her; to which she cannot but blushingly answer, ‘Nay, now you are too ambitious.’ And then do I reply: ‘I cannot be too Ambitious of Honor, sweet lady. Will’t not be good?’”

And his friend assures him that it is “a very politic achievement of a kiss.”

When the gallant Cardinal, John of Lorraine, was presented to the Duchess of Savoy, she gave him her hand to kiss, greatly to the indignation of the irate churchman. “How, madam,” he exclaimed, “am I to be treated in this manner? I kiss the Queen, my mistress, who is the greatest queen in the world, and shall I not kiss you, a dirty little Duchess?” Without more ado he caught hold of the princess and kissed her thrice in the mouth. He was apparently of the mind of Selden, who thought “to kiss ladies’ hands after their lips, as some do, is like little boys who, after they eat the apple, fall to the paring.”

It was a custom among the Greeks and Romans to drink from the same cup as their lady friends, and from the spot where the fair one had touched the brim. Ben Jonson borrows this idea from a Greek poet when he says:

One of the older poets referring to this custom, writes:

Of course the poets have had a good deal to say about lips. Anacreon speaks of “lip-provoking kisses,” and, alluding to the lip of another fair one, calls it a “sweet petitioner for kisses.” Tatius speaks of “lips soft and delicate for kissing;” and Lucretius gave it as his opinion that girls who have large lips kiss much sweeter than others. The ancient ladies seemed to enter into kissing with such enthusiasm that they often bit their lovers. Cattalus, in one of his poems, asks:

And Horace, in one of his odes, says:

When kissing was a common civility of daily intercourse, it is not to be wondered at that it should find its way into the courtesies of dancing, and thus we learn that a kiss was anciently the established fee of a lady’s partner. In a dialogue between Custom and Verite, concerning the use and abuse of dancing and minstrelsie, is the following verse:

In the “Tempest” this line occurs:

And Henry says to Anne Boleyn:

A correspondent having bitterly complained of the lascivious character of the dancing of the period, Budgell, in the course of his reply, remarks:

“I must confess I am afraid that my correspondent had too much reason to be a little out of humor at the treatment of his daughter; but I conclude that he would have been much more so had he seen one of those kissing dances, in which Will Honeycomb assures me they are obliged to dwell almost a minute on the fair one’s lips, or they will be too quick for the music, and dance quite out of time.”

Sir John Suckling, in his “Ballad of the Wedding,” published some years before this period, said:

Brand, in his “Popular Antiquities,” tells us that the custom of kissing in dancing, is still prevalent in many parts of the country. “When the fiddler thinks young couples have had music enough, he makes his instrument squeak out two notes, which all understand to say ‘kiss her.’” The panting bucolic swains are not slow to claim this privilege from their blushing partners.

In the “Banquet” of Xenophon, quoted by Burton in his “Anatomy of the Melancholy,” there is an account of an interlude, or dance, in which Dionysius and Ariadne were engaged, which was of such a pleasing character that the account states that “the audience were so ravished with it, that they that were unmarried swore they would forthwith marry, and those that were married called instantly for their horses and galloped home to their wives.”

In Hone’s “Table Book” there is an account of a curious kissing festival held in Ireland. It is stated that on Easter Monday several hundred young persons of the town and neighborhood of Potsferry, County Down, dressed in their best, went to a pleasant walk near the town. “The avowed object of each person is to see the fun, which consists in the men kissing the females, without reserve, whether married or single. This mode of salutation is quite a matter of course; it is never taken amiss, nor with much show of coyness. The female must be ordinary indeed who returns home without having received at least a dozen hearty kisses.”

Some writer of the future, in describing the manners and customs of our modern age, will doubtless allude to the “electric kissing parties,” which it is averred exist in New England, and which are thus described:

“The ladies and gentlemen range themselves about the room. In leap year the lady selects a partner, and together they shuffle about on the carpet until they are charged with electricity, the lights in the room having first been turned low. Then they kiss in the dark, and make the sparks fly for the amusement of the on-lookers. Oh, the shock is delightful! I have never been but to one electric party, but I understand that after a young lady has played the game for a while it is impossible to give her a shock. Probably the gentleman don’t shuffle his feet hard enough on the carpet. Gracious! I’m afraid I should wear the soles off my shoes.”

Kissing under the mistletoe is a custom of very remote origin, and a practice too common to be dealt with here, though it may not, perhaps, be known that, owing to the licentious revelry to which it gave occasion, mistletoe was formerly excluded by ecclesiastical authority from the decoration of the church at Christmas time. Hone tells us that there was an old belief that unless a maiden was kissed under the mistletoe at Christmas time, she would not be married during the ensuing year.

The special custom connected with the mistletoe on Christmas Eve is undoubtedly a relic of the days of Druidism, and is familiar to most readers. A branch of the mystic plant is suspended from the wall or ceiling, and any one of the fair sex who, either from inadvertence or on purpose, passes beneath the plant, incurs the penalty of being then and there kissed by any man who has the courage to avail himself of the privilege.

The Scandinavian tradition is that Balder was killed by a mistletoe arrow given to the blind HÖder by Loki, the god of mischief and potentate of our earth. Balder was restored to life, but the mistletoe was placed in future under the care of Friga, and was never again to be an instrument of evil till it touched the earth, the empire of Loki. Hence, it is always suspended from ceilings. And when persons of opposite sexes pass under it, they give each other the kiss of peace and love, in the full assurance that the plant is no longer an instrument of mischief.

A modern English writer says that in Battersea Park on bank holiday he found kissing to be all the vogue. “But what kissing! Instead of the rhythmic chant, the graceful dance, or even the sportive chase of the northern kissing games, here was simply promiscuity of osculation of the most unabashed description. There was no ring to begin with, only an imperfectly cleared space in the middle of a great crowd. In this crowd a young woman would approach a young man—as often as not a perfect stranger—thrust a chip into his hand, and then bolt across the green. The man chases her, runs her down, and brings her back with his arm around her waist, enters the cleared space, and kisses her, sometimes half a dozen times, before the on-lookers. Sometimes the girl chases the man, sometimes the man the girl. If they wanted their kisses sans ceremonie they were caught at once, and kissed without more ado.”

In Diedrich Knickerbocker’s veracious History of New York, it is told how the good burghers of New Amsterdam, with their wives and daughters, dressed in their best clothes, repaired to the governor’s house, where the rite of kissing the women a happy new year was observed by the governor. Antony, the Trumpeter, who acted as head usher, was a young and handsome bachelor. “Nothing could keep him from following the heels of the old governor, whom he loved as he did his very soul; so, embracing all the young vrouws, and giving every one of them that had good teeth and rosy lips a dozen hearty smacks, he departed, loaded with their kind wishes.” The Trumpeter seems to have been a prodigious favorite among the women, and was the first to exact the toll of a kiss levied on the fair sex at Kissing Bridge, on the highway to Hellgate.

In the far west they have “kissing bees,” and the rural husking frolic common to many parts of the country has been described by Joel Barlow, an early American poet: