Author: Sarah Angleton

Sarah Angleton is a wife, mom, blogger, book nerd, history enthusiast, author, and lover of puns. Her books include Paradise on the Pike, Launching Sheep & Other Stories, Gentleman of Misfortune, Smoke Rose to Heaven, and White Man's Graveyard.

Making a Big Splash

On By Sarah AngletonIn Animals, Books, Liesure6 Comments

In 1882, owner of the Rock Island and Milan Steam and Horse Railway Company, Bailey Davenport took on a new business venture to drive more business. What he created was Watchtower Park, a leisure destination at the end of the line on the bluffs overlooking the Rock River at Rock Island, Illinois.

This recreational park, admission to which was included with the price of a trolley ticket, opened with groomed hiking trails, a grand pavilion with picnic tables, and what Davenport advertised as a healing spring. Eventually, it would expand to include live theater, vaudeville, tennis courts, and billiards tables.

Shoot the Chute on the Pike at the 1904 World’s Fair.

But the biggest attraction, built in 1884 by J. P. Newburg, was a five hundred foot greased wooden track built into a hill down which a wide flat-bottomed boat zoom toward the river where it created a satisfying splash and glided across the surface of the water. An attendant then used a pulley system to drag the boat back up the hill for another go.

Watchtowers “Shoot the Chute” ride was the first of its kind, but the design quickly took off, becoming a frequent feature of amusement parks throughout the United States and the world. It’s probably no surprise then that a Shoot the Chute ride popped up in 1904 in the entertainment section, known as the Pike, on the grounds of the World’s Fair in St. Louis.

What might be more surprising is that there were actually two such rides on the Pike—one for the fairgoers, and one for the elephants at Hagenbeck’s Zoological Paradise and Trained Animal Circus. And just as a visitor standing nearby the Shoot the Chute could expect to enjoy a cool splash on a hot, sticky St. Louis summer day, a visitor to Hagenbeck’s could get showered by the kerplunk of an 8,000 pound pachyderm.

The elephant slide sure did make a splash, and appears frequently as a highlight in fairgoer written accounts. One biographer of Hagenbeck elephant trainer Reuben Castang even recounts a shared story in which Castang took an accidental plunge with the giant animals, and lived to play it off as if it had been a planned stunt.

Now that’s how you make a splash.

A fictionalized version of this scene appears in my new historical mystery, Paradise on the Pike, which came sliding onto the market this past week. With any luck, and with a lot of help from wonderful people spreading the word and building the buzz, it’s making a big enough splash that readers will notice and take a chance on it.

Hagenbeck’s Zoological Paradise and Trained Animal Circus is central to the novel, which is populated by elephants and many other animals that were fun characters to write. And of course sometimes when researching, you come across something that you just can’t leave out. Because everyone loves a good Shoot the Chute ride and some stories just make a big splash.

If you’d like to read more about the real Hagenbeck elephant antics that appear in the book, check out my guest post featured by writer and very gracious host Roberta Eaton Cheadle on her blog Roberta Writes.

Meet Me at the Fair

On By Sarah AngletonIn History, literature, Writing14 Comments

On November 22, 1944 after schedule delays, numerous script rewrites, budget woes, and a leading lady still unhappy with her role, a new Christmas musical debuted on the big screen in St. Louis, the city at the film’s heart. 

The song “Meet Me in St. Louis,” well known today because of the musical, is actually from 1904 and was written specifically for the World’s Fair. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Despite the mess of getting to that moment, Meet Me in St. Louis enjoyed immediate success, becoming Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s second highest grossing film up to that point, coming in only behind Gone With the Wind. After the premiere, Judy Garland even decided she liked it after all and commented to the producer, “Remind me not to tell you what kinds of pictures to make.”

The screenplay is based on a series of semi-autobiographical short stories by St. Louis native Sally Benson who wrote of an upper middle-class family that lived at 5135 Kensington Avenue during the construction of the 1904 World’s Fair on the grounds of Forest Park in St. Louis.

I confess, I saw the movie for the first time later in life than I should have, having grown up within easy reach of St. Louis. My childhood summers included trips to downtown to watch the Cardinals play at Busch Stadium where the musical’s title song is still played by the organist at every game and the crowd sings along as the words scroll across the jumbotron. 

I’ve been many times to the wonderful outdoor Muny theater in Forest Park where the stage adaptation of Meet Me in St. Louis, originally produced in 1989, is performed every few years. I even got engaged in that park on the very grounds of the actual 1904 World’s Fair.

I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at the new exhibit, open to the public on April 27th. It contains a scale model of the entire fairgrounds. And it’s spectacular.

Officially known as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the Fair is a big deal in St. Louis history. It transformed the city, launching it for about seven months into the center of the world’s attention. 

And it’s still a big deal, today. One-hundred and twenty years later the World’s Fair looms large in the community memory carried now by not a single living person who was there to see it, sparking excitement whenever it comes up in conversation, which is kind of weirdly a lot.

It’s especially on everyone’s minds right now because at the end of this month, just in time to celebrate the 120th anniversary of the opening of the Fair, the Missouri History Museum will reveal a newly re-imagined permanent World’s Fair exhibit. 

Equally exciting for everyone who either lives in my house or happens to be my mother, is the release of my new historical mystery set on the grounds of the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. 

Paradise on the Pike is available for the first time today. The story takes place in the enchanting world of Hagenbeck’s Zoological Paradise and Trained Animal Circus on the Pike, which is the entertainment strip within the Fair. It’s not a light, sentimental sort of story like Sally Benson’s, but it does contain elephants and lions and a pair of cantankerous goats. It also allowed me, and will hopefully allow you, to spend some time strolling through the Fair, which was almost entirely constructed of temporary buildings meant to disappear.

Available today! Order from your favorite independent bookstore or slightly bigger bookstore or Amazon.

And maybe that’s why, one hundred and twenty years later, it still takes up space in our imaginations, because we’re a little like six-year-old Tootie at the end of Benson’s stories when the family marvels over the lights and fountains on the fairgrounds and her sister Agnes asks if it’ll ever be torn down.

Tootie emphatically replies, “They’ll never tear it down. It will be like this forever.”

Agnes, relieved, exclaims, “I can’t believe it. Right here where we live. Right here in St. Louis.”

Forest Park retains very few physical reminders of the enormous event that once filled its every corner and held the attention of the world, but in the hearts of the St. Louisans who stroll through the grounds and wish they could have seen those lights shining, it will never be torn down. It’ll be like this forever.

You can find more information about Paradise on the Pike at this link.

Avoiding Traffic

On By Sarah AngletonIn Astronomy, History, Travel11 Comments

August 15, 1969 was a mild, warm day near the small town of Bethel, New York. It was the perfect day for a leisurely drive down State Highway 17B. By leisurely of course, I mean about an eight hour drive to move about ten miles with nearly half a million of your closest friends.

Just like in the classic children’s book Go Dog, Go! by P.D. Eastman, the place everyone was going on that pretty day in the middle of nowhere, was a great big party—in this case, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair that was to take place for “three days of peace and music” on a 600-acre dairy farm.   

I have lots of friends who made the drive and took the pictures. This isn’t one of theirs, but they all look pretty much like this. Image by Dane from Pixabay

The weather didn’t stay nice, of course. The sky grew overcast and there was a fair amount of rain to try to soak into an already somewhat saturated ground. By the end of the event, which rain delays pushed into a fourth day, there was an awful lot of mud. And the road snarl to get there was bad enough the performers had to be brought in by helicopter. Nearly fifty-five years later it still makes the top ten list of all-time worst traffic jams in history.

But people who attended seem to think it was a pretty good time. The whole thing sounds like an absolute nightmare to me, but then my perfect day would more likely be spent on a dairy farm in the middle of nowhere with no one but the cows and a book. Well, maybe a few people could come with me. And I’d want at least three books. Also, no traffic. 

There are probably a lot of things I’d choose not to do just so I could avoid traffic. Earlier this week I made just such a decision when a swath of my state experienced a total solar eclipse. From the vantage point of my driveway, the moon’s coverage of the sun was somewhere close to 98%. 

If you do like to avoid a rush, you can still get a free advance digital copy of my new historical mystery by joining the launch team by April 15th: https://forms.gle/psi7ctZ6fNK88dbB9

A lot of people got pretty excited about the idea of traveling a smidge into the area of totality. I do mean a lot. The news reported that drive times doubled and even more than tripled in parts of the state. In many places, traffic completely shut down during the eclipse itself with motorists donning cardboard eclipse glasses and staring up at the sky.

Of those I know who traveled for the event, most say it was well worth it. I’m sure it was. If I hadn’t experienced a total eclipse seven years ago, I might have been excited enough to travel, too, but the traffic in my driveway was no thicker than usual.

At nearly 98% coverage of the sun, the sky grew noticeably darker, the air got cooler, the insect noise shifted a bit, and my dog grew a touch antsy. I had a pair of cardboard eclipse glasses and I did stare up at a sliver of the sun. Then I had a lengthy conversation with my four-year-old neighbor who was wearing a Spider-Man sweatshirt just in case the eclipse gifted him with superpowers. 

It didn’t, which was disappointing for both of us. But the day was mild and warm, perfect for standing on the driveway, looking up at the sky, and avoiding traffic.

Shooting for the Moon with A Lot of Help

On By Sarah AngletonIn Books, History3 Comments
Even astronauts need a little help from 400,000 friends. NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

On July 16 of 1969, at 9:32 AM approximately one million people gathered on Florida beaches to witness the launch of Apollo 11. Many of them had camped out for multiple days to claim a spot. I imagine their enthusiasm was palpable.

Millions more people watched on television. Excitement mounted in the first few days of the mission and by the time Neil Armstrong took that first small step, 650 million people tuned in to see it happen, making the event the most widely watched television broadcast in history.

And it couldn’t have happened if NASA’s first female launch controller JoAnn Morgan hadn’t been in the control room, or electrical engineer Tom Sanzone hadn’t designed and monitored the backpack life support systems worn by the moon-walkers, or if astronaut Frank Borman hadn’t used a personal connection to assure that the Luna 15 Soviet spacecraft wouldn’t interfere with the Apollo mission, or if diver Clancy Hatleb hadn’t been on scene to welcome the returning astronauts to earth by whisking them into quarantine in case of space germs.

A new historical mystery set against the backdrop of the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, for fans of Water for Elephants and Devil in the White City.

In all, NASA estimates that approximately 400,000 people contributed to the success of the Apollo 11 moon landing, from thousands of engineers working throughout the world to the janitors and caterers that kept the facilities running smoothly. Every successful launch requires coordinated effort from a lot of people.

That statement is true when applied to Apollo 11, and it’s true when applied to a new book. My fourth historical novel, Paradise on the Pike, a mystery set against the backdrop of the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, will officially launch on April 18 and it’s taken a lot of people to get it this far, from critique partners, beta readers, and cheerleaders to cover artist, formatter, and editor. It maybe hasn’t taken 400,000 people, but it’s been a lot.

And I still need help to get the book off the ground because no matter how enthusiastic I am about this book launch, I can’t make it successful by myself. I could really use an enthusiastic crowd to camp out on the beach and cheer loudly in hopes that even more people will become curious enough to tune in.

If you are interested in being part of that first, important crowd, I would love for you to join my launch team on Facebook. Participation is simple. You’ll receive an advance digital copy of the book to review (along with some helpful guidance if you’re not too sure how to do that) and some graphics to share on social media, There will also be some fun and chances to win prizes along the way. Sign up to be part of the group at this link:  https://forms.gle/psi7ctZ6fNK88dbB9

Or if Facebook isn’t your thing, but you happen to be a NetGalley reviewer, you can request a review copy of the book at this link: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/354539

I probably won’t be able to pull together a million, or even 400,000, people to help me with this, though feel free to share the opportunity with anyone you think might be interested. Of course I also wouldn’t be terribly surprised if somewhat fewer than 650 million people eventually read my book. Still, it takes a lot of help to shoot for the moon.

Hollow Inside

On By Sarah AngletonIn Food, Holidays18 Comments

On December 5, 1942 the Easter Bunny went to war. That’s when the United States War Production Board issued Conservation Order M-145, banning the production of novelty chocolate, including those delightful long-eared treats that had been gracing the Easter baskets of American kids for a few years by then.

The Board defended the decision by suggesting that the move would more intentionally include children in the war effort, providing them with the opportunity to be as sad as the adults in their lives. Instead of enjoying chocolate treats, children would wake up on Easter morning to plush bunnies, or to bunnies carved from soap or wood, which were somewhat less delicious.

Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay

Of course it’s worth noting that chocolate Easter bunnies had been introduced in Germany in 1890, had only come to the United States 1939, and had pretty quickly become hollowed out by vanishing supplies and profit margins. The children had already been sacrificing.

And the real reason for the decision had more to do with supply line interruptions and the diversion of limited resources to the front lines. That makes sense, because I think it’s safe to suggest that chocolate improves morale. It packs a pretty substantial caloric punch and is a mild stimulant, which makes it a great snack for soldiers on the go.

What makes it less great is chocolate’s tendency to melt and spoil. The War Production Board had a solution for that as well. Government contracts went to major chocolate manufacturers who could produce a D-ration chocolate bar with a higher melting point and a flavor described by soldiers as maybe a little bit better than a boiled potato. It was also not shaped like a bunny.

So, nobody was happy, though eventually American children did get their chocolate bunnies back. By about 1947, supply lines were humming along more or less at pre-war efficiency and chocolate was allowed to be both fun and delicious once again. The Easter Bunny returned home, but like so many who go to war, he’d been forever changed by the experience.

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

Today, it’s hard to find a chocolate bunny that isn’t hollow inside. Manufacturers and chocolatiers will tell you that’s because when chocolate gets too thick, it’s less pleasant to bite into. Personally, I think I could manage, but hollow or not, I certainly won’t hesitate this Easter to bite into the long ears of a chocolate bunny.

According to many not entirely substantiated claims on the internet, more than ninety million such bunnies are sold in the US every year, and 89% of people surveyed claim that biting first into the ears is the right way to consume them. 5% are convinced that the tail should be first. I don’t know what to think of that other 6%. I guess maybe they’re hollow inside.

How about you? How will you be eating your chocolate bunny this Easter?

Seven More Years of Wrinkles and Gray Hair

On By Sarah AngletonIn Art, Books, literature24 Comments

Today marks exactly four weeks until my fifth book launches into the world. It’s been nearly seven years since I published my first, a collection developed from the first five years of this blog. That book, called Launching Sheep & Other Stories from the Intersection of History and Nonsense, is part history, part memoir, and a good part made-up silliness. The cover features a picture of me in period costume.

This picture has served me well, but it’s time to age up a little bit. Image by KarenAndersonDesigns

That was my first professional author photograph. My second was taken not long after in preparation for the release of my first novel, which happened about five months later. That one is a tad bit more professional and includes much less ridiculous clothing. I’m smiling, but not too much. I look like an approachable but also knowledgeable and literary lady in her thirties.

Most of those things, I hope I am. One of them, I definitely am not. And that’s why I recently had some new photos taken. Having portraits taken is uncomfortable for me. I don’t exactly run from the camera, but as a typical mom and keeper of memories, I am more often behind the lens than in front of it.

But I’ve earned nearly seven more years of wrinkles and gray hair since the last set of head shots, and readers have been expecting author portraits since the papyrus scrolls of Ancient Egypt. I couldn’t avoid them any more than John Milton could have when his printer Humphrey Moseley insisted the poet include one with his first collection of poems in 1645.

Maybe not the most flattering portrait ever. William Marshall, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Milton enlisted the help of renowned engraver William Marshall to create a frontispiece including an author portrait. At the time, Milton was thirty-seven years old, but the standard of the day was to include a picture of the poet at a younger age. Alas, that is no longer the standard.

According to the words engraved around the portrait, William aimed to depict Milton at the age of twenty-one. According to the overly large nose, greasy hair, puckered lips, and swollen right eye of the portrait, he missed.

The picture was so unflattering and Milton so upset about it, that the poet asked the engraver to include the following lines in Greek (a language that Marshall allegedly could not read) beneath the portrait:

“Looking at the form of the original, you could say, perhaps that his likeness has been drawn by a rank beginner; but, my friends, since you do not recognize what is pictured here, have a chuckle at a caricature by a good-for-nothing artist.”

An approachable, knowledgeable, literary lady with seven more years of wrinkles and gray hair, looking pretty darn okay. Image by Karen Anderson Designs.

When the collection was updated in 1673, the portrait was no longer included, but Milton, apparently still bitter about the worst head shot ever, moved his added poetic words to the interior of the book and slapped a title on them: “On the Engraver of his Portrait.”

Fortunately, my good friend and photographer is much more pleasant to work with than William Marshall apparently was. She doesn’t bat an eye when I ask her to photograph me in period costume holding a laptop, or to meet me in Forest Park in St. Louis so we can get a hint of the 1904 World’s Fair into the pictures.

She makes it as easy as possible for an awkward, squinty-eyed person such as myself to look pretty darn okay. I can trust that she’d never make my nose appear too large, my eye swollen, or my hair extra greasy. She’d probably even digitally remove my wrinkles and gray hair if I asked her to, but I didn’t. And she can trust that I’ll never include an insulting poem about her work in my book.

Yielding the Circumference Day

On By Sarah AngletonIn History, Mathematics18 Comments

In honor of Pi Day, I have dusted off a post from the early days of the blog. Enjoy!

Today is March 14 (3/14 in the US), which means that millions of nerds are spending the day happily celebrating that most mysterious of irrational numbers, pi. I’ll just briefly explain in case you don’t happen to be a nerd (because the jury’s still out). Pi (which is a stage name because this rock star number is too irrational to have it any other way) is the expression of the ratio of the circumference (the distance around) of a circle to the diameter (the distance across and through the center) of that same circle.

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

Ancient nerds discovered that this ratio is constant for any circle and like nerds will do (and this is the reason they generally make more money than non-nerds), they correctly decided that this might be information worth noting. And when I say “ancient,” I’m talking before Egyptians and Babylonians started writing down their various approximations for this handy little ratio, say 4000 years ago.

In fact, I think it’s safe to suggest that the approximate value of pi was probably discovered first by the same caveman (let’s just call him Og) who invented the wheel. He carefully painted the number (out to 300 decimal places) on an as yet undiscovered cave wall and proudly showed it to the other cavemen because he thought it was so neat. At that point (and again, I’m just assuming here) the other cavemen gave Og a wedgie.

This is an artist’s approximation as it is believed that Og never sat for a portrait. It’s pretty good, I think.
Image by GraphicMama-team from Pixabay

Don’t fret, though. Og didn’t suffer in vain because humankind has been using his handy little observation ever since, and has spent thousands of years approximating the constant. After the Egyptians and the Babylonians, who each found the number to be a little more than 3, pi shows up in the history of India and China (where again it was found to be a little more than 3).

It also gets a nod in the Hebrew Bible (in 1 Kings 7:23) where it is calculated to be 3. This has (believe it or not) been a source of great controversy for Hebrew scholars, but what I think it indicates is that God isn’t all that impressed by our efforts to calculate pi out to well over 10 trillion places. This may also be illustrated by the fact that if one were to calculate the circumference of a circle that enclosed the entire known universe (you know, just for fun), using just 39 decimal places of pi would yield an answer with a maximum error equal to the radius of a hydrogen atom.

William Jones. Not nearly as famous as Leonhard Euler, nevertheless important to pie-loving nerds everywhere. William Hogarth, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Still, I suppose it’s nice that thanks to computers, we can now calculate that the value of pi is a little bit over 3. Most of us (at least those of us who aren’t mathematicians by trade) never bother with much more than 3.14. So on March 14 we release our inner nerd (some more inner than others) to celebrate by baking and eating pie because if we can’t be bothered with all those extra decimal places, we sure aren’t going to be concerned by an extra (delicious) “e” at the end.

One question that remains for me, though (because my inner nerd is actually more interested in symbol origins than in geometry), is why is this super important irrational constant referred to by the Greek letter π? The answer is pretty simple. Before it had a stage name to call it’s own, pi was referred to most often as “quantitas in quam cum multiflicetur diameter, proveniet circumferencia” or “the quantity which, when the diameter is multiplied by it, yields the circumference.” Admittedly this name is highly descriptive, but probably a little cumbersome written into an equation.

Yum. Happy Pi Day!

In 1706, a Welsh math teacher by the name of William Jones first introduced π as the now universally recognized symbol for this precise meaning. Though Jones isn’t well remembered for any other contributions to mathematics, Leonhard Euler (who was a heavy hitter in the field) adopted and popularized the symbol. It was chosen simply because in Greek, π is the first letter of the word for perimeter.

And I suspect that it was chosen because no one could figure out what to eat in order to celebrate Yielding the Circumference Day. Whatever you call it, it’s a day for all of us nerds (and, yes, if you stuck with this post until the very end, the jury is done deliberating) to enjoy a piece of piE. I’m thinking strawberry.

Malapropos of Nothing

On By Sarah AngletonIn Language, Sayings, Writing15 Comments

I admit to being a little bit of a language snob. Of course I recognize that language evolves and a misspoken word today may be perfectly acceptable tomorrow, at least for some, but know that if you use a malapropism, I’ll probably judge you.

In case you are unfamiliar with the word malapropism, in lame man’s terms, it’s the mistaken replacement of a word with another that sounds similar. The term, derived from the French mal à propos, meaning inappropriate, got picked up in the English language because of playwright Richard Brinsely Sheridan. In his 1775 play The Rivals, a character named Mrs. Malaprop is notorious for muddling up her words. 

One version of Mrs. Malaprop looking “as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile,” which is one of her delightful lines. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign University Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

That’s not to say that Sheridan was the only, or even the first, writer to make use of such a character trait, but I suppose that’s a moo point. For all intensive purposes, that’s when the concept entered the English language where it’s been driving language snobs like me bonkers ever since.

I’ve been thinking about malapropisms a lot lately because the publication date of Paradise on the Pike, my new historical novel set in the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, is drawing near and I have discovered that not everyone is familiar with the word “pike.” 

If you happen to live in one of the handful of US states that contain a turnpike, you might be able to puzzle out that “turnpike” is another word for toll road and that “pike” is another word for a road. You might even be familiar with the phrase “coming down the pike,” meaning something is going to happen in the future. For example, I have a new novel coming down the pike. 

If you don’t happen to live near a turnpike, then you might mistakenly believe the phrase is “coming down the pipe,” in which case, I’m probably judging you. 

But this particular malapropism does make some logical sense because there is another phrase “in the pipeline” that also refers to something that is going to happen soon. I could, for example, tell you that I have a new novel in the pipeline. Conflating the two seems like a fairly innocuous mistake.

And of course you can go ahead and say whatever you like. It’s a doggy dog world and I don’t always get my way even if I do think malapropisms ought to be nipped in the butt whenever possible. Really, I could care less. Except that the expression, “coming down the pike,” may actually have its roots in the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis in which a mile long stretch of road along the north side of the fairgrounds that formed the main entertainment section of the fair was referred to as “the Pike.”

A new historical mystery coming down the pike on April 18, 2024.

The Pike contained all manner of concessions including battle reenactments, rides, a wax museum, fashion demonstrations, mock-ups of exotic locales, dancers, musicians, and animal shows. It was also the site of daily parades, leading to much excitement as people crowded around to catch a glimpse of what wondrous things might be coming down the Pike.

And so, the cover of my newest novel in the pipeline that will be coming down the pike on the 18th of April, just in time to celebrate the 120th anniversary of the 1904 World’s Fair, features a picture looking down the historical Pike. I hope you’ll forgive me for stringing out the cover reveal and keeping you on tender hooks for a few weeks. I also hope you’ll really enjoy the book when it’s finally here. And in the meantime, language snobbery aside, I hope you’ll love the book by its cover.

A Nice New Pair of Gloves

On By Sarah AngletonIn Courtship, Traditions9 Comments

It was in the 5th century when St. Brigid of Kildare brought a problem of inequality to the attention of St. Patrick, who may not have particularly cared. Brigid’s complaint was on behalf of all the single ladies who kept waiting and waiting and waiting for a man to propose marriage.

It’s also said that St. Brigid once prayed for God to make her less beautiful just so she wouldn’t be pressured to marry, so the St. Patrick proposal stories may be a little off brand. Glaaaastonbury88, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

St Patrick set down his shamrock, swallowed the last of his green beer, rolled his eyes, and graciously suggested that every four years (except in years divisible by 100, but not by 400), when February 29th rolled around, it was okay with him if the womenfolk wanted to go ahead and propose to the men.

In one version of the story, a thankful St. Brigid immediately dropped to one knee and proposed to St. Patrick, but he was too busy driving the snakes out of Ireland to notice. Also the lives of Brigid and Patrick didn’t overlap that much, making her maybe five years old when this event allegedly took place and him not more than a few years from the end of his life. The story, either version, is a bit dubious.

But the strange tale got even stranger when in the year 1288 Irish monks brought the tradition to Scotland where Queen Margaret cemented into law that if a woman proposed marriage to a man on February 29th then he’d better either say yes or compensate her for her disappointment with a pretty silk dress or a nice new pair of gloves. That just sounds to me like a great way to get a free dress and gloves.

I could always use a nice new pair of gloves.
Image by 378322 from Pixabay

Of course Queen Margaret was at most only five years old when the law would have been written and there’s no record of any such law having ever existed. But regardless of where the tradition of women proposing marriage to men on leap day might have come from, there’s no question that the notion has been around for a long time in western culture.

The tradition showed up in the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries where it mostly became the subject of ridicule. Today of course it feels a little silly because women in western cultures have more agency than ever and incidences of proposals from women to men are on the rise at any time of year.

I’ll really be spending my leap day preparing for the launch of my new historical mystery in just seven weeks. Watch this space next week for the full cover reveal.

Still, it feels like this strange day that has been popping up on our calendars more or less every four years, with only a few necessary tweaks, since 46 BC should be marked as special in some way. If nothing else, it feels like a stolen extra day and I for one want to make the most of it.

As a woman who has been happily married for going on twenty-four years now, it would probably be pretty inappropriate for me to propose marriage to anyone, but I guess I wouldn’t say no to a pretty silk dress or a nice new pair of gloves. I’ll just have to shop for them myself.

What are you doing with your extra February day?