The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1902-06-22
KISSING THE BOOK.
A Relic of the Time When Kissing
Was General in Merry England.

(Lancet)
Sir Francis Jeune and Mr.. Justice
Gorell Barnes have had posted outside
4 the two courts of the probate. divorce
and admiralty division notices to wit
nesses calling their attention TO the
tact that they may be sworn in the
/ scotch manner before giviug evidence.
Ihat IS to say, they may be sworn with
uphfted hand. repeating a solemn in
vocation to the Deity, instead Of taking
a book and kissing il, after listening
TO form repeated by q minor official
! of the court. The notice 10 which we
refer is repeated outside one of the
courts of the chancery division. and
we have every hope that it may be-
come universal.
We have for many years cOntended
that the oath of kissing d book has
nothing TO commend it, while it is
nasty and may become a means of
propagation of disease and We have
seen with regret that the statutory. per
mission 10 swear in the Scotch fashion
was, as a rule not known by witnesses
and frequently, also, that judges, coro-
ners and magistrates were ignorant Of
it,
The form Of swearing by kissing a
book is purely one Of custom. There is
no direct authority for it in any act Of
parliament or rule, or book Of prac-
uce. The date also of its introduction
is unknown, but this is not because il
has been lost in the mists of antiquity
for IL is fairly certain that. so recent
as at the end of the seventeenth cen
fury, if the form existed it was not I'm
any general use. It has been pointed
out that Coke in his institutes makes
no mention of kissing the book, but
writes Of the corporal oath as thus
named, because the witness touched
with his hand a portion of the scrip
lures, and this aspect Of the oath no
doubt survives in the familiar warning
of the usher to the witness to remove
the glove before taking the Testament
for the purpose Of Kissing it. 1t is also
observed in the Book of Oaths." Of
which an edition was published in 1889,
there is no mention Of kissing a book
How the kissing originated is, we be
lieve, almost as much a matter Of spec
Ulation as is the date at which it be-
came frequent or universal
The laying of the hand on the Gospels
in swearing is, no doubt, Of great an
tiquity, while the laying of the hand on
the altar of a deity in invoking the
deity to witness a statement or prom
Use is older than the Gospels. The lay
ing of the hand on the Gospels has its
parallel in other countries besides Eng
land. The kissing of the book is, how
ever, we believe, peculiar 10 England,
or to England and Ireland, and it is not
quite easy to assign its origin to the
kissing of relics when we apparently
find it introduced in England after all
veneration for relics had been swept
away and made illegal
It is worth noting that English peO-
pie were more addicted TO kissing once
than they are now. kissing as a form
Of salutatiOn was SO common among
them that it excited the interest and
amusement of foreigners. Erasmus re-
fers to it, and a Hungarian gentleman
who visited London and moved in good
society in 1863, was much struck with
the way in which men kissed ladies
when they greeted them. where Hun
gaTians would have shaken hands.
Even Frenchmen in the middle ages
held kissing as a popularity of the
English nation, much as we remark
upon it now among the French. 1t is,
therefore, at least possible that the kiss
bestowed upon the book in taking an
oath may have been not so much a kiss
Of veneratiOn as a form Of salutation or
acknowledgment by bodily contact,
somewhat more ceremOniOUs than man
ual contact, but still not associated
with any great feeling of soIemnity.