What Happened If the Village Disapproved of Your Marriage? A Very Loud Night

A crowd assembled after dark outside the house of whoever had offended, and made as much noise as possible with pots, pans, horns, bells, whistles and anything else that would produce a din, frequently continuing for hours and repeating on successive nights. Participants were disguised, with faces blackened or masked and clothing reversed or exchanged between the sexes. Effigies were carried, verses were shouted, and the targets were sometimes seized and paraded through the village, occasionally seated backwards on a donkey or carried on a pole. Payment or drink from the household would end it.

The offences were social rather than criminal and the pattern is consistent:

• •A marriage between people of very different ages
• •A widow or widower remarrying, particularly quickly
• •A marriage outside the community
• •A husband beaten by his wife, or thought to be dominated by her
• •Adultery, or a household whose arrangements were irregular
• •Behaviour the community regarded as failing an expected role

The custom is best understood as unofficial enforcement of community norms in places where official authority reached lightly and rarely, and historians treat it as a form of law rather than as disorder. It targeted behaviour that no court would punish but that the community regarded as a threat to how households and marriages were supposed to work. The anonymity of disguise made participation possible without individual responsibility. The noise made the judgement public and inescapable. And the payment that ended it converted the confrontation into a transaction, which let both sides withdraw with the point made.

The custom had different names across Europe and in the English-speaking world, and the variety records how widespread it was rather than several different practices. English usage includes rough music and skimmington, the latter referring particularly to the parading of a couple where the wife was thought to dominate. Scottish and northern English usage has riding the stang, which describes carrying somebody on a pole. American usage brought over a corrupted form of the French word, applied more narrowly to the noisy serenading of newlyweds. German, Italian and Spanish each have their own terms. Thomas Hardy describes one in The Mayor of Casterbridge, with fatal consequences in the plot.

The practice declined through the nineteenth century as states extended policing into rural districts and as magistrates began treating it as riot rather than custom, which it plainly resembled from an official point of view. Several prosecutions established that. It survived longest where authority was thinnest and where the custom was strongest, in parts of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the English west country, with recorded instances into the twentieth century. It left descendants in the noisy sending-off of newlyweds, in mock ceremonies and in the practice of tying tins to a wedding car, all of which retain the noise and have lost the judgement.

A disguised crowd making deliberate noise outside a house for nights on end, sometimes parading the targets, punished behaviour that no court would touch, which is why historians treat it as unofficial law rather than as disorder. Age-gap marriages, quick remarriage and households thought to have the wrong person in charge were the usual targets. Payment ended it, and policing eventually ended the practice.