“Come in, come in,” implored Elizabeth; “and let me shut the window!”

“She’s me—she’s me—even to the parasol—my green parasol!” cried Lucetta with a wild laugh as she stepped in. She stood motionless for one second—then fell heavily to the floor.

—Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge

The Skimmington ritual by Rowlandson
Note the items of clothing hoisted above the participants

Rumors of a relationship between Lucetta and the mayor of Casterbridge had got round and the former, pregnant with her first child by her husband, had seen an effigy of herself, along with that of her paramour, being paraded in the street below.

SPOILER ALERT:  The shame was so great that she died.

The skimmington ritual Hardy describes in his tale from the West Country is a tradition that goes back a long way in rural society. Punctuated by loud, raucous noise, villagers would parade objects identifying those whose behavior was found to be offensive, in a procession designed to humiliate them.

While Lucetta’s shame was due to having an intimate relationship with a married man, many cases showed the skimmington employed to police “domestic” relations; particularly spousal beatings.

The ritual was also called “skimmity riding.” Skimmity is thought to come from the term describing a cheesemaking ladle employed (apart from skimming cheese) by a wife to beat her husband. A husband’s weakness was frowned upon, whether he was being scolded or cuckholded. So, too, was frequent wife-beating, and those riding would beat one another with ladles and spoons in the most “ludicrous processions,” stopping at the offender’s house to make their point.

In Wales the procedure(!) was called the Ceffyl Pren, or wooden horse. The miscreant was paraded around, tied to a wooden frame. Scottish accounts name it “riding the stang,” a plainly uncomfortable means of conveyance for the shamed, particularly when that person was a man.

Riding the Stang —
Regency era engraving by Robert Havell, Sr.

Interesting ditties accompanying the skimmington were recorded for posterity in 1892 by G. F. Northall in his English Folk-Rhymes:

“With a ran-a-dan-dan, at the sight of an old tin can,

For neither your case nor my case do I ride the stange,

Soft Billy Charcoal has been banging his wife Ann,

He bang’d her, he bang’d her, he bang’d her indeed,

He bang’d the poor creature before she stood in need.”

Wife (and husband) beaters everywhere–take heed!