Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/254

Rh can be extracted—poker and tongs, kettles and frying-pans, old tin pots, and so forth. Amid the discordant sounds thus produced, and the yells, cheers, and derisive laughter of the mob, the procession moves to the house of his whose misdeeds evoked it. At his door the rider recites in doggerel verse the cause of the disturbance, beginning—

‘The indictment is, of course, made as ludicrous as possible, and intermixed with coarse jests and mockery.’

Not many years ago the bride of a medical man in Yorkshire, thinking that her husband was too warmly attached to a servant maid who had been some time in his service, ran away to her father’s house. Popular feeling was on her side, and the stang was ridden for some nights before the surgeon’s door. The end was that he had to dismiss the servant, whereupon the wife returned to him.

In France the Charivari is much of the same character. In Devonshire it takes a different form, and always occurs on the wedding night of a couple who have caused some talk—but not by any means always