Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/52

30 noise 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 him whose misdeeds evoked it. At his door the rider recites in doggrel verse the cause of the disturbance, beginning—

Or—

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

Recent instances of this mode of popular trial and punishment have come to my knowledge at Thirsk and Darlington. One such took place at Rawtenstall, near Preston, in August, 1870, on the beating of a woman by her husband, and was recorded in The Preston Guardian. Not many years ago the bride of a medical man at H, in Yorkshire, being jealous of an old servant of her husband’s, ran away to her father’s house. Popular feeling was on her side. For several nights there was much excitement, and the stang was ridden thrice consecutively with a great deal of noise and confusion. The end of it was that the servant was dismissed, the bride returned, and the young couple settled down amicably at last. It may be added, that during the Napoleonic wars the riding of the stang was practised on crimps, those designing villains by whose treachery unfortunate sailors were betrayed to the press-gang.

It is interesting to compare the rough justice of our northern riding of the stang with the Haberfield Treiben of Upper Bavaria, a secret society dating from medieval times, for the denouncing and discouragement of sins of unchastity. The proceedings of the Haberfield Treiben somewhat resemble those of the Sacred Vehme, which, however, it has long survived. Its