_Ridings and Chaffings_ (Vol. ix., p. 370.).--Though unable to give MR.
THOMAS RUSSELL POTTER any information respecting the "Ridings and
Chaffings" of Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, I send the following note
of a somewhat similar custom prevalent in Oxfordshire (I never heard of it
elsewhere), thinking it may perhaps interest him and others of your
correspondents.
I remember once, about three years ago, I was walking in Blenheim Park,
with a friend then resident at Woodstock, when suddenly the stillness of a
summer evening was broken by strange and inharmonious sounds, coming to us
across the water from the old town. The sounds grew louder and louder, and
in great surprise I appealed to my friend for an explanation; when I
learned that it was a custom in that part of the country, whenever it was
discovered that a man had been beating his wife, for the neighbours to
provide themselves with all sorts of instruments, fire-irons, kettles, and
pots, in fine, anything capable of making a noise, and proceed _en masse_
to the house of the offender, before whose door they performed in concert,
till their indignation subsided or their arms grew weary; and that the
noise we then heard was the distant sound of such music.
I do not know if my friend gave any name to this practice; if he did, I
have since forgotten it. Doubtless, some of your Oxford readers can assist
me.