_Ridings and Chaffings._--A singular custom prevails in South
Nottinghamshire and North Leicestershire. When a husband, forgetting his
solemn vow to love, honour, and keep his wife, has had recourse to physical
force and beaten her, the rustics get up what is called "a riding." A cart
is drawn through the village, having in it two persons dressed so as to
resemble the woman and her master. A dialogue, representing the quarrel, is
carried on, and a supposed representation of the beating is inflicted. This
performance is {371} always specially enacted before the offender's door.
Another, and perhaps less objectionable, mode of shaming men out of a
brutal and an unmanly practice, is to empty a sack of chaff at the
offender's door,--an intimation, I suppose, that _thrashing_ has been "done
within." Perhaps this latter custom gave rise to the term "chaffing."
Thirty years ago both these customs were very common in this locality; but,
either from an improved tone of morality, or from the comparative rarity of
the offence that led to them, both _ridings_ and _chaffings_ are now of
very rare occurrence.
Can any reader of "N. & Q." inform me whether these customs have prevailed,
or still prevail, in other counties?