Regency Pastimes: Riding the Stang

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Kiding the Stang THE vulgar of every country have particular customs which being immediately subversive of decorum and good order can only be practised at uncertain intervals when magistracy sleeps or a more than common effervescence of popular daring contemns authority and overbears control of this descrip tion is the ignominious punishment called RIDING the Stang This custom is of northern origin and of great antiquity but from the cognizance which in modern times the laws gene rally take of all illegal restraints on personal liberty it bids fair to terminate at no very distant period C Riding the Stang according to Dr Jamieson is the remains of a very ancient custom among the Goths who were wont to erect what they called Nidstaeng on the pole of infamy with the most dire imprecations against those who were thought to deserve the reprobation which this act im plied The person thus subjected to dishonour was called Niding or infamous and he was thenceforth deemed incapa ble of making oath in any cause A memorable instance of the consequences of raising the Nidstaeng is furnished in the Runic Law which states that Egill Scallagrim the celebrated Icelandic bard having performed this tremendous ceremony against Eric Bladdox who as he supposed had highly injured him the latter soon after became hated by all and was obliged to fly from his dominions The custom of Riding the Stang appears to have been known in Scandinavia for Soren gives Stong hesten as signi fying a Roddle horse Callender observes that in Scotland Riding the Stang is a mark of the highest infamy and the person who has been thus treated seldom recovers his honour in the opinion of his neighbours When they cannot he con tinues lay hold of the culprit himself they put some young fellow on the Stang or pole who proclaims that it is not on his own account that he is thus treated but on that of another whom he names The glossary to Gawin's Douglas's Virgil informs us that Riding the Stang is when one is made to ride on a pole for his neighbour's wife's fault The word Stung says Ray is still used in some colleges in the university of Cambridge to Stang scholars in Christmas time being to cause them to ride on a colt staff or pole for missing of chapel In the Ice landic tongue Staung means a spear and hence probably the Stang of Yorkshire and the north where it signifies a long pole I am informed says Dr Jamieson that in Lothian and perhaps in other counties the man who had debauched his neighbour's wife was formerly forced to ride the Stang yet this punishment was not exclusively inflicted on gallants detected in criminal amours The virago who had beaten her husband was also subjected to ride the Stang not in person however but by substitute as we learn from Allan Ramsay's admirable continuation of Christ's Kirk on the Green canto iii where after the marriage the visitors become inebriated and the conduct and punishment of a graceless vixen are thus humourously drawn The Smith's wife her black deary sought And fand him skin and birn Quoth she This day's wark's be dear bought He ban d and ga e a girn Ca d her a jade and said she mucht Gae hame and scum her kirn Whisht ladren for gin ye say ought Mair I se wind ye a pirn To reel some day Ye ll wind a pirn ye silly snool Wae worth ye r drunken saul Quoth she and lap out o er a stool And claught him by the spaul He shook her and sware muckle dool Ye's thole for this ye scaul I se rive frae aff ye r hips the hool And learn ye to be baul 66 Ye r tippanizing scant o grace Quoth she gars me gang duddy Our nibour Pate sin break o day's Been thumping at his study D On sic a day
An it be true that some fouk says Ye ll girn yet in a woody Syne wi her nails she rave his face Made a his black baird bloody A Gilpy that had seen the faught I wat he was nae lang Till he had gather d seven or aught Wild hempies stout and strang They frae a barn a kaber raught Ane mounted wi a bang Wi scarts that day Betwisht twa's shoulders and sat straught Upon t and Rade the Stang The wives and gytlings a spawn d out O er middings and o er dykes Wi mony an unco skirl and shout Like bumbees frae their bykes On her that day Thro thick and thin they scour d about Plashing thro dubs and sykes And sic a reird ran through the rout Gart a the hale town tykes Yamph loud that day The Newcastle Courant for August 3 1793 states that at the assizes at Durham in the preceding week seven persons whose names are mentioned were sentenced to be impri soned two years in Durham gaol and find sureties for their good qehaviour for three years for violently assaulting Nicholas Lowes of Bishop Wearmouth and carrying him on a Stang In Yorkshire in the neighbourhood of Leeds it was cus tomary about sixty years ago to Ride Stang on the man who had beaten his wife but this practice was pursued only by the lowest of the vulgar The subject of the accompanying print is derived from a custom of the populace in Westmoreland and Cumberland who on the morning of the new year assemble with stangs and bas kets for the purpose of preventing every one whether male or female inhabitant or stranger from pursuing any employment or business on that day Whatever person is caught offending is immediately seized and if a male mounted across the stang if a woman placed in a basket and carried on men's shoulders to the next public house where on payment of a small fine the prisoner is liberated Popular pastimes, being a selection of picturesque representations of the customs & amusements of Great Britain, in ancient and modern times (1816).

 

 

This European and North American custom can also be called charivari or skimmington.

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3 Responses to Regency Pastimes: Riding the Stang

  1. Nancy Mayer says:
    April 18, 2024 at 7:49 am

    Is the the same as being “run out of town on a rail” where a man us carried out on a log, a railing, or other long piece of wood?

  2. Nancy Mayer says:
    April 18, 2024 at 7:51 am

    I thought charivari was gathering out side the person’s house at night and making a great noise.