Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-05-28
BRIDEGROOM HAz|NG
Franks Played on the Newly
Married Couples.

June the month alike of roses and of
brides, is at hand.
For weeks dressmakers by the thousand
have been making wedding gowns; whole
regiments of prospective brides fathers
have been figuring up how much money
they could afford to spend in wedding dis
play; brigades of brdegrooms have been
wondering how they were ever going to go
through the ceremony with credit; armies
of their friends, with fendish ingenuity
have been devising new schemes for max
ing the newly married couples uncomfort-
able and ridiculous on their wedding jour
neys.
The "skimmton," known also as the
"horning. and still otherwise as the
''shivaree" "a post-nuptial serenade in
which the prize went to the performer who
could produce the most terrifying noises
by all odds the most diabolical Of all the
devices for the hazing of newly-married
pairs-has gone out almost completely eX-
cept in regions remotely rural. Even in
the back country 1t doesn't flourish 1t
did forty years ago, and you may find plen-
ty of hfty-year-olds, nowadays, even
among the farmers, who never heard such
devilish concert of discordant sounds as
used to be prepared for the discontinue
of the freshly welded in Riker's Hollow,
\. Y, and elsewhere in the sixties and
seventies.
The skimmiton rarely was held till after
the bride and groom had settled down in
their own home. and so never preceded the
wedding journey as do the bridegroom
gaiting tricks of today.
Gathering Up the Dinner Horns.
eve used to set great store by the skim
milton when l was a youngster." said a
bald-headed. goat-bearded veteran the
other day but the times amt what they
used to be. Why. my grandsons wouldn't
fnry Ill.
couple than anything. My oldest son-he's
past fifty, too-never went to more than
one or two such entertainments. but
shucks! We didn't let no couple get away
young.
Come to think of it, I wouldn't really
like TO countenance an old-fashioned horn
ing myself in these days; I'll have to ad-
NIT that they were what / suppose you d
call little too primitive.
When We got ready to organize a first
class horning party we first took stock
and found out how many horns we could
muster. Now, horns was horns them
times. You couldn't go out and buy a
horn for 10 cents most anywhere, as you
can in this here twentieth century. No
sir; we had to gather up our mothers din
ner horns mostly, and. of course, we had
to sneak 'em out of the house on the quiet,
in order to get 'em. Every one Of our
fathers had helped at horning parties when
they were young, no doubt, but mighty few
OIL EN- were WllIHS tneiF SOilS SuOulQ IOi-
low in their footsteps.
The Awful "Shivaree" Fiddle.
''Well, mebbe we'd get five or six horns
In horning party OF. say, fifty. Next to
horns, big dinner bells were good noise
making tools. couple of old anvils and
three or four pounds of powder had their
usefulness, too. and likewise 'clappers
made out of pieces of light board with
how u-l,it
could be clapped together-all them came
~ handy. Horning parties always was
'hId in the evening. of course, the exer-
cisos generally beginning soon after dark
Whistles, if they were big ones were all
right, too. and there were some other
things, like old tin dishpans. to beat upon
with sticks, but the best thing of all was
the rosined plank-mebbe you ought to call
it a shiyaree fiddle.
Never heard the noise a rosned plank
makes did you? Wal, you wouldn't want
to hear 1t again IL you had. To work 1t just
right, there ought to be a length or two of