page_title: Charivari
section_title: Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Charivari / Regional variations / Europe
caption_attribution_description: Part of the series Les musiciens de Paris, no. 3.
context_page_description: Charivari, shivaree, chivaree, or skimmington was a folk custom in which a mock parade was staged through a community accompanied by a discordant mock serenade. Since the crowd aimed to make as much noise as possible by beating on pots and pans or anything that came to hand these parades are often referred to as rough music. Parades were of three types. In the first, and generally most violent form, a wrongdoer or wrongdoers might be dragged from their home or place of work and paraded by force through a community. In the process they were subject to the derision of the crowd, they might be pelted and frequently a victim or victims were dunked at the end of the proceedings. A safer form involved a neighbour of the wrongdoer impersonating the victim whilst being carried through the streets. The impersonator was obviously not himself punished and he often cried out or sang ribald verses mocking the wrongdoer. In the common form, an effigy was employed instead, abused and often burnt at the end of the proceedings.
  Communities used "rough music" to express their disapproval of different types of violation of community norms.
context_section_description: Equivalents include the German Haberfeldtreiben and Katzenmusik, Italian scampanate and French charivari.
  The custom has been documented back to the Middle Ages but it is likely that it was traditional before that. It was first recorded in France, as a regular wedding activity to celebrate the nuptials at some point after the vows had been taken. But charivari achieved its greatest importance as it became transformed into a form of community censure against socially unacceptable marriages; for example, the marriage of widows before the end of the customary social period of formal mourning. In the early 17th century at the Council of Tours, the Catholic Church forbade the ritual of charivari and threatened its practitioners with excommunication. It did not want the community taking on the judgment and punishment of parishioners. But the custom continued in rural areas.
  The charivari as celebration was a custom initially practised by the upper classes, but as time went on, the lower classes also participated and often looked forward to the next opportunity to join in. The two main purposes of the charivari in Europe were to facilitate change in the current social structure and to act as a form of censure within the community. The goal was to enforce social standards and to rid the community of socially unacceptable relationships that threatened the stability of the whole.
  In Europe various types of charivari took place that differed from similar practices in other parts of the world. For example, the community might conduct a stag hunt against adulterers by creating a mock chase of human "stags" by human "hounds". The hounds would pursue the stags (that is, those who were committing the adulterous relationship) and dispense animal blood on their doorsteps. European charivaris were highly provocative, leading to overt public humiliation. The people used them to acknowledge and correct misbehaviour. In other parts of the world, similar public rituals around nuptials were practised mostly for celebration.
  Humiliation was the most common consequence of the European charivari. The acts which victims endured were forms of social ostracism often so embarrassing that they would leave the community for places where they were not known. Sometimes the charivari resulted in murder or suicide. Examples from the south of France include five cases of a charivari victim's firing on his accusers: these incidents resulted in two people being blinded and three killed. Some victims committed suicide, unable to recover from the public humiliation and social exclusion.
  Norman Lewis recorded the survival of the custom in 1950s Ibiza "in spite of the energetic disapproval of the Guardia Civil".  It was called encerrada, consisted of raucous nocturnal music, and was aimed at widows or widowers who remarried prematurely.
  It is possible that the blowing of car horns after weddings in France (and indeed in many European countries) today is a holdover from the charivari of the past.
caption: Paris men sing a drunken serenade in Honoré Daumier's series of humorous cartoons, The Musicians of Paris
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