A noisy mock serenade given to newlyweds. It consists of noise made outside the
couple’s home in the evening with anomalous instruments, especially pots, pans, ketdes,
and other metal implements, bells, guns, and musical instruments played out of tune or in
other than the normal fashion. The band may include traditional improvised noisemakers
such as tick-tacks, horse fiddles (a plank sawed against the edge of a large box), or
devil’s fiddles (consisting of a rosined string passed through the bottom of a tin can). The
noise does not cease until the shivaree band is offered money or invited into the house for
food and drink. At this stage, they may play practical jokes on the couple, such as
rearranging the contents of the kitchen and booby trapping the bed. Either the bride or the
groom may be subjected to physical hazing, such as being carried out of the house,
covered with messy substances, and dumped in a pond.
The term “shivaree” is derived from the French charivari, which designates the same
custom. “Shivaree” is the term known all over Canada and most of the United States;
lesscommon names for the custom include “serenade,” “belling,” “horning,”
“callathump,” “bullbanding,” “warming,” and “skimmelton.”
In addition to its function as a benign rite of passage for newlyweds, the shivaree was
used as an extralegal ritualized expression of disapproval that enforced community
morality by publicly shaming transgressors. Common targets for this folk justice were
widows and widowers who remarried quickly, couples mismatched in age or rank,
adulterers, and spouse beaters. These punitive rituals ranged from mild satire to extreme
violence, sometimes ending with death or injury. In French Canadian areas and in New
Orleans, remarriages were the most common target: The noise was kept up, sometimes
for days, until the target paid a fine that was often given to charity.
Charivari (rough music) was a widespread popular custom in Europe, where it was
primarily an expression of community disapproval or derision, and is now rare. In North
America, the function of the shivaree expanded from an expression of public disapproval
to a benign well-wishing extended to all newlyweds. The predominance of the term
“shivaree” and its derivation from the French charivari have led to the assumption that
the custom was brought to America by French settlers, but the existence of charivari
customs throughout Europe suggests that other immigrants also brought their versions of
the custom.
Because of social changes and a long tradition of official opposition—it was
frequently outlawed as a danger to law and order and a challenge to authority—the
popular-justice shivaree is rare in North America after the 1890s. Since World War II, the
benign shivaree has been reported sporadically in rural areas of the United States. In
some Canadian rural communities, however, the practice still thrives.
Moira Smith
References
Greenhill, Pauline. 1989. Welcome and Unwelcome Visitors: Shivarees and the Political Economy
of Rural-Urban Interactions in Southern Ontario. Journal of Ritual Studies 3:45–67.
Morrison, Monica. 1974. Wedding Night Pranks in Western New Brunswick. Southern Folklore
Quarterly 38 (4):285–297.
Palmer, Bryan D. 1978. Discordant Music: Charivaris and Whitecapping in Nineteenth-Century
North America. Labour, Le Travailleur 3:5–62.