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Archiver > ENG-DORSET-LIFE > 2002-04 > 1019952047


From: "Dr P Turnbull" <>
Subject: Re: [DOR-LIFE] skimmity-ride
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 01:00:47 +0100
References: <01C1EE23.38852340.geoffrey.everest@free.fr>


Hi All
A Croud or Crowd is an early violin type instrument.
Humstrum is defined by Websters as An instrument out of tune or rudely
constructed; music badly played.
I also found http://www.quinion.com/words/weirdwords/ww-ski1.htm from which
it seems the custom was not only English.
Fascinating stuff
Theresa Turnbull
Ringwood
Hampshire
----- Original Message -----
From: GEOFF EVEREST <>
To: <>
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2002 6:38 PM
Subject: [DOR-LIFE] skimmity-ride


> Out of pure patriotism - or should I say chauvinism - I make a point of
> re-reading a couple of Hardy novels every year. This time I came across
the
> 'skimmity-ride' in The Mayor of Casterbridge, and started wondering
whether
> this was a Dorset custom, or whether it was national tradition.
>
> In the Oxford Concise Dictionary I found 'skimmington' as "a procession to
> ridicule a nagging wife or an unfaithful husband".
> Albeit the second may be a result of the first, the OCD suggests that the
> origin of the word is PERHAPS skimming-ladle used as a thrashing
instrument
> during the procession. This instrument being a large metal spoon for
> skimming the cream off the milk, and which would probably make quite a
> lovely noise if bashed, for example, on a milk churn.
>
> Hardy however describes a procession where an unfaithful couple,
> represented by some sort of dummies, are placed back to back on a donkey -
> in this novel the wife facing the donkey's head and the husband the
> donkey's tail - and are driven through the town to
> "the din of cleavers, tongs, tambourines, kits, crouds, humstrums,
> serpents, ram's horns and other historical kinds of music............."
>
> Well, cleavers could be meat choppers, tongs=fire tongs?, kits are old
> violins (OCD), crouds ?????, humstrums I guess to be some sort of drone,
> serpents are old tubas, and ram's horns sounds rather jewish. I wonder
> whether crouds are the skimmers?
> A quick look at my Old English Dictionary, which never leaves my waistcoat
> pocket, gives me the word scomu meaning 'shame', which seems another
> reasonable origin of the expression.
>
> Any experts in Dorset dialect out there who can enlighten me?
>
> Geoff
>
>
>
>
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