Shivaree

Feature

Nov. 19/99

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Lloyd JonesA surprise party for a newly married couple, called a charivari (Fr.) or shivaree (Eng.), was a social event in colonial Upper Canada and early Ontario. A dictionary defines shivaree as: a noisy mock serenade of a newly married couple - which is a bit of an understatement. The Dammed Lakes (Jones, 1989) mentions Bedford Township Council's 1898 legislation for protecting public morality which included constraints on noise making - which , among other things, included a bylaw for the prevention of charivaris. The Bedford bylaw used the French spelling of the event. On some night, after a newly married couple had gone to bed and the lights were out, friends and neighbours secretly collected outside in the yard with cow bells, whistles, lights and pots and pans to bang - all to make their presence known. Then an unmerciful din began, which might include some singing amid shouting, cheering, bell ringing and clanking, and banging on the door. Sometimes ladders were brought to peek in the second story windows and embarrass the inhabitants . When the door was opened, the horde poured into the house in what we would call a home invasion today. The couple, perhaps not fully dressed, found themselves in a party which might go on for hours. The self invited guests would bring food and drink and musical instruments to provide entertainment and dancing. In some unexplainable way a shivaree in the past marked recognition of a couple in a rural community. No doubt the Irish practiced this social event in Bedford Township, and the bylaw was not likely to have had much effect - after all, who would enforce it when everyone participated! Often the event was reported in the social column of a local newspaper. Having been half of the target of a shivaree in Prince Edward County, I can report that it was a shocking surprise and a lot of fun. Susanna Moodie, in her book, Roughing it in the Bush, paints a darker picture of a charivari in her time in Upper Canada. She claimed that the French introduced this queer custom from Lower Canada. She stated that charivaris were inflicted on couples whose marriage failed to meet some perception of public standards, such as a very old man marrying a very young girl. She claimed that a group of males used it as an excuse to extort money from the offending groom so the they could buy drinks at the nearest tavern. If the groom failed to pay, then an attack on the house took place, which was likely to include shooting peas from a gun at the house. Susanna went further to report that the stingy groom might be tarred and feathered and occasionally could be more seriously injured or killed. . Susanna's information about the lower classes in Canada has been called into question. She was pretentious and exhibited upper class attitudes while living on the outer limits of that class as the wife of an army officer. Some have concluded that she had no direct knowledge of social life or practices in colonial Canada in the 1830s, and wrote her material much later, primarily to warn potential immigrants of higher rank about the lack of respect they were likely to receive in Canada. Her writing about social life in Upper Canada was condemned by many contemporary Canadians. Consequently, Susanna's views on charivaris are difficult to assess, but there are at least two interpretations of their nature and only a bit of agreement on how they were conducted.