Saturday, 20 January, 1962, The Frances Hubbard Diaries

Saturday, 20 January 1962, The Frances Hubbard Diaries
Sunny, had about 1 inch of new snow, slippery.  Clifton and the boys cut wood.  We went to a ballgame at night, played Greenville.  Sue took her music lesson.  Had horning planned for LaVerne and Roberta and it was called off.
Comment:  They have cut wood about 5 days in a row so far....Mom's "horning" is an example of a very localized idiom.  It comes from "horn in" where the newlywed couple is subjected to a late-night noisy party of hell raisers pounding pans, shooting guns and generally disrupting the couple in their beds.  I've been to a couple, one for Alton Brand sticks in my mind.  Another term for it was "shivaree" which came from the French word "Charivari"...see Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charivari

Here is a vicious "horning" described by Socrates Hubbard for his brother Lorenzo. I can't help thinking that these incidents involved something other than a simple wedding custom........these events seem particularly violent and vindictive with the household literally being under siege....

"We pass over several years.  I am nine years old or nearly nine  Lorenzo is married and is expected home.  He dos not come when expected but a lot of riaters calling themselves horners came and the first thing I know in the ded of night was the defning discharge of musketrey and the blowing of hornes the rateling of pans the ringing of bells with all the diabolicle noises that could be amagoned.  Paul grabed his cloths and ran to Fathers and mothers room  l followed in my night shirt half frightened to death.  The whole familey dressed and sat about the fire  Father would go down and throw water on them when they came up to fire.  After a while they with drew to get dry and then on they came again.  they were led by one Dock Norwood.  I got so sleepy that during the last salley I slipt.  These hornings at wedings were common in that countrey at that time.  I have known them to tare or breake every glass out of a house."

      "A few weeks after Lorenzo did come with his wife and the Diabolical crew gathered again there names was got this time and they were prossicuted.  And each one was fined.  Sometime the next summer Lorenzo came down on a visit that night this same vile crew went into a field of rye that had just been cut and put in shocks they thrashed out every shiefe on the ground and then unbound it and scattered it.  from there they went into our garden pull up corne and everything they could get at.  from there they went into the corne field pulled a wide road to the midel of the field then tore up an half acre or more and made a road out the other side of the feald.  They also tore down a large amount of fence.  It took a long time to write things up agane."