| Summary: |
This is a book about justice. It is not about justice as observed in the courtroom
(unless it be a ‘courtroom’ of an unorthodox variety) but about unofficial justice
as visited upon malefactors by the collective actions of private citizens. Justice is a
difficult word, and I should say at the start that for my purposes the term ‘unofficial
justice’ is taken to exclude deeds of furtive vengeance (however much deserved). I am
not concerned here with those occasions upon which offenders were simply set upon
in the dark and given a good beating – though it is likely that such instances occurred
often enough. Rather my interest is in those occasions upon which groups acted
openly, publicly and unapologetically against wrongdoers. Unapologetically because
they claimed that they were doing so by right and in accordance with customary practices
that supposedly legitimated group responses to moral defects. Reference will
indeed be made to some actions that were both public and yet quite indiscriminate
in respect of the violence visited upon the wrongdoer. However, it will soon become
apparent that most public collective acts were intended primarily to shame their
victims rather than to harm them, and that they were performed within an understood
rubric of customary practice that served (in the main) to contain the violence
inherent in group action. This study, then, is primarily focused on public shaming
rituals – and these generally (though not invariably) involved a noisy perambulation
through an offended community. During the course of these processions the
participants tried to attract as much attention as possible by beating on pots, pans,
kettles . . . anything suitable that came to hand. Hence these phenomena are broadly
subsumed under the title ‘rough music’ – rituals that were widely distributed and
known variously at the time as ‘skimmingtons’, ‘stang ridings’, ‘ceffyl prens’ and by
many other terminologies besides.
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