subs. (old).—1. See quots: also TO RIDE THE SKIMMINGTON (or [Scots’] THE STANG). [For a long description see BUTLER, Hudibras, II. ii. 585.] Hence (2) a row, a quarrel.
1562. Stowe’s London [STRYPE], B. ii, 258. Shrove Monday at Charing Cross was a man carried of four men, and before him a bagpipe playing, a shawm, and a drum beating, and twenty men with links burning round about him. The cause was his next neighbour’s wife beat her husband; it being so ordered that the next should ride about to expose her.
1685. OLDHAM, Satyrs.
| When I’m in pomp on high processions shown, | |
| Like pageants of Lord Mayor, or SKIMMINGTON. |
1753. WALPOLE, Letters, i. 289. There was danger of a SKIMMINGTON between the great wig and the coif, the former having given a flat lie to the latter.
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v. RIDING SKIMMINGTON. A ludicrous cavalcade, in ridicule of a man beaten by his wife. A man behind a woman, face to horse’s tail, distaff in hand, which he seems to work, the woman beating him with a ladle; a smock on a staff is carried before them denoting female superiority. They are accompanied by rough music, frying pans, bull’s horns, marrowbones and cleavers, &c.—Abridged.
1822. SCOTT, The Fortunes of Nigel, xxi. Note. The SKIMMINGTON has been long discontinued in England.
1865. Exeter Police Report, 9 Sept. Summary justice had been done by a SKIMMINGTON MATCH [sic], on two married persons, whose ill and faithless example had scandalised the neighbourhood.
