Shivaree, Charivari

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Well, hello.

Hi, who is this?

This is Sue Rusi from Omaha, Nebraska.

Hello, Sue. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Sue. What would you like to talk with us about?

I wanted to ask you about chivalry.

I think it’s probably kind of gone out of fashion now, but it’s something that they used to do back in the 40s and 50s, I know, and I think before that.

And I wanted to ask you some about that tradition. What do you know about it?

Chivalry. Let’s just get that word, make sure everyone hears that. It’s chivaree.

How would you spell that?

I’ve seen it C-H-A-R-I-V-A-R-I, but it’s pronounced like S-H-I-V-A-R-E-E.

And my folks were chivareed when they were married. I grew up in a very rural area just south of the Black Hills in South Dakota.

And it was a tradition that right after a couple was married, or soon after they set up housekeeping, that a great big noisy group of friends would show up and make a lot of noise and wake the couple up from their marriage bed.

And then there were also some pranks and things like that. And in my case, they banged on the windows and carried my dad down to throw him in the creek and generally embarrassed my mother to tears.

Oh, wow.

If it’s supposed to be in honor of the couple, I think they probably would have gladly forgotten the honor.

But, yeah, it’s all in good fun, right? I mean, it’s good nature.

Supposed to be, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s supposed to be.

Yeah, and sometimes there’s a celebration involved where the men go off to a bar and the women stay and fix up a big meal in the middle of the night.

Have you heard of that?

Well, I expect that they expected to be fed. So I imagine that while they were carrying my dad down to the creek, the women were probably doing something at the house, fixing a meal or something.

Opening all the canned goods to figure out which is what. Oh, look, more lima beans.

Putting cornflakes in the bed.

Yeah, this is a longstanding tradition.

In fact, if you ever saw the movie Oklahoma or saw the musical Oklahoma, a chivalry is a very important part of the plot there.

In that case, I don’t know, did you see that movie?

I did, but I don’t remember the chivalry.

Yeah, yeah. At the very end, they shivery the newlywed couple, Curly and Laurie, and they put them up on a haystack, and somebody sets the haystack on fire, and it’s this big, big to-do, a crucial part of the plot.

Anyway, there’s a long tradition of this kind of teasing, as you put it, of a newlywed couple, usually a little bit after they’re married.

And sometimes it’s specifically directed at a couple that’s a little bit unusual. Maybe they have an age difference or something like that, or they’re from out of town.

But it’s all in good fun, really.

Yeah, you mentioned the spelling C-H-A-R-I-V-A-R-I, which is a word in French that may be the source of it.

Charivari. It’s spelled the same way as what you described.

Well, it sounds like there was a lot of talk going on.

Yeah, but good-natured chaos.

Yeah.

Great introduction to married life, right? Anything else has got to be better.

Well, thank you so much for sharing that story, Sue. And thanks for the information about it.

All righty.

Thanks, Sue. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Maybe your family has a story about a chivalry or some other story about language that you’d like to share with us.

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Thank you.