RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: Nick29 on Sunday 11 July 10 10:32 BST (UK)
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I was talking to an older cousin the other day, and he mentioned a conversation he had with our grandmother many years ago, in which she spoke of couples getting together on one particular summer's day, where they would get married "over the brush". I'm not sure grandma did, though.
Now, I've vaguely heard about this - can anyone elaborate ? I suppose these marriages were legalised at some stage ?
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It has not been possible to enter into an informal marriage in England and Wales since the passage of Lord Hardwicke's Act in 1753.
Stan
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The phrase, "living over the brush", was used to describe an unmarried couple who lived together.
Stan
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Thanks, Stan :)
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I've always understood it to relate to an old Romany Gypsy tradtion of couples jumping over a sweeping brush as part of their wedding celebrations, to make the marriage contract binding. Was your grandmother perhaps a Gypsy or lived near a settlement/meeting place of theirs?
It was a very common phrase of my (Lancashire, non-Romany) upbringing, usually as Stan says, a more tolerant version of 'living in sin'.
:) Barbara
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The phrase, "living over the brush", used to describe an unmarried couple who live together, originated in the tunnel building days of the 19th Century. If a boy and a girl (usually camp followers from the towns, prostitutes in reality) took a liking to each other then the other men and women would respect them as man and wife. They could not afford a church wedding so, holding hands, they jumped over a brush or broom handle held by two older people. They were then "married" in the eyes of their peers.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/9/messages/383.html
Stan
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But wherr did the older people get the 'habit' of using a broom handle - must have older origins I would have thought?
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I've always understood it to relate to an old Romany Gypsy tradtion of couples jumping over a sweeping brush as part of their wedding celebrations, to make the marriage contract binding. Was your grandmother perhaps a Gypsy or lived near a settlement/meeting place of theirs?
It was a very common phrase of my (Lancashire, non-Romany) upbringing, usually as Stan says, a more tolerant version of 'living in sin'.
:) Barbara
My granny came from rural Suffolk. I'm not sure she used the phrase "over the brush" (that may have come from my head), but she did say that in earlier times there was a sort of midsummer fair every year, when couples would congregate and would end up getting married. Now, if this was by conventional means at the end of the day, or by some rite, she didn't say. At the time she said it, she was talking about the marriage of her own mother, but I am quite sure, both my grandmother and great-grandmother were both married in church. She was prone to some strange stories.
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Hi all,
I think this comes from slave days in America. If you have watched Roots, you will see that they refer to "jumping the broom" as a form of informal marriage and "jumping into the land of matrimony". Once they've jumped the broom they are married. But I dont know how it actually started.
Busybod
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Hi again,
Yes, I was right about it originating in America in slave days. Apparently it originated in West Africa, the home of most of the slaves in America. The broom was seen as a spiritual object it seems.
If you google "jumping the broom" you will find more details on it.
Cheers.
Busybod
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"A Jumping over the Broom Marriage" and "Living Over the Brush" i.e. an unmarried couple who live together are two different things.
Stan
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZRuge14cIU
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The same broom-jumping ritual was a feature of the church-less marriages of Black slaves, forbidden to wed by their white slave-owners in the USA in the C19th. In the C20th to jump the broomstick is a euphemism for extra-marital sex, a woman who gives birth to a bastard child is said to have jumped over the besom, and living over the brush is used of an unmarried cohabiting heterosexual couple in northern England
"Womanwords:a dictionary of words about women" by Jane Mills
http://www.rootschat.com/links/0968/
Stan
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Thanks for the clarification, Stan :)
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Stan,
Dont know how you get it that a jumping the broomstick marriage and living over the brush are two different things. In my view they are one and the same thing. They are both two people's (churchless) commitment to each other. The only difference it seems to me is that a broomstick wedding would be done in front of witnesses and 2 people who live over the brush just set up home together, but it is one and the same thing, hence where does the brush come into it.
That's my view anyway. Dont want to fall out with anyone.
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This is an interesting thread. What did people do before the invention of priests and vicars etc?
If a couple are committed to each other in front of witnesses, surely that was enough for the community in which they lived! That being so, remember that "broomsticks (or besoms) had magical properties - they could fly! Much faster than my old Ford Anglia!
Bill
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Stan,
Dont know how you get it that a jumping the broomstick marriage and living over the brush are two different things. In my view they are one and the same thing. They are both two people's (churchless) commitment to each other. The only difference it seems to me is that a broomstick wedding would be done in front of witnesses and 2 people who live over the brush just set up home together, but it is one and the same thing, hence where does the brush come into it.
That's my view anyway. Dont want to fall out with anyone.
It depends on when and where ! In England it has not been possible to enter into an informal marriage before and after the passage of Lord Hardwicke's Act in 1753. As I posted "living over the brush" is used of an unmarried cohabiting heterosexual couple in northern England.
Stan
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Dickens mentions 'broomstick marriage' in Great Expectations.
The Welsh also had a centuries-old custom called priodas coes ysgub, or "broom-stick wedding"
In some areas of Wales, a couple could be married by placing a birch broom at an angle across the doorway. The groom jumped over it first, followed by his bride. If neither of them knocked it out of place, the wedding was a go. If the broom fell down, it was considered that the marriage was doomed to failure, and the whole thing was called off. If the couple decided they were unhappy within the first year of marriage, they could divorce by jumping back out the door, over the broom. More information on this can be found in T. Gwynn Jones' 1930 publication, Welsh Folklore.
The custom was certainly widely-known in England by the late 18th century. The earliest reference given to the phrase in the Oxford English Dictionary is a quote from the Westminster Magazine of 1774: "He had no inclination for a Broomstick-marriage".
A satirical song published in The Times of 1789 also alludes to the custom in a line referring to the rumoured clandestine marriage between the Prince Regent and Mrs. Fitzherbert: “Their way to consummation was by hopping o’er a broom, sir"
I doubt that many people would give a fig for Lord Hardwickes Act in 1753 :P
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There was nothing to stop anyone living together after Harwicke's Act whether they gave a fig or not but they would not be legally married. Under Harwicke's Act all marriages were void unless they followed the requirements of the Act,
Stan
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Dickens mentions 'broomstick marriage' in Great Expectations.
A satirical song published in The Times of 1789 also alludes to the custom in a line referring to the rumoured clandestine marriage between the Prince Regent and Mrs. Fitzherbert: “Their way to consummation was by hopping o’er a broom, sir"
I doubt that many people would give a fig for Lord Hardwickes Act in 1753 :P
A clandestine marriage was a secret marriage which could be perfectly valid. I am not disputing the existence of 'broomstick marriages' but this it not the meaning of 'living over the brush' as generally meant in the north of England. There were plenty of couples who simply lived together as man and wife, knowing that the law puts the burden of proof on those who would challenge such a ‘marriage’ as invalid.
Stan
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To marry over the broomstick was to go through a quasi-marriage ceremony in which the parties jumped over the broomstick.
To marry over the broomstick is an old term meaning that a couple were joined in a common-law union by jumping over a broomstick together.
In English Law, since 1753, there is no such thing as a 'common law marriage', in the eyes of the law there is no special relationship and they are not equivalent to a husband or wife.
Stan
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In this podcast from the National Archives Rebecca Probert shows that even before Harwicke's Act the great majority of couples married in church
Tracing marriages in 18th century England and Wales: a reassessment of law and practice.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/podcasts/tracing-marriages-in-18th-century.htm
Stan
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Interesting thread,
My granny (bless her) always used to talk in 'hushed tones' about people who lived over the brush, she meant people who were ,shock horror, living together. I always wondered how the saying came about :)
,
Leandra
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I always understood that "Jumping over the brush" marriage was praticed my the romany or more commanly know Gipsy folk my grandmother ones told me this as she was supose to be related to the Irish Gipsys we kids all thought she was a gipsy