Marriage "over the brush" ?

[busybod]

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

[stanmapstone]

"A Jumping over the Broom Marriage" and "Living Over the Brush" i.e.  an unmarried couple who live together are two different things.

Stan

[Geoff-E]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZRuge14cIU

[stanmapstone]

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

[Nick29]

Thanks for the clarification, Stan 

[busybod]

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.

[cathaldus]

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

[stanmapstone]

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

[Mort29]

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