The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [27]
With a stick he gouged a groove across the dirt floor of his cabin, right down the middle, dividing the room into two halves. “That’s yourn,” he said to Noah. “This is ourn.” But Noah got busy and built a small loft up under the gables, and moved his bed up there. It was his first activity since he had been stricken with the frakes the year before, and it was the beginning of his return to normal life.
Jacob and Sarah Ingledew did not consummate their marriage on the bridal night. As soon as it got dark, their cabin was surrounded by a horrendous din: rifles firing, drums beating, cats howling, pans banging, cowbells clanging, hands clapping, lips whistling, horns blaring, hounds bugling, it was all hell broke loose and the roof was raised an inch or two. Investigating with his lantern, Jacob discovered that it was the entire human and animal population of Stay More, serenading the newlyweds.
This was the first Stay More shivaree, or charivari as the French would call it, from a Latin word meaning “headache.” How did this custom ever get started? What psychological motives do people have for harassing the poor couple on their first night together? If we were to interrupt young Virgil Swain while he was pulling the cat’s tail to make it howl and contribute that part of noise to the racket, and interview him on this subject, he would reply, “Wal, I reckon everbody knows what folkses air really gittin married fer, and so we’re a-teasin ’em on account of that. Hoo lordy!” Perhaps he would be right, that even the youngest among them (and maybe some of the animals too) sensed the real reason that a man and a woman would become “one flesh,” and out of envy as well as out of a sense of that reason being lewd, they lewdly heckle and pester the wedded pair. I cannot help but remark upon the contrast between this behavior and that of Fanshaw’s people on the wedding day: the Osage’s “grunts and whoops of joy” become the white man’s grunts and whoops of lewd mirth. The shivaree ends when the groom “treats”: Jacob invited all of them (except the animals) into his cabin, where he gave them refreshments, sarsparilla for the younger ones, stronger stuff for the older, and Sarah’s cake of cornbread smeared with wild honey and divided all around. The party ran deep into the night, and when it was over Jacob was too inebriated to find his bed. He aimed for it but missed, and spent the night sleeping on the floor (or rather the dirt, since there was no floor). The next day all of the guests came back again, for the infare (or “infair” or “enfare,” as most writers misspell it). Lizzie Swain and her girls brought the food, and again it was a big blow-out with fried chicken and everything.
Only Murray Swain wasn’t there, for the shivaree or the infare either. As has been mentioned, being the oldest of the Swain boys, he had worked the hardest in the construction of their house, hewing the logs with his broadaxe and lifting them into place with Jacob lifting the other end of the log, and after three weeks of this hard work he came down with the frakes. His mother tried several of her best home remedies to no avail. Jacob wanted to suggest the poultice made with panther urine, but couldn’t bring himself to broach such a delicate topic to her. Lizzie resorted to a drastic cure of her own, using the warm blood of a black hen. She had Murray lie down on the ground (out back of the house so the other children wouldn’t watch), then she chopped off the hen’s head with an axe and let the blood dribble onto his eruptions and remain on after it had dried. This treatment seemed