Blackenings and Jumping the Chanty
The rituals connected with stag and hen nights might be messy and raucous, but to try to avoid them would be to invite bad luck for the upcoming nuptials. By Jean Brittain
Do you remember the good clean fun of slurry? And soot, engine oil, boot polish, treacle, flour and eggs with a feather topping? You’d see grown men jeuking into shops and diving aboard buses when they spied their best friends coming in the run-up to a wedding. Scotsmen’s attempts to avoid their pre-nuptial blackenings are legendary. An Inverurie lad jumped from the back of the van that his fifteen friends had bundled him into – and broke his leg in three places. An Ayrshire man louped the cemetery dyke and hid behind a tombstone half the night – a pointless sufferance, as his pals got him the next day.
The best blackenings on stag nights are the ones which involve a chase, and obviously the groom has a clue what’s coming and has to be manoeuvred into a position where he can be caught by the pursuing hoards. Devious ways to capture the stag are a necessary part of the blackening custom down among the rugby-playing Borderers, especially since the custom arose of handing him a nice floral dress to wear before he’s greased and chained to the railings in a public place.
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