According to stories I heard from older people when I was growing up, an old-time wedding celebration in our hills didn't always meet with the approval of the bride groom, and sometimes almost made nervous wrecks of the young brides. The "shivareeing" of the bride groom often drove the poor fellow to distraction, and occasionally, prompted him to use firearms on his tormentors. The following story was told to me by an old-timer more than 50 years ago:

The old-timer was a young father and husband himself at the time. Suddenly, down the road from his place, he heard a lot of "beating and banging" noises mixed with a lot of "whooping and hollering." Also, along with the noise was some "gun cracking now and then." At first, he thought his nearest neighbor was having a bee swarm and trying to settle the bees. Then he realized that the whole fam ily put together couldn't make all that noise and "carrying ons." So be thought that something awful must be hap pening. That made him stand on his porch with his "eyes toward down the road," because the noise was coming closer.

Suddenly, around the bend of the road appeared a group of young men. Some were banging sticks against large tin dishpans. Several were leap ing high in the air, and furiously ring ing cowbells held high over their heads. One man held an iron bar in his left hand and pounded it with a hammer held in his right hand. Scat tered throughout the group, young men were firing off bandguns and shotguns into the air. All of them were hollering and screaming like demons from Satan's insane asylum!

Then, near the middle of the crowd, the old-timer saw two husky men carrying on their shoulders a long fence rail, trimmed to a sharp edge on the upward side. Midway the rail, sitting astride on the sharp edge, was a young man dressed in his Sunday's best. Two tall muscular men, on each side of the rail, were holding the cursing and struggling young man on the rail!

The old-timer knew he was wit nessing a wedding shivaree. As the mob roared past his house, he recog nized some of the young men as his near neighbors, and the others were his far neighbors.

According to the old-timer, the rail-riding ended after the shivareers rode the bridegroom away and re turned him to the bride's home. The husky rail carriers had skinned shoulders. He didn't know how much of the bride groom's hide had been disturbed. The angry bridegroom forgot the in dignities he suffered on the rail-riding episode during the square dancing that night. That is, until he and his new bride went to bed!

During all the dancing one of the boys had sneaked into the bedroom where the newlyweds were to sleep during the night. He had with him a loud-sounding cowbell. He crawled under the bed and tied the bell to the bedsprings. Then he stuffed the hell with a wad of rags, which had a long string tied to them. After doing that, he uncoiled the string and ran the end through a crack in the rough plank flooring.

That night, after all the guests had gone home, several of the boys remained in the darkness outside the house. They held to the long string that ran under the floor, through the floor crack, to the rag stuffed into the bell. After waiting about 30 minutes, the boys yanked the string and pulled the rag from inside the bell. The bell began to clatter. With a loud oath the bridegroom leaped from the bed, and the bride screamed!

Instead of running away, as had been planned, the boys bunched to gether and almost split their sides laughing. Orange-colored flames leaped from the newlywed's window, followed by the thunderous report of a double-barrel shotgun. The boys screamed and ran. After arriving home, they spent over an hour plucking shotgun pellets from each other's hide!