Editing Jumping the broom (section)

=={{anchor|As an expression for "irregular marriage"}}Euphemism for irregular marriage==
References to "broomstick marriages" emerged in England during the mid-to-late 18th century to describe a wedding ceremony of doubtful validity. The earliest use of the phrase is in the 1764 English edition of a French work. The French text, describing an elopement, refers to the runaway couple hastily embarking on "''un mariage sur la croix de l'épée''" (literally "marriage on the cross of the sword"); this was freely translated as "performed the marriage ceremony by leaping over a broomstick".<ref name="Probert">Probert, R. ''Marriage Law and Practice in the Long Eighteenth Century: A Reassessment'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)</ref>

A 1774 use in the ''Westminster Magazine'' also describes an elopement. A man brought his underage fiancée to France and discovered that it was as difficult to arrange a legal marriage there as in England, but declined a suggestion that a French [[sexton (office)|sexton]] might simply read the marriage service before the couple because "He had no inclination for a Broomstick-marriage".<ref>(1774) 2 ''Westminster Magazine'', p. 16</ref> In 1789, the rumoured clandestine marriage between the [[George IV|Prince Regent]] and [[Maria Fitzherbert]] is cited in a [[satire|satirical song]] in ''[[The Times]]'': "Their way to consummation was by hopping o'er a broom, sir".<ref>The Times, Tuesday, 8 September 1789; pg. 4; Issue 1251; col A</ref>

Despite these allusions, research by [[legal historian]] [[Rebecca Probert]] of [[Warwick University]] has failed to find evidence of an actual contemporary practice of jumping over a broomstick as a sign of informal union. Probert says that the word ''broomstick'' was used in the mid-18th century in several contexts to mean "something ersatz, or lacking the authority its true equivalent might possess"; because the expression ''broomstick marriage'' (a sham marriage) was in circulation, [[false etymology|folk etymology]] led to a belief that people once signified an irregular marriage by jumping over a broom.<ref name="Probert"/> American historian Tyler D. Parry, however, contests the claim that no part of the British custom involved jumping. In his book, ''Jumping the Broom: The Surprising Multicultural Origins of a Black Wedding Ritual'', Parry writes that African Americans and [[British Americans]] had a number of cultural exchanges during the 18th and 19th centuries. He describes correlations between the ceremonies of enslaved African Americans and those of the rural British, saying that it is not coincidental that two groups separated by an ocean used similar matrimonial forms revolving around a broomstick. If British practitioners never used a physical leap, Parry wonders how [[European Americans|European-Americans]] and enslaved African Americans in the [[Southern United States|American South]] and rural North America learned about the custom.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Parry|first1=Tyler D.|title=Married in Slavery Time: Jumping the Broom in Atlantic Perspective|journal=Journal of Southern History|date=May 2015|volume=81|issue=2|pages=273–312|url=https://www.academia.edu/12373198}}</ref>

Later examples of the term ''broomstick marriage'' were used in Britain, with the similar implication that the ceremony did not create a legally-binding union. This meaning survived into the early 19th century; during an 1824 case in London about the legal validity of a marriage ceremony consisting of the groom placing a ring on the bride's finger before witnesses, a court official said that the ceremony "amounted to nothing more than a broomstick marriage, which the parties had it in their power to dissolve at will."<ref>''The Times'', 13 August 1824, p.3.</ref>

The [[Marriage Act 1836]], which introduced civil marriage, was contemptuously called the "Broomstick Marriage Act" by those who felt that a marriage outside the [[Church of England|Anglican church]] did not deserve legal recognition.<ref>''Jackson's Oxford Journal'' 12 September 1840, p. 1; ''Saint Valentine: or, Thoughts on the evil of Love in Mercantile Community: The Galanti Show'' (1843) 13 ''Bentley's Miscellany'' 151</ref> The phrase began to refer to non-marital unions; a man interviewed in Mayhew's ''London Labour and the London Poor'' said, "I never had a wife, but I have had two or three broomstick matches, though they never turned out happy."<ref>Volume I, Pg. 389-91. Quoted in Thomas, Donald, ''The Victorian Underworld'' John Murray (1998), p. 62.</ref> [[Itinerant groups in Europe|Tinkers]] reportedly had a similar marriage custom, "jumping the budget", with the bride and groom jumping over a string or other symbolic obstacle.<ref>Chesney, Kellow. ''The Victorian Underworld'' Penguin (1970), p. 92.</ref>

[[Charles Dickens]]' novel, ''[[Great Expectations]]'' (first published in serial form in ''[[All the Year Round]]'' from 1 December 1860 to August 1861), contains a reference in chapter 48 to a couple's marriage "over the broomstick." The ceremony is not described, but the reference indicates that readers would have recognized this as an informal (not legally valid) agreement.<ref>"They both led tramping lives, and this woman in Gerrard-street here, had been married very young, over the broomstick (as we say), to a tramping man,..." DICKENS, C. ''Great Expectations'' (1860–1861), chap. 48.</ref>

Although it has been assumed that "jumping (or, sometimes, 'walking') over the broom" always indicated an irregular or non-church union in England (as in the expressions "Married over the [[besom]]" and "living over the brush"),<ref>{{cite journal
 |last=Dundes |first=Alan |author-link=Alan Dundes
 |title='Jumping the Broom': On the Origin and Meaning of an African American Wedding Custom
 |journal=The Journal of American Folklore |volume=109 |issue=433 |date=Summer 1996
 |page=327<!--Exact page; article is pp. 324-329--> |doi=10.2307/541535
|jstor=541535 }}</ref> examples of the phrase exist in the context of legal religious and civil weddings.<ref>See Dudley Heath, 'In Coster-Land' (1894) 125 ''English Illustrated Magazine'' 517, referring to "a newly-made and happy couple on their way from Bethnal Green, where, at the Red Church, they have for the sum of seven-pence halfpenny gone through the ceremony of 'jumping the broomstick{{'"}}.</ref> Other sources cite stepping over a broom as a test of chastity, and putting out a broom was said to be a sign "that the housewife's place is vacant" as a way of advertising for a wife.<ref>J.G. Whitehead, M. Terry, B. Aitken, 'Scraps of English Folklore, XII' (1926) 37 ''Folklore'' 76; Sheila Stewart, ''Lifting the Latch: A Life on the Land'' (Charlbury: Day Books, 2003)</ref> The phrase was also used colloquially in the US and Canada as a synonym for getting married legally.<ref>{{cite news|title=In a short story published in 1896 a character remarks of two lovers who are keen to wed, "Young 'n' old has be'n lookin' constant fer these two ter jump the broomstick 'n' give 'em weddin' cake, 'n' chicken pie."|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date=29 March 1896}}</ref>