Jumping The Broom - Origin

Origin

There is an ongoing debate as to the exact origin or origins.

It has been claimed, by commentators citing the 1920s folklorist Gwenith Gwynn (a.k.a. W. Rhys Jones), that "broom-stick weddings" were first known in Wales, originating either among the Welsh people themselves or among Romani living in Wales.

According to scholar Alan Dundes, who wrote extensively on the topic, the custom originated among Romani Gypsies in Wales (Welsh Kale Gypsies) and England (English Romanichal Gypsies). Scholar C.W. Sullivan III, however, argued that the custom originated among the Welsh people themselves, since the custom was known in Wales prior to the 1700s when he believed Gypsies arrived there. Historical records, however, show that Gypsies actually arrived in Wales earlier, in 1579. A more serious problem with Sullivan’s claim is the complete lack of evidence that the custom even existed in Wales in the eighteenth century. His source, the Welsh folklorist Gwenith Gwynn, assumed that the custom had once existed on the basis of conversations with elderly Welsh people during the 1920s, none of whom had ever seen such a practice. One had claimed that: “It must have disappeared before I was born, and I am seventy-three”. Others had heard of the practice, but all were unclear on the details, their evidence being peppered with phrases such as “it must have” and “I should think”. Gwynn’s dating of the custom to the eighteenth century rested on the assumption that it must have disappeared before these elderly interviewees were born, and on his misreading of the baptism register of the parish of Llansanffraid Glyn Ceiriog.

A commonly held belief is that the practice originates or at least has roots in West Africa. However, there are no recorded instances of West African or Central African weddings that involved jumping over a broom.

It is documented that brooms existed as spiritual symbols in regions where African Americans originated. The prime candidate for a geographic origin of the custom in Africa is Ghana where brooms were waved above the heads of newlyweds and their parents. Danita Rountree Green, in her book Broom Jumping: A Celebration of Love, admits there is no recognized documentation suggesting that ethnic groups in Ghana, who were prominent in the Atlantic Slave Trade, ever jumped over the broom. Still, Green's research implies that the ceremony used today stems from traditional rites of maturation still practiced in Africa.

Dundes asserts that the practice was passed along, possibly by force, to slaves by their masters. This is given some weight by the fact that slave masters and their wives assisted in the ceremony at times.

Another author states that it is likely both blacks and whites in the antebellum south accepted jumping the broom as a quasi-marriage ceremony since the practice or symbols used in it (specifically the broom) had similar meanings in their respective cultures. She claims jumping over the broom was definitely a feature in both European and African wedding ceremonies, but believes that the slave practice likely originated in Africa and not Europe.

Research by the legal historian Professor R. Probert of Warwick University has since shown that the actual history of the broomstick wedding, at least in the United Kingdom, has a much shorter history than has been claimed. The earliest references to ‘broomstick’ marriages in England did not refer to a practice of jumping over a stick, but rather to any kind of sham or dubious ceremony. The earliest use of the phrase is a quote from the Westminster Magazine of 1774: "He had no inclination for a Broomstick-marriage", the person in question simply stating that he did not want to go through a ceremony that had no legal validity, it having been suggested to him that he would pretend to be marrying by having a French sexton read the marriage service to him and his young bride. A satirical song published in The Times newspaper of 1789 referring to the rumoured clandestine marriage between Prince Regent and Mrs. Fitzherbert also reflects this symbolic usage of the broomstick imagery: “Their way to consummation was by hopping o’er a broom, sir”, and there are plentiful other examples of ‘broomstick’ being using in other contemporary contexts but all with a similar implication of dubiousness or fakery. This meaning survived into the early nineteenth century: during a case heard in London in 1824 regarding the legal validity of a marriage ceremony consisting of nothing more than the groom placing a ring on the bride's finger before witnesses, a court official commented that the ceremony "amounted to nothing more than a broomstick marriage, which the parties had it in their power to dissolve at will." A decade later, the 1836 Marriage Act, which introduced civil marriage, was contemptuously referred to as the ‘Broomstick Marriage Act’ by those who felt that a marriage outside the Anglican church did not deserve legal recognition. Some also began to use the phrase to refer to non-marital unions: a man interviewed in Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor admitted: "I never had a wife, but I have had two or three broomstick matches, though they never turned out happy." By the 1850s, though, this meaning of ‘broomstick’ had fallen out of currency and references to ‘broomstick marriages’ began to be interpreted literally, as though they had involved a couple actually jumping over a stick. Folklorists such as Gwenith Gwynn, interviewing people in the early twentieth century, were unwittingly discovering folk memories of a Victorian misunderstanding rather than an actual, earlier folk practice.