Skĭm'ming-ton, n.

[Written also skimitry and skimmerton.] A word of unknown signification, but probably the name of some notorious scold of olden time; — used only in the following phrase: —

To ride skimmington, to perform a burlesque ceremony in ridicule of a man who had been beaten by his wife. It consisted in causing the man beaten (or, according to Nares, the next neighbor to him) to ride on a horse behind a woman, with his face to the horse's tail, holding a distaff in his hand, at which he seems to work, and followed by a procession of rough music, as frying-pans, bulls' horns, marrow-bones, cleavers, &c. Halliwell.