This chapter and much that follows thereafter concerns itself with the phenomenon widely distributed throughout European society into the twentieth century and known broadly as charivari in France, katzenmusik in Germany or shivaree in North America. In Britain the broadest term employed was ‘rough music’, the essence of which was the staging of a shaming procession through a community in response to some alleged turpitude. The term ‘rough music’ derived from the hullabaloo made by the participating crowd on pots and pans and anything else that came to hand. These processions had close affinities with earlier judicial ridings – indeed the term ‘rough music’ was employed in describing the behaviour of the crowd during both activities. There were two important differences, however. First, the popular practices of ‘rough music’ were not formally sanctioned; second, these parades did not necessarily involve, and by the later period only rarely, the parading of the actual wrongdoer. Sometimes a substitute was employed in his or her stead to mimic and declare the offence, though more often the effigy of the offending party (or parties) was employed. Whatever the form of the procession, many of these affairs terminated with the additional burning of the effigy of the miscreant. There seem to have been some occasions upon which a bonfire and burning alone sufficed, but the fact that a parade is not reported in a (usually brief) account of such an event is not reliable evidence that one was not staged.