How To Write a Story: #83. Using old language and custom: "Hog Trough Dance."

A few years back I had one of those calendars that gives you a new thing every day of the year. In this case, the thing was archaic words and terms from English. Such words as “bludget” (a female thief), “pudicity” (modesty), or “boist” (bed set by a fireside for a sick person) supplied ideas, mostly for poems. One of them, "My Hog Trough Dance,” led me to write a poem with the term for a title that got published in The Dark Horse, a rather high-rated Scottish poetry journal, higher on the literary food chain that the type of journal my poems were usually included in. A hog trough dance, the calendar informed me, was an old English and American Appalachian custom where, when a woman with a older unmarried sister got married the older sister was made to dance, at the wedding, in a hog trough.

The term, and the custom it represented, intrigued me. I did some research on it and found out it is still done today. Though today, it is simply done to be funny. In olden times, I got the idea, it was done to humiliate the older sister and spur her on to get married. That was the content of the poem that appeared in The Dark Horse. I felt sympathy for a women humiliated in this way and indignation that such a misogynistic custom existed, and I expressed as much in the poem. Soon, though, I began to get the idea for a story. What if a modern did a hog-trough dance “just to be funny” but it was not so funny for the person who agreed to do it? This got the creative wheels turning. As often, such historical matters, be they archaic words or outmoded practices, can spur one on to a successful story line.

Hog Trough Dance at a Modern Wedding

The story turned out to be a flash fiction piece—under 1000 words. Flash fiction is very much in vogue today, but I don’t write a lot of it. Usually at 1000 words I’m just getting the characters nailed down. In this case, however, I wanted to see if I could write that genre and compressed the story in a small space. It worked, I think, though I have not done a flash fiction tale again and don’t plan to. It’s too restrictive for me; and I’m old school and like to develop character, do descriptions, and work toward the plot. Flash fiction does this with too much velocity, so I stay away from it.

In the story, Rita Wilson is getting married and asked her sister Genevieve to do a hog trough dance at her wedding. The sister objects:

“Is this hog trough thing supposed to make me look ridiculous because you’re younger than me and getting married before I do?”

"Ginny,” Rita said, exasperated, “it’s supposed to be funny, that’s all. Just to get laughs. If you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to.”

Genevieve agrees. After all, Rita is going to jump into the pool at the place they’ve rented for the wedding—wearing her bridal dress. Why can’t her sister do the dance? It seems reasonable and will provide merriment during the reception. Genevieve plays mandolin in a bluegrass band. They are doing music at the reception. When the time comes for her to do the hog trough dance, she plays her mandolin and sings, as she dances, an old song:

I ain’t marrying’ a banker’s clerk

                        Spends all day long doin’ work.

                        I ain’t marryin’ at all, Lord,

                        I ain’t marryin’ at all.

                       

                        I ain’t marryin’ a preacher’s son

                        He won’t let me have no fun. 

                        I ain’t marryin’ at all, Lord.

                        I ain’t marryin’ at all.

She dances and sings. Then drama occurs. The hastily-assembled hog trough splits, Genevieve falls and hits her head. A doctor attending the wedding sees to her. When Rita knows her sister will be all right she kisses her, smiles, and tells her the old legend that if the hog trough breaks during the dance, the dancer will marry. “Too bad,” Genevieve replies. Later, Rita jumps off the diving board of the pool in her wedding dress, breaks the surface, stands up in the shallow end, and throws a bouquet of water-soaked flowers at the assembled guests. Ginny doesn’t try to catch it.

The story was published by a journal called Eskimo Pie. You can read it here.

For additional stories, see my Writer's Page.

A great read, the best of vampire novels, the tale of atalented, beautiful vampire who does not sparkle, is my novel, Sinfonia:  The First Notes on the Lute:  A Vampire Chronicle, Part I. Get a copy here.

I would love to hear your comments.

Happy Thanksgiving (to my American readers)

Blessings to everyone.

And happy reading.