Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/208

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PUNISHMENTS—LEGAL AND POPULAR.




INTRODUCTION.

Among the old legal punishments, descending, many of them, from Saxon times, the chief, or at least the most remarkable in Lancashire, were the stocks, the whipping-post, the cucking or ducking stool, the tumbrel, the scold's brank or bridle, the pillory, and the gallows. Of those popular punishments, which were inflicted in the spirit of Lynch-law for offences which the ordinary processes of law and modes of legal punishment would not reach, the most striking were riding the stang and ringing the pan. The following are a few brief notices of these.