Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 02.pdf/223

TONGUE-TAMING. IT is not given to every man to possess ished by the mayor on a cuck-stool before the philosophical phlegm of Socrates, their own door, and then carried to the four who, when Xantippe wound up one of her gates of the town." And this failing, the "little speeches " with a bucket of water tumbrel was turned into the trebucket, or over the poor, patient, hen-pecked man, would movable ducking-stool, and this, in its turn, yielded to the permanent ducking-stool, calmly observe that " after thunder rain gen erally fell; " and consequently poor puny which, according to Gay, seems at all events man, who actually at one time considered to have had terrors for some. himself the lord of creation, essayed to "I 'll speed me to the pond where the high stool battle with the evil, instead of sitting down On the long plank hangs o'er the muddy pool; quietly and accepting scolding as inevitable, That stool the dread of every scolding quean," etc. and a misfortune for which there was no The ducking-stools proper were perma remedy. "A common scold, 'communis rixatrix ' nent affairs, and were erected by the side of some river or pond. They were numerous, (for our Law Latin confines it to the fem inine gender)," says Blackstone, " is a public but not so numerous as the stocks, which were in almost every village, and indeed the nuisance to her neighborhood." In full ac cordance with the view of this great legal cause for their use seems to have been only luminary, our English forefathers, who were too prevalent. As Poor Robin said, — men of mettle, grappled with this social evil, "Now, if one cucking-stool was for each scold, and they found a possible remedy handy in Some towns, I fear, would not their numbers hold; the cucking-stool, which certainly had come But should all women patient Grisels be, Small use for cucking-stools they'd have, I see." to them from Saxon times, as it is men tioned in Domesday Book, although it then But the ducking-stool was not the only seems to have been used to punish offenders remedy used to tame a scold's tongue. At of a different description, such as giving Carrickfergus they tried another plan, as this false measures, or selling bad beer. But it extract from the town records will show, — was a convenient and harmless punishment. It involved no physical hardship, and was "October 1574 — Ordered and agreede by applied to a scold in a very simple manner. the hole Court, that all manners of Skoldes which She was only placed in it (being of course shall be openly detected of Skolding, or Eville duly fastened in), and exposed outside her wordes in manner of skolding, and for the same house, or in some other place, for a given shal be condemned before Mr. Maior and his time, and so left to the gibes and insolent brethren, shall be drawn at the sterne of a boate remarks of the crowd. This was the first in the water from the ende of the Pearle round and gentlest treatment of the disease. It about the Queene's Majestie's Castell in manner gave no physical pain, as did the stocks, of ducking, and after when a cage shall be made, the party so condemned for a skold Shal and rather shows the wish of our ancestors be therein punished at the discretion of the to begin with moral suasion; but finding maior." still that her " clam'rous tongue strikes pity deaf," they invented the tumbrel, on which And a cage was made, and women were so she was drawn round the town, seated on punished, and a regular list kept of scolds. the chair. For instance, in the Common A very curious punishment obtained at Hall accounts of the Borough of Leicester, Sandwich, and in the mayoralty of Robert 1467, it was ordered " that scolds be pun "Mitchell, 1637: "A woman carries the