the old writers, might be added almost ad infinitum to those which I have thus has tily thrown together; but my object has not been to collect together all that is known on the subject, but to bring to bear a few of the examples, so as to show the extent to which this mode of punishment has been practised in this kingdom, and to explain the different varieties of engines used. In the latter part of the fifteenth, during the whole of the sixteenth, and more particularly during the entire period of the seventeenth, centuries, as well as in the first half of the eighteenth, the practice of ducking continued through out the kingdom, and although duck ing stools were not perhaps quite as plenty as parish stocks, there was scarcely a town without one, and the beauty of many a village green was blotted and spoiled by the disgraceful machine being attached to the side of the horse, or duck pond in its center. There, in the village were the stocks for the men, and the duck ing stool for the women, and the pillory for both or either, and when the villagers wished to get up "an excitement" to relieve the dull monotony of their lives, a "ducking" was " as good as a show," or a bull or bear baiting, and if the poor victim should die from the effects of the brutal treatment she received, why, all the better — they knew that they had had their amusement to its fullest extent, and had been debarred of nothing of their sport. I may, perhaps, in a future number, give a few additional notes on the cucking stool, and so introduce some extraordinary ac counts which I have met with of the duck ing of some " good-wife " or other, as a matter of speculation — for it has even been known that men (!) have "presented" a woman as a scold, for the purpose of mak ing money by it, by " going round with the
hat " among the bystanders, in considera tion of the sport they had given them! Such is human nature. No matter whether the bull-ring, the cock-pit, the bear-garden, or the ducking-pond — no matter whether cruelty was to be practised on the beast, the fowl, the brute, or the woman — a crowd would be gathered together to enjoy the sport —• the greater the cruelty the greater the zest with which it would be enjoyed — and people would be found to turn it to pecuniary account. Happy indeed is it for us that we live in an age when such public exhibitions are not tolerated, and when the law — for my fair readers must listen to the fact that it is still lawful to order them to the ducking-stool!! — dare not, even if in clination led the authorities, be put in force. He would indeed be a hardy mayor, or magistrate, who would now order a woman to be dragged through the town, and publicly ducked, and I am very much of opinion -that the assembled people would turn round, and, very properly, well duck him instead. A prose satire, " Poor Robin's True Character of a Scold," published in 1678, says — " A burr about the moone is not half so certain a presage of a tempest at sea, as her brow is of storm on land. And though laurel, hawthorn, and seal skin, are held preservatives against thunder, magick has not yet been able to find any amulet so sovereign as to still her ravings; for, like oyl poured on flames, good words do but make her rage the faster; and when once her flag of defiance, the tippet, is unfurl'd, she cares not a straw for constable nor cucking-stool " — and if any hardy mayor now was to order the punishment, he would find not only the scold's tongue, but thou sands of "flags of defiance" "unfurled" against him, and would be glad to retire not only from his office, but from the neighborhood where he had attempted to use his cruel authority.
