[1] When ducks breed in trees, the precise way in which the young get
to the ground is still a matter of uncertainty. The mother is
supposed to convey them in her bill, and most likely does so, but
they are often simply allowed to fall.
DUCKING and CUCKING STOOLS, chairs used for the punishment of scolds,
witches and prostitutes in bygone days. The two have been generally
confused, but are quite distinct. The earlier, the Cucking-stool[1] or
Stool of Repentance, is of very ancient date, and was used by the
Saxons, who called it the _Scealding_ or _Scolding Stool_. It is
mentioned in Domesday Book as in use at Chester, being called _cathedra
stercoris_, a name which seems to confirm the first of the derivations
suggested in the footnote below. Seated on this stool the woman, her
head and feet bare, was publicly exposed at her door or paraded through
the streets amidst the jeers of the crowd. The Cucking-stool was used
for both sexes, and was specially the punishment for dishonest brewers
and bakers. Its use in the case of scolding women declined on the
introduction in the middle of the 16th century of the Scold's Bridle
(see BRANKS), and it disappears on the introduction a little later of
the Ducking-stool. The earliest record of the use of this latter is
towards the beginning of the 17th century. It was a strongly made wooden
armchair (the surviving specimens are of oak) in which the culprit was
seated, an iron band being placed around her so that she should not fall
out during her immersion. Usually the chair was fastened to a long
wooden beam fixed as a seesaw on the edge of a pond or river. Sometimes,
however, the Ducking-stool was not a fixture but was mounted on a pair
of wooden wheels so that it could be wheeled through the streets, and at
the river-edge was hung by a chain from the end of a beam. In sentencing
a woman the magistrates ordered the number of duckings she should have.
Yet another type of Ducking-stool was called a tumbrel. It was a chair
on two wheels with two long shafts fixed to the axles. This was pushed
into the pond and then the shafts released, thus tipping the chair up
backwards. Sometimes the punishment proved fatal, the unfortunate woman
dying of shock. Ducking-stools were used in England as late as the
beginning of the 19th century. The last recorded cases are those of a
Mrs Ganble at Plymouth (1808); of Jenny Pipes, "a notorious scold"
(1809), and Sarah Leeke (1817), both of Leominster. In the last case the
water in the pond was so low that the victim was merely wheeled round
the town in the chair.
See W. Andrews, _Old Time Punishments_ (Hull, 1890); A.M. Earle,
_Curious Punishments of Bygone Days_ (Chicago, 1896); W.C. Hazlitt,
_Faiths and Folklore_ (London, 1905); Llewellynn Jewitt in _The
Reliquary_, vols. i. and ii. (1860-1862); _Gentleman's Magazine_ for
1732.