100 years ago in COUNTRY LIFE

January 4, 1919

IT went ill with offenders in Scotland in the old days. In the sixteenth century the civil law condemned the ‘breakirs of Cunningaires [warrens]’ and doo’cots, the destroyers of the bees, the ‘cutteris and pulleris of Broome’ ‘to be put in the stokkes, prison or irones auct [eight] dayes, on bread and water for a first fault; And for the second fault, fifteene days; and for the third fault hanging to the death’; and Church law lagged little behind. No mode of correction was more often appealed to than the Stool of Repentance. The penitent was placed, according to his sin, ‘on the highest degree of the penitent stuill’ or on the lower ‘cock stool’. Throughout the service he stood, bareheaded and barefoot, the butt of the sermon.