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Updated: June 19, 2025
As Ann Linkon descended for the last time, she seemed to gather up all her energies and, in a voice overflowing with hate, shrieked: "It's true! She is a hussy!" Plunging down, down, down, until ducking-stool and occupant were completely buried beneath the water, sank the victim, and on the air came a gurgling sound: "She's a hussy!"
But, hark ye, good woman, every bull of Bashan and Red Dragon will not be so civil as I am, or be contented to leave you to the charge of the constable and ducking-stool. In the meantime I must necessarily carry off this young man to head-quarters. I cannot answer to my commanding-officer to leave him in a house where I have heard so much treason and fanaticism."
The founders of the American, colonies, whatever may have been their original designs for the promotion of universal happiness, found it necessary very soon to allot a portion of the virgin soil to the humiliation, punishment and degradation of their fellow creatures. Thus we find, in addition to the prison, the whipping-post and the pillory, the ducking-stool.
Its stocks were a marvel of age and efficiency. A ducking-stool for scolds yet remained in the courthouse, beside the beam with which they weighed witches against the Bible; but the oldest thing in Great Tattleton was its charter: a native antiquary demonstrated, that it had been signed by King John the day after Runnymede; and among other superannuated privileges, it conferred on the free burghers the right of trade and toll, ward and gibbet, besides that of electing their own mayor and one loyal commoner, to serve in the king's parliament.
On the opposite end of the pole a rope was tied, the end hanging down to the ground. This contrivance, to-day unknown, was once quite familiar to English civilization, and was called the "ducking-stool."
A bridle, something like a bit for a restive horse, was in use for the curbing of scolds; but this was a later invention than the cucking-stool, or ducking-stool.
The ducking-stool and whipping post, as well as numerous other devices of torture, were the favorite English methods for American purification. Boston, the city of culture, has gone down in the annals of Puritanism as the "Bloody Town." It rivaled Salem, even, in her cruel persecution of unauthorized religious opinions.
In some ways he is better. He is far less cruel than his ancestors were than our ancestors were. He does not torture with the tumbril, the stocks, the ducking-stool, the pillory, the branding-irons, the ear-pruners and nostril-shears and tongue-branks that were in everyday use under the old criminal code.
Men who lived ill were fined or expelled from Stratford's boundaries; scolding wives were sentenced to have their tempers sweetened by immersion from the ducking-stool in the clear, cold waters of Avon. Publicans were forced to conform to the local laws carefully framed to abolish public drunkenness.
The twins considered themselves very nearly as grown-up as Fairy, and the fact that she was a young lady, and they were children, filled their hearts with bitterness. They never lost an opportunity of showing their independence where she was concerned. And with marvelous insight, Prudence used Fairy as her weapon of punishment, in fact, the twins called Fairy the "ducking-stool" for many days.
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