rosco rathbone
1. f3e5 2. g4??
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2002
- Posts
- 42,431
I don't know what relevance if any this thing about 17th-century Puritan practices has to BDSM, but it tickled the same part of my brain.
"...Will-breaking was mainly a form of mental discipline, but when all else failed, New England parents did not hesitate to use physical constraints. Restless children were rolled into small, squirming human balls with their knees tied firmly beneath their chins, and booted back and forth across the floor by their elders. Other youngsters were dangled by their heels out of windows, or forced to kneel on sharp sticks, or made to sit precariously for long periods on a one-legged stool called the unipod, or compelled to wear a painful cleft stick on the tip of the nose. Partners in juvenile crime were yoked together in miniature versions of an oxbow. Small malefactors were made to wear shame-signs that proclaimed their offenses: "Lying Anasias" or "Bite-Finger-Baby". Large children were caned or whipped, little ones were slapped with ferrules, and tiny infants were tapped sharply on the skull with hard ceramic thimbles. Another common punishment was a wooden bit called the whispering stick, firmly set between the teeth and fastened by a cord behind the neck. To the front was added a shame-sign that read "he whispers". Several of these devices have survived, as sketched here from old photographs...."
-Chapter 11 "Massachusetts Child-Ways" from Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer.
"Small squirming human balls"..."the unipod"...rapped on the head with a thimble.
This stuff comes from the same nexus of horror and inventive absurdity that makes the work of Jack Vance so compelling to me.
"...Will-breaking was mainly a form of mental discipline, but when all else failed, New England parents did not hesitate to use physical constraints. Restless children were rolled into small, squirming human balls with their knees tied firmly beneath their chins, and booted back and forth across the floor by their elders. Other youngsters were dangled by their heels out of windows, or forced to kneel on sharp sticks, or made to sit precariously for long periods on a one-legged stool called the unipod, or compelled to wear a painful cleft stick on the tip of the nose. Partners in juvenile crime were yoked together in miniature versions of an oxbow. Small malefactors were made to wear shame-signs that proclaimed their offenses: "Lying Anasias" or "Bite-Finger-Baby". Large children were caned or whipped, little ones were slapped with ferrules, and tiny infants were tapped sharply on the skull with hard ceramic thimbles. Another common punishment was a wooden bit called the whispering stick, firmly set between the teeth and fastened by a cord behind the neck. To the front was added a shame-sign that read "he whispers". Several of these devices have survived, as sketched here from old photographs...."
-Chapter 11 "Massachusetts Child-Ways" from Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer.
"Small squirming human balls"..."the unipod"...rapped on the head with a thimble.
This stuff comes from the same nexus of horror and inventive absurdity that makes the work of Jack Vance so compelling to me.
I mean, minus the burning at the stake. I'm not sick or anything! 
