The Scottish JOUGS and BRANKS are old instruments of punishment, popularly associated, for the most part, with judicial visitations of a more homely and less revolting character than those previously referred to, though not altogether free from sterner associations. The jougs, which consist of an iron collar attached by a chain to a pillar or tree, form the corresponding Scottish judicial implement to the English Stocks: applied, however, not to the legs or arms, but to the neck. They are still to be met with attached to the porch of our older village churches, or occasionally to some venerable tree in the surrounding churchyard, their application having been most frequently reserved in the olden time for the enforcement of ecclesiastical discipline. The woodcut represents a fine old pair of jougs, the property of Sir William Jardine, Bart., which were found imbedded in a venerable ash tree, recently blown down, at the churchyard gate, Applegirth, Dumfriesshire. The tree, which was of great girth, is believed to have been upwards of three hundred years old, and the jougs were completely imbedded in its trunk, while the chain and staple hung down within the decayed and hollow core. The more usual form of the jougs is simply a flat iron collar with distended loops, through which a padlock was passed to secure the culprit in his ignominious durance. Along with this may be mentioned a singular and probably unique relic of old Scottish judicature, preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, to which it was presented in 1784. It consists of the brass collar of a Scottish slave of the eighteenth century. The collar is inscribed in accordance with the terms of the following verdict, which shews that the case was not singular; and having been dredged up in the Frith of Forth, it seems sufficiently probable that the unhappy victim may have chosen death in preference to the doom from which there was no other release.
Jougs, Applegirth.
"At Perth, the fifth day of December 1701 years, the Commissioners of Justiciary of the south district, for securing the peace of the Highlands, considering that Donald Robertson, Alexander Steuart, John Robertson, and Donald M'Donald, prisoners within the Tolbooth of Perth, and indicted and tried at this court, are by verdict of the inquest returned, GUILTY OF DEATH; and that the Commissioners have changed their punishment of death to perpetual servitude; and that the said pannells are at the court's disposal. Therefore the said Commissioners have given and gifted, and hereby give and gift, the said Alexander Steuart, one of the said prisoners, as ane perpetual servant to Sir John Areskine of Alva, recommending him to cause provide an collar of brass, iron, or copper, which by his sentence or doom, (whereof an extract is delivered to the magistrates of the said burgh of Perth,) is to be upon his neck with this inscription: Alexr. Steuart, found guilty of death for theft, at Perth, the 5th of December 1701, and gifted by the Justiciars as a perpetual servant to Sir John Areskine of Alva; and recommending also to him to transport him from the said prison once the next week; and the said Commissioners have ordained and hereby ordain the magistrates of Perth, and keeper of their Tolbooth, to deliver the said Alexander Steuart to the said Sir John Areskine of Alva, having the said collar and inscription conform to the sentence of doom foresaid."[712]
From another deed of gift, it appears that Donald M'Donald was bestowed in like manner on John Earl of Tullibardine.[713] No doubt the other two were similarly disposed of by gift, if not by positive sale—so very recently was slavery a part and parcel of Scottish law: feudal customs, and the singular ideas incident to the peculiar social state of the Highlands, having remained little affected by all the changes wrought on the Lowland Saxon and the Southron, until the final overthrow of the clans on Culloden Moor abruptly broke the traditions of many centuries.
The BRANKS is another Scottish instrument of ecclesiastical punishment, chiefly employed for the coercion of female scolds, and those adjudged guilty of slander and defamation. It may be described as a skeleton iron helmet, having a gag of the same metal, which entered the mouth and effectually brankit that unruly member—the tongue.[714] It is an instrument of considerable antiquity, and has probably not unfrequently been employed for purposes of great cruelty, though in most examples the gag is not designed to wound the mouth, but only to hold down the tongue. In the Burgh Records of Glasgow, for example, under date of April 1574, "Marione Smyt and Margaret Huntare" having quarrelled, they appear, and produce two cautioners or sureties, "þat þai sal abstene fra stryking of utheris in tyme cuming, under þe pane of X lib., and gif thai flyte to be brankit."[715] One very complete specimen still preserved at St. Mary's Church, St. Andrews, is popularly known as the Bishop's Branks, and is usually said to have been fixed on the head of Patrick Hamilton and of others of the early Scottish martyrs who perished at the stake during the religious persecution of James V.'s reign. This tradition, however, is not borne out by history in the case of Hamilton, and is probably the addition of a later age, though the instrument may possibly have supplied both Archbishop and Cardinal Beaton with a ready means of restraining less confirmed recusants, and thereby nipping the new heresy in the bud. But the real origin of its present title is to be traced to the use of it in much more recent times, by Archbishop Sharp, for silencing the scandal which an unruly dame promulgated openly against him before the congregation. A view of the Bishop's Branks is given in the Abbotsford edition of The Monastery, where it is described as formerly kept at St. Mary's Church. It still remains there, in the custody of the sexton, and is regarded with such general interest as is likely to secure its preservation. The annexed woodcut is drawn from another example, which was discovered in 1848 behind the oak panelling in one of the rooms of the ancient mansion of the Earls of Moray, in the Canongate, Edinburgh. The term Branks, it may be added, is also used in Scotland to designate a rude substitute for a horse's bridle and bit, formed most frequently of a halter and stick. Some few years since the frightful instrument represented below was preserved in the old steeple at Forfar, where it bore the name of the Witch's Branks or Bridle, and is described in the Old Statistical Account of the parish of Forfar as the bridle with which the wretched victims of superstition were led to execution. The field, it is added, where they suffered is pointed out to strangers as a place of curious interest. The witch's bridle was carried off from Forfar to add to the antiquarian treasures of the late well-known collector Mr. Alexander Deuchar of Edinburgh. The date 1661 is punched on the circle, along with what seems to read Angus s.[716] The object aimed at in applying so dreadful a gag to those who were condemned to the stake as guilty of witchcraft and dealing with the devil, was not so much the purposed cruelty which its use necessarily involved, as to prevent the supposed possessors of such unearthly gifts from pronouncing the potent formula by means of which it was implicitly believed they could transform themselves at will to other shapes, or transport themselves where they pleased, and thus effectually outwit their tormentors. It furnishes a melancholy index of the barbarism which prevailed in our own country at so very recent a period, that educated men could be found to give credit to such follies, or that even among the most illiterate and rude, executioners could be enlisted to apply to a woman an instrument the very picture of which is calculated to excite a shudder.
The Branks, Moray House.
