PUBLIC PUNISHMENTS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4760, 6 October 1924, Page 3

PUBLIC PUNISHMENTS.

ECHOES OF A STERANER DAY. In the good old days our. forefather* decided without a moment’s hesitation that a public punishment was a much more efficacious thing than a private one (says an exchange). In Elgin it is duly recorded that one Christiane Innes had to do penance at the “ Pillar ” on the Lord’s Day, clad in sackcloth and with a “ mytre of paper on her head containing the cause of her sitting there.” The pillar was inside the Church of St. Giles, and poor Christane (one wonders what had been her sin I) found when she entered the kirk that she could not climb to her perch ‘because the ladder that stud at the pillar of repentance was tane away.” Did she stand shivering there at the foot of the pillar till some officious person fetched the ladder ’.And was her sin that of “ the sclanderer In the church of Spynie there is still preserved a “cutty stool ” upon which “ slanderious ” folks had to sit and do penance. In early times an extensive brewing trade was carried on in Elgin, and we find the town council seriously annoyed with the weakness-of the ale brewed by some “browsters’ wives.” Taking a .leaf out of the Church s book they decreed that if any of these women made “ washy or evil ale ” she she should be fined and set upon the ‘•cock stule Despite this threat, we find in 1633 that certain Elgin ladies broke the law again. This time it wa- by selling ale during time of divine service. Their names were Christian Jeanour, and Margaret, Dunbar, “browsters,” and they were ordered td stand at “the pillai on Sunday next, and there confess, their fault, with a promise of amendment, as also to pay half a merke.” For making a ‘‘penny bridal” to his daughter-in-law, one William Saunders was censured by the Presbytery of Flgin, but report is silent as to the lady’s punishment. “To be put to the horn” was another form of punishment. Three blasts of the horn were sounded at the Mercat Cross, and the culprit was declared an outlaw. This strange punishment was meted out to Elspeth Straghin, somewhere about 1630, her sin being that of dinging to the Church of. Rome.