16th December

Nostalgia for early morning walks

Someone, a friend in Cornwall, sent me a CD with about 30 Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine (WAM for short) journals of the 19th century.  It really is fascinating to poke about men's mind in this era, not many women authors sadly.  But I picked up this on witches, think I had just called myself a witch that day on the blog.  Just love this...'the way of punishing scolding women is pleasant enough'
who for may one ask?
There is a certain sense of satisfaction as women start to question the role of equality, we lose of course in fair pay for jobs, but the latest tsunami when we question being sexually harassed has become a sport in its own right.  I have said before, impossible to monitor such behaviour, you would need more than 10 commandments, will this tidal wave have any significance?
Punishment nowadays to women is filtered through the medium of social media such as twitter, and cruelty abounds (by both sexes).  Anyway glad I did not live in a time when you were dunked in cold dirty water, is it true that if you drowned you were innocent?

"Mr. Ozell, in his translation of this work printed in 1715, thus translates this passage : —" Cucking Stool—the way of punishing scolding women is pleasant enough. They fasten an arm chair to the end of two beams, twelve or fifteen foot long, and parallel to each other, so that these two pieces of wood with their two ends embrace the chair which hangs between them on a sort of axle, by which means it plays freely, and always remains in the natural horizontal position in which a chair should be that a person may sit conveniently in it, whether you raise it or let it do^mi. They set up a post, upon the bank of a pond or river, and over this post they lay almost in equilibrio the two pieces of wood, at one end of which the chair hangs j\ist over the water ; they place the woman in this chair, and so plunge her into the water, as often as the sentence directs, in order to cool her immoderate heat." 

Some old fashioned words, when the world lived within its separate villages and people never knew what was happening outside that world......

Bang-tail, or Red Fiery Bang-tail. Phmnicurus ruticuia, the Redstart.

Bedwind, Bedwine. Clematis Vitalba, L., TraveUer's Joy. S.W.

 Bee-flower. Oi^A?-^* apifera, Huds., Bee Orchis.

Cluttery. Showery and gusty.

Bottle-tit. JParus caudatus, L., the Long-tailed Titmouse or long tailed tit, one of my favourite birds as they loop through the trees like little old men.

A peaceful English scene