Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/213

 9* S.V.MARCH 17, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

205

written " gantelope," as in Shaftesbury's ' Diary ' in 1646.

To run the gantelope was considered a more severe punishment than the picket or the wooden horse, and could only be awarded by a court-martial. The mode of inflicting it, though varying in detail from time to time and at different stations, was generally as follows. The assembled troops were drawn up in two lines facing each other, every man having some sort of switch, willow-rod, stick, wand, or " cudgel " in his hand, wherewith to strike the culprit as, stripped from the waist upwards, he went down the lane with what speed he could. A mounted officer, generally the major of the man's regiment, rode along- side and urged the soldiers to lay on well, and a sergeant went in front with his h albert pointed to the culprit's breast, to prevent his going too fast. Frequently drums were beaten to drown his cries. In the navy a rope, or a kriittle with two or three knots on it, was the weapon used as the culprit went up and down a double line of bluejackets, preceded by a master-at-arms who carried his cutlass pointed towards the man's breast. But it was never a frequent punishment in the navy.

In 1686 it was reported from Dublin by Lord - Lieutenant Clarendon that a soldier " had run the gantlet quite through the whole regiment, and was beaten with that severity that he fell down twice by the way " (' Correspondence,' vol. i. p. 475). In 1693, at Portsmouth, a deserter was sentenced to run the gauntlet five times through six hundred men, with two days' intermission between each time of running. In 1699, at Dublin, a soldier was sentenced to run the gauntlet three times a day, for three days successively, through a detachment of each regiment.

In Watson's 'Military Dictionary,' 1758, it is stated that

"in England this way of punishment is disused 5 and instead thereof, the delinquents have their thumbs tied to halberts placed triangularly, and the drummers of the regiment, being provided with whips of whipcord tied in knots, perform the dis- cipline."

But the punishment was continued at some foreign stations, and among troops on active service, for long after its disuse in England, probably down to 1785. In an ' Essay on the Art of War,' London, 1761, we read :

" To be hanged, shot, sent to the gallies, chained to a wheelbarrow, or run the gantlope, are the military punishments of Crimes in use. The wooden mare, the piquet, imprisonment, chains, bread and water, are the punishments of Faults." P. 106.

Capt. Smith, in his 'Military Dictionary,' 1779, under the words ' Execution ' and 'Run,' describes the punishment as it was

carried out at that date ; and Dr. Hamilton, of the 10th Foot, in his 'Duties of a Regimental Surgeon,' 1787, writes that "different regi- ments use different methods of punishing ; in some to run the gauntlet, as they call it, is customary," and he proceeds to describe such a punishment parade. Hamilton probably left the army in 1780, but he allowed the passage to stand in the second edition, 1794 (vol. ii. p. 70), and he would hardly have done so had the punishment been wholly disused before 1785.

Not many years ago, when a soldier was sentenced to imprisonment and discharge with ignominy, it was customary to form the regiment in two lines facing each other, and the culprit had to march down this lane escorted by a guard with fixed bayonets and preceded by a drummer and a fifer playing the ' Rogue's March.' Neither a voice nor a hand was allowed to be raised ; it was simply the last the regiment saw of the man ; his march ended in a prison, where his military discharge was carried out. But no doubt the idea of this ignominious procession down a lane of soldiers had its origin in the gantelope.

A curious mode of running the gauntlet in civil life is thus described in an entertaining little book about Tranent, a town which is close to the battlefield of Prestonpans :

" The last case of gauntlet-running in Tranent

occurred nearly a century ago At a given time

the people assembled in the guilty man's house, when, disrobing him of all save his shirt, they tied him to the back of a pony cart which stood in readi- ness, and into which his cast-off clothes had been previously thrown. In this manner he was made to march or run through the town, followed by a hooting crowd, who soundly belaboured him all the way. This continued till the procession reached the top of the ' muir,' where the fellow's hands were unloosed, and his clothes flung at him, when he was allowed to return or depart as he chose." ' Tranent and its Surroundings,' Edinburgh, 1884, p. 259.

w. s.

[See ' H.E.D.'; and ' N. & Q.,' 8 th S., under ' Pro- verbs and Phrases.']

BYRONIANA.

(Continued from ante, p. 44.) 2. ' Bride of Abydos,' opening lines : Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle, &c. Moore, in his ' Life of Byron,' says that these opening lines (which were an afterthought) were supposed to have been suggested to him by a song of Goethe's ; and a note in Murray's 4 Byron ' (edition 1837) gives the first line of the song, " Kennst du das Land," &c. In a Berlin edition of Goethe's ' Poems ' (1868), vol. i. p. 113, this song, entitled 'Mignon,' appears as the first of the l Balladen.' The only lines