Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/523

 9s.v. JUNE so, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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opinion, I have met with no array so strong as this now brought before the reader.

(EDIPTJS.

THE LOG.

THTS punishment, which should rather be called the clog, consisted in fastening some weighty article to the person of a culprit, in order to make his movements slow and diffi- cult and uncomfortable, and to prevent his escape, and also, it may be added, to make him an object of derision. An early instance of the use of the word dog in the sense of restraining a person is to be found in Holins- hed's 'Chronicles,' 1587, vol. iii. p. 1392, where, in relating the career of the traitor Parrie, it is stated that when a youth he had been bound to serve in Chester under one John Fisher, from whom he often tried to escape :

"His master, to correct his perverse and froward conditions, did manie times shut him as prisoner in some close place of his house, and manie times caused him to be chained, locked, and clogged, to staie his running awaie."

Among allusions to a clog as applied to a beast the following passage from 'Hudibras,' 1663, may be cited :

Yet, as a dog committed close For some offence, by chance breaks loose And quits his clog ; hut all in vain, He still draws after him his chain.

Part ii. canto iii.

In 1680 the laws affecting negro slaves in St. Helena provided that for some offences the culprit should, in addition to receiving a hundred lashes, "wear, for one year, a chain and clogg of thirty pounds weight " (Brooke's Dictionary,' fourth edition, 1728, gives, " Clogg, a piece of wood, (fee., fastened about the legs of beasts to keep them from running astray," and makes no mention of the word signifying a punishment, civil or military. It would be difficult to fix the date when it first came into frequent use in our army, but in 1768 Capt. Cuthbertson, who had been for twelve years adjutant of the 5th Foot, pub- lished his ' System for the Management of a Battalion,' stating in the preface that his book is designed to show by what easy methods regularity may be established, and he says :
 * St. Helena,' p. 357). Bailey, in his ' English

" Whenever the regiment is underarms the drum- major should have his apparatus for whipping con- stantly with him Another excellent punishment

is, for everv company to have an iron fetter with a chain two feet in length, and at the end of it a log of wood of about four pounds, which when locked upon a soldier's leg, at the same time that he wears his coat turned inside out, exposes him so much to

the ridicule of his brother soldiers, that he will certainly avoid being again disgraced." Pp. 147, 151.

In France this form of punishment was

known as the boulet, " peine infamante a

trainer un boulet attache a une chaine de fer de deux metres et demi de long " (Littre). In England, a log of wood being the weight most frequently used, the punishment came to be known as the log. It is rarely mentioned in old military narratives, but Morris tells us, in his ' Recollections,' that when he was with his regiment, the 73rd, in Belgium in 1815, a culprit was sometimes ordered to stand "with a loe of wood fastened by a chain to his leg " (p. 101) ; and perhaps the first mention of it in any military dictionary is in the fourth edition of James's, 1816, where it is said that

" to log is a punishment which is inflicted in some dragoon or hussar regiments for indisciplined and disorderly conduct, and consists of a heavy piece of wood which is fixed to the leg of a soldier, and which he is obliged to wear under confinement in the barrack yard."

Marshall, in his 'Military Miscellany,' states that a log, or a large round shot or shell, was fastened to a delinquent's leg, and he was obliged to drag or carry it about with him on all occasions except when he mounted guard. Marshall adds that in one regiment, which was quartered in Richmond Barracks, Dublin, in 1821, from twenty to twenty-five men were frequently seen marching together round the barrack square, each dragging a log behind him (p. 205). That was probably the last of the punishment at home, but it was continued for some time afterwards at foreign stations, and Teesdale, writing in 1835, says ^ that "standing drill in marching order with a log" had been in use in the Mediterranean during most of the previous fourteen years. For several years after its discontinuance at home many officers asked to have it restored, but they were opposed by some influential men. among whom was the Commander-in- Chief, Lord Hill "Daddy Hill," as he was affectionately called by the soldiers under his command in the Peninsular War, from his mternal care of them (Donaldson's 'Eventful Life,' p. 212). Examined by a royal com- mission, his lordship said that, in his opinion, the log was a punishment more for a beast than a man, and it was not desirable to restore it. W. S.

AZAZEL This slender attempt to construct a rational interpretation of Leviticus xvi. should not be unwelcome to readers of ' N. & Q.' The crux of the problem centres in the word ^TKW- The Septuagint perceives a corruption in the text. According to the