Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/510

 422 NOTES AND QUER1ri»... . 'f>e==_s. v1. Dm. 1, INK). which had been animadverted upgn and reprobated on former occasions by His late yal Highness the Duke of York and by His Grace the Duke of Wel- linlgton. The Log, for instance, is a punishment in ictcd at the discretion of the commanding officer which cannot be sanctioned, and is hence- forth strictly forbidden. ..... Standing under arms is altogether forbidden. lt a pears to be the practice in some regiments to contiiie a man to the Black Hole for 48 hours, and after an interval of 24 hours to repeat the confinement. for 48 hours, _and so on ; nay, in some re iments men are conhned in the Black Hole at the discretion of the commanding officer for periods not only exceeding 48 hours, but amounting to 7 days. T ese practices are in the grgaitest, egree reprehensible, and are strictly for- en. Donaldson mentions the case of a man “standing in full marching order, with his arms carried, and his face within a few inches of the barrack wall, in which position he was sentenced to remain during three successive days, from sun- rise to sunset, for being absent when the roll was called at tattoo.”-P. 284. There were also punishments which never had lawful authority or oflicial recognition. A soldier accused of some petty offence-such as a dirty personal habit, or pilfering from a comrade, or shirking work by hiding himself, or pleading sickness when wanted for duty, called in barrack-room slang a “schemer ” or a “sconce” (see Anton, . 150)-was often dealt with by a mock tribunal of his peers the ofiicers tacitly ap roving. It was resorted to not only when tiie offence was deemed trivial, but when it was ditiicult to assemble a court-martial, either from the paucity of officers available or from the delay in military operations which such an assembly would occasion, or when the evidence seemed too weak to ensure a conviction by legal process. These “ company courts-martia ,” as they were generally called, did no doubt at times a kind of rough-and-ready °ustice, but they were open to great abuse. booting, cobbing, and scabbardin were the punishments they usually awarded, and in Tomkinson’s ‘Diary of a Cavalry Oflicer’ mention is twice made of booting :- “The one absent had got away during the ad- vance, to plunder, was reported to me b the men, and booted b them on the morning following the action [Waterioo].”-P. 289. “A corporal of the Guards stationed in Hougo- mont, having left his regiment passed through t ie 95th on his way to the rear. He was not wounded, and assigned no reason for leaving his corps. He told the 95th that the enemy had possession of the chateau, and that all there was lost. From the goint the 95_th occupied in the line, they saw our re proceeding out of Hougomont against the enemy, and therefore, knowing his report to be false, they caught him, and gave the corporal a good bootmg.’ -P. 318. Booting was a punishment in cavalry regi- ments only, and consisted in beating a man with a long boot, generally on the soles of the feet; but subsequently a strap or belt was used, and the word at ast came to mean any kind of rough handling, a drubbing. During the eighteenth century infantry soldiers had not boots; they wore shoes. Moreover, a bastinado on the soles of the feet would have made an infantry soldier unfit for the line of march. The common punishments among foot soldiers were scabbarding and cobbing, the former meaning to beat a man with a bayonet scabbard, and the latter to beat with a cobbing stick ° but straps and belts came to be used, and scabbar ing and cobbing meant at last any kind of beating. The practice o officers countenancing these sham tribunals received a wholesome check on 31 March, 1828, when the following case was decided by Mr. Justice Bailey and a jury at the York Assize. It was shown that on the forenoon of 2 October, 1827, a trooper of the Gth (Inniskilling) Dragoons was drag ed by some of his comrades from the old cava5ry barrack in Sheffield down what is still called Barrack Lane to the riverside, his arms pinioned, and a long rgpe round his body. here for some alleged o ence, he was thrown into the Don. Pulled back to the river bank, he was again plunged into the river and dragged in it till he was neaw dead. The officers of his squadron, Major hichcote and Ca t. Portman, looked on, and the latter cali)ed out to the soldiers, “Throw him in again; drown himl” Some civilians who happened to be passincg at the time witnessed these proceedings, an gave evidence at the trial of the action brought against the two officers, and the trooper o tained 2501. damages. W. S. THE REVISED VERSION . I WOULD begin by expressing the o inion that this is by far the best existing Iiiiiglish translation of the Scriptures, and my regret at the ultra-conservatism which hinders it from taking the place of the A.V. in the public services of the Church. But I have certain doubts as to a few particulars. 1. Who for 'w/ufr/z. As the R-.V. has uni- formly substituted its for /nfs neuter, I think here it would have been better to have followed the modern grammar, which is a distinct advance or improvement on the old. I think it not unlikely that one consideration that weighed with the Revisers was the translation of the first words of the Lord’s Prayer. The Americans say, “Our Father who art in heaven.” There is a slight difiiculty from the hiatus between who and