Obs. exc. Hist. Forms: 4 coking-, 4– cucking, 6 cukkyng-, cuckyng-, cooking-; also (by association with CUCKQUEAN) 6 coqueen-, 7 cockqueane-stool. [app. f. CUCK v.1 + STOOL; cf. CUCK-STOOL. Called in the Chester Domesday (I. 262 b) cathedra stercoris (Way, Promp. Parv.). So named from one of its common forms, which was perhaps the original.]
An instrument of punishment formerly in use for scolds, disorderly women, fraudulent tradespeople, etc., consisting of a chair (sometimes in the form of a close-stool), in which the offender was fastened and exposed to the jeers of the bystanders, or conveyed to a pond or river and ducked.
For full account of its history, see Dr. T. N. Brushfield’s Obsolete Punishments, II. The Cucking Stool, in Jrnl. of Archit., Archæol., & Hist. Soc. of Chester, VI. 203 (1857–9).
[1215–70. in Borlase, Hist. Cornwall, I. 303. (transl.) Brawling women … undergo the punishment of the ‘Coking Stole.’]
c. 1308. Sat. People Kildare, 100, in E. E. P. (1862), 155. Brewesters … beþ i-war of þe coking-stole, þe lak is dep and hori.
c. 1325. Poem times Edw. II., 477, in Pol. Songs (Camden), 345. The pilory and the cucking-stol beth i-mad for noht.
1511–2. Act 3 Hen. VIII., c. 6 § 1. To be sett upon the pillorie or the Cukkyngstole Man or Woman as the case shall requyre.
1534. in Boys, Coll. Hist. Sandwich, 684. [Two women] to be placed in the coqueen stool, and dipped to the chin.
1577. Harrison, England, II. xi. (1877), I. 228. Scolds are ducked upon cuckingstooles in the water.
1633. in Rushw., Hist. Coll. (1721), III. II. II. App. 57. She was committed … to be duck’d in a Cucking-Stool at Holborn-Dike.
c. 1680. Butler, Rem. (1759), I. 217.
| When Pudding-Wives were launcht in cockquean Stools; | |
| For falling foul on Oyster-women’s Schools. |
1769. Blackstone, Comm., IV. 169. She … shall … be placed in a certain engine of correction called the trebucket, castigatory, or cucking stool … now it is frequently corrupted into ducking stool.
1825. Scott, Betrothed, ix. Beware the cucking-stool.
