Scold's bridle: Women who told off men in 16th-century Scotland could face a brutal punishment – Susan Morrison

Tempers can flare and things can be said. These days we can call on neighbourhood dispute officers from the councils, or perhaps the police if things are really getting out of hand, but in the 16th century we had the Kirk Sessions. They made sure everyone knew how to behave themselves and to punish those who didn’t.

The wonderful thing about God’s enforcers is that they wrote everything down, like recording angels, and because of this we know a lot about what warring neighbours said to each other in those long-ago, stair-heid square-goes. Presbyterians loved categories, and so they grouped the sins of the speakers under headings.

‘Scolds’ were nearly always vexatious women, although a few men were recorded. They had the cheek to talk back to their betters, and that usually meant a man, and they would do it in public, too. They had to be stopped. A woman giving a man a right ticking off in public was widely considered the end of civilisation.

‘A woman deemed to be annoying’

The worst offenders would find their heads locked into a horrible iron mask, the scold’s bridle or ‘branks’. Some had spikes to go through the tongue to stop the wearer speaking, eating or drinking.

In Edinburgh in 1567, Bessie Tailiefeir said that Baillie Thomas Hunter was using false measures, a slanderous charge. She was locked in the branks and “fixed to the cross for one hour”. Astonishingly, according to the Scottish Legal News, charging a woman as a scold, “a woman deemed to be annoying or vexatious, was not dropped from the statute books in Britain until 1967".

Marion Miller lived in Leith in 1609, and she seems to have been determined to work her way through just about all the categories. She was a scold. She didn’t like the minister, and had the temerity to say so. She said he was “partial”, and worse, a liar. The sessions hauled her in and she said sorry, but it looks like her heart wasn’t really in it.

They recorded that she did ‘‘confest hir offence be siting doun upone hir kneis in presence of ye sessioun, cravit mercie at god and the pastor forgiveness". But when the kirk looked for more penitence, she gave them a right tongue lashing and swore at them. That must have set the men of North Leith Parish Sessions back on their heels a bit. She relented in the end and said she’d not be “fund offensive to nane of ye… under the paine of standing in the jogis or on the kok stulie”.

She’s probably referring to the jougs, an iron collar fastened to a wall or post used as a pillory. Even Marion drew the line at being chained up or sitting on a stool of shame whilst the entire parish lined up to gawk at you, or worse, chuck a handy bit of household refuse in your face.

The Scottish art of ‘flyting’

Marion was more than a scold though. She was a flyter. Flyting is a particularly Scottish art form, where two poets insult each other in verse, the most famous being “The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy”. By this time it had become one of the categories for wrong-speak. Scolds tended to be people down the social scale nipping the ears of their betters.

Flyters were people, usually women, of the same status having a barney with each other. Both sides were willing to give as good as they got, and that’s what sweary Marion found out when she took on Katherine Wood.

There was obviously history between these two, and it looks like there was a man involved. Marion called out Katherine and said she was a "commoun hure and skailer of honest men’s housis”. “Hure” doesn’t need translating. By calling Katherine a “skailer”, a scatterer, she was accusing her of being a home-wrecker.

Once again, North Leith Parish Church stepped in and wagged a finger at Marion and she was forced to apologise to Katherine and ask for her forgiveness. Katherine may have been gracious in her acceptance of the apology, but Mistress Wood was no slouch in the street-stooshie stakes herself, because she had to say sorry for calling Marion a “drunken jad”.

A reputation restored

They might have fought in the street, but they did their penance through the kirk. Historian Elizabeth Ewan, of the University of Guelph, described a uniquely Scottish ritual of reconciliation. Those, like Marion, found guilty of slandering another had to rebuke their tongues in the presence not only of their victim, but usually the entire congregation.

They would kneel and say "tongue, you lied when you said”, then repeat the offending words. In a way, they would be taken back. Sometimes the tongue would actually be held, which must have made speaking difficult. At the end, the offender would say “I know nothing but gud and honeste of them”, thereby restoring the victim’s reputation.

These insults and penitential statements were recorded by clerks of the session, patiently writing down who called who a "jad”, a “hure” and a “skailer”. The fact that Dr Nikki Macdonald, the historian who found these warring women in the kirk records, is herself the minister of the Upper Clyde parish church seems very fitting.

Today’s ministers are very different to the censorious kirk of the 16th century. They probably don’t handle too many gossip girl battles these days. Today's Marion and Katherine are more likely to sue each other for social media posts than hold their tongues in kirk.