RIDING THE STANG, subs. phr. (old).—See quots. and SKIMMINGTON. Hence STANGEY = a hen-pecked husband.

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  1674.  RAY, Proverbs, 44. This word is still used in some colleges in the University of Cambridge: TO STANG scholars in Christmas being to cause them to ride on a coltstaff or pole for missing of chappel.

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  1782.  CALLANDER, Two Ancient Scottish Poems, 154. A custom [is] still prevalent among the country people of Scotland: who oblige any man, who is so unmanly as to beat his wife, to ride astride on a long pole, borne by two men, through the village, as a mark of the highest infamy. This they call RIDING THE STANG; and the person who has been thus treated seldom recovers his honour in the opinion of his neighbours. When they cannot lay hold of the culprit himself, they put some young fellow on the STANG or pole, who proclaims that it is not on his own account that he is thus treated, but on that of another person, whom he names.

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  1847.  HALLIWELL, A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, etc., s.v. RIDING THE STANG … [One] cry or proclamation is as follows:

        Ran, Tan, Tan, the sign of the old Tin Can;
Stephen Smith’s been paying his daughter Nan:
He paid her both behind and before,
He paid her ’cause she wouldn’t be his whore.
He lick’d her neither with stake nor stower,
But up wi’ his fist and knock’d her ower.
Now if Steenie Smith don’t mend his manners,
The skin of his prick shall go to the tanner’s;
And if the tanner don’t tan it well;
Skin, tanner, and prick shall go to hell.

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  1892.  W. C. SYDNEY, England and the English in Eighteenth Century, ii. 255. RIDING STANG was another local punishment inflicted occasionally upon the intemperate, particularly in the county of Cheshire.

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