A scold’s bridle, sometimes called a branks, was a punishment device for women, also used as a mild form of torture up to 19th cent. It was an iron muzzle in an iron framework that enclose the head. The tongue’s curb could be a flat iron plate that prevented the tongue’s movement or a spike-studded iron bit that punished its victim rather more painfully. Wives that were seen as witches, shrews and scolds, were forced to wear a brank's bridle, which had been locked on the head of the woman and sometimes had a ring and chain attached to it so her husband could parade her around town and the town's people could scold her and treat her with contempt; at times smearing excrement on her and beating her, sometimes to death. Other variants are shaped like an animal’s head, such as a cow for a lazy bones, a shrew for a scold, a donkey for a fool, ahare for an eavesdropper or a pig for a glutton.
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A scold’s bridle, sometimes called a branks, was a punishment device for women, also used as a mild form of torture up to 19th cent. It was an iron muzzle in an iron framework that enclose the head. The tongue’s curb could be a flat iron plate that prevented the tongue’s movement or a spike-studded iron bit that punished its victim rather more painfully. Wives that were seen as witches, shrews and scolds, were forced to wear a brank's bridle, which had been locked on the head of the woman and sometimes had a ring and chain attached to it so her husband could parade her around town and the town's people could scold her and treat her with contempt; at times smearing excrement on her and beating her, sometimes to death. Other variants are shaped like an animal’s head, such as a cow for a lazy bones, a shrew for a scold, a donkey for a fool, ahare for an eavesdropper or a pig for a glutton.
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