The Ducking Stool

Publication Instance Details #1710

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	Yes	No	No	No

Details

Human Rights Issues	Gender-based violence
Irish Context	Other
Genre	Short Lyric
Medium	Print Collection
Notes	This hermetic poem, first published in Mules (1977), focusses on gender-based violence and may reference an instance of child abuse. The poem uses the image of the 'ducking' or 'cucking stool', a medieval and early modern punishment device used to publicly humiliate--or, in the worst case, drown--mostly women accused of disorderly or immoral conduct (or witchcraft), but also children. The poem appears to remember and name those 'drowned on that long arm of the law', although it is unclear whether 'Maeve and Bronagh, Rowena and Morag' were historical persons or imagined personas. The poem ends in a sinister game of hide-and-seek between a grandfather and a child. After a further unspecified 'mild' offence, the child, a she, is hiding in a wardrobe among 'mildewed foxes'. This may be a reference to C. S. Lewis's character Lucy Pevensie, who finds the kingdom of Narnia in an old wardrobe among furs. Narnia, however, is famously closed to girls who, like Lucy's older sister Susan, are on the brink of discovering sexuality. For this child, there is no escape.