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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 June 2012
Every thing involved in mystery carries with it a certain degree of interest, especially when connected with the history of the past; and there are few things more deeply so involved, and more calculated to show the worthlessness of criminal tribunals under irresponsible authority, than the singular judicial enormity commemorated in the following pages.
page 232 note a It is currently believed, by the mass of the French people, that the guillotine is a child of their Revolution; but it existed in Germany, Bohemia, Scotland, and Italy long before it was known in France as a means of public execution. In Germany it was called der Planke (i. e. the plank of wood), der Deile, das Falbeil. In Bohemia it was called Hagec, which must mean also something akin to plank, as the term is explained by the Latin wordsylvula in Thomsa's Bohemian dictionary. In Italy it was known by the appellation Maunagia. This may possibly be the old way of spelling Maunacia, which means a large ugly hand, and may refer to the blade of the instrument being made somewhat in the form of a hand; or it may more probably be some old word coming from the Italian verb Mangiare, to eat, and signifying a machine that eat or bit off the heads of its victims.
In Scotland, however, it was called by a name much more germain to the matter before us, namely, “the Maiden.”
As in all these nations there was no essential difference in the form of this instrument, and as the reader may be curious to know how it was anciently constructed, we may take the description of a most respectable eyewitness, who states the practice of guillotining criminals to have been more ancient than that of beheading them with a sword. “In former times,” says Crusius (Annales Sueviæ a. 1556-96), “decapitation was performed, not with a sword, but with a piece of oak or plank furnished with a sharp cutting iron edge. I myself (continues the author) have seen such an instrument in the old Hospital at Halle. When any one was to be beheaded, this machine was brought out. It looked like a Zwagstuhl (i. e. a washing seat); on each side were props, on the top of which was set up the plank, and at the end of this was a cutting-iron; as soon as the culprit was bound to the seat, just as if he was going to be washed, the executioner let fall the plank, which hung by a rope, and the iron beneath it struck off the poor sinner's head.” The reason which caused decapitation with the sword to be preferred to the more sure operation of the plank does not appear; but probably it arose from ideas of economy, for we find in the “Lubeckische Verord,” p. 431, that the executioner was paid one Rhenish florin for beheading with the sword, and two if he did his office with the plank. Having premised thus much, let me again call the reader's attention to the fact of the guillotine having been called in Scotland “the Maiden.” (Vide Pennant's Tour, p. 363.) There, as well as in England, a man was said to “kiss the block” when he was beheaded; and although I have no authority for saying that a man was said to “kiss the Maiden” when he was guillotined, there can be no doubt that such a phrase would have been perfectly well understood to signify it, at least in Scotland, where the following popular saying is well known, “he that invented the Maiden first hanselled it,” i. e. caressed it.
I am not aware that the machine in question was ever employed in England; but the rack there was called “the Duke of Exeter's daughter,” and about the same time there was in the Tower of London an instrument of torture called “the Scavenger's daughter.” (Vide Milner's Letters to a Prebendary, p. 157, and the authority there cited.) I think also that I have somewhere read of Guy Fawkes having been threatened with being made to kiss the Duke of Exeter's daughter. At any rate the phrase was very commonly used, and even at the present day would require no explanation amongst people of education.
Having shown that the kiss of the Maiden may be referable to the guillotine, let us see how the matter stood in Germany. There, Hals ringen (to embrace by putting the arms round any one's neck) and kussen (to kiss with the lips) are used convertibly, one for the other, in common conversation; and, according to old representations of the German plank, the culprit's neck was put into a wooden collar, which kept it steady, and enabled the blade of the machine to do its office unfailingly. A sort of collar also called the Virgin appears to have been formerly placed as a punishment about the necks of prisoners. Dr. Lommel of Nuremberg told me in 1832, that this was the case at Wurtzberg, and that he remembered, when he was a boy, to have seen there part of a wooden image which was formerly hung round the necks of culprits as an instrument of torture. This was probably the Virgin, or Jungfer, which Adelung in his dictionary (voce Jungfer, 6, 7) defines to be a block, to which prisoners were fastened with smith's work, and which they were obliged to bear about with them in their arms wherever they went. Here, then, we have virgins embracing the necks of prisoners; but I have never been able to ascertain whether the wooden collar which formed part of the old plank was called virgin. If so, we should have a virgin forming part of that machine embracing her victim; and death by the plank might, by an extremely popular figure of speech, have been often called in Germany “the kiss of the Virgin.” I cannot venture to assert positively that such was the case, but I have more than one reason for believing it to be highly probable. Dendermond in Flanders once belonged to Germany, and we find the following law was enforced there A.D. 1233, “quicunque per vim fæminam violaverit, ei collum cum assere (vulgo planke) debet abscidi;” vide David Lindanus tr. de Tentermonda (art. 20). We find also a similar law adverted to in the Saaelfelder statutes of the 13th century (art. 2), which is thus expressed: “Wirt ein man begriffen ander waren tad daer eine Fraven oder eine lr.aget notzoget, man sal yme den stalz abestoze mit ein Winbrechen Deile.” From these passages it is clear that decapitation by the plank or deal was the punishment inflicted on those who offered violence to women! Now this is a species of the lex talionis which is better relished and more readily understood by barbarous people, and even by the common people of the present day, than any other code. Even the threats of the latter bear frequently an indirect allusion to it: “He laughs at me, does he? I'll make him laugh the other side of his mouth!” “He has stolen my horse-collar, has he? I'll give him a hempen collar to boot!” These, and such like, are expressions often heard amongst the common people of England; and I believe, amongst those of every other nation, we shall find similar expressions. May not then the common people of the middle ages have been accustomed to say something of this kind, “So, he has kissed a virgin? We shall see how he will like to be kissed by the virgin into whose hands he is about to be delivered.”
page 238 note b I have used the word gentry here, rather than nobility, because our word nobility, in its ordinary acceptation, refers to the Peerage, and it is only the high nobility of Germany, that is to say those who had anciently the hereditary right of seat and vote in the Diet or Parliament of the Empire, who can be classed with our Peers. The rest, titular Counts, Barons and others, were called nieder Adel, and must be classed with our nobiles minores or gentry.
page 247 note c The following extract from Hampton's Polybius seems to attribute the invention of the Virgin to Nabis tyrant of Sparta, who died B. C. 192: “He (Nabis) contrived also a machine, if it may be called by such a name, an image of a woman, magnificently dressed, and formed in a most exact resemblance of his wife. And when his intention was to draw money from any of the citizens, he invited them to his house, and represented to them the great cost of maintaining the worship of the Gods, &c. If these arguments prevailed, it was sufficient for his purpose. But if all his solicitations were without effect, then he used to say: ‘I want, it seems, the power of persuasion; but Apega, I believe, will persuade you.’ Apega was the name of his wife. Upon these words an image of the woman that has been mentioned immediately appeared. Nabis then taking her by the hand raised her from her seat, and folding afterwards his arms round the person whom he had been soliciting, brought him near by degrees to the body of the image, whose breast, arms, and hands were stuck full of points of iron, concealed under the clothes; and then pressing the back of the pretended woman with his hands, by means of some secret spring, he fixed the man close to her breast, and soon forced him to promise all he desired. But there were some also who perished in this torture, when they refused to comply with his demands.” Vide vol. ii. ed. Lond. 1772, p. 291.