Bringing Back Sligo

“Termagant” is one of my new favorite words.  From the Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary “termagant” is a noun and defined as “an overbearing or nagging woman.”  If you follow the Facebook page then you’ll know my children, if they knew of the word, would define me as a “termagant.”  But let’s be honest, just about every woman could be defined as such at some point in their lives, such is our burden.

If you were accused of being a termagant up through the 19th century you faced the risk of being sentenced to the ducking stool, a very primitive way of dealing with us hysterical women.  In the picture below you can see what a sentence by ducking meant and to be perfectly honest if I wasn’t a little crazy before I would certainly be after.  The Historic Fredericksburg Foundation, Inc. (HFFI) wrote a recent blog post about ducking stools and their history in Fredericksburg which is what led to our discovery that there is a loose connection between John Ferneyhough Jr. and termagants.

I don’t know about you but I think if strapped to this thing I would become more of a shrew…

As we know, John Ferneyhough Jr. was a prominent carriage maker in the city of Fredericksburg.  It turns out he was a handy guy because he was also very likely the last person commissioned by the city to construct a ducking stool.  It’s very worth clicking on the HFFI blog post above because I am not one to plagiarize and they did a very nice job pulling up old articles relating to one termagant in particular, why it was deemed that women should not be nags (hint: it hurts the men’s feefees) and the method of using a ducking stool, plus evidence of John Ferneyhough Jr. making one.