Question for our American members.

Well, I believe that hickory switches were immortalized in the classic American song "School Days," via the line, "Reading and writing and 'rithmatic, taught to the tune of a hickory stick."

However, willow switches were/are pretty much considered to be the most effective--the trees they come from aren't called 'weeping willows' by pure coincidence, I'm figuring...

--C.K.

I suspect the 'switch' was not a common weapon in England largely because the school cane was once readily available and widely used. Therefore cutting a stick from a tree was unnecessary. Also many English homes had veggie gardens and thus bamboo canes were always available in the garden shed.

The nearest of course was the 'birch' which was still used on the Isle of Man by their courts until the 1970s.

I remember reading about a 'switch' when I was little and rushing to Google to find out what it was. I couldn't quite comprehend what it was and how it worked - in my head I was picturing a tiny twig. It does seem to be a much more traditionally American implement than English.

I think I first heard the expression in England on TV back in the 1960s on The Beverly Hillbillies, where the old Grandma would tell Jethro or Elly May to "go cut a hickory switch!" Sadly I don't recall Elly May ever getting her butt Whupped.

Actually it was quite rural and there was a big weeping willow tree in my garden but I think the concept of being whipped with a 'switch' just doesn't really exist in the UK. If asked to describe a tree someone would say it has branches and twigs but wouldn't use the word switch. In my experience, anyone I know who was smacked in childhood was only ever smacked by hand, with a belt, a shoe, a hairbrush, or a wooden spoon.

Something that fascinated me as a kid was the presence of paddling in the book 'Hetty Feather' by Jacqueline Wilson. It's set in Victorian England and written by an English author, but the character's foster mother 'paddles' her and her siblings with a cooking ladel. I didn't understand as a young budding spanko why 'paddling', which seemed like a relatively American thing, was in an English novel set in the Victorian era. Also slightly off topic, but a LOT of Jacqueline Wilson's books have smacking/spanking/caning scenes, discussions or illustrations, my younger spanko self was in seventh heaven when I realised.

transmanspankee
She mentions being smacked a couple of times in her autobiography and I agree there are a lot of references in her books. I suspect she may be a bit of a secret spanko herself. And I noticed the reference to 'paddling' in Hetty Feather and thought it a bit odd and not true to the period. Maybe she thought her modern readers are all so influenced by American culture that they would find the word paddling normal.

Yep, I remember that well.

I know I've mentioned this before on a different thread, but since the subject of 'switches' came up I'll share the story I heard from a friend around Christmastime a few years ago. His daughter was around 8 at the time and was being a total brat. He warned her that he was going to tell Santa to bring her nothing but a stocking full of switches for Christmas and she immediately started bawling. He asked her if she even knew what a switch was.

"Yes, they make lights go on and off!"

Is it in the Netherlands where along with St Nicholas bringing presents for the good children, Black Peter comes with a whip to whip the naughty children?

In looking around, it appears that some variation of Black Peter exists in most of northern Europe (including the Netherlands) and Scandinavia. He's somewhat controversial because in some versions he's a Moorish slave or servant to St. Nicholas and gets depicted in blackface and foppish costumes. But he does carry either a switch or rod to punish naughty children with.

But even that's supposed to be the appropriation of the Old Norse myth of Woden, who accompanies Odin riding through the night air. Two black ravens, Huginn and Miersinn, accompany them and listen through the chimneys and tell Woden who has been good and who has been bad during the year. Good children get bags of sweets, but he is armed with a birch made from willow branches to beat those who have been naughty.