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 �>�Jus Primae Noctis by Big Billie

   Note from Dr.  Hamish Kemp, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, Peebles
University.  The recent emergence of important new documentary evidence has
revolutionised our knowledge of the early history of feudalism in southern
central Scotland.  By the ninth century a fortified settlement had been
established to the north west of Selkirk, in the area that to this day is
still known as Traquair.  From 809 to 854 AD Robert, known as  -�the Just,
-� was the Thane of Traquair, and he ruled his domain with a wisdom and
foresight that, in a period which until recently was misguidedly referred
to as the  -�Dark Ages, -� was remarkable.  For some twenty years now I
have led the archaeological team that is excavating the remains of the old
Traquair settlement.  Some fifteen years ago two of my colleagues
discovered, deep underground, in the cellar of the ancient castle, a large
metal trunk, battered, and with its iron hinges rusted away.  Inside were a
number of artefacts and several manuscript scrolls.  The MSS were brittle,
on the point of decomposition, and quite impossible to unravel. 
Fortunately, however, digital technologies recently developed at Cambridge
University and elsewhere have begun to open up the MSS -(TM)s secrets. 
Some MSS are in early Church Latin.  Others, more difficult to decipher,
are in primitive Lowland Scots.  An academic edition, complete with
facsimile images and translations into modern English, will be published in
due course.  A major finding is that Robert the Just strictly and rigidly
enforced his droit de seigneur, and the jus primae noctis, within his
lands. Exactly what that meant is explained and illustrated in the
following narrative.  The story is fictitious, and Robert speaks to us, not
as a ninth century Scottish thane, but in the voice of the twenty-first
century.  But his account is based upon the currently available MSS
evidence.  ******************************** In the year of our Lord 809 my
father died and, at the age of 17, I succeeded to his estate.  When I was 8
I had been sent away, for 9 months of every year, to serve, and to be
educated by, fugitive monks who, to avoid the Danes, had recently moved
from Lindisfarne to Chester-le-Street in County Durham.  The monks looked
after me, and educated me well.  Then, during the other three months of the
year, my father saw to it that I was taught the arts of war, and how to
fight on horseback as an armed knight.  I realised, however, that I could
not order and rule my lands unaided.  I needed ministers, and I needed to
develop financial and administrative institutions and practices.  My
Chaplain and my Steward came to me from Durham.  My Treasurer and my
Marshal I inherited from my father.  For between 3 and 5 years I worked
with these and other servants to strengthen and secure my thanedom during
dangerous and tempestuous times.  For my wife I took Margaret of Lauder. 
The damsel was 4 years younger than me, beauteous and fair.  Our marriage
strengthened my friendship and alliance with Kenneth, her father, the Thane
of Lauder and my near neighbour.  As the new thane of Traquair I inherited
my father -(TM)s numerous bondswomen.  Many were nubile, tempting and
desirable.  All young bonded damsels belonged to me.  They were my
property, and I could do whatever I wished with them.  I seduced and bedded
girls and young women at will, and got many a lass big bellied with child.
Soon I regularised my depredations.  I learnt of the  -�droit de seigneur
-� ( -�lord -(TM)s right -�) and the  -�jus primae noctis -� ( -�law of the
first night -�) from my Latin studies, and I decided to implement both
practices in the lands under my control.  This is what happened if all went
well.  A wedding was celebrated on the Sabbath.  When the service was over
the bride was taken from her husband at the altar and escorted to my
private chambers in the castle.  My wife -(TM)s handmaidens received her.
They plied her with dainty foods and drinks.  They bathed her.  They combed
and coiffured her hair.  They anointed her naked body with sweet smelling
oils, unguents and perfumes.  They adorned her with jewellery: gold,
silver, and precious gems.  They dressed her in costly diaphanous silks. 
They put her into a large, ornately carved four-poster bed, and pulled the
curtains around her.  Later my wife and I entered the bedchamber.  Margaret
removed the bedclothes from the bride.  She raised her night attire.  Her
fingers probed, and her eyes scrutinised, the bride -(TM)s pudenda.  My
wife then declared the bride -(TM)s maidenhead (her hymen) to be intact,
and retired to a large sofa.  I took the bride to my bed.  When the first
coupling was completed I summoned Margaret.  With a white linen cloth she
mopped up the hymeneal blood and handed me the cloth as proof of the bride
-(TM)s deflowered virginity.  Next my wife sponged me and the bride clean,
dried us, and left.  The bride and I then returned to bed and resumed our
couplings.  On the Monday morning my wife -(TM)s handmaids collected the
bride, took from her the jewellery and silken finery, bathed her, dressed
her in her peasant -(TM)s raiment, and moved her to chambers in the palace
where her husband awaited her.  For 3 days husband and wife were invited to
stay at the castle and consummate their union.  During this time they were
exempt from bondage labour, and were fed and housed free of charge.  So
that was what happened if the bride was a virtuous maiden, a virgo intacta.
But, of course, this was not always so, as the case of my young serving
wench Elizabeth ( -�Lizzie -�) demonstrates.  Lizzie was a victim of the
Viking raids in northern England.  Her mother was widowed, and she was
orphaned, when the raiders killed her father in a military skirmish.  She
arrived at Traquair castle with her mother when she was 9 years old.  My
father granted food and shelter out of Christian charity, and set the
refugees to work.  Lizzie -(TM)s mother was engaged as a cook and Lizzie,
as she grew older, was trained up to serve at our family table.  After I
inherited my father -(TM)s domain and title I established a schoolroom. 
Most of the pupils were freeborn boys, and there were also a few freeborn
girls.  Bonded children were barred.  But Lizzie had been schooled by nuns
in her early years.  Her mother pleaded that her education be continued;
and my father granted her plea.  Now, however, all of that was behind her
and Lizzie was betrothed to marry Davie, one of the stable boys.  The
wedding was held on Whit Sunday.  Then Lizzie was taken from the altar to
my chambers and prepared for bed.  Upon inspection, however, my wife
Margaret could find no sign of a hymen and she declared that my bondswoman
was not virgo intacta (an intact virgin).  Nevertheless, beguiled by the
girl -(TM)s beauty, and by her winsome ways, I took her to my bed and
coupled with her.  After our first coupling I summoned Margaret who mopped
at Lizzie -(TM)s sex with a linen cloth.  There was no sign of blood but,
inflamed by the girl, I again took her to my bed and coupled with her until
dawn.  I had already established the procedures to be followed, and the
penalties to be paid, in cases such as this.  The next morning Davie and
Lizzie were taken to the Family Courtroom.  The session was held in
private. The Chaplain presided and Margaret and I attended and bore
witness. The Chaplain asked me to state the charge against Lizzie and Davie
and, if the charge was proved, how I intended to punish the malefactors. 
The charge was sponsa iam rupta: literally,  -�the bride already broken. -�
Under interrogation the accused couple confessed that they had consummated
their union before their wedding.  They were therefore pronounced guilty as
charged of sponsa iam rupta.  Their liege lord had been robbed of his
privilege under the jus primae noctis.  He had the right to couple with the
bride on her wedding night from sunset to sunrise; and during that coupling
he had the right to take her maidenhead.  In turn the bride had the duty to
preserve her virginity until her wedding night, and then to surrender it to
her liege lord.  This she had failed to do because she and her husband had
committed illicit fornication, and the penalties were as follows.  The
groom was sentenced to 4 extra days of bonded labour.  The bride was
sentenced to 3 extra nights of subjection to her liege lord under the jus
primae noctis, and, after that, to 39 cuts across her naked rump with a rod
of birch twigs.  The legal basis of these punishments was explained to the
newly-weds.  The Jewish Torah and Roman law both endorsed a fourfold
repayment to atone for theft.  A bondswoman -(TM)s virginity was the
property of her liege lord and to take it from him was theft.  Thus a total
of 4 night -(TM)s subjection to the jus primae noctis for the bride, and of
4 days of bonded labour for the groom, were appropriate penalties.  As to
the cuts from the birch rod, these were retributive and reformative rather
than restitutional.  They were to punish the bride for her illicit
pre-nuptial fornication, and to reform her so that she mended her ways. 
The number of cuts, 40 minus 1, like the restitution to be made for theft,
was stipulated both in the Torah and in Roman law.  The Chaplain then
adjourned the court.  Davie was told to report to the Marshal to begin his
bonded labour.  For the next 4 days he would toil from dawn until dusk in
the gang that was strengthening the castle earthworks against future
attacks.  Lizzie was instructed to resume her duties until dusk.  She was
then to return to my bedchamber where maid servants would again prepare her
for my bed.  When I studied with the monks at Chester-le-Street I came
across a Latin text in their library.  It was entitled De Periculis
Mulierum or  -~On the Dangers of Women. -(TM) It was addressed to young
monks and celibates and it urged them not to succumb to the temptations of
female flesh.  It described a typical she-devil, a woman to drag you down
to hell.  She was dark, fiery, hot, intense and passionate; and she might
have been Lizzie.  Lizzie was of below average height, and of a slim build.
She was slight of body, but she crackled and sizzled with a fierce, raw
sexuality.  This was the bondswoman with whom I spent the next 3 nights in
violent, tempestuous coitus.  The prospect of her forthcoming birching
enraged her, and it inflamed her to the most egregious excesses.  I was her
liege lord, but she cared not a fig for that.  She was furious and, in her
anger, she screamed foul-mouthed curses against the birchen discipline and
against me, her liege lord, for putting her to it.  She rained down blows.
She kicked.  She fought.  She wrestled.  She spat.  But then, when once I
was inside her, she exploded into the most violent orgasms, one after
another in a long, passionate sequence until finally, gasping and sweating
profusely, her stiff, enraged body collapsed and melted into softness and
compliance, and she wept bitterly into her pillow.  For all or any of this
I could have had the girl flogged, mutilated, branded, imprisoned or
killed. But I liked her.  So instead I took her in my arms and comforted
her until she was hit by another wave of anger and our love games started
all over again.  In the afternoon before our final night of passion Lizzie
was ordered to report to Adam, the castle gardener.  The old man told her
that, under his direction, she must make a rod of birch twigs, and that the
rod must meet the specifications stipulated by her liege lord.  He gave
Lizzie a staff that was as long as a man -(TM)s arm and said that all of
the twigs must be the same length as the staff.  He then showed her a pair
of scales and two weights.  The finished rod, he explained, must be no
lighter that the smaller weight and no heavier than the larger weight.  It
must also consist of at least 24 twigs.  Adam is a kindly man.  He liked
Lizzie.  She reminded him of his own daughters, and he tried to help her.
He told her to cut 30 of the straightest, thinnest and supplest twigs that
she could find.  She should strip them of their leaves with her fingers and
of their side shoots with his shears.  She should take care, he added, to
cut off the side shoots flush and smooth with the main branch so that there
were no protrusions to cut into her flesh.  It took more than two hours for
Lizzie to complete this task but eventually she presented Adam with 30
straight, thin, supple birch twigs.  Adam weighed the twigs and pronounced
them satisfactory.  He bound them up with twine, tightly, beginning at
their thick ends and extending up their length for one and a half hand
breadths.  He then gave the completed rod to Lizzie and ordered her to
present it to me.  That evening I used the birch rod as a prelude to our
coitus.  I bent Lizzie across the bed and administered 6 sharp cuts across
her naked rump.  This took the best part of a minute since I left several
seconds between each cut to give it time to sting, tingle and smart.  I did
not strike all that hard.  I intended the cuts to be playful rather than
disciplinary.  I was having a bit of fun.  Lizzie, however, did not see the
joke.  By cut number 6 she was incandescent with rage.  She rose to her
feet and launched herself at me, pummelling, kicking, spitting, fighting
and screaming defiance.  This was what I had hoped for.  Soon we were
locked into a wrestling match that escalated into passionate embraces,
enforced kisses, and violent, contested coitus.  Lizzie climaxed once,
twice, three times; and then I came inside her.  Lizzie took more  -�love
cuts -� from the birch during the first part of the night, and every time
it infuriated her, and excited her to violent sexual frenzy.  By the early
hours of the morning we were both exhausted.  I told Lizzie to get some
sleep.  She needed, I added archly, to be fresh and alert for her 
-�Biblical -� the following morning.  At this Lizzie -(TM)s anger seethed
and boiled over yet again.  She cursed me violently and beat her fists
against my breast.  But she was by then very sleepy and she soon dozed off
in my arms.  Early next morning the chamber maids came for Lizzie.  They
gave her food and drink, bathed her, and dressed her in a short white linen
shift.  They took her to the Court Room and sat her in the dock, where she
was joined by her husband, Davie.  Then the Chaplain arrived to preside
over the proceedings.  Finally I entered, accompanied by Margaret bearing
the birch rod.  The Chaplain announced that Lizzie had now completed her 3
extra nights of subjection to her liege lord under the jus primae noctis.
Margaret, daughter of Kenneth, Thane of Lauder, and wife of Robert, Thane
of Traquair, acting for and on behalf of the Domestic Court as the
Designated Matron of Discipline for Women and Girls, would now inflict 39
cuts across her naked rump with a rod of birch twigs.  My intention was
that Lizzie -(TM)s birching should be firm but not cruel.  I wanted her to
take the full 39 cuts as an example and an incentive to other young virgins
to retain their maidenheads.  I felt aggrieved that this succulent and
desirable young maiden had given her virginity to another when I wished to
take it for myself, and I wanted to discourage others from doing the same
thing.  I also wanted to slap the sauciness, the tempestuous ill temper,
and the uncontrolled rage out of Lizzie.  I wanted to make her a virtuous
and well governed young lady, an obedient and submissive wife, and a good
example to other young females.  But I liked Lizzie, and I told Margaret
not be too hard on the girl.  Margaret, however, pursued her own course. 
She herself had preserved her pre-nuptial chastity for her husband and she
saw no reason why Lizzie should not have done the same.  She also resented
the 4 nights that Lizzie had spent in my bed while she, Margaret, had been
forced to sleep elsewhere.  She viewed my couplings with other women as
illicit.  She considered me an adulterer.  Worst of all, Margaret resented
that I liked Lizzie, and that I had enjoyed my couplings with her.  Hera,
the wife of Zeus, was angry at his seductions and his infidelities.  She
could not control her husband so she took out her anger on his lovers:
Danae, Leda, Europa and the rest.  Thus, too, does Margaret take out her
anger on my lovers, and on the brides to whom I apply the ius primae
noctis. She is particularly vindictive towards naughty brides from whom I
exact 4 nights of coupling under the jus primae noctis.  So Margaret was
angry at Lizzie and she birched her hard.  Two of my wife -(TM)s handmaids
removed Lizzie -(TM)s short white shift.  This presented an excellent
frontal view of her, totally naked.  She was of less than average height
and slight and slim of frame.  Her waist was thin.  Her belly was trim and
neat.  Her breasts were small, firm and high.  Her complexion was dark and
the hair on her underarms and crotch was jet black.  The handmaids turned
Lizzie to display a rear view.  They stretched and bent her over a padded
bench.  They tied her wrists and ankles to iron rings fixed into the stone
floor.  The damsel -(TM)s rump was small but plump and meaty.  It presented
to Margaret a succulent and inviting target for the stinging, tinging,
smarting cuts of the birch rod.  Margaret drew back her right arm and the
birchen discipline began.  The rod scythed through the air with an audible
swish and landed with a sharp crack across the undercarriage of Lizzie
-(TM)s naked rump, just above her thighs.  Then, after about 10 seconds,
Margaret inflicted the second cut just above the first, then the third just
above that.  Thus the birching continued with cut after cut across the
entire area of Lizzie -(TM)s shapely rump.  After 20 cuts the girl -(TM)s
buttocks were red raw and she was howling.  Adam the gardener, however, had
advised her well.  She had chosen green tipped, supple birch twigs and had
cut them neat and smooth.  Thus, except for a few glistening drops of gore,
her skin was thus far unbloodied.  This could not last, however.  For the
second half of the discipline Margaret moved to Lizzie -(TM)s right hand
side and inflicted the cuts with the rod grasped into her left hand.  By
now Lizzie was screaming at every stroke, and after stroke 25 she began to
sob uncontrollably.  By the end of her ordeal Lizzie -(TM)s rump was
indented all over with deep livid cuts that were oozing blood and already
beginning to turn blue.  The sting, the tingle, and the smart must have
been almost unbearable.  Lizzie had received condign punishment for her
unchaste and reckless pre-marital fornication, and she had had all of the
sauciness, all of the insubordination, and all of the violent rage slapped
out of her.  After her ordeal Lizzie, as instructed, kissed the birch rod
and thanked Margaret for birching her.  She was then ordered to report to
the kitchens and resume her duties.  As for the birch rod, that was
presented to Davie, with the instruction that he was to discipline his wife
with it if she ever gave him reason to do so.  That night I coupled in bed
with my beautiful wife and afterwards, as we lay entwined, my thoughts
turned to Davie and Lizzie.  That evening Davie had completed his fourth
and final day of extra bond labour.  He would have returned home physically
exhausted but able, at last, to enjoy his first couplings with his wife as
a married man.  Lizzie is a beauteous daughter of Eve and he must have been
eager for the fray.  But Lizzie -(TM)s delectable rump was in no condition
to enjoy the sport.  For several days at least every thrust, every little
intimacy, would be agony for her.  There would be no unbridled passion for
him for some time.  He would either make love very carefully, or not at
all. That would teach him, I mused, not to take what was mine and not his,
namely the maidenhead of his betrothed.  Then, inflamed by my lascivious
thoughts, I coupled with Margaret again; and that night, I firmly believe,
she conceived our first child, our daughter Agnes.  My wife -(TM)s
handmaids, who had witnessed Lizzie -(TM)s birching, spread the news and
soon it was widely known.  A sexual frisson ran through the land and the
topic was hotly debated.  Lizzie was the first, but by no means the last,
bondswoman that I have had birched for illicit pre-marital coupling. 
Within my thanedom I have now, for this several years, strictly enforced
the droit de seigneur and the jus primae noctis.  Young blood runs hot, the
deflowered damsels are many, and all of them, between their wedding
ceremony and their first coupling with their husbands, receive from
Margaret  -�the Biblical, -� 39 cuts from a birch rod across their naked
rumps.  A bare-bottomed birching is not a permanent mutilation such as the
cutting off of ears.  The victim usually recovers from it, with little or
no lasting damage, after a week or two.  The injuries are almost always
merely temporary.  Many folk thus make light of it.  It is saucy and
amusing, especially when the victim is a nubile young girl, as most brides
are.  I have indeed received reports of young men who deliberately seduce
young girls to ensure that they receive  -�the Biblical -� as an unwanted
wedding present.  These same young men then openly boast of their conquests
thus exposing the girls to shame and mockery.  A birching, however, is not
funny at all if it is you that gets birched.  Young girls who are known to
have lost their maidenheads get teased mercilessly about what is about to
hit them.  Then if maidens thought to be chaste fail the virginity test it
generates a delicious schadenfreude.  Little Miss Virginity has been
naughty and must get her naked rump birched.  Her mother, perhaps, is an
old prude, quick to condemn immorality in others when she should have
addressed her strictures closer to home.  Wow!  How embarrassing! 
Physician, heal thyself!  To their tormentors the sharp comeuppance of
these non-virgins is one big joke.  But to the fallen maidens it is no joke
at all.  They are in a serious quandary, a disturbing predicament, a
worrying dilemma.  They live in a constant state of embarrassment,
apprehension, resentment, outrage and horror.  Their buttocks shudder in
fearful anticipation, sometimes for years on end.  They want to get
married. They must get married.  They long to enjoy the delights of the
marriage bed, to be a wife, to be a mother.  But before that can happen
they must take the birch.  They protest that it is wrong to birch them! 
They hotly declare that, even if they do deserve it, 1, or perhaps 2 or 3
cuts, would be more than adequate, and 4 cuts would be excessive.  But 39
cuts?  Outrageous, they cry!  Blatantly unfair!  Before their deflowering
these damsels were naïve, innocent, as pure as the driven snow.  But then,
perhaps at the age of 12 or 13, they experimented in casual sex; perhaps
the antics of that older, more experienced boy went a bit too far.  At the
time they had wondered what the blood was all about.  Yes.  He had taken
advantage of them.  But surely, they protest, it was no big deal?  No, my
gullible damsels, you are wrong.  For you it is a big deal, a very big
deal. You are safe for the time being but this one is a slow burner.  Years
from now, when you are no longer little girls but adult, mature, grown up,
fully developed women there will be a price to pay, and a punishment to
take.  You will be hauled up before the Family Court.  Sentence will be
passed.  You will be stripped naked and secured across a bench.  And your
naked rumps will take 39 tingling, stinging, smarting cuts from a birch
rod, briskly and vigorously delivered by your Thane -(TM)s wife, the Matron
of Discipline for Women and Girls, the lady you hold in dread and awe, the
famed, the notorious Margaret, known as  -�The Bum Brusher. -� Afterwards,
for a week or more, your rump will be too sore for sex, and too sore to sit
on.  People will be amused.  They will think your birching is saucy and
funny.  They will laugh and smile at you behind your back, and they will
tease and torment you to your face.  You will never live it down.