Birching used to be a very traditional judicial punishment in the UK, and across Europe. It was primarily used on young male offenders and involved the police or prison services. The last bastion of the birch, after everywhere else had banned it, was the Isle of Man (Island in the Irish Sea).
I remember as a child the news reports as the camps for and against the use of the birch battled back and forth with their arguments. Rather surprisingly it wasn’t until 1993 that birching was taken off the Manx statute books even though it hadn’t been used in 17 years.
It still evokes a bygone era and makes for good scene when discipline has to be improvised, and outside.
Here is an excerpt from Taught to Serve. Casey having taken Rob to visit her parents has behaved badly and in Rob’s eyes disrespectfully. Driving home, he takes Casey to an isolated copse and she knows she is in trouble when he points out he is disappointed with her.
*****
“Me…” said Casey fingering the steering wheel. Shutting her eyes, she replayed the day and each minute she saw played before her eyes, made her cringe. “Shit.”
“Yes, quite,” said Rob in agreement. “Get out of the car.”
Casey wanted what was coming and now she understood the remote location. Rob stretched his legs and headed into the wooded area, while Casey remained behind pensive. Being made to wait for the inevitable conclusion to his little lecture served only to make her more disheartened by her attitude. She tracked about the rough grass in a circle, head low and eyes on the tiny ants making a route through the giant wilderness of their natural terrain. She noted how hard they worked amongst the tall blades and the focus such small creatures had to finish their chosen path without deviation. Her own route through life had been disorganised and she imagined if she had been an ant, every blade of grass would have thwarted her journey to the point of giving up. In that moment, she cherished, like never before, Rob’s efforts to tame her lack of direction.
Rob returned, some considerable time later, with the dreaded object in his hands and he tapped the still warm bonnet of the car with it. “A dozen of this. Over.”
Rob in a traditional fashion had decided to use birch to birch her. She reckoned twenty or so silvery thin branches, which were about two foot in length, had been gathered together to form the rod. The sight of the sticks nearly undid Casey. He had not chosen dry twigs, which would snap easily and risk cutting her, but the kind of slender young branches found on a sapling tree. Somehow, he had removed the leaves and sharper edges, to create something that resembled the end of a witch’s broomstick. Clasped together at one end in his hand, the sticks were not straight enough to gather into a neat bundle nor were they of an even length. Casey wanted to baulk at him, plead for mercy, but she did not and was quite resolved to go through with his chosen act of discipline. She had to trust him.
Blurb: A romantic story of spankings and erotic sex – set in the English countryside – and a young woman in need of a little discipline…..
Though she is both beautiful and intelligent, Casey has bounced from one job to another as a result of her failure to truly apply herself. As she sits on a park bench crying after yet another dismissal, things show no sign of changing anytime soon… until a passing stranger sees the tears in her eyes and comes to her rescue. The handsome, smartly dressed man by the name of Robert informs her that he is in need of a personal assistant and she might be a good fit.
Casey soon learns that her new boss will be a demanding one, and insufficient attention to detail will earn her a trip over his knee for a bare bottom spanking. To her surprise, Rob’s firm discipline only increases her attraction to him, and their relationship quickly grows into a passionate romance. She finds that Rob can be just as firm a boyfriend as he is a boss, but even as he teaches her to submit to him completely he also shows her pleasure—and love—beyond anything she has known before.