Mystery Spanking Implement?
Hi, I’d like to comb the assembled expertise of my readers to help me identify this unique sort of whip or cane:
I’ve seen it in movies from Lupus Pictures (in stills like this) and a few other places. It looks like a little bit like a cane and a little bit like a whip. The distinguishing feature is that unique twist, but it appears also to be more flexible than a cane, welting along the entire length of its landing zone. Perhaps a twisted piece of leather or rawhide, but dried and varnished? Maybe even that item of exotica, the bull pizzle cane? I just don’t know.
Surely one of my readers has some knowledge to share?
I think it may well be! I did a search, because I thought it might be a Knut (Knout, or any one of a number of spellings) but then I found this.
http://www.ecstagony.com/eng/dict/dicinstr/instr_pi.htm
If you click on the entry for pizzle, you will find an implement that looks very similar.
Possibly a twisted willow crop. If you look at the collection at http://worldwidewhips.com/, you can find small photos of such.
is it not a rope?
Nightfall, I once read a book about Russian peasant revolutions, every chapter of which involved a story ending “and they were beaten to death with knouts and thrown into the Volga”. But I don’t think it’s a knout.
As to the bull pizzle theory, I can’t get your link to work, but there’s a bull pizzle at Gary’s link also, and I have to say it looks very likely. The page is here:
http://worldwidewhips.com/collection.php?item_number=148&command=show_item&lang=en
Gary, the twisted willow is also a possibility, but in the snippet of video I’ve seen, the item looks too flexible for (dry) willow. Thank you for that link, it’s quite awesome and I hadn’t seen it before.
Outside the “erotic” brief of this blog, but I found extensive reference to a bull pizzle in this surprisingly modern-sounding account of domestic violence, 1725-style:
“He came back at Night, and calling to me from the Stairs-foot, Is my Bitch above? Says he. If she is, send her down with a Candle. She beg’d me to go down with her, for fear he should abuse her.
I went; He beat her, damn’d her for a Bitch, and swore he’d murder her. She ran out, and he after her; but she got out of his Sight, and came back again without any further Hurt. Pray, Landlady, says she, if he comes again, tell him that I am not here; for if he finds me, he’ll certainly be way Death. I hid her behind my Bed. He came; I deny’d her; he swore, and went to Bed. When his wife thought he was asleep, she went into his Room to see how much he had spent of the Seven Shillings he took with him in the Morning. She came up, and said, I have found but Three-Halfpence; I am afraid he’ll murder me, for he has found his Knife that I hid in my Box; it lies by his Bed-side with a Bull’s Pizzle.
Next Morning I went into his Room, and took the Bull’s Pizzle out of the Chair. He jump’d out of Bed, snatch’d it from me, and swore that he valu’d his Pizzle as he valu’d his life, and he’d as soon lose an Inch of one as t’other; for he kept it on purpose to pizzle the Bitch his Wife.
I left him; he dress’d himself, came out of the Chamber, lock’d the Door, and went away. His Wife between 6 and 7 in the Evening persuaded me to go with her to see for him at the Alehouse in Py-Corner: We went, found him there, and he was as good as his Word in exercising his Bull’s Pizzle upon her.
I left her, and she follow’d me in a quarter of an Hour. I blamed her, as her Life was in Danger, for not securing him, as he had been secured before in New-prison for abusing her.”
http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/oldbailey/html_sessions/T17250407.html
The film ‘The Master Executioner’ identifies that item as a Stock Whip.
Whatever it is, it ain’t a knout. A knout is just a bull whip - nothing very exotic at all.
I, once, many years ago in Europe, saw and used a pizzle and it was remarkably like that except slightly longer and less regular with knotty bulges down its length. Very effective. Marked like the cane, wrapped like the whip. Definately tears before bedtime :-)
Adele, that was my understanding.
These days bull pizzles mostly seem to get chopped up into 12″ lengths and sold as chew toys for dogs, or so says Google.
Petrus, thanks for the confirmation. I’m getting more convinced that this is indeed a pizzle whip.
I’m sure it’s a pizzle. They are not hard to find in Eastern Europe; a friend of mine in Prague has one just the same.
OK, so it’s a bull pizzle. Next exciting question: Does anybody make these things in commercial quantities these days, and sell ‘em online?
Not only do they look wondrously effective, but Bethie’s utterly horrified at the idea that a dried bull whang might be applied to her bottom. So, of course I want one now.
It is a bulls pizzle whip. They are made by twisting and drying a bull’s penis. Perhaps a by-product of the bull fighting industry. I have several which I purchased during trips to Spain, though I also seen them for sale in street markets in the South of France. They are quite widely available. Some are sold to tourists, but I have seen smaller lighter ones, which are i suspect used for disciplinary purposes in Spanish families.
A ps to my earlier post.
Read Nell in Bridewell for a description of their use on male and female bottoms in a German House of Correction in the 18th century.
But of course it is a bull pizzle! Shouldn’t it be quite known over there in Cowboyland? In last few really rural areas of central Italy it is still the croplike-thing of choice for herders, and in fact it is so culturally important that in our language “nerbata” (hit of “nerbo”, which is the local name for the thing) is actually a more highbrow word for “hit of the whip”.
Having said this, properly made bull pizzles are very difficult to find nowadays, as they require some dedication in the making (i.e. curing, stretching, twisting, drying, shaping, etc.) and, since it’s organic matter after all, not enough care in this phase tends to produce a slowly-decaying thing - not the most pleasant thing to keep in your toybag. The herders, of course, don’t care about this very much: they just make another.
The few commercially made b.p. I’ve seen are varnished to somewhat prevent the problem, but this makes them less flexible and slightly hard-edged in places like the tip, so you don’t really want to use them. The solution: find a serious rancher and ask him to make a couple of particularly cared-for bull pizzles. If you get the right guy, you’ll have a great (and harsh) toy that will last forever.
Ayzad, over here in Cowboyland all the herding traditions are adjusted for wide open spaces — the cowboy sits high on his horse with a lariat and lets his herding dog do the work. (Or, these days, sits not-quite-so-high on his four-wheeler all terrain vehicle.) If he’s down on foot in the muck in the stockyard, he’s carrying an electric cattle prod. I don’t think the bull pizzle ever made it into the rural American iconography. I’ve literally never seen one — until I started this thread, “bull pizzle” was just a phrase I’d read in old kinky literature (like “Nell in Bridewell”) set in foreign countries.
I’m pretty sure the one in the picture at the top of this thread has been varnished. I figured that making a pizzle whip properly was a (now-rare) art, like any other whip-making, so I’m not too confident of ever being able to get my hands on a good one. I may have to hope that some Spanking Blog reader will come along saying “I can get these in my local market!” and then bribe them with free traffic to their website or something in exchange for sending one via International Air Mail.
I’d love to help, but I live in Milano, which is a very un-cattle-like city. I’ll remember your quest next time I visit a farmer friend in Tuscany, however - which might take quite a bit, to be honest.
And yes, the BP in your pic seems to be varnished.
Ayzad, no worries, if you remember me when you go to the country, I’ll be in your debt, but I won’t expect it. Besides, some other source may turn up before then.
I have had quite a few pizzle whips pass through my hands, research indicates that most if not all but one were donkey not bull, which makes sense given the number of bulls versus the number of donkeys in any given mediterranean/african location. The most interesting thing I discovered about them was when a couple were left in storage in a damp location over last winter, the moisture turned them into something rubbery and almost alive in the hand. A completely different sensation for both sides and I suspect more akin to how they would have felt when in daily use.