Ceffyl Pren

The Ceffyl Pren ("wooden horse") was a traditional Welsh form of mob justice. It was a form of ritual humiliation in which offenders would be paraded around the village tied to a wooden frame. The custom was similar to practices known in England as "rough music" or in Scotland as "riding the stang". It seems to have persisted until the mid 19th century. In later times, an effigy was sometimes burned instead.

Adulterers, harsh landlords, the fathers of bastard children who hid behind the hated provisions of the 19th century Poor Law making the mother entirely responsible for her own predicament, all faced the frightening, embarrassing (and not infrequently painful) effects of these riotous affairs .