RULE OF THUMB
How would you care to be beaten with a stick as thick as a thumb?
No doubt you'd end up black and blue, very sore and numb!
Well, in the fourteen hundreds, a husband had the right
To beat his wife in this very way; the law said that he might.
However, the stick must be 'slender', bigger than a thumb was banned,
Although he could beat her as hard as he liked, just with his open hand!
And the women had nowhere to run to and so they had to stay!
That's how arose 'The Rule of Thumb' we hear about every day!
The Good Old Days? I think not! For us, those days have gone,
But in some parts of this sad old world something similar still goes on!
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Another look back, but not so far, here:
