Gefail Gŵn - Dog Tongs

Again not Romanesque. But considering all the churches we've been in, it amused me to think of the dog tongs being applied. From Old Stone Crosses of the Vale of Clwyd by the Rev. Elias Owen (1886).


A curious instrument, indicative of a practice no longer followed, is still preserved in Llanynys Church, a Dog Tongs.

Formerly, farmers attending church were accompanied by their faithful dogs. Where large numbers of these animals met, although it was in church, their behaviour was not always strictly decorous, and often their snarling and growling culminated in an open fight. Such conduct in such a place was not to be tolerated, and so man's ingenuity invented an instrument for ejecting noisy, or quarrelsome and pugnacious dogs. 

[...] The parish clerk, or other official, was able to use the tongs without risk to his own person, and the dog, when firmly grasped around the neck, or leg, could not wriggle out of the embraces of the wooden arms that clasped him, and therefore, out of the church he was obliged to go.[...] Stretched out at their greatest length the tongs measure 52in.

[...] It can easily be imagined that the expulsion of a dog was neither noiselessly nor easily executed, and the numerous teeth-marks in this instrument bear witness to many a struggle that took place when an offending dog was being ignominiously dragged out of church. Dog tongs were formerly a necessary appendage in every church. Several of these have reached our days, and others have been lately lost, or carelessly destroyed.