pandy bat

English

Alternative forms

• pandy-bat, pandybat

Etymology

pandy + bat

Perhaps also a pun on the Latin pendebat "you paid".

Noun

pandy bat (plural pandy bats)

1. (chiefly Ireland, historical) (originally) a stout leather strap reinforced internally with whalebone or even lead, and used at Jesuit schools to inflict corporal punishment on pupils by striking the palm; (latterly, sometimes) more loosely applied to any punishment bat
   • 1916 December 29, James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC:

     The soutane sleeve swished again as the pandybat was lifted and a loud crashing sound and a fierce maddening tingling burning pain made his hand shrink together […]

   • 1930 Irish Province News, 5th Year No 3 (Irish Province of the Society of Jesus) "Obituary: Fr James Daly"

     All this punctuated, driven home, by loud-resounding strokes of the pandy-bat, not administered one after another quickly, but at regular intervals.

   • 1957 Irish Province News, 32nd Year No 3 (Irish Province of the Society of Jesus) "Obituary: Fr Esmonde White (1875-1957)"

     While Prefect of Studies in Belvedere Junior House, he combined gentleness with severity in such perfect measure that a past pupil recalls: “He hit very hard with the pandy bat but obviously felt every bit as miserable about it as the unfortunate victim!”

   • 1991 March 3, Gregory Allen, “Letters: Christian Brothers”, in The Irish Times, page 11:

     The strap seemed preferable to the cane and the pandybat.

   • 1991, Benedict Kiely, Drink to the Bird: a Memoir, London: Methuen, →ISBN, page 69:

     Round about here it would seem to me to have become necessary to make some general statement about the Irish Christian Brothers. ... I have heard them blamed for many things. ... Blamed for the pandy-bat, as it was called in Dublin, or the leather as we called it in the North.

   • 1995, Aidan Higgins, Donkey's Years: Memories of a Life as Story Told, London: Secker & Warburg, →ISBN, pages 140-141:

     The procedure was that you knocked on the door and were called in, presented the docket, watched the pandy bat (some were slim, some fat) being removed from a drawer or inside the soutane. You took your punishment on either hand, thanked the priest and withdrew. ... The pandybat was a sort of sjambok slick as a spatula that imparted sudden deadening pain, felt in the head as in either hand, turn and turn about, pain travelling through the nervous system.

   • 2005, Fred Sedgwick, How to Teach with a Hangover: a Practical Guide to Overcoming Classroom Crises, London, New York: Continuum, →ISBN, page 92:

     Crowded round a small table are seven figures: a schoolmaster holding what looks like a wooden spoon — it is probably a pandy bat, a stick kept for the sole purpose of hitting children — over the half-open palm of a mop-haired boy, who is wiping a tear away from his eye as he waits for the next blow.

   • 2010 Martin Tierney, Reflections of a Dublin priest (Dublin : Columba Press) →ISBN p. 19

     Corporal punishment was administered by use of a thick leather strap called a ‘pandy bat’.

   • 2021 March 6, Conor Lally, Simon Carswell, “Former Clongowes pupil says Fr Joe Marmion ‘screened’ him for abuse”, in The Irish Times, page 6:

     Boys were beaten with a strap device referred to as “cockers, which you got on the bare bum” and also with a paddle-type device called a “pandybat” used to strike boys on the hands.

   • 2024 June 3, Gerry McArdle, “Celebrating James Joyce and those fearful Jesuits”, in The Irish Times:

     Corporal punishment was used by both for disciplinary purposes; the pandy bat by the Jesuits, and the leather strap by the Brothers.