Gallows

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Image:Tombstone courthouse gallows.jpg A gallows is a frame, typically wooden, used for execution by hanging (see that article), and hence a metaphor for that capital punishment.

A gallows can take several forms. The simplest (as often used in the game 'Hangman') resembles an inverted 'L', with a single upright and a horizontal beam to which the rope noose would be attached. In other designs, the horizontal crossbeam is supported at both ends. The infamous Tyburn gallows was triangular in plan, with three uprights and three crossbeams, allowing criminals to be executed along all three sides. The apparatus can be permanent, as a deterrent for potential commiters of capital offences and a grim symbol of the power of high justice (indeed the french word for gallows, potence, stems from the Latin potentia, 'power'), usually in a public place, but especially if the corpses are to remain exposed preferably desolate; erected for a specific hanging, in a public place if the sentence is to be public, or else rather inside a prison, often so the condemned sees and or hears his imminent death taking physical shape. Although serial execution was almost never prohibited by the number of victims, it was not uncommon to erect multiple gallows, even one noose per condemned man after the trial.

Hanging people from early gallows sometimes involved fitting the noose around the person's neck while they were on a ladder or in a horse-drawn cart underneath. Removing the ladder or driving the cart away left the person dangling by the neck so that they slowly strangled. Later, a 'scaffold' with a trap-door tended to be used, meaning that victims dropped down and died quickly from a broken neck rather than through strangulation, especially if extra weights were fixed.

The gloom and perhaps mystique of the gallows is perpetuated in music from various places and times and one such notable song is the folk-tinged Gallows Pole from the 1970 album Led Zeppelin III.

Grammatical note

"Gallows" is grammatically anomalous, as it is both singular and plural in different contexts. When referenced with an indefinite article, it is singular ("Build a gallows here"), whereas when referred to definitely, it is plural.da:Galge de:Galgen he:גרדום nl:Galg ja:絞首台 pl:Szubienica sv:Galge (bestraffningsinstrument)