"Bend over". Corporal punishment in English public schools, if the literature about it is to be believed, was most often delivered on the bottom. And often. Kipling writes in his autobiography that in his school, the penalty for shirking games was three cuts with a ground ash from the Prefect of Games. Not from a Master. "One of the most difficult things to explain to some people (perhaps he meant `lesser breeds without the law' in his own phrase) is that a boy of seventeen or eighteen can thus beat a boy barely a year his junior, and on the heels of the punishment go for a walk with him; neither party bearing malice or pride."
The ashplant was wielded in the school described by Roger Moran in his wonderful book on the Shannon the Wildfowler. For example... "It's `that' time of the month again for Old Rooney the Master. Six of us are standing in line before him. He's tossing the ashplant in his hand as he moves along the line of boys. He turns to me: "What delayed you" he asks. "And make it good". My mind is working overtime, I dare not give an excuse I've used before. "I had to tie the Gandalo sir", I say. He looks at me under bushy eyebrows, "Had you now. I suppose we could say you were mooring the liner?"
He addresses the boy next to me. "What about you, what were you tying?" "Nothing sir, I was up in Tom Cobley's Hill looking for the ass, sir". The Master puts his hands to his head. `Jesus almighty' he says, `One ass looking for another ass ... I wonder which end of the line he'll start using the stick. Why did I have to be late today of all days, it is drawing towards the end of the month and his cheque won't be here for a few days yet. We will continue to suffer his wrath as his raging porter thirst takes holt and burns unabated.
Woe betide the boy that gets in his bad books during the next few days, until his money arrives and he can once more quench the fire raging within him. Suddenly he swipes the stick across the shins of the boy nearest him; the lad jumps and howls with pain and gets another lash on the backside for good measure. He's coming back up the line, dishing out medicine left right and centre. We fall back in confusion, but there is no escape, and we go to our desks nursing our shins and backsides, wishing a speedy, and if possible painful, end to Old Rooney." Appalling conduct for a teacher, but, in a way, poor Old Rooney.