Kiss the Gunner’s Daughter (To)

To be flogged on board ship, being tied to the breech of a cannon.

“I was made to kiss the wench that never speaks but when she scolds, and that’s the gunner’s daughter, … Yes, the minister’s son … has the cat’s scratch on his back.”—Sir W Scott: Redgauntlet, chap. xiv.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.