haul/rake over the coals, to

To administer a severe reprimand. The term alludes to the medieval practice of pulling an alleged heretic over the coals of a slow fire, which is described in numerous sixteenth-century church chronicles. By the early nineteenth century the term had been trans- ferred to more benign kinds of punishment, often signifying only a severe scolding, as in Byron’s poem “Beppo” (1818): “They’d haul o’er the coals.”