Duntrune, near Dundee.
_The Kilkenny Cats._--I would feel obliged if any of your correspondents
could give me information as to the first, or any early, published allusion
to the strange tale, modernly become proverbial, of the ferocity of the
cats of Kilkenny. The story generally told is, that two of those animals
fought in a sawpit with such ferocious determination that when the battle
was over nothing could be found remaining of either combatant except _his
tail_,--the marvellous inference to be drawn therefrom being, of course,
that they had devoured each other. This ludicrous anecdote has, no doubt,
been generally looked upon as an absurdity of the Joe Miller class; but
this I conceive to be a mistake. I have not the least doubt that the story
of the mutual destruction of the contending cats was an allegory designed
to typify the utter ruin to which centuries of litigation and embroilment
on the subject of conflicting rights and privileges tended to reduce the
respective exchequers of the rival municipal bodies of Kilkenny and
Irishtown,--separate corporations existing within the liberties of one
city, and the boundaries of whose respective jurisdiction had never been
marked out or defined by an authority to which either was willing to bow.
Their struggles for precedency, and for the maintenance of alleged rights
invaded, commenced A.D. 1377. (see _Rot. Claus._ 51 Ed. III. 76.), and were
carried on with truly feline fierceness and implacability till the end of
the seventeenth century, when it may fairly be considered that they had
mutually devoured each other to the very _tail_, as we find their property
all mortgaged, and see them each passing by-laws that their respective
officers should be content with the dignity of their station, and forego
all hope of salary till the suit at law with the other "pretended
corporation" should be terminated, and the incumbrances thereby caused
removed with the vanquishment of the enemy. Those who have taken the story
of the Kilkenny cats in its literal sense have done grievous injustice to
the character of the grimalkins of the "faire cittie," who are really quite
as demure and quietly disposed a race of tabbies as it is in the nature of
any such animals to be.