[Illustration: CHAPTER X.]
_Of a certain Voracious Cat, some Goblin Cats, Magical Cats, and Cats of
Kilkenny._
Of all the great big stories that have been told of Cats, that which
describes the origin of Cat’s-head apples is surely the greatest biggest
one. The legend runs thus:--
“The Widow Tomkins had a back room, on the second floor;
Her name was on a neat brass plate on one side of the door:
Companion she had only one--a beautiful Tom Cat,
Who was a famous mouser, the dickens for a rat:
His colour was a tabby, and his skin as soft as silk,
And she would lap him every day while he lapped the milk.
One day she was disturbed from sleep with double rat-tat-tat,
And she went in such a hurry that she quite forgot her Cat.
* * * * *
Poor Thomas, soon as day-light came, walked up and down the floor,
And heard the dogs’-meat woman cry “Cats’-meat” at the door;
With hunger he got fairly wild, though formerly so tame--
Another day passed slowly, another just the same.
With hunger he so hungry was--it did so strong assail,
That, although very loath, he was obliged to eat his tail.
This whetted quite his appetite, and though his stump was sore,
The next day he was tempted (sad) to eat a little more.
To make his life the longer then, he made his body shorter,
And one after the other attacked each hinder quarter.
He walked about on two fore legs, alas! without beholders,
’Till more and more by hunger pressed, he dined on both his shoulders.
Next day he found (the cannibal!) to eating more a check,
Although he tried, and did reach all he could reach of his neck.
But as he could not bite his ear, all mournfully he cried,--
Towards the door he turned his eyes, cocked up his nose, and died.
The widow did at last return, and oh! how she did stare,
She guessed the tale as soon as she saw Tom’s head lying there.
Quite grief sincerely heart-felt as she owned his fate a hard’un,
She buried it beneath an apple-tree just down her garden.
So mark what strange effects from little causes will appear,
The fruit of this said tree was changed, and strangely, too, next year.
The neighbours say (’tis truth, for they’re folks who go to chapels),
This Cat’s head was the sole first cause of all the Cat’s-head apples!”
[Illustration: THE CAT AND THE CONJUROR. _Page 187._]
Gottfried Heller, in _Die Leute von Seldwyla_, tells a droll story. This
is an abridgement of a popular author’s version of it, published some
years ago:--
“One day, once upon a time, or thereabouts, the witch-finder of a certain
Swiss town--himself secretly a wizard--was taking his afternoon’s walk,
when he came across a Tom Cat, looking very thin and miserable. This Cat
had once been the chief favourite of a rich old lady, who had trained him
up in luxurious living. Now she was dead, and Tom’s happy days were over:
he was as shaggy and meagre, as he had formerly been sleek and plump. Now,
you must know that Cats’ grease was, in those days, an invaluable
ingredient for certain magical preparations, provided the Cat to whom it
belonged willingly made a donation of it. This proviso rendered good
efficient Cats’ grease an exceedingly rare commodity; for though there
might be no great difficulty in finding a fat Cat, to find one willing to
part with its fat was, of course, difficult enough.
“Here, however, was an animal in desperate circumstances, who might be
accessible to reason; therefore, says the magician--
“‘How much will you take for your fat?’
“‘Why, I haven’t got any,’ replied Tom, who, to tell the truth, was as
thin as a hurdle.
“‘You may have, though, if you say the word,’ said the magician; ‘and I’ll
tell you how.’
“You see, he knew from experience that Tom was a Cat who was capable of
making flesh, for he had known him as round as a dumpling; so he made this
bargain:--He offered Tom a whole month’s luxurious living on condition
that at the expiration of that time he should voluntarily lay down his
life and yield up all the fat he had acquired during the four weeks. Of
course Tom agreed, and the contract was signed on the spot. The apartment
provided for Tom’s lodging was ’fitted up as an artificial landscape. A
little wood was perched on the top of a little mountain, which rose from
the banks of a little lake. On the branches of the trees were perched
dainty birds, all roasted, and emitting a most savoury odour. From the
cavities of the mountain peered forth sundry baked mice, all seasoned with
delicious stuffing and exquisitely larded with bacon. The lake consisted
of the newest milk, with a small fish or two at the bottom. Thus, to the
enjoyment of the epicure, was added the excitement of imaginary
sportsmanship. Tom ate his fill, and more, and soon became as fat as the
magician could wish, but before long he became thoughtful. The month had
nearly expired; at the end he was to die if fat enough. Ah! a bright
thought, he would get thin again. With a wondrous strength of mind he
refrained from eating the luxuries provided, took plenty of exercise on
the house-tops, and kept himself in excellent health, but much thinner
than suited the wizard’s fancy.
“Before long, this gentleman remonstrated with Tom, pointing out to him
very plainly, that he was bound by all the laws of honour to get fat by
the month’s end. To this, Tom had little to urge of any moment, and the
magician informed him that he would kill him at the appointed period, let
him be in what condition he might. Tom, therefore, would gain nothing by
being thin, and it was hoped that his good taste, unchecked by other
considerations, would induce him to make up for lost time. Time rolled on,
Tom behaved worse than ever, and when the fatal day arrived ‘he looked in
worse condition than ever--a dissipated, abandoned, shaggy scamp, without
an ounce on his bones.’ The wizard could not stand this, so he thrust Tom
into an empty coop and fed him by violence. In course of time, the wizard
was satisfied, and began to sharpen his knife; but no sooner did Tom
perceive this act, than he began to utter such singular expressions of
contrition, that his proprietor paused to ask him to explain them. The Cat
in wild terms alluded to a certain sum of ten thousand florins lying at
the bottom of a well, and the wizard wanted to know more about them. It
appeared then, that Tom’s late mistress had thrown the sum he named to the
bottom of a well, and informed her Cat that ‘should he find a perfectly
beautiful and a penniless maiden, whom a perfectly honest man was inclined
to wed in spite of her poverty, then he should empty the contents of the
well as a marriage portion.’
“Of course this tale was false. The money existed where Tom had described,
but it had been ill-gotten gold, with a curse upon it. But the wizard
nibbled at the bait, put a chain round Tom’s neck, and went to have a look
at the treasure. There it was, sure enough, shining under the water.
“‘Are you quite sure that there are exactly ten thousand florins?’ asked
the magician.
“‘I’ve never been down to see,’ replied Tom; ‘I was obliged to take the
old lady’s word for it.’
“‘But where shall I find a wife?’ asked the wizard.
“‘I’ll find you one,’ said Tom.
“‘Will you?’
“‘To be sure. Tear up that contract, though, to begin with.’
“The wizard, not without grumbling, drew from his pocket the fatal paper,
which Tom no sooner perceived than he pounced on it and swallowed it
whole, making at the same time the reflection that he had never before
tasted so delicious a morsel in his life.
“In the neighbourhood dwelt an old woman, who was a witch--one of the
ugliest old women you ever saw, who every night flew up the chimney on a
broom-stick, and played Meg’s diversions by the light of the moon. This
lady had an owl, who was a bird of loose principles, and had been an
associate of Tom’s in his gay days. This bright couple consulted together
how they should persuade the ancient maiden to marry the old man.
“‘She never will,’ said the owl.
“‘Then we must make her; but how?’
“‘We must catch her first, and take her prisoner, and that is to be done
easily enough, with a net, spun by a man of sixty years old, who has never
set eyes on the face of woman.’
“‘Where are we to find him?’
“‘Just round the corner: he has been blind from his birth.’
“When the net had been procured, they set it in the chimney, and presently
caught the old lady, and after much trouble they starved her into
compliance. Then, by magical art, she put on an appearance of youth and
beauty, and the wizard married her in an ecstacy of delight; but was he
not in a fury when, evening approaching, she resumed her pristine
ugliness. And was he not disgusted at his bride, in spite of the treasure
she had brought him. As for Tom, like many bad people, he lived happy ever
afterwards.”
Here is an abridgement of the famous tale of _Puss in Boots_:--
“A miller died, leaving his youngest son nothing but a Cat: the poor young
fellow complained bitterly of his fate; the Cat bade him be of good cheer,
and procure a pair of boots and a bag: the youth contrived to do so. The
first attempt Puss made was to go into a warren, in which there was a
great number of rabbits. He put some bran and parsley into his bag; and
then, stretching himself out at full length, as if he were dead, he waited
for some young rabbits, who as yet knew nothing of the cunning tricks of
the world, to come and get into the bag. Scarcely had he laid down, before
he succeeded as well as could be wished. A giddy young rabbit crept into
the bag, and the Cat immediately drew the strings, and killed it without
mercy. Puss, proud of his prey, hastened directly to the palace, where he
asked to speak to the King. On being shown into the apartment of his
Majesty, he made a low bow, and said:--“I have brought you, Sire, this
rabbit from the warren of my Lord the Marquis of Carabas, who commanded me
to present it to your Majesty, with the assurance of his respects.” One
day, the Cat having heard that the King intended to take a ride that
morning by the river’s side with his daughter, who was the most beautiful
Princess in the world, he said to his master:--“Take off your clothes, and
bathe yourself in the river, just in the place I shall show you, and leave
the rest to me.” The Marquis did exactly as he was desired, without being
able to guess at what the Cat intended. While he was bathing, the King
passed by, and Puss directly called out, as loudly as he could
bawl:--“Help! help! My Lord Marquis of Carabas is in danger of being
drowned!” The King hearing the cries, and recognising the Cat, ordered his
attendants to go directly to the assistance of my Lord Marquis of Carabas;
and the cunning Cat having hid his master’s clothes under a large stone,
the King commanded the officers of his wardrobe to fetch him the
handsomest suit it contained. The King’s daughter was mightily taken with
his appearance, and the Marquis of Carabas had no sooner cast upon her two
or three respectful glances, than she became violently in love with him.
The Cat, enchanted to see how well his scheme was likely to succeed, ran
before to a meadow that was reaping, and said to the reapers:--“Good
people, if you do not tell the King, who will soon pass this way, that the
meadow you are reaping belongs to my Lord Marquis of Carabas, you shall be
chopped as small as mince-meat.” The King did not fail to ask the reapers
to whom the meadow belonged? “To my Lord Marquis of Carabas,” said they
all at once; for the threats of the Cat had terribly frightened them. Puss
at length arrived at a stately castle that belonged to an Ogre, whom he
first persuaded to assume the form of a mouse, and then cleverly gobbled
him up before he could get back to his proper shape again. The King’s
party soon after arrived. The Cat said the castle was his master’s; and
the King was so much charmed with the amiable qualities and noble fortune
of the Marquis of Carabas, and the young Princess too had fallen so
violently in love with him, that when the King had partaken of a
collation, he said to the Marquis:--“It will be your own fault, my Lord
Marquis of Carabas, if you do not soon become my son-in-law.” The Marquis
received the intelligence with a thousand respectful acknowledgments,
accepted the honour conferred upon him, and married the Princess that very
day. The Cat became a great lord, and never after pursued rats, except for
his own amusement.
I think, too, that the famous story of the _White Cat_ should also find a
place in this little volume:--
There once was a King, the legend says, who was growing old, and it was
told to him that his three sons wished to govern the kingdom. The old
King, who did not wish to give up his power just yet, thought the best way
to prevent his sons from taking his throne was to send them out to seek
for adventures; so he called them all around him, and said:--
“My sons, go away and travel for a year; and he of you who brings me the
most beautiful little dog, shall have the kingdom, and be King after me.”
Then the three Princes started on the journey; but it is of the youngest
of the three that I have now to tell. He travelled for many days, and at
last found himself, one evening, at the door of a splendid castle, but
not a man or woman was to be seen. A number of hands, with no bodies to
them, appeared: two hands took off the Prince’s cloak, two others seated
him in a chair, another pair brought a brush to brush his hair, and
several pairs waited on him at supper. Then some more hands came and put
him to bed in a fine chamber, where he slept all night, but still no one
appeared. The next morning, the hands brought him into a splendid hall,
where there sat on a throne a large White Cat, who made him sit beside
her, and expressed herself glad to see him. Next day, the Prince and the
White Cat went out hunting together: the Cat was mounted on a fine
spirited monkey, and seemed very fond of the Prince, who, on his part, was
delighted with her wit and cleverness.
Instead of dogs, Cats hunted for them. These creatures ran with great
agility after rats, and mice, and birds, catching and killing a great
number of them; and sometimes the White Cat’s monkey would climb a tree,
with the White Cat on his back, after a bird, a mouse, or a squirrel. This
pleasant life went on for a long time: every day the White Cat became more
fond of the Prince, while, on his part, the Prince could not help loving
the poor Cat, who was so kind and attentive to him. At last, the time drew
near when the Prince was to return home, and he had not thought of looking
for a little dog; but the Cat gave him a casket, and told him to open this
before the King, and all would be well; so the Prince journeyed home,
taking with him an ugly mongrel cur. When the brothers saw this, they
laughed secretly to each other, and thought themselves quite secure, so
far as their younger brother was concerned. They had, with infinite pains,
procured each of them a very rare and beautiful little dog, and each
thought himself quite sure to get the prize. When the day came on which
the dogs were to be shown, each of the two elder Princes produced a
beautiful little dog, on a silk velvet cushion: no one could judge which
was the prettier. The youngest now opened his casket, and found a walnut:
he cracked this walnut, and out of the walnut sprang a little tiny dog, of
exquisite beauty. Still the old King would not give up his kingdom. He
told the young Princes they must bring him home a piece of cambric so fine
that it could be threaded through the eye of a needle; and so they went
away in search of such a piece of cambric. Again the youngest Prince
passed a year with the White Cat, and again the Cat gave him a walnut
when the time came for him to return home. The three Princes were summoned
before their father, who produced a needle. The first and second Princes
brought a piece of cambric which would almost, but not quite, go through
the needle’s eye. The youngest Prince broke open his walnut-shell: he
found inside it a small nut-shell, and then a cherry-stone, and then a
grain of wheat, and then a grain of millet, and in this grain of millet a
piece of cambric four hundred yards long, which passed easily through the
eye of the needle. But the old King said:--
“He who brings the most beautiful lady shall have the kingdom.”
The Prince went back to the White Cat, and told her what his father had
said. She replied:--
“Cut off my head and my tail.”
At last he consented: instantly the Cat was transformed into a beautiful
Princess; for she had been condemned by a wicked fairy to appear as a Cat,
till a young Prince should cut off her head and tail. The Prince and
Princess went to the old King’s court, and she was far more beautiful than
the ladies brought by the other two Princes. But she did not want the
kingdom, for she had four of her own already. One of these she gave to
each of the elder brothers of the young Prince, and over the other two she
ruled with her husband, for the young Prince married her, and they lived
happily together all their lives.
In Mr. Morley’s _Fairy Tales_, there is a funny passage:--“‘I wonder,’
said a sparrow, ‘what the eagles are about, that they don’t fly away with
the Cats? And now I think of it, a civil question cannot give offence.’ So
the sparrow finished her breakfast, went to the eagle, and said:--
“‘May it please your royalty, I see you and your race fly away with the
birds and the lambs that do no harm. But there is not a creature so
malignant as a Cat; she prowls about our nests, eats up our young, and
bites off our own heads. She feeds so daintily that she must be herself
good eating. She is lighter to carry than a bird, and you would get a
famous grip in her loose fur. Why do you not feed upon Cat?’
“‘Ah!’ said the eagle, ‘there is sense in your question. I had the worms
to hear this morning, asking me why I did not breakfast upon sparrows. Do
I see a morsel of worm’s skin on your beak, my child?’
“The sparrow cleaned his bill upon his bosom, and said:--‘I should like
to see the worm who came with that enquiry.’
“‘Come forward, worm,’ the eagle said. But when the worm appeared, the
sparrow snapped him up, and ate him. Then he went on with his argument
against the Cats.”
Everybody has heard of the Kilkenny Cats, and how they fought in a saw-pit
with such ferocious determination, that when the battle was over, nothing
was remaining of either combatant except his tail. Of course, we none of
us suppose that the tale is true, but some writers think that the account
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 the respective jurisdiction of which had never
been marked out or defined by an authority to which either was willing to
bow. The desperate struggles for supremacy of these parish worthies began
A.D. 1377, and they fought, as only vestrymen can fight, a little over
three hundred years, by the end of which time there was, as you may
suppose, very little left of them but their tails, for, of course, there
was a disinterested third person to whom the affairs were referred for
arbitration, in the old way that the Cats appealed to the monkey upon the
great cheese question--who swallowed his huge mouthful. In the end it
would appear that all the property of either side was mortgaged, and
bye-laws were passed by each party 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.
Let this be as it may, one thing is certain: Kilkenny Cats are quite as
amiable now-a-days as the Cats of any other city in Great Britain.
But there is another story of a great Cat fight in the same neighbourhood.
One night in the summer time, all the Cats in the city and county of
Kilkenny were absent from their homes, and next morning a plain near the
city was strewn with thousands of slain Cats; and it was reported that
almost all the Cats in Ireland had joined in the fight, as was shown by
the collars of some of the dead bearing the names of places in all
quarters of the island. The cause of the quarrel is not stated, but there
are yet men alive who knew persons since dead, who actually inspected the
field--at least so they say.
Time out of mind the Cat has figured largely in our nursery annals--from
the days of _Heigh Diddle-Diddle_ and the _House that Jack Built_ to the
present moment. There is some waggishness, by the way, in Mr. Blanchard’s
version of the second mentioned rhyme, printed, as a sort of argument, in
the book of the Drury Lane Pantomime:--
“Anon, with velvet foot and Tarquin strides,
Subtle Grimalkin to his quarry glides;
Grimalkin grim, that slew the fierce Rodent,
Whose tooth insidious Johann’s sackcloth rent.
Lo! how the deep-mouthed canine foe’s assault,
That vest th’ avenger of the stolen malt
Stored in the hallowed precincts of that hall
That rose complete at Jack’s creative call.
Here stalks th’ impetuous cow with crumpled horn,
Thereon th’ exacerbating hound was torn,
Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast that slew
The rat predacious, whose keen fangs ran through
The textile fibres that involved the grain
That lay in Han’s inviolate domain.”
The Cat is one of the principal of the _dramatis personæ_ in Mr. D’Arcy
Thompson’s droll _Nursery Nonsense_; and some of the most ingenious
pictures Charles Bennett ever drew are to be found in his _Nine Lives of a
Cat_. There is some good fun for little folks in a small book called
_Tales from Catland_, with some masterly pictures from the graceful pencil
of Mr. Harrison Weir; and there is another work called _Cat and Dog_,
which I would recommend to all young readers. Of some other children’s
books, in which Pussy takes a prominent part, it behoves not the writer of
this volume to say very much, for obvious reasons. I may, however, remark,
that though a great admirer of the feline race, the artist who illustrated
the works in question and this, has very limited notions concerning the
way in which a Cat should be drawn, and has found, after all his trouble,
that under his hand Pussy transferred to wood is very wooden indeed. It is
some consolation to that artist, however, to reflect that Hogarth’s Cats
are anything but good ones. By the way, I always wonder when I look at
that picture of the “Actress’s Dressing Room” in the barn, whether poor
strollers were ever driven to such an expedient as that of cutting a Cat’s
tail for the blood, and if so, how was it used? In George Cruikshank’s
“Bottle,” do you remember in the first scene how happily the Cat and
Kittens are playing on the hearth, and how in the next the kitten has
disappeared, and the Cat, a poor half-starved wretch, is sniffing
wistfully at an empty plate upon the table? The change in Pussy’s
fortune is a clever touch; but of all Cat pictures, one of the same
artist’s illustrations to the Brothers Mayhew’s _Greatest Plague of Life_
is that to be remembered; I mean the one called “The Cat did it,” in the
chapter about Mrs. Burgess’s Tom. There are a score and more of wonderful
Cat stories in the _Münchener Bilderbögen_, and in other German books; and
who of those who have seen them can forget Grandville’s extraordinary
animals, so like Cats, and yet so human. There were some pictures that
Charles Bennett drew, showing the gradual change of a human face into that
of a beast, in which it was astonishing to note how easy and with what a
few lines the transformation could be effected.
I might make this book a great deal longer (and more wearisome, perhaps)
if I gave even the briefest outline of all the stories I have come upon
during my long search; but I believe that those to be found in these pages
are among the best extant.