WITCHES AS CATS.
The association of witches with cats is of great antiquity. In the legends of Greece and Rome, we are told of a woman, who had been changed into a cat, being chosen as priestess by Hecate, the goddess of sorcery and magic power, and of Hecate herself, when the gods were forced to hide themselves in animals, taking refuge in the shape of a cat. The association probably arose not so much from cats being the frequent, almost invariable, companions of the poor old women accused of witchcraft, as from the savage character of the animal itself. Its noiseless and stealthy motions, its persevering watchfulness, its extraordinary agility and tenacity of life, its diabolical caterwauling, prowling habits, deceitful spring, and the luminous appearance of its eyes in the dark, would alone suffice to procure it the name of unearthly; but when infuriated, glaring, bristling, and spitting, it forms a vivid representation of a perfect demon. In the Highlands, it was not, as in the witchcraft of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, looked upon as the familiar or attendant imp of the witch, but merely as an animal, whose form witches frequently assumed.
There were other superstitions connected with the animal. Were it not the fear of being swallowed by the ground, a cat would run much faster than it does. When people have a cat along with them in a boat, they cannot, or will not, be drowned by witches. By burying a cat alive, people waiting for a favourable wind get a breeze from the direction in which its head is put; and a witch, that is, a young one, who is courted by a sailor, can detain him with contrary winds as long as she likes by shutting up the cat in the cupboard. A cat scraping is a sign that some beast, horse, cow, pig, or dog will be found dead on the farm before long. A cat washing its face portends rain next day, and turning its back to the fire storm and rain. When removing from one house to another (imrich), it is unlucky to take a cat. The animal was disliked by the MacGregors, and the Camerons of Glenevis could not tolerate it at all.
A shepherd in Kintail, living alone in a bothy, far from other houses, after kindling in the evening a bright cheerful fire, threw himself on a heather bed on the opposite side of the house. About twenty cats entered and sat round the fire, holding up their paws and warming themselves. One went to the window, put a black cap on its head, cried “Hurrah for London!” and vanished. The other cats, one by one, did the same. The cap of the last fell off, and the shepherd caught it, put it on his own head, cried “Hurrah for London!” and followed. He reached London in a twinkling, and with his companions went to drink wine in a cellar. He got drunk and fell asleep. In the morning he was caught, taken before a judge, and sentenced to be hanged. At the gallows he entreated to be allowed to wear the cap he had on in the cellar; it was a present from his mother, and he would like to die with it on. When it came the rope was round his neck. He clapped the cap on his head, and cried “Hurrah for Kintail!” He disappeared with the gallows about his neck, and his friends in Kintail, having by this time missed him, and being assembled in the bothy prior to searching the hills, were much surprised at his strange appearance.
This is a fair specimen of the popular tale. It forms the foundation of the Ettrick Shepherd’s “Witch of Fife.” In Skye, the adventure was claimed by a man nicknamed ‘Topsy-turvy’ (But-ar-scionn) as having occurred to himself. After coming home, he made the gallows into a weaver’s loom. The hero in Argyllshire made it the stern and keel of a boat, which may be seen in Lorn to this day. In Harris the hero is a tailor: and the tale has been even found in the Monach isles, west of Uist.
Captain Burt (1730) tells a story of a similar kind which he had heard from a minister. A laird, whose wine was disappearing mysteriously, suspecting witches one night, when he thought the plunderers were at work, entered the cellar, closed the door, and laid about him with a broadsword. When light was brought, the cats, whose eyes he had seen glaring at him in the dark, disappeared, and only some blood was found on the floor. An old woman in the neighbourhood, suspected of being a witch, was found, on her house being entered, in bed, with her leg cut off and lying below the bed. The same story is told of the witches of Thurso (Inbher-Eòrsa).
A tailor, named Macilduinn, was left in a house alone on Hallowe’en night, while the rest of the household went to a neighbour’s house to hold the festivities of the evening. As he sat on a bed, working at his trade, a great many cats came in, and attacking a bag of flesh at the end of the bed soon tore it up and devoured it. They then gathered round the tailor. One said, “The back of my paw to Macilduinn!” Another said, “The front of my paw to Macilduinn!”[12] These threats were repeated by all the rest, while they held out their horrid claws, some derisively, some menacingly, to the poor tailor. Frightened from his wits, he blew out the light, sprung to the door, and took to his heels. The cats gave chase, and by the time he reached a neighbours house his back was scratched into shreds and thongs (na iallun) by the claws of the infernal cats.
Cameron of Doïni, or Glenevis, was out hunting, and killed a wild-cat. The animal, when expiring, asked him to tell, when he went home, that ‘the King of the Cats’ (Righ nan Cat) was dead, or according to others ‘the Key of Battle’ (an Iuchair Chath), or ‘the streaked Brindled one’ (a Bhruchail Bhreac). As he told his story, the little black kitten in the ash-hole (an toll na luath) bristled up and swelled, till it was as large as a dog. Cameron said, “You are swelling, cat.” The cat answered, “My feathers and my swellings are growing bigger with the heat,”[13] and, springing at the chieftain’s throat, killed him. The scions of this family (Teaghlach Dhomhainnidh no Ghlinn-Ibheis) till quite recent times, would not tolerate a cat in the house, from the memory of this tradition.
The same story is told in the following manner, without any locality being assigned for the incident. A hunter killed a wild-cat, and when he came home told his adventure. He said,
“To-night has well prospered with us,
The big urchal-erchal has been slain.”
A kitten that was listening rose and said, “Has Bald Entrails of the Cats been killed? If it were not the many nights I have got meat and milk in your family, I would have your long brindled weasand in my claws. Tell Streaked Foul-Face, that Bladrum is dead,”[14] and saying this the kitten went away, and was never seen afterwards.
Near Vaul in Tiree, a man riding home at night, with his son, a young boy, seated behind him, was met by a number of cats. The boy had his hands clasped round his father, and the man, pressing them to his sides, to make surer of the boy’s hold, urged his horse to its speed. The cats sprang, and, fastening on the boy, literally devoured him. When the man reached home, with his horse at full gallop, he had only the boy’s arms left.
A Wexford legend of the same kind (the two stories might have been originally identical), said to be at least as old as 1584, will be found in the Dublin University Magazine for September, 1869.
A woman detected a strange cat drinking the milk in her kirn, caught it by the back of the neck, and rapped its nose against the floor. It went about mewing in a melancholy manner, till the woman took pity on it, and called it, saying, “Puss, puss, till you get a drop” (Puis, puis, gus am faigheadh tu diar). The cat answered, “It is not a drop I want, but the way my mouth is, Mary” (Cha-ne diar tha mi’g iarraidh ach mar tha mo bhial a Mhàiri). It then went away, but came back through the night with two other cats. One said they would take the back of their paws to the woman, but the second said the front of their paws. This resolution was carried by the casting vote of the injured cat, and the woman was torn in shreds.
A man, going in the evening to see a girl he was courting, was met at a lonely part of the road (near the end of Balefetrish Hill in Tiree) by seven cats, and was so terrified that he turned back and thereby lost his sweetheart. She married an old man from the village of Hianish, where a noted witch dwelt. The old man got the blame of bribing the witch to send the cats.
In olden times a cat belonging to the tenant of Heynish in Tiree was much addicted, like the rest of its kind, to stealing cheese. It was caught in the act, and, as a punishment for the past and a lesson for the future, its ears were taken off. The tenant had occasion to go from home, and on his return found the cat lying dead, having been hung for theft in his absence. He took it in his lap, and thus addressed it:
Did I not tell you, little Duncan,
You had needs of being wary;
When you went where the cheeses were,
The gallows would teach you how to dance.
Evil is it, earless cat,
They you have killed, because of cheese;
Your neck has paid for that refreshment,
At this time, after your death.
On hearing these expressions of sympathy, the cat began to revive, and the man went on:
A hundred welcomes wait you, cat,
Since in my lap you’ve chanced to be;
And, though I do not much liberty allow,
Many have you greatly loved.
Are you the untamed cat that Fionn had,
That hunted wild from glen to glen?
Had Oscar you at the battle of Bla-sguinn,
And left you heroes wounded there?
You drank the milk Catherine had,
For entertaining minstrel and meeting;
And why should I praise you?
You ought to be, like any kitten,
On the hillside seeking mice,
’Neath greyish grassy stems and bramble bushes.
On hearing this the cat ran away and was never again seen.
A Tiree boat was tacking out of a loch in the north. A man met it at a point of land near which it came, and asked to be taken to the other side. One of the boatmen was willing, but the rest were not, as they would thereby lose time. Next tack back, the man met the boat again, with the same result. “Well, then,” he said, “perhaps you will repent it.” At the mouth of the loch the boatmen heard a howling as of innumerable cats. A storm arose, and with difficulty they reached shelter at the island of Eigg.