Of a certain Voracious Cat, some Goblin Cats, Magical Cats, and Cats of Kilkenny.
f 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!”
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:—