Mercutio. "Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?"
Tybalt. "What wouldst thou have with me?"
Mercutio. "Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine lives."
(Romeo and Juliet, iii. 1.)
The fact that the donkey was at one time regularly called Cuddy made Cuthbert for a long period unpopular as a baptismal name. He is now often called Neddy. The hare was called Wat (Walter) in Tudor times. In the Roman de Renard he is Couard, whence coward, a derivative of Old Fr. coue (queue), tail, from Lat. cauda. The idea is that of the tail between the legs, so that the name is etymologically not very appropriate to the hare. Parrot, for earlier perrot, means "little Peter." The extension Poll parrot is thus a kind of hermaphrodite. Fr. pierrot is still used for the sparrow. The family name Perrot is sometimes a nickname, "the chatterer," but can also mean literally "little Peter," just as Emmot means "little Emma," and Marriot "little Mary." Petrel is of cognate origin, with an allusion to St Peter's walking upon the sea; cf. its German name, Sankt Peters Vogel. Sailors call the petrel Mother Carey's chicken, probably a nautical corruption of some old Spanish or Italian name. But, in spite of ingenious guesses, this lady's genealogy remains as obscure as that of Davy Jones or the Jolly Roger.
NAMES OF BIRDS
Robin has practically replaced red-breast. The martin is in French martinet, and the name may have been given in allusion to the southward flight of this swallow about Martinmas; but the king-fisher, not a migrant bird, is called martin-pêcheur, formerly also martinet pêcheur or oiseau de Saint-Martin, so that martin may be due to some other association. Sometimes the double name survives. We no longer say Philip sparrow, but Jack ass, Jack daw, Jenny wren, Tom tit (see p. [123]), and the inclusive Dicky bird, are still familiar. With these we may compare Hob (i.e. Robert) goblin. Madge owl, or simply Madge, was once common. For Mag pie we find also various diminutives—
"Augurs, and understood relations, have
By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth
The secret'st man of blood."
(Macbeth, iii. 4.)
Cotgrave has pie, "a pye, pyannat, meggatapie." In Old French it was also called jaquette, "a proper name for a woman; also, a piannat, or megatapie" (Cotgrave).
The connection of this word, Fr. pie, Lat. pica, with the comestible pie is uncertain, but it seems likely that the magpie's habit of collecting miscellaneous trifles caused its name to be given to a dish of uncertain constituents. It is a curious coincidence that the obsolete chuet or chewet meant both a round pie and a jackdaw.[30] It is uncertain in which of the two senses Prince Hal applies the name to Falstaff (1 Henry IV., v. 1). It comes from Fr. chouette, screech-owl, which formerly meant also "a chough, daw, jack-daw" (Cotgrave).
A piebald horse is one balled like a magpie. Ball is a Celtic word for a white mark, especially on the forehead; hence the tavern sign of the Baldfaced Stag. Our adjective bald is thus a past participle.