[98].
This is another translation by Kuno Meyer from the ancient Irish—just the bare bones, that is, of a poem that in its original tongue must have been many times more musical with rhyme and gentle echo and cadence; for the craft of Gaelic verse was an exceedingly delicate one.
I like it for the sake of its cat, its monk, and its age, but chiefly because it reminds me of my own faraway days at Thrae—brooding up there in solitude and silence over Mr. Nahum's books.
As for "white Pangur" and his kind, "it is needlesse," says Topsell, "to spend any time about [Puss's] loving nature to man, how she flattereth by rubbing her skinne against ones legges, how she whurleth with her voyce, having as many tunes as turnes; for she hath one voice to beg and to complain, another to testifie her delight and pleasure, another among her own kind by flattring, by hissing, by spitting, insomuch as some have thought that they have a peculiar intelligible language among themselves." So also John de Trevisa, in 1387: "The catte is a beaste of uncerten heare (hair) and colour; for some catte is white, some rede, some blacke, some skewed (piebald) and speckled in the fete and in the face and in the eares. He is a beste in youth, swyfte, plyaunte, and mery, and lepeth and reseth (rusheth) on all thynge that is tofore him; and is led by a strawe and playeth therwith. He is a right hevy beast in aege, and ful slepy, and lyeth slily in wait for myce. And he maketh a ruthefull noyse and gastfull, whan one proffreth to fyghte with another, and he falleth on his owne fete whan he falleth out of hye places."
The writings of the ancient Egyptians show that, far from detesting to wet his paws, he would then swim in pursuit of fish. They painted a cat for the sound "miaou" in their hieroglyphics; gazed into his changing moon-like eyes and revered him; and embalmed him when dead.
Having borrowed him from Egypt, the Romans brought him to Britain (though we already had a wilding of our own, Felis Catus'), with the ass, the goat, the rabbit, the peacock, not to speak of the cherry, the walnut, the crocus, the tulip, the leek, the cucumber, etc. The Monk's Pangur, then, came of a long lineage.
So valuable were cats in Wales in the eleventh century (two or three hundred years after Pangur), that their price was fixed by law: for a blind kitten a penny; for a kitten with its eyes open, twopence; for a cat of one mouse, fourpence, and so on. And to kill one of the Prince's granary cats meant payment of a fine of as much wheat as would cover up its body when suspended by its tail. In Scotland there has long been a complete Clan of Cats—apart from the witches. As for the Cheshire Cat, he grins, I imagine, not because he has nine lives, is said to be melancholy, may look at a king, and has nothing to do with Catgut, Cat's cradle, and Cat-i'-the-pan, but because he has read in a dictionary that Dick Whittington sailed off to the Isle of Rats, not with a Cat, but with acat or achat, meaning goods for trading—Coals! Long may he grin! How but one country Gib or Tom may befriend the brightfaced Heartsease (so sturdy a little dear that it will bloom at burning noonday in a gravel path) Charles Darwin tells in his "Origin of Species," p. 57.
His "loving nature" to creatures other than man and the heartsease is referred to in the following old Scots nursery rhyme:
There was a wee bit mousikie,
That lived in Gilberaty, O,