The ring, which belonged to the family of Graham of Duntrune (representative of Viscount Dundee), has for several years been lost or mislaid; perhaps, through some of the numerous readers of the "Notes and Queries," information
might be obtained as to the place where that ring is at present preserved, and whether there would be any possibility of the family recovering it by purchase or otherwise.
W. C. Trevelyan.
Duntrune, near Dundee.
The Kilkenny Cats.—I would feel obliged if any of your correspondents could give me information as to the first, or any early, published allusion to the strange tale, modernly become proverbial, of the ferocity of the cats of Kilkenny. The story generally told is, that two of those animals fought in a sawpit with such ferocious determination that when the battle was over nothing could be found remaining of either combatant except his tail,—the marvellous inference to be drawn therefrom being, of course, that they had devoured each other. This ludicrous anecdote has, no doubt, been generally looked upon as an absurdity of the Joe Miller class; but this I conceive to be a mistake. I have not the least doubt that the story 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 whose respective jurisdiction had never been marked out or defined by an authority to which either was willing to bow. Their struggles for precedency, and for the maintenance of alleged rights invaded, commenced A.D. 1377. (see Rot. Claus. 51 Ed. III. 76.), and were carried on with truly feline fierceness and implacability till the end of the seventeenth century, when it may fairly be considered that they had mutually devoured each other to the very tail, as we find their property all mortgaged, and see them each passing by-laws 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, and the incumbrances thereby caused removed with the vanquishment of the enemy. Those who have taken the story of the Kilkenny cats in its literal sense have done grievous injustice to the character of the grimalkins of the "faire cittie," who are really quite as demure and quietly disposed a race of tabbies as it is in the nature of any such animals to be.
John G. A. Prim.
Kilkenny.
Robert de Welle.—Can any of your correspondents inform me of what family was Robert de Welle, who married Matilda, one of the co-heirs of Thomas de Clare, and in 15th Edward II. received seisin of possessions in Ireland, and a mediety of the Seneschalship of the Forest of Essex in her right? (Rotul. Original., Record Commission, pp. 266, 277.) And how came the Irish title of Baron Welles into the family of Knox?
Again, where can I meet with a song called the Derby Ram, very popular in my school-boy days, but of which I recollect only one stanza,—
"The man that killed the ram, Sir,