CHAPTER IX.

These are some of the best known Proverbs about Cats:—

“Care will kill a Cat,” one says, and yet Cats are said to have nine lives. Let us hope that poor Pussy will never be put to a worse death.

“A muffled Cat is no good mouser.”

“That Cat is out of kind that sweet milk will not lap.”“You can have no more of a Cat than her skin.” This proverb seems to refer to the unfitness of her flesh for food. Formerly the fur of the Cat was used in trimming coats and cloaks. The Cat-gut used for rackets, and for the fine strings of violins, is made from the dried intestines of the Cat, the larger strings being from the intestines of sheep and lambs.

“Fain would the Cat fish eat, but she is loth to wet her feet.”

“The Cat sees not the mouse ever.”

“When the Cat winketh, little wots the mouse what the Cat thinketh.”

“Though the Cat winks a while, yet sure she is not blind.”

“Well might the Cat wink when both her eyes were out?”

“How can the Cat help it, if the maid be a fool?” Which means how can it help breaking or stealing that which is left in its way?

“That that comes of a Cat will catch mice.”

“A Cat may look at a king.”

“An old Cat laps as much as a young kitten.”

“When the Cat is away, the mice will play.”

“When candles are out, all Cats are grey.” Otherwise, “Joan is as good as my Lady in the dark.”“The Cat knows whose lips she licks.”

“Cry you mercy, killed my Cat.” This is spoken to those who play one a trick, and then try to escape punishment by begging pardon.

“By biting and scratching, Cats and Dogs come together.”

“I’ll keep no more Cats than will catch mice;” or no more in family than will earn their living.

“Who shall hang the bell about the Cat’s neck.” The mice at a consultation, how to secure themselves from the Cat, resolved upon hanging a bell about her neck, to give warning when she approached; but when this was resolved on, they were as far off as ever, for who was to do it? John Skelton says:—

“A Cat has nine lives, and a woman has nine Cats’ lives.”

“Cats eat what hussies spare.”

“Cats hide their claws.”

“The wandering Cat gets many a rap.”

“The Cat is hungry when a crust contents her.”“He lives under the sign of the Cat’s foot;” that is to say, he is hen-pecked—his wife scratches him.

Here are some French proverbs:—

“Chat ÉchaudÉ craint l’eau froide.” (A burnt child dreads the fire.)

“Ne rÉveillons pas les Chats qui dort.” (Let sleeping dogs alone.)

“La nuit tous Chats sont gris.”

MoliÈre says:—

“Vous Êtes-vous mis dans la tÊte que LÉonard de Pourceaugnac soit un homme À acheter Chat en poche.” (To buy a pig in a poke.)

“Ce n’est pas À moi que l’on vendra un Chat pour un liÈvre.” (Don’t think you can catch an old bird with chaff.)

“Elle est friande comme une chatte.” (She’s as dainty as a Cat.)

“Payer en Chats et en rats.” (To pay in driblets.)

“Appeler un Chat un Chat.” (Call a spade a spade.)

“Avoir un Chat dans la gorge.” (Something sticking in the throat.)

Shakespeare says:—

Again:—

The wisdom of our forefathers teaches us, that if a Cat be carried in a bag from its old home to a new house, let the distance be several miles, it will be certain to return again; but if it be carried backward into the new house this will not be the case.

A Cat’s eyes wax and wane as the moon waxes and wanes, and the course of the sun is followed by the apples of its eyes.

The brain of a Cat may be used as a love spell if taken in small doses.

If a man swallow two or three Cat’s hairs, it will cause him to faint. As a cure for epilepsy, take three drops of blood from under a Cat’s tail in water.

The horse ridden by a man who has got any Cat’s hair on his clothing will perspire violently, and soon become exhausted. If the wind blows over a Cat riding in a vehicle, upon the horse drawing it, it will weary the horse very much.

To preserve your eyesight, burn the head of a black Cat to ashes, and have a little of the dust blown into your eyes three times a day.

To cure a whitlow, put the finger affected a quarter of an hour every day into a Cat’s ear.

The fat of the wild Cat (Axungia Cati Sylvestris) is good for curing epilepsy and lameness. The skin of the wild Cat worn as coverings, will give strength to the limbs.

Now about dreams:—

If any one dreams that he hath encountered a Cat, or killed one, he will commit a thief to prison and prosecute him to the death, for the Cat signifies a common thief. If he dreams that he eats Cat’s flesh, he will have the goods of the thief that robbed him; if he dreams that he hath the skin, then he will have all the thief’s goods. If any one dreams he fought with a Cat that scratched him sorely, that denotes some sickness or affliction. If any shall dream that a woman became the mother of a Cat instead of a well shaped baby, it is a bad hieroglyphic, and betokens no good to the dreamer.

Stevens states, that in some counties of England, it used to be thought a good bit of fun to close up a Cat in a cask with a quantity of soot, and suspend the cask on a line; then he who could knock out the bottom of the cask as he ran under it, and was nimble enough to escape its falling contents, was thought to be very clever. After the first part had been performed, the Cat was hunted to death, which finished this diverting pastime. They were full of their fun, once upon a time, in merrie England.

In an old-fashioned treatise upon Rat-catching, I find mentioned a means of alluring “of very material efficacy, which is, the use of oil of Rhodium, which, like the marumlyriacum, in the case of Cats, has a very extraordinary fascinating power on these animals.”

Among the sympathetic secrets in occult philosophy, published in the Conjurors’ Magazine, in 1791, I find a recipe “to draw Cats together, and fascinate them,” which is as follows:—

“In the new moon, gather the herb Nepe, and dry it in the heat of the sun, when it is temperately hot: gather vervain in the hour ?, and only expose it to the air while ? is under the earth. Hang these together in a net, in a convenient place, and when one of them has scented it, her cry will soon call those about her that are within hearing; and they will rant and run about, leaping and capering to get at the net, which must be hung or placed so that they cannot easily accomplish it, for they will certainly tear it to pieces. Near Bristol there is a field that goes by the appellation of the ‘Field of Cats,’ from a large number of these animals being drawn together there by this contrivance.”

One of the frauds of witchcraft was the witch pretending to transform herself into a Cat, and this led to the Cat being tormented by the ignorant vulgar.

In 1618, Margaret and Philip Flower were executed at Lincoln; their mother was also accused, dying in goal before (probably of fright, added to old age and infirmity). It was asserted that they had procured the death of the Lord Henry Mosse, eldest son of the Earl of Rutland, by procuring his right-hand glove, which, after being rubbed on the back of their imp, named “Rutterkin,” and which lived with them in the form of a Cat, was plunged into boiling water, pricked with a knife, and buried in a dung-hill, so that, as that rotted, the liver of the young man might rot also, which was affirmed to have come to pass.

Those were dreadful times for the ill-looking old ladies, and the more so if they were unfortunate enough to have an affection for the feline race.

The belief in witchcraft is a very ancient and deep-rooted one. From the earliest times, we can trace records of supposed acts of witchcraft, and their punishment. Pope Innocent VIII., in 1484, issued a bull, empowering the Inquisition to search for witches and burn them. From the time of this superstitious act, the executions for witchcraft increased. The pope had given sanction to the belief in this demoniacal power, and had asserted their possession of it. In 1485, forty-one poor women were burnt as witches in Germany; an inquisitor in Piedmont burnt a hundred more, and was proceeding so fast with others daily, that the people rose en masse, and chased him out of the country. About the same time, five hundred witches were executed at Geneva, in the course of three months.

Among the many who counterfeited possession by the devil, for the purpose of attracting pity or obtaining money, were Agnes Bridges and Rachel Pinder, who had counterfeited to be possessed by the devil, and vomited pins and rags; but were detected, and stood before the preacher at St. Paul’s Cross, and acknowledged their hypocritical counterfeiting: this happened in 1574.

In fifteen years, from 1580 to 1595, Remigius burnt nine hundred reputed witches in Lorraine. In Germany, they tortured and burnt them daily, until many unfortunates destroyed themselves for fear of a death by torment, and others fled the country.

Ludovicus Paramo states, that the Inquisition, within the space of 150 years, had burnt thirty thousand of these reputed witches.The superstition continued on the increase, and reached its culmination in the Puritanic time of the Commonwealth, when persons more cunning and wicked than the rest, gained a subsistence by discovering witches (by pretended marks and trials they used), and denouncing them to death. The chief of these persons was Mathew Hopkins, Witch Finder General, as he termed himself. He was a native of Manningtree, in Essex, and he devoted his pretended powers so zealously in the service of his country, that in 1644, sixteen witches, discovered by him, were burnt at Yarmouth; fifteen were condemned at Chelmsford, and hanged in that town and at Manningtree. Many more at Bury St. Edmunds, in 1645 and 1646, amounting to nearly forty in all at the several places of execution, and as many more in the country as made up threescore.

In this work he was aided by one John Stern, and a woman, who with the rest, pretended to have secret means of testing witchcraft; nor was their zeal unrewarded by the weak and superstitious parliament. Mr. Hopkins, in a book published in 1647, owns that he had twenty shillings for each town he visited to discover witches, and owns that he punished many: testing them by a water ordeal, to see if they would sink or swim. He says that he swam many, and watched them for four nights together, keeping them standing or walking till their feet were blistered; “the reason” as he says, “was to prevent their couching down; for indeed, when they be suffered to couch, immediately come their familiars in the room, and scareth the watchers, and heartneth (encourageth) the witch.”

This swimming experiment, which was deemed a full proof of guilt if any one subjected to it did not sink, but floated on the surface of the water, was one of the ordeals especially recommended by our king, James I., who, in a work upon the subject, among other things, assigned this somewhat ridiculous reason for its pretended infallibility:—“That as such persons had renounced their baptism by water, so the water refuses to receive them.” Consequently, those who were accused of diabolical practices, were tied neck and heels together, and tossed into a pond; if they floated or swam they were guilty, and therefore taken out and hanged or burnt; if they were innocent, they were drowned. Of this method of trial by water ordeal, Scot observes: “that a woman above the age of fifty years, and being bound both hand and foot, her clothes being upon her, and being laid softly upon the water, sinketh not a long time, some say not at all.” And Dr. Hutchinson confirms this, by saying, not one in ten even sink in that position of their bodies. Its utter fallacy was shown when the witch finders themselves were thus tested; and the last quoted writer says, that if the books written against witchcraft were tested by the same ordeal, they would in no degree come off more safely.

One of the most cruel cases was that of Mr. Lowes, a clergyman, who had reached the patriarchal age of eighty. He was one of those unfortunate ministers of the Gospel whose livings were sequestered by the parliament, and who was suspected as malignant because he preserved his loyalty and the homilies of the Church. It would have been well for him had this been the only suspicion; but he was accused of witchcraft; and it was asserted that he had sunk ships at sea by the power he possessed, and witnesses were found who swore to seeing him do it. He was seized and tested. They watched him, and kept him awake at night, and ran him backwards and forwards about the room until he was out of breath; then they rested him a little, and then ran him again. And thus they did for several days and nights together, until he was weary of his life, and was scarce sensible of what he said or did. They swam him twice or thrice, although that was no true rule to try him by, for they sent in unsuspected people at the same time, and they swam as well as he; yet was the unfortunate old clergyman condemned to death and executed.

In the book written some years after this, by Mr. Gaul, he mentions their mode of discovering witches, which was principally by marks or signs upon their bodies, which were in reality but moles, scorbutic spots, or warts, which frequently grow large and pendulous in old age, and were absurdly declared to be teats to suckle imps. Thus of one, Joane Willimot, in 1619, it was sworn that she had two imps, one in the form of a kitten, and another in that of a mole, “and they leapt on her shoulder, and the kitten sucked under her right ear, on her neck, and the mole on the left side, in the like place;” and at another time a spirit was seen “sucking her under the left ear, in the likeness of a little white dogge.” (See The Wonderful Discovery of the Witchcrafts of Margare and Philip Flower, 1619).

Another test was to place the suspected witch in the middle of a room, upon a stool or table, cross-legged, or in some other uneasy posture, and if she were refractory, she was tied too by cords, and kept without meat or sleep for a space of four-and-twenty hours; all this time she was strictly watched, because it was believed that in the course of that time her imp would come to suck her, for whom some hole or ingress was provided. The watchers swept the room frequently, so that nothing might escape them; and should a fly or spider be found that had the activity to elude them, they were assured these were the imps. In 1645 one was hanged at Cambridge, who kept a tame frog which was sworn to be her imp; and one at Gloucester, in 1649, who was convicted for having suckled a sow in the form of a little black creature. In “a Tryal of Witches, at Bury St. Edmunds, 1664,” a witness deposed to having caught one of these imps in a blanket, waiting for her child, who slept in it and was bewitched; that it was in the form of a toad, and was caught and thrown into the fire, where “it made a great and horrible noise, and after a space there was a flashing in the fire like gunpowder, making a noise like the discharge of a pistol, and thereupon the toad was no more seen nor heard.” All of which was the simple natural result of this cruel proceeding, but which was received by judge and jury, at that time, of the poor toad being an imp!

Hutchinson, in his essay on witchcraft, says:—“It was very requisite that these witch-finders should take care to go to no towns but where they might do what they would without being controlled by sticklers; but if the times had not been as they were, they would have found but few towns where they might be suffered to use the trial of the stool, which was as bad as most tortures. Do but imagine a poor old creature, under all the weakness and infirmities of old age, set like a fool in the middle of a room, with a rabble of ten towns about her home; then her legs tied across, that all the weight of her body might rest upon her seat. By that means, after some hours, the circulation of the blood would be stopped, and her sitting would be as painful as the wooden horse. Then must she continue in pain four-and-twenty hours, without either sleep or meat; and since this was their ungodly way of trial, what wonder was it if, when they were weary of their lives, they confessed many tales that would please them, and many times they knew not what.”

Hopkins’ favourite and ultimate method of proof was by swimming, as before narrated. They tied together the thumbs and toes of the suspected person, about whose waist was fastened a cord, the ends of which were held on the banks of the river by two men, whose power it was to strain or slacken it. If they floated, they were witches. After a considerable course of wicked accusation on the part of Hopkins and his accomplices, testing all by these modes of trial, and ending in the cruel deaths of many wretched old persons, a reaction against him took place, probably at the instigation of some whose friends had been condemned innocently, or of those who were too wise to believe in his tests, and disgusted with his cold wickedness. His own famous and conclusive evidence—the experiment of swimming—was tried upon himself; and this wretch, who had sacrificed so many, by the same test, was found to be guilty, too. He was deservedly condemned, and suffered death himself as a wizard.

Dr. Harsenet, Archbishop of York, in his Declaration of Popish Impostures, says, “Out of those is shap’d us the true idea of a witch, an old weather-beaten crone, having her chin and knees meeting for age, walking like a bow leaning on a staff, hollow ey’d, untooth’d, furrow’d on her face, having her lips trembling with the palsy, going mumbling in the streets—one that hath forgotten her pater-noster, and yet hath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab!—if she hath learned of an old wife in a chimney end, pax, max, fax, for a spell, or can say Sir John Grantham’s curse for a nuller’s eels—‘All ye that have stolen the miller’s eels, Laudate Dominum de Coelis, and they that have consented thereto, Benedicamus Domino,’ why then, beware, look about you, my neighbours. If any of you have a sheep sick of the giddies, or a hog of the mumps, or a horse of the staggers, or a knavish boy of the school, or an idle girl of the wheel, or a young drab of the sullens, and hath not fat enough for her porridge, or butter enough for her bread, and she hath a little help of the epilepsy or cramp to teach her to roll her eyes, wry her mouth, gnash her teeth, startle with her body, hold her arms and hands stiff, etc. And then, when an old Mother Nobs hath by chance called her ‘idle young housewife,’ or bid the devil scratch her, then no doubt but Mother Nobs is the witch, and the young girl is owl-blasted, etc. They that have their brains baited, and their fancies distempered, with the imaginations and apprehensions of witches, conjurors, and fairies, and all that lymphatical chimera, I find to be marshalled in one of these five ranks:—Children, fools, women, cowards, sick or black melancholic discomposed wits.”

Many hundreds of poor old women, and many a Cat, were sacrificed to the zealous Master Hopkins, for Cats and Kittens were frequently said to be imps, who had taken that form. However, he was not the only scoundrel who made witch-finding a trade.

In Syke’s Local Recorder, mention is made of a Scotchman, who pretended great powers of discovering witchcraft, and was engaged by the townsmen of Newcastle to practise there; and one man and fifteen women were hanged by him. But he ultimately shared, as Hopkins did, the cruel fate he had awarded to so many others. “When the witch-finder had done in Newcastle, and received his wages, he went into Northumberland to try women there, and got three pounds a-piece; but Henry Doyle, Esq., laid hold on him, and required bond of him to answer at the Sessions. He escaped into Scotland, where he was made prisoner, indicted, arraigned, and condemned for such-like villany exercised in Scotland, and confessed at the gallows that he had been the death of above two hundred and twenty women in England and Scotland.”Here is an account of the death of a famous witch’s famous Cat:—

“Ye rats, in triumph elevate your ears!
Exult, ye mice! for Fate’s abhorred shears
Of Dick’s nine lives have slit the Cat-guts nine;
Henceforth he mews ’midst choirs of Cats divine!”