Chapter III (3)

During the Middle Ages it was held that the head of a mad dog pounded up and drank in wine was a specific for jaundice. If, on the other hand, the head was burnt and the powdered ashes put to a cancer, it was held a sure remedy, and, naturally, on the homœopathic principle of like to like, these ashes, if given to a man who had been bitten by a rabid dog, “casteth out all the venom and the foulness, and healeth the maddening bites.” The liver of the dog was equally efficacious. A gipsy preventative of hydrophobia was to take some hairs from the dog that gave the bite, a very risky operation by the way, and fry them in oil, applying them with a little green rosemary to the wound. To eat churchyard grass[64] was esteemed also a good thing in the case of anyone bitten by a rabid dog. So lately as the year 1866 it came out at the inquest held on the body of a child that had died of hydrophobia, that one of the relatives fished up out of the river the dead body of the dog that had done the mischief, in order that its liver might be cooked and eaten by the child. In spite of this the patient died.

It was held that if a cat were in a cart, a state of things that need rarely happen one would imagine, the horses would soon tire if the wind blew from Pussy to them, and that in like manner the steed would soon flag that was ridden by a man who had any cat’s fur in his dress, and that anyone swallowing the hair of a cat would be subject to fainting fits. On the other hand, it was believed that nothing was better as a cure for whitlow than to put the ailing finger for a quarter of an hour each day into the ear of a cat. Anything that touches a cat’s ear is received with such marked disfavour that we imagine this remedy is simply unworkable, as the cat would never be a consenting party. Three drops of blood from a cat’s tail were held to be a cure for epilepsy, while a sovereign remedy for those who would preserve their sight was to burn the head of a black cat to ashes, and then blow a little of the dust three times a day into the eyes. This, we imagine, should rather be classed amongst the methods of injuring the sight.

To cure a stye our forefathers had great faith in rubbing it with hairs from a cat’s tail,[65] two essential points being that the cat should be a black one, and that the operation should take place on the first night of the new moon; but to cure warts the hairs must be taken from the tail of a tortoiseshell cat, and even then the remedy is only efficacious during the month of May. Another strange belief was that a cat having three colours in its fur was a great protection against fire. It is an old idea that the brains of cats are of destructive malignity, and that anyone desiring to quietly get rid of an enemy has only to invite him to a repast in which some of the delicacies have an imperceptible fragment of this poison added.

Cats see well by night, and were often, and especially black ones, believed to be the witches’ familiars, and therefore regarded with fear and aversion. It was held that they had power to raise a gale, and on board ship the malevolent disposition with which they were credited has made them in an especial degree unpopular shipmates. Pussy was thought to particularly provoke a storm by playing with any article of wearing apparel, by rubbing her face, or by licking her fur the wrong way; she was sheltered from rough usage however by the belief that provoking her would bring a gale, while drowning her would cause a regular tempest. In Germany there is a belief that anyone who makes a cat his enemy will be attended at his funeral by rats, and heavy rain. As cats see well by night, and are given to wandering abroad at unholy hours, they were connected with the baleful influences of the moon. Freye, the Norse goddess, was attended by cats, and Friday, her especial day, was always considered unlucky. The ruffling of the water by the rising wind is called a cat’s paw, and cats are said to smell a coming gale, while all must be familiar with that tempestuous state of affairs known as “raining cats and dogs.” In Cornwall, and on some other parts of the coast, the people say that a spectral dog, called Shony, is sometimes seen, and that this always predicts a storm.

Some persons have a marked antipathy to cats. Henry III. of France fainted if he caught sight of one, and Napoleon I. had almost as strong a feeling and failing. Shylock, in the Merchant of Venice it will be remembered, says:—

“Some men there are that love not a gaping pig,
Some that are mad if they behold a cat.”

It is well known that cats have a wonderful knack of falling on their feet, and they are so tenacious of life that they are ordinarily credited with having nine lives, though it is proverbially held that care will kill even a cat. Not only does Shakespeare refer to cat-lore in Macbeth in “the poor cat i’ the adage,” but in Romeo and Juliet this old belief in the strong hold that Pussy has on life is distinctly referred to in the first scene of the third act:—

“What would’st thou have with me?
Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine lives.”

The cat again appears in the legend of the indomitable cats of Kilkenny that fought till a little fluff was all the record of that sanguinary struggle, and we have all of us heard of the special power of facial expression of the cats of Cheshire.

The Grimalkin of Shakespeare’s Macbeth was one of the witch’s familiar spirits, and the cat, the reputed companion of these unlovely and unloved personages, often therefore receives this name. Aubrey, writing in 1686, tells a story that smacks strongly of witchcraft and the black cat. “Mrs. Clarke, a Herefordshire woman, told me,” he says, “to bury the head of a black Catt with a Jacobus or a piece of gold in it, and put into the eies two black beanes (what was to be done with the beanes she hath forgott), but it must be done on a Tuesday at twelve o’clock at night, and that time nine nights after the piece of gold must be taken out, and whatsoever you buy with it (always reserving some part of the money) you will have money brought into your pockett, perhaps the same piece of gold again.” Unfortunately, he does not seem to have tried it, so we never learn what success might have attended the experiment.

The description of pussy by Bartholomew Anglicus is most graphic, and is an evident study from the life. “He is a full lecherous beast in youth,” saith he, “swift, pliant, and merry, and leapeth and reseth on everything that is afore him, and is led by a straw and played therewith, and is a right heavy beast in age and full sleepy, and lieth slyly in wait for mice, and is aware where they be more by smell than by sight, and hunteth and reseth on them in privy places, and when he taketh a mouse he playeth therewith, and eateth him after the play. In time of love is hard fighting for wives, and one scratcheth and rendeth the other grievously with biting and with claws; and he maketh a rueful noyse and ghastful when one proffereth to fight with another, and hardly is he hurt when he is thrown down off an high place.[66] And when he hath a fair skin he is, as it were, proud thereof, and goeth fast about, and is oft for his fair skin taken of the skinner and slain and flayed.”[67] This is clearly the description of a close and accurate observer.

The description in the “Speculum Mundi,” though much shorter, is almost equally happy. “The common or vulgar Cat is a creature well known, and being young it is very wanton and sportfull: but waxing older is very sad and melancholy. It is called a Cat from the Latine word signifying wary, for a Cat is a watchfull and warie beast, seldome overtaken, and most attendant to her sport and prey.” John Bossewell says of the cat that “he is slie and wittie and seeth so sharply that he overcommeth darknesse of the nyghte by the shynynge lyghte of his eyne. He doth delighte that he enjoyeth his libertie.” Men may come and men may go, but cat-nature is evidently unchanging.

Cats naturally suggest rats and mice. It was an ancient belief that these sprang spontaneously from any mass of putrefaction. “Mice excell all living creatures,” writes one of the ancient authorities, “in the knowledge and experience of things to come: for when any old house, habitation, tenement, or other dwelling place waxeth ruinous and ready to fall, they perceive it first, and out of that their foresight they make present avoidance from their holes, and betake themselves to flight even as fast as their little legs will give them leave, and so they seek some other place wherein they may dwell with more securitie.” Our readers will naturally recall the proverbial belief that rats desert the sinking ship. Swift, in his epistle to Mr. Nugent, writes of those that “fly like rats from sinking ships,” and the desertion of the losing side has received the opprobrious name of “ratting” on this account.

Maundevile, amongst many other wonderful things that he saw or heard of in his travels, came to a place where the rats were as large as dogs;[68] requiring great mastiffs for their capture, as they were altogether beyond the power of the cats of the place to deal with. “And ther ben Myse als grete as Houndes, and yalowe Myse als grete as Ravennes.” If the rats and mice kept the proportion between their respective sizes that we are familiar with, and the mice were as big as hounds, we can readily understand that the rats must have been very formidable creatures indeed, and quite beyond the power of ordinary terrier or pussy to cope with.

Jordanus brought home a story of rats in India as large as foxes. The creatures he saw were probably bandicoots,[69] very rat-like animals, though not quite so big as foxes, even though the Indian foxes are much smaller than the species we have in England. A bandicoot is about twenty-one inches long, full measure, about five inches of this being tail. According to Herodotus, it was not the rats that were equal in size to foxes in India, but the ants. We can recall an absurd picture of these in one of the mediæval natural history books, where a couple of Europeans stand at a very respectful distance from a large mound that is covered with ants as big as cats, the effect of the ant-form when thus magnified being very quaint.

It was a very ancient belief that oysters, mussels, cockles, and all shell fishes grew or diminished according to the phases of the moon. “Some have found it out by diligent search that the fibres in the livers of rats and mice answer in number to the days of the month’s age.” This was really a very curious discovery to make, or shall we rather say—a very curious assertion to be responsible for?

It is impossible to mention a tithe of the strange facts got together by the industry of the men of science of the past; sometimes introducing to our notice the most extraordinary creatures, at others presenting the most ordinary creatures in an extraordinary way. What can we say, for instance, of the Catoblepas, a beast bred in Lybia, “a fearful and terrible beast to look upon”? His eyes “very fierie, as it were of a bloudie colour, and he never useth to look directly forward, nor upward, but always down to the earth.” He has a long mane and cloven feet, and his body covered with scales. “As for his meat, it is deadly and poysonfull herbes, and he sendeth forth a horrible breath which poysoneth the aire over his head and about him, inasmuch that such creatures as draw in the breath of that aire are grievously afflicted, and losing both voice and sight, they fall into deadly convulsions.” What shall we say of the Oryges, the only beast in creation that has his hair growing reversed and turning towards the head? Or of the Lomie in the forests of Bohemia, “which hath hanging under its neck a Bladder always full of scalding water, with which, when she is hunted, she so tortureth the Dogs that she thereby maketh her escape”? Or of the wonderful Eale of Ethiopia as large as a hippopotamus, and having horns that he can incline backwards or forwards at any angle to suit the exigencies of conflict? Or of the Manticora, having the face of a man and the body of a lion, and voice like the blending of flute and of trumpet? Or of fifty other creatures equally extraordinary? It is painful to think that such stories were deliberate inventions, and that knaves devised them and fools accepted them; and we must, we believe, conclude that almost every story had a grain of truth in it, but that the love of the marvellous, the tendency to exaggeration, the change that took place as the story travelled, and received almost unconsciously here an additional graphic touch and there a little more fully developed detail, made the fully matured statement an entirely different thing to the modest seed from which it sprang.

We have already encountered many instances of how the most ordinary creatures are described in a way that leads one to suppose that the two great virtues in a naturalist, observation and experiment, were almost entirely wanting at any period for the last two thousand years or more. How else could such a belief as that the badger has his two legs on one side shorter than the other two have ever gained credence? or that the ram “when he slepeth, from spring-time till harvest he lyeth on the one side, and from harvest till spring-time againe on the other side”? Or, to travel a little further afield, that the whiskers of a tiger are mortal poison, causing men to die mad if given to them in meat? Or that the camel is so ashamed of its ugliness that before drinking in a stream it always fouls the water so that it may not see the reflection of itself? Or fifty other statements equally at variance with the facts? The respect for those who by the vigour and uncompromising directness of their assertions became regarded as great authorities was so tremendous and all-embracing that no one seemed to dare to challenge statements made by them, while the ease and comfort to subsequent writers of having all responsibility taken off their own shoulders by merely copying instead of testing had a fatal fascination, the result being that many assertions have had a vigorous vitality for centuries that could have been readily disproved in a week or even an hour of honest personal investigation.