'
"Oh, horrible! Oh, terrible! Oh, deadly tale to tell!
When the sun shone through the window-hole all seemed still and well:
The cats they sat and licked their paws all in a merry ring.
But nothing else in all the house looked like a living thing.
"Anon they quarrelled savagely--they spit, they swore, they hollered:
At last these six great large tom-cats they one another swallered:
And naught but one long tail was left in that once peaceful dwelling,
And a very tough one, too, it was--it's the same that I've been telling."
By far more artistic is the version for which I am indebted to Miss
Katharine Eleanor Conway, herself a poet of high order and a lover of
cats.
THE KILKENNY CATS
There wanst was two cats in Kilkenny,
Aitch thought there was one cat too many;
So they quarrelled and fit,
They scratched and they bit,
Till, excepting their nails,
And the tips of their tails,
Instead of two cats, there wasn't any.
This version comes from Ireland, and is doubtless the correct original.
"Note," says Miss Conway, "the more than Greek delicacy with which the
tragedy is told. No mutilation, no gore; just an effacement--prompt and
absolute--'there wasn't any.' It would be hard to overpraise that fine
touch."
CHAPTER X
CONCERNING CAT ARTISTS
While thousands of artists, first and last, have undertaken to paint
cats, there are but few who have been able to do them justice.
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