''PUSS IN BOOTS." 203 



pointed out that the pupils of their eyes went on constantly 

 growing narrower until twelve o'clock, when they became 

 like a fine line, as thin as a hair, drawn perpendicularly 

 across the eye, and that after twelve the dilatation re- 

 commenced." 



" Archbishop Whately once declared that there was only 

 one noun in English which had a real vocative case. It 

 was * cat,' vocative ' puss.' I wonder if this derivation is 

 true (I take it from a New York journal) : When the 

 Egyptians of old worshipped the cat they settled it that she 

 was like the moon, because she was more bright at night, 

 and because her eyes changed just as the moon changes — 

 from new, to crescent, and to full. So they made an idol 

 of the cat's head, and named iVpasht, which meant the face 

 of the moon. Pasht became pas, pus, puss." — Church 

 Times, March 8th, 1888. 



"PUSS IN BOOTS" {Le Chat Boitc) 



Is from the " Eleventh Night " of Straparola's Italian fairy 

 tales, where Constantine's cat procures his master a fine 

 castle and the king's heiress, first translated into French in 

 1585. Our version is taken from that of Charles Perrault. 

 There is a similar one in the Scandinavian nursery tales, 

 This clever cat secures a fortune and a royal partner for his 

 master, who passes off as the Marquis of Carabas, but is in 

 reality a young miller, without a penny in the world. 



The above is from Dr. Brewer's " Dictionary of Phrase 

 and Fable," and goes far to prove the antiquity of what is 

 generally believed to be a modern story, many believing it 

 to be one of the numberless pleasant, amusing, and in a 

 sense instructive nursery or children's stories of the present 

 time. 



