28o Tlie Book of Cats. 



nine tails,'* referred to in a former chapter, a writer 

 in Notes and ^eries says : — 



" As there appears to be some uncertainty about 

 the number of cords or tails attached to this whip, 

 it may be a question whether, like its namesake, 

 the animal, it did not originally commence by 

 having only one tail, and in course of time or 

 fashion increase to nine, the number of lives pro- 

 verbially allotted to our domestic friend Pussy. 



" According to the Talmudists {Maccoth iii. lo), 

 the Jews, in carrying out their sentences of 

 scourges, employed for that purpose a whip which 

 had three lashes (Jahn's Arch. Biblica, page 247), 

 and it is stated in the Merlinus Liberatus^ or John 

 Partridge's Almanack for l6g2, that in "May, 1685, 

 Dr. Oates was whipt," and "had 2,256 lashes with 

 a whip of six thongs knotted, which amounts to 

 I3>536 stripes." Sir John Vanbrugh, moreover, in 

 the prologue to his play of the False Friend (written 

 A.D. 1702), alludes to this scourge in these words: — 



" You dread reformers of an injurious age, 

 You awful cat-o'-nine tails of the stage." 



"In James'' s Military Dictionary, the cat, etc., is 

 described as " a whip with nine knotted cords, 

 with which the public soldiers and sailors are 



