88 THE FIRESIDE SPHINX 



wild or tame, — acknowledging it possibly as a 

 universal and most excellent characteristic of all 

 sentient creatures. " When he hath a fayre skinne, 

 he is, as it were, prowde thereof, and then he goeth 

 faste aboute to be scene." 



Other sins, more flagrant than vanity, were laid 

 at Pussy's doors. Not only was she the "mortal 

 Enemy " of rats and mice, which won her chill 

 esteem from selfish utilitarians ; but, like a true free- 

 booter, she waged war with the same frank enjoy- 

 ment upon " every sort of Bird," as Maister Salmon 

 sadly confesses ; making no nice distinction between 

 the feathered nestling of the woods and her mas- 

 ter's treasured possessions. Farmers' wives were 

 wont to fasten little sprigs of rue beneath the wings 

 of their chicks and ducklings, in the belief that the 

 cat's distaste for this herb of grace would save the 

 barnyard innocents. The marauding spirit that sent 

 her pillaging the cupboard, and revelling in the 

 dairy, prompted her patient and sinister ambush 

 beneath the swinging wicker cage, wherein piped a 

 tame bullfinch or spiritless captive lark. The Greek 

 Agathias, passionately lamenting the death of his pet 

 partridge in the cat's cruel claws, is outclamoured 

 by John Skelton, who, for hundreds of lines in 

 "The Boke of Phylyp Sparowe," bewails the fate of 

 that insignificant bird, and hurls — in fair Margery's 

 name — breathless and terrible denunciations at its 

 destroyer. 



