The Domestication of Animals in the Middle Ages. 325 



as the twelfth, century, and implies a certain degree of familiarity 

 between the cat and its master. The earliest English form in 

 which I have found the proverb is the following, taken from a 

 manuscript of the thirteenth century : — 



" Wei wot hure cat whas berd he likat." 



i.e., "Well knows our cat whose beard he licks." In the same 

 manuscript the proverb is given in a Latin Leonine verse as 

 follows : — 



" Murilegus bene scit eujus barbam lingere suescit. 



The line is given by Ducange in the following form, which 

 appears to be of still greater antiquity : — 



" Murilegus bene scit cujus genorbada lambit." 



This strange word, genorbadum (for it is here in the plural), or 

 grenorbadum, is only the French word grenon, or guernon, used 

 so often in the early French metrical romances, and means 

 simply the hair on the upper lip, or, as we now call it, the 

 moustache. The same proverb is found in French, or perhaps I 

 should say in Anglo-Norman, for it is, I believe, only met with in 

 manuscripts of that language (probably written in England), 

 in the thirteenth century. The Anglo-Norman poetess Marie 

 quotes it in the following words in one of her fables : — 



" Bien seit chat cui barbe il loiche." 



i.e., "Well knows the cat whose beard he licks." Its modern 

 English form, for it has never become obsolete in our country, 

 is, " The cat knows whose lips she licks." 



I quote this proverb because its early' popularity implies a 

 considerable degree of familiarity between the cat and its 

 master, not, it will be observed, its mistress. Joannes Dia- 

 conus, who wrote in the ninth century, in his life of Pope 

 Gregory the Great, who flourished at the end of the sixth, says 

 (c. hi.), speaking of his contempt for worldly possessions, that 

 " he possessed nothing in the world but one cat (prceter unam 

 cattam), which, often caressing (blandiens crebro), he cherished 

 in his bosom as a companion." I am not aware of any direct 

 evidence to show that cats were made pets of afc a later period 

 of the middle ages. The cat, which was the only animal the 

 nun was allowed to have in her convent, was evidently, like 

 the one allowed to the Welsh village, intended for use, and not 

 for amusement. In some of the droll sculptures of our old eccle- 

 siastical buildings, as in the carvings of the stalls or misereres, 

 we find cats figured as the pets and companions of weird- 

 looking old women. One of the stalls in the church of 

 Minster, in the Isle of Thanet, represents an old woman accom- 



