[372] "Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," p. 267; Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 7.
[373] Malkin is a diminutive of "Mary;" "Maukin," the same word, is still used in Scotland for a hare. "Notes to Macbeth," by Clark and Wright, 1877, p. 75.
[374] Sternberg's "Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire," 1851, p. 148.
[375] Henderson's "Folk-Lore of Northern Counties" 1879, p. 206.
[376] Kelly's "Indo-European Folk-Lore," 1863, p. 238.
[377] Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," 1851, vol. iii. p. 32.
[378] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 32; vol. iii. pp. 26-236.
[379] See Baring-Gould's "Book of Werewolves," 1869, p. 65.
[381] Dyce's "Glossary to Shakespeare," p. 70.
[382] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 39; also Wright's "Essays on the Superstitions of the Middle Ages," 1846.
Percy, in his "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry" (1794, vol. i. p. 155), says: "It is still a diversion in Scotland to hang up a cat in a small cask or firkin, half filled with soot; and then a parcel of clowns on horseback try to beat out the ends of it, in order to show their dexterity in escaping before the contents fall upon them."
This practice was once kept up at Kelso, in Scotland, according to Ebenezer Lazarus, who, in his "Description of Kelso" (1789, p. 144), has given a graphic description of the whole ceremony. He says, "This is a sport which was common in the last century at Kelso on the Tweed. A large concourse of men, women, and children assembled in a field about half a mile from the town, and a cat having been put into a barrel stuffed full of soot, was suspended on a crossbeam between two high poles. A certain number of the whipmen, or husbandmen, who took part in this savage and unmanly amusement, then kept striking, as they rode to and fro on horseback, the barrel in which the unfortunate animal was confined, until at last, under the heavy blows of their clubs and mallets, it broke, and allowed the cat to drop. The victim was then seized and tortured to death." He justly stigmatizes it, saying:
"The cat in the barrel exhibits such a farce, That he who can relish it is worse than an ass."
Cats, from their great powers of resistance, are said to have nine lives;[383] hence Mercutio, in "Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 1), says: "Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine lives." Ben Jonson, in "Every Man in His Humour" (iii. 2), makes Edward Knowell say to Bobadil, "'Twas pity you had not ten; a cat's and your own." And in Gay's fable of the "Old Woman and her Cats," one of these animals is introduced, upbraiding the witch: