Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/121

 Rh "cat's aunt;" while a foolish boy who grins and stammers instead of answering promptly is called—Oh! stinging reproach!—the "cat's uncle." There is even a name to denote this feline consanguinity,—Grinagog, which sounds like the very embodiment of contempt.

The wild-cat, that splendid and courageous beast which roamed the English woods in savage freedom, was hunted both for the beauty of its skin, and because, though small in stature, its strength and fierceness made it a noble quarry. In those old rough days the chase was a dangerous diversion, and men loved it for the peril that it brought. Richard the Second granted to the Abbot of Peterborough, who was a man of mettle, a license to hunt wild cats in the royal forest. In Beaumont and Fletcher's "Scornful Lady," we find this allusion to the sport:—

and Shakespeare does infinite honour to the animal's spirit when he likens Katharine to one, in "Taming of the Shrew."

It was the admitted courage of cats, both wild and tame, which gave them their conspicuous place in heraldry, ever since the days when Roman legions and Vandal hordes carried their cat banners