Articles

• Frequently Asked Questions
• Aliens and Irishmen!
• Attack of the Plastic Patty's
• Beyond Green Beer and Leprechauns
• Celebrating the Saint of Ireland - St. Patrick
• Celtic Cats - Magical Mystery Purr!
• Celtic Love, nothing short of Epic!
• An Interview with a Faerie in the 21st Century
• Five Miracles of Storytelling
• Halloween, the Celtic American Holiday!
• Irish Standard Time
• Kerns + Galloglass. Scariest Team on Earth!
• One old Biddy you don't mess with
• The Problem with Fairies.... NEW!
• Saint Preserve Us
• Shaggy Dog Stories - a Celts best friend!
• St. Patrick's Day: A story of celebration and survival
• Storytelling for Kids
• A Tough Act To Follow - Mystic, Legend, Saint,… Patrick.
• Tying the Knot, Celtic Style

Celtic Cats - Magical Mystery Purr!

Legends and Lore by True Thomas the Storyteller

First, let me make a disclaimer- I like cats. I've been owned by several large apple headed Siamese, and have learned to respect our friends, Felis Catus. Smart, powerful, and capable of yowling through concrete walls, even our everyday housecat has huge body of legend and lore. The Celts have always had a great love of nature, and so we see a lot animals featured in their legends and folklore. Cats have an interesting place in these Celtic legends, both loved and hated. They have always been associated with magic… and this has been both good and bad, as we shall see.

One of the earliest Irish Legends has Miach, the son of Diancecht, god of healing placing the eye of a cat into the face of a one-eyed man. Everything seems fine, but later the man comes back to complain "I can't sleep! That eye! Every rustle of a mouse, flight of a bird, even in the dead of night, and it wakes right up. During the day, when others head off to battle, it sleeps!" There are no reports if this condition was fixed.

One great story involves Irusan, King of Cats during the time of Senchan Torpeist. Senchan Torpeist was a bard so powerful, he could satirize mice at his table, and they would fall dead with shame. In one instance while visiting King Guaire, Senchan decided he was unhappy with the hospitality provided. After refusing several offers of food, he finally deigned to eat an egg. Unfortunately, a rat had run off with it. Senchan proceeds to satirize Irusan, and all the cats of Ireland. This proves to be a big mistake. Irusan hears word of this, and in rage heads toward Connaught to deal with Senchan. Irusan, King of Cats flies through the armed might of King Guaire and is described as being coal black, the size of a bull, and in the words of the bards of old "his appearance--rapacious, panting, jagged-eared, snub-nosed, sharp-toothed, nimble, angry, vindictive, glare-eyed, terrible, sharp-clawed." Irusan snags up Senchan and takes him back to his cave. On his way, Senchan tries to make nice, but it's St. Kieran who sees the bard on the back of the giant cat, and stops Irusan. Senchan of course, criticized St. Kieran for getting involved.

There are folktales about fairies posing as cats, fairy cats (Cait Sith) and of common household cats with a secret life. One farmer was coming home one night and saw a funereal procession that was rather odd. He saw a long parade of cats, wailing, and 6 very large ones carrying a coffin, saying that the King of Cats was dead. When he got home, he immediately relates this to his wife. At that moment, the sleeping family cat jumped up and said "Really? Why, that means I'm the King of Cats!" and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Every Celtic country has it's cat-legends. The Welsh believed that ship-cats could predict weather and tides. The English were worried about cat's stealing a babies breath and the Scot's had a very gruesome ritual called the Taghairm. (There is another ritual of the same name not involving cats.) In Scottish tradition there is a giant demonic cat, named Big Ears, who can be summoned by roasting cats alive in succession, in bags or on spits for four days and nights. According to the story, he shows up and grants wishes. The last ceremony of Taghairm was said to have been performed in Mull and was described in detail in the London Literary Gazette (March 1824). According to the witness, it was very unlikely that the people who performed the ceremony ever saw heaven.

We add this to the fact that during the plague years, cats were supposed to be associated with witches, and so were wiped out of many European towns. This was very counter productive, as we now know that some forms of plague were actually carried by the fleas on rats, and the cats were actually helping to prevent the plague.

The legends and stories of our feline friends continue to this day, with stories of the Kellas Cats named after the village of Kellas, Morayshire, Scotland. People tell of very large cats, often described as black and the size North American Lynx that live in the Scottish highlands. Some specimens have been collected, and genetic tests prove that they are hybrids of some sort, part domestic cat and part wildcat. Certainly wildcats were in the Scottish lands at one point so it's not unreasonable to think that there are still some lurking about, cross breeding with housecats.

I find it interesting that Irusan, Big Ears, and some of the Kellas cats are described as big black cats. And that we still see them represented very much during Halloween, aka Samhain, for us Celtic types. These legends still get around. So the next time your cat preemptively sits on the Sunday paper or acts like the world revolves around them, it may come naturally. After all, they may actually be Royalty - and the next King of Cats!