What Is The Origin Of (163)?…
Fight like Kilkenny cats
A little while ago someone, in describing a spat, described the adversaries as fighting like Kilkenny cats. I have never been to Kilkenny in the south-east of the Republic of Ireland and so cannot verify how aggressive the moggies there are. The sense of its figurative usage is pretty clear, describing a couple of particularly tenacious opponents who are diametrically opposed in their views and will never agree. Think Brexiteers and Remainers. But why cats from Kilkenny?
A clue to understanding the genesis of the phrase is to be found in a limerick attributed to that most prolific of poets, Anon. There are a number of variants but this version gives the general sense; “there once were two cats of Kilkenny/ each thought there was one cat too many/ so they fought and they hit/ and they scratched and they bit/ ‘til (excepting their nails/ and the tips of their tails/ instead of two cats there weren’t any!” It must have been some scrap. Although limericks are strongly associated with Ireland, there is no clue as to why these ferocious cats came from Kilkenny, other than the felicitous rhyming of their town of origin with many.
Etymologists like to ascribe the origin of a word or phrase to some historical event or person and there are three theories, each of which appeared in the pages of Notes and Queries during the middle of the 19th century, relating to Kilkenny cats. The first, appearing in an edition from 1850, refers to the factional disputes between the English and Irish contingents in Kilkenny during the period between the 14th and 17th centuries. There was much to fall out over – after all, the English were the occupiers and the native Irish the oppressed. Following Henry VIII’s schism with Rome, there were religious differences. And to cap it all, there was no clarity in statute as to the respective roles and rights of each community. The result was three centuries of bickering which ended up putting the town in Queer Street. It is said that our phrase is an allegorical representation of this tempestuous and ultimately ruinous relationship.
A second attempt was made to explain the origin appeared in an edition of Notes and Queries from 1864. According to this explanation, a group of German soldiers were stationed in Kilkenny at the turn of the 19th century and to relieve the monotony of garrison life, they used to arrange fights between a couple of moggies that were tied together by their tails. One day an officer, alerted by the noise, went to see what was going on and in an attempt to hide the evidence one soldier cut off both tails to allow the cats to escape. Holding the tails, he explained that the fight was so fierce that the elongated pieces of fur, bone and cartilage in his hand were all that was left.
A third version tells of a battle in the 18th century between two bands of cats, a thousand strong each side. The fighting was so vicious that all the cats were killed on both sides. This sounds very much like a particularised version of the first explanation. All have elements of a shaggy dog story (or should it be shaggy cat?) about them. The disputes between Irishtown and Englishtown, as the two disputatious communities were called, may have a scintilla of truth about them but I have a sneaking suspicion that Kilkenny may just have easily have been selected because of its rhyming qualities. As with many of these enquiries, no one really knows.
