From myths to cartoons, the mysterious cats have been around for centuries, engaged in a mutually destructive battle for power.
New Delhi: Attorney General K.K. Venugopal Wednesday told the Supreme Court that top CBI officers Alok Verma and Rakesh Asthana were fighting like Kilkenny cats — a phrase that alludes to an Irish fable in which two cats fought and killed each other.
The story goes like this: Once upon a time, there lived two cats in the Irish town of Kilkenny who fought to death and ate each other up such that only their tails were left. The fable also formed the basis of a limerick and an idiom.
On Wednesday, Venugopal told the top court that the Centre had no option but to intervene and stop the “Kilkenny cat fight” in the CBI.
The phrase has since become a hot topic to discuss and share on social media.
However, this is not the first time the legend has been invoked in the context of a political confrontation. In March 1931, a Baltimore Sun editorial used the allegory with reference to a disagreement in the National Democratic Committee. The reference was made in context of a dispute between then Chairman John Raskob and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
ThePrint looks at the folklore and its history.
Also read: Top CBI officers fighting like Kilkenny cats exposed agency to ridicule: Attorney General Venugopal
Lust for power and sadistic soldiers
Kilkenny, the anglicised version of Cill Chainnigh, is a quaint town in southeast Ireland. Known for its castles and cathedrals (and cats, of course), the city has seen many ups and downs since first being recognised in the 1600s.
The myth of the cats predates the existence of the town, and is quite possibly an allegory for the unbridled lust for power.
It is believed that the town of Kilkenny was actually ruled by a mouse-lord. Banghaisgidheach, a monstrous cat, eventually defeated the mouse-lord. Having conquered the highest throne in the land, it is said that the cat turned on its own brethren. And thus, the fable of the cats of Kilkenny was born to warn about the dangers of absolute power.
There is another version of the tale which is as old as the city itself. It is an allegory for the relentless and disastrous disagreement between the two townships of Kilkenny in the 14th century. The Statutes of Kilkenny, 35 Acts passed in 1366 after the Norman invasion, divided the town into an Irish town and an English town. Thus, began a conflict between rival boroughs that went on for nearly three centuries and beggared both.
John Butler in his book Search of Ireland, however, refers to the time that Oliver Cromwell spent in Ireland after the invasion in 1650 as a likely point of origin.
“When Cromwell was here, his troopers, to amuse themselves, would tie the two cats together by their tails, then tie a rope across the road, sling them over and watch them fight.” The use of the cats by sadistic soldiers has become a common enough trope.
It is around the same time that the limerick first makes an appearance.
There once were two cats of Kilkenny,
Each thought there was one cat too many,
So they fought and they fit,
And they scratched and they bit,
Till, excepting their nails
And the tips of their tails,
Instead of two cats, there weren’t any
Then there are 19th century accounts that suggest that Kilkenny cats were actually bred for the amusement of spectators.
In Memoirs of John Philpot Curran, William O’Reagan offers an extended version of the story. Referred to as Silgo cats in this tale, the two are locked up in a room, similar to the way bulls are made to fight each other in Spain. At the end, the author notes, that nothing but “little tails” remained.
“The cats had actually eaten other.” Curran was so disgusted at the representation that he launched a full protest against the “game”.
Also read: Alok Verma tells Supreme Court his fixed tenure of 2 years as CBI chief cannot be altered
Popular culture and visual representations
American author and satirist Mark Twain uses the legend to dismiss the “stupid and rather tiresome” Mormon Bible. He notes that the mythical battle created in the Bible has only ever been paralleled by the tale of the Kinkelly cats. In its grandiosity, the Bible seems to have outdone the cats.
Irish cartoonist John Doyle’s representation of the cats is perhaps the most famous visual image of the legend. He invokes the fable at the turn of the 19th century as “Young Ireland” gears up for a fight against the “Old”. The cartoon was captioned —
“Oh, leave them alone,
They’ll fight to the bone,
And leave naught but their tails behind ‘em.”
Anglo-Irish poet Alfred Graves picks up the myth in the early 20th century, and produces his own version of the limerick — Och! the Cats of Kilkenny, Kilkenny’s wild Cats!
“And that mortial night long
We should hark, right or wrong,
To the feast and the song of them cannibal Cats.”