*Placebo is the first word of the first chant in the service for the dead. Skelton has here made it into three words. The chant is called the Placebo from the first word. . . . . I wept and I wailed, The tears down hailed, But nothing it availed To call Philip again, That Gib our cat hath slain. Gib, I say, our cat Worried her on that Which I loved best. It cannot be expressed My sorrowful heaviness And all without redress. . . . . It had a velvet cap, And would sit upon my lap, And seek after small worms, And sometimes white bread-crumbs. . . . . Sometimes he would gasp When he saw a wasp, A fly or a gnat He would fly at that; And prettily he would pant When he saw an ant; Lord, how he would fly After the butterfly. And when I said Phip, Phip Then he would leap and skip, And take me by the lip. Alas it will me slo,* That Philip is gone me fro. *Slay. . . . . For it would come and go, And fly so to and fro; And on me it would leap When I was asleep, And his feathers shake, Wherewith he would make Me often for to wake. . . . . That vengeance I ask and cry, By way of exclamation, On all the whole nation Of cats wild and tame. God send them sorrow and shame! That cat especially That slew so cruelly My little pretty sparrow That I brought up at Carowe. O cat of churlish kind, The fiend was in thy mind, When thou my bird untwined.* I would thou hadst been blind. The leopards savage, The lions in their rage, Might catch thee in their paws And gnaw thee in their jaws.