At Exeter, an ingenious grotesque composition of two duck-footed harpies, one on either side of a _fleur-de-lis_, is evidently from the same source. Examples of this could be multiplied very readily. [Illustration: THE ALTAR OF LIGHT AND THE BIRDS OF DARKNESS, EXETER.] The Cat and the Fiddle are subjects of carvings at Beverley and at Wells. Man has an almost universal passion for the oral transmission of the fruits of his mental activity. In the particular instances of many lingual compositions this passion has become an inveterate race habit, and the rhymes or reasons have been transmitted verbally to posterity long after their original meaning has been lost or obscured. It is no new thing that a nursery rhyme has been found to be the relic of an archaic poem long misunderstood or perverted. The lines as to "the cat and the fiddle" are an excellent instance of the aptitude to continue the use of metrical composition the sense of which has departed. The full verse is, as it stands, a curious jumble of disconnected sentences. "Hey, diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon, The little dog laughed to see such sport, While the dish run away with the spoon." [Illustration: THE WEEKS DANCING TO THE MUSIC OF THE MONTH, BEVERLEY MINSTER.] [Illustration: HEY, DIDDLE, DIDDLE, THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE, WELLS.] I am not aware that any attempt has yet been made to explain this extraordinary verse. Examination seemingly shews that it was originally a satire in derision of the worship of Diana. The moon-goddess had a three-fold existence. On the earth she was Diana. Among the Egyptians we find her as Isis, and her chief symbol was the cat. Apuleius calls her the mother of the gods. In the worship of Isis was used a musical instrument, the sistrum, which had four metal bars loosely inserted in a frame so as to be shaken; on the apex of this frame, which was shaped not unlike a horse-shoe, was carved the figure of a cat, as emblematic of the moon. The four bars are said by Plutarch to represent the elements, but it is more likely they were certain notes of the diapason. The worship of Isis passed to Italy, though the Greeks had previously connected the cat with the moon. The fiddle, as an instrument played with a bow, was not known to classic times, but the word for fiddle--_fides_--was applied to a lyre. It is equivalent to a Greek word for gut-string. In the light of what follows, I suggest that "the Cat and the Fiddle" is a mocking allusion to the worship of Diana upon earth. In the heavens the moon-goddess had the name of Luna, and her chief symbol was the crescent, which is sometimes met figured as a pair of cow's horns. Images of Isis were crowned with crescent horns; she was believed to be personified in the cow, as Osiris was in the bull, and her symbol, a crescent moon, is met in sculpture over the back of the animal. This apparently suggested the second line.