But we have got among the birds again. We must hark back to our four-footed friends. There are no “Donkeys” in the London Directory—probably the only place in the world where they are not to be found. But this may be accounted for, perhaps, because there are no Thistles there either. Nevertheless, had there been an English Directory in the year when Domesday Book was compiled, it would have been otherwise; for, thistles or no thistles, “Roger the Ass” is among the list of tenants under the crown. Here we have been liberal: for we have presented our good thistle-loving friend with no less than three of our baptismal names. In the north of England, where Cuthbert was the favourite appellation for three centuries at least, he is called a _Cuddy_, that being the pet form of the saintly sobriquet. {141} In more southern regions he is known as _Ned_ or _Neddy_, from Edward. And north and south alike, _Jack_-ass is familiar to all. It is curious to notice how a name that has become opprobrious can be dropped. “Rascal” was one of our commonest surnames while the term only meant a lean, ragged deer; but when it was passed on to a _herd_ of worthless folk the surname disappeared. One of the latest was Robert Rascal, who, according to Foxe, was persecuted for his religion in 1517. I must not omit the mention of one or two of our household favourites. There are five Catts in our London Directory, entered in old days as Adam le Kat, or Milo le Chat. In the reign of Richard the Third, there was a rhyme to this effect:— “The Rat, the Cat, and Lovel the Dog, Rule all England under the Hog.” The Hog was the king, Rat was Ratcliffe, and Cat, Catesby. It is not often we hear of cat, dog, and rat, uniting together to worry others, and not one another! If I recal my history correctly, however, they did fall out in the end. There must have been something sleek and smooth, if not stealthy, about the progenitor of our friends the Catts, I fear. But if our mouse-loving friends gave us their appellation, we were bountiful in return. For three hundred years the most familiar term for a cat was “Gib,” from Gilbert. Hamlet says:— “For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise, Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib, Such dear concernings hide?” And in Peele’s “Edward the First,” the Novice says to the Friar:— “Now, master, as I am true wag, I will be neither late nor lag, But go and come with gossip’s cheer Ere Gib, our cat, can lick her ear.” That Gib was short for Gilbert, our Gibbs, Gibsons, Gibbins, and Gibbons can prove. But “Gib” for a cat is obsolete, I fear; and now we speak of a Tom-cat. A female cat was called a Tib-cat, or Tibert, from Tibb, or Tibot, pet forms of Theobalda, which at one period as Tibota was our commonest girl’s name. In “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” one of our very earliest dramatic plays, Dicon (Richard) says:—