Larking on an ark

Having a lark on your ark? What‘s a-waft on your watercraft? Whatever floats your boat! (Get my drift?)

Now that Memorial Day has passed, water sport season has opened in full force.  Perhaps you will load up the ark with friends and family—two by two--for some fun touring whatever body of water you have access to? Possibly you plan on taking the ark out for some water skiing? Do you have plans to gather your buds and head out fishing in your ark or check your trot lines? 

Depending on the purpose of your water adventures, you may own a canoe, a sail boat, a kayak, a motor boat, a party boat, a skiff, or even a tub. In South Louisiana, you may own a pirogue or a bateau. But an ark?!?

In a recent conversation regarding when the story of Noah and the Flood occurs in the Bible—Genesis, chapter 5—questions regarding why boats are not more commonly referred to as arks came up. After all, in the Old Testament, the vessel which Noah builds is not just a boat or a canoe or even a ferry, but an ark. So why are watercraft not more commonly called arks after the “archetype” of watercraft?

I have to insert a disclaimer before I continue. The word “ark” is translated from the original Hebrew, so the choice of the noun “ark” could be the translator’s choice.

That being said, I pulled out my ever-trusty Oxford English Dictionary for some insight. The first meaning listed for “ark” is “a chest, box, coffer, close basket, or similar receptacle.” More specifically, this meaning is the familiar one of the place where the tablets of holy law are housed, as in “the Ark of the Covenant.” 

“Ark” as in “Noah’s Ark” is defined as “the large covered floating vessel in which Noah was saved at the Deluge.” Therefore, the meaning metaphorically refers to a place of refuge. According to the OED, “ark” meaning “a ship, boat, or similar floating vessel” is a transferred meaning from that Biblical place of refuge. The American Heritage Dictionary ultimately defines “ark” as “a large, commodious boat.” 

None of this information truly answers why the word “ark” is not more commonly used for watercraft. Regardless, many of us who utilize watercraft—boats, canoes, kayaks, pirogues, bateaux, and such—do find refuge in our “arks” from the workaday world.

LAGNIAPPE: See my earlier blog entry “Travelin’” for a discussion of barks as another word for boat.

Cats—WDSS (What Does Shakespeare Say)

My previous blog entry opened a can of worms about a bag of cats. The current blog entry will follow-up that examination of proverbs which refer to cats with a discussion of the burning question, WDSS (What Does Shakespeare Say), about cats. Cats clearly influenced Shakespeare’s choice of character names, as in Fleance from the Scottish play. In addition, Shakespeare uses a variant spelling of Clawdio, Claudio, for characters in Much Ado About Nothing and Measure for Measure.

The Phrase Finder notes that many English proverbs mention cats, providing the following list:  a cat may look at a king (1546); all cats are grey in the dark (1596); curiosity killed the cat (1921); there are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream (1855); and when the cat is away, the mice will play (1607). The Phrase Finder explains popularity of cats in the English language as a result of them being widely kept as mousers and pets. However, as Shakespeare created the world—at least in my version of the creation story—and hence the English language, the number of cats in English proverbs comes as no surprise.

As I contemplated how Shakespeare uses cats in his plays, a few examples popped to mind immediately, such as his characterization of Tybalt as the King of Cats, meaning a formidable opponent and capable swordsman, in Romeo and Juliet. I also thought of the line from Hamlet, “The cat will mew, the dog will have his day,” or as Andy Warhol phrased it in modern times, everyone will have his or her fifteen minutes of fame (MEOW).

Next, I took the traditional approach and consulted the entry on “cat” in Alexander Schmidt’s Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary.”  I report here on a few of my favorites from the multitude of usages. 

For the actors among my readers, the next time you get a role in which you “tear a cat,” as Bottom hopes for in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, you will rant and rave, perhaps like a bag of cats. In that same play, Lysander, under the influence of the love-in-idleness potion, thrusts his former lover, Hermia, away with these words, “Hang off, thou cat, thou burr.” (They end up married at the end.)

Lady Macbeth, in questioning Macbeth’s doubts about killing King Duncan in order to take his throne, asks why he got her hopes up “Like the poor cat in the adage?” The adage refers to a cat who would eat fish but dares not wet her feet. (Both Macbeths ultimately end up with much more than wet feet.)

In Much Ado About Nothing, Benedick arrives to challenge Claudio (see above on naming) for unjustly accusing Hero of infidelity. Claudio, surprised by Benedick’s boldness, comments, “What, courage, man. What though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care.” The allusion to cats refers to the belief that cats have nine lives so it had to be a powerful “care” to kill the cat, thus a powerful emotion in Benedick.

The Tempest offers two mentions of cats. In the first, Antonio speaks to Sebastian about corrupting certain servants to achieve evil ends, saying “They’ll take suggestion as a cat laps milk.” My favorite usage of cats, however, is the second, occurring in a comic drunken scene involving Stefano, Trinculo, and the savage Caliban. Stefano has a bottle of liquor, an elixir previously unknown to Caliban. Stefano exhorts the savage to drink, “Open your mouth. Here is that which will give language to you,” alluding to an old proverb that good liquor will make a cat speak. (If you decide you want to try to make your cat speak, I suggest other means than giving your cat liquor, however.)

Finally, I took the post-modern approach, Googled “cats in Shakespeare,” and found this link on PandEcats.com, “The Cats of Shakespeare.”

LAGNIAPPE 1: I believe I told this anecdote in a blog months ago, but it bears repeating here. Many years ago, I lived with a cat named Clawdio, an adult cat whom I adopted from a local shelter. Since I gave him a Shakespearean name, I decided to teach him to mew Shakespearean speeches, with no success. I learned the hard lesson that, indeed, you cannot teach an old cat mew tricks.

LAGNIAPPE 2: This trivia is not relevant to cats but to Shakespeare. I realized recently that Hamlet begins in the middle of a knock-knock joke. The first line of the play, spoken by the guard, Bernardo, is “Who’s there?” Perhaps Hamlet is so conflicted because he missed the set-up of the joke; hence, he puzzles over it for the remainder of the play.

LAGNIAPPE 3: I would like to recommend two cat-related books: (1) The Big New Yorker Book of Cats (2013); and (2) The Guest Cat, copyright 2001 by the author Takashi Hiraide and 2014 by the translator (from the Japanese) Eric Selland.

Skinning a cat in a bag

Imagine language without idioms, proverbs, or other flourishes to represent the nuances of the human condition. In 1984, George Orwell imagines such a language in “Newspeak.” Recently at work, a colleague used a proverb to point out that we could approach a certain task in a few different ways, saying, “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” A second colleague noted that an absent co-worker who loves cats would have been upset to hear that proverb used. A discussion of the possible origins of the proverb ensued, with great sympathy for Poor Tom Cat.

A few days later, a panelist on a radio talk show commented on a secret revealed, again using a cat-related proverb, “Someone let the cat out of the bag.” This usage caught my attention because of the recent conversation at work regarding skinning cats. At least the poor skinned cat was set free.

 Ways to skin a cat

Where did these catty proverbs originate? I employed only one way to skin these kitties—a Google search. Three different sources all agree that vague references to killing cats appear in English proverbs going back to the 1600’s; however, the exact origin of the first proverb under study remains a mystery. A web site dealing with English Language and usage, English Stack Exchange, cites a letter dated 13 March 1839 in which John Smith writes about the challenge of creating a white flag to signal a truce: "There's more ways to kill a cat than one." The Phrase Finder cites a version from 1855 in Charles Kingsley’s novel Westward Ho!, “There are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream.”

All three sources cited agree that the earliest appearance of the proverb referring to skinning a cat as opposed to killing it appears in 1840 in a short story, “The Money Diggers,” by Seba Smith, an American humorist.

Rolls off the Tongue puzzles over the proverbial desire to kill both cats and dogs, noting a shift from “killing the cat” to “skinning the cat” in American usage and Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, published in 1889. This proverb, however, does not refer to feline cats but to catfish, rendering the proverb less gruesome and potentially more palatable.

LETTING THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG

Now that the cat is skinned, let’s let the cat out of the bag. A generally accepted first appearance of the phrase in print comes from The London Times in 1760: “We could have wished that the author . . . had not let the cat out of the bag.”

Both The Phrase Finder and Mental Floss offer similar information regarding two theories of origin for this phrase. One theory, traced back to 1530, refers to a trick supposedly played at markets in which the wily seller substituted a cat for a pig in a bag, or a poke. According to the Phrase Finder, “If you let the cat out of the bag,” you disclosed the trick – and avoided buying a pig in a poke (bag).

In the second theory, the “cat” is a cat-of-nine-tails, a whip used to punish sailors. Few sources give this explanation much credibility. For a full refutation of both theories, see Snopes.com.

While the cat has been away, this mouse has played—with words and ideas—perhaps set on by the cat’s curiosity, which I hope will not kill it this time. I had planned to write more about cats and proverbs in this blog, but for now I must put the cat back in the bag and promise you more feline-related fun in the next blog.

LAGNIAPPE: “Pig in a Poke” is the name of an episode of “Green Acres” in which Lisa sneaks Arnold Ziffel into a New York hotel room in order to prevent Mr. Haney from seizing Arnold to satisfy a debt.