ut down by an act of Parliament,
"forbidding the keeping of any house, pit, or other place for baiting or
fighting any bull, bear, dog, or other animal;" and, after an existence
of at least seven centuries, this ceased to rank among the amusements of
the English people.[370] This sport is alluded to in "Merry Wives of
Windsor" (v. 5), "Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa." We
may, too, compare the expressions in "Troilus and Cressida" (v. 7),
"Now, bull, now, dog!... The bull has the game."[371]

[369] Wright's "Domestic Manners," p. 304; see Strutt's "Sports
and Pastimes;" Smith's "Festivals, Games, and Amusements,"
1831, pp. 192-229.

[370] "Book of Days," vol. ii. p. 59.

[371] Cf. "2 Henry IV." ii. 2, "the town-bull."

_Cat._ Few animals, in times past, have been more esteemed than the cat,
or been honored with a wider folk-lore. Indeed, among the Egyptians this
favored animal was held sacred to Isis, or the moon, and worshipped with
great ceremony. In the mythology of all the Indo-European nations the
cat holds a prominent place; and its connection with witches is well
known. "The picture of a witch," says Mr. Henderson,[372] "is incomplete
without her cat, by rights a black one." In "Macbeth" (iv. 1) the first
witch says:

"Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd"--

it being a common superstition that the form most generally assumed by
the familiar spirits of witches was the cat. Thus, in another passage of
the same play (i. 1), the first witch says: "I come, Graymalkin"--the
word otherwise spelled Grimalkin,[373] meaning a gray cat. Numerous
stories are on record of witches having disguised themselves as cats,
in order to carry out their fiendish designs. A woodman out working in
the forest has his dinner every day stolen by a cat. Exasperated at the
continued repetition of the theft, he lies in wait for the aggressor,
and succeeds in cutting off her paw, when lo! on his return home he
finds his wife minus a hand.[374] An honest Yorkshireman,[375] who bred
pigs, often lost the young ones. On applying to a certain wise man of
Stokesley, he was informed that they were bewitched by an old woman who
lived near. The owner of the pigs, calling to mind that he had often
seen a cat prowling about his yard, decided that this was the old woman
in disguise. He watched for her, and, as soon as she made her
appearance, flung at her a poker with all his might. The cat
disappeared, and, cur