Dick Whittington and His Cat

Another element in the legend is that Dick attempted to flee his service as a scullion one night, heading towards home (or reached Highgate Hill in later tradition), but was dissuaded by the sound of Bow bells, which promised he would be mayor of London one day.

This early ballad already contains the tradition that Whittington fled his scullion's service and travelled towards home, but was beckoned back by the London bells which predicted his future of becoming mayor.

The earliest known prose rendition is The Famous and Remarkable History of Sir Richard Whittington by "T. H." (Thomas Heywood), published 1656 in chapbook form, which specified that the bells were those of Bow Church (St Mary-le-Bow), and that the boy heard them at Bunhill.

);[a][3] C = Late chapbook (18th to 19th-century printing by J. Cheney):[4] Dick Whittington was a poor orphan boy, languishing in Lancashire (B), or some unnamed place in the country (H, C).

When Fitzwarren organized a trade expedition sending the merchant ship Unicorn (H), Dick's cat was "ventured" to this mission to be sold for profit abroad (B, H, C).

The versions also differ regarding the circumstances: either Dick relinquished the cat of his own volition, hoping its sale in a foreign land might reap a "store of gold" towards the fulfillment of the omen of the bells (B), or, Dick was compelled to do so by Fitzwarren, who maintained a steadfast rule that everyone in his household should have some article of worth riding on the venture, with due dividends forthcoming from the proceeds (H, C).

Dick became disenchanted with the scullion's lot and attempted to flee, either because he received only room and board for his labours but was denied monetary wages (B), or because the kitchen maid (H) or female cook named Mrs. Cicely (C) abused and physically beat him beyond his tolerance.

The ship was driven off course to the Barbary Coast, where the Moorish king purchased the entire cargo for a load of gold, and insisted on entertaining the English traders with a feast.

But the banquet was swarmed with rats and mice, whereby the English "factor" (business agent) informed their hosts that they were in possession of a creature which could exterminate these vermin (H, C).

Whittington biographer Lysons felt it stood there as a marker for "many centuries", even if it was actually just the debris of an old cross with only the plinth or base remaining, as some had suggested.

[10] Henry B. Wheatley argued that Whittington's association to "Holloway" must have been a later embellishment, as it is lacking in the early T. H. text (in which the boy only goes as far as Bunhill, just north of London).

Based on the only remaining evidence, which comes from the record at the Stationers' Registers, there is no proof beyond doubt whether the play accounted for Dick's rise from "lowe birth" by means of a cat, but it is considered likely, since a play from the contemporary period entitled Eastward Hoe (1605) makes an explicit cat association with the line: "When the famous fable of Whittington and his puss shall be forgotten".

The Famous and Remarkable History of Sir Richard Whittington by "T. H." (first edition, 1656) is the earliest extant chapbook version of the tale in the estimation of its editor Henry B.

(1953) is a retelling of the legend,[36] as is a 1958 adaptation titled Dick Whittington and His Cat, written by Oscar Weigle and published by Wonder Books.

But commentators have strived to demonstrate that various pieces of art and architecture might be allusions to the legend of Dick Whittington and His Cat that predate the early 1600s (See §Relics).

Antiquarians have noticed similarities to foreign tales of medieval origin, which tells of a character who makes his fortune selling his cat abroad.

Localized around Keish (Kish Island), this version tells of a certain widow's son who lived in the 10th century and made his fortune in India with his cat.

Albert von Stade in his Chronicon Alberti Abbati Stadensis, writing on the events in 1175,[p] sidetracks into a legendary tale involving two early citizens of Venice.

One was told by Lorenzo Magalotti (d. 1732), regarding a 16th-century merchant Ansaldo degli Ormanni who made his fortune selling his cat to the king of the isle of Canary (Canaria).

An Ethiopian version of the story was written down between 1600 and 1632, although with the addition of the Virgin Mary as a character and the poor man buying the cat for two grains of gold.

[58] An excellent source of various stories is older but still useful, Keightley, who devoted Chapter VII of his Tales and Popular Fictions (1834) to the topic, boasting of the largest compilation of these parallels ever.

[55] "Whittington and his Cat" is listed as one of the analogues grouped under Grimms' tale KHM 70 Die drei Glückskinder [de] ("The Three Sons of Fortune") in Bolte and Polívka's Anmerkungen.

[66] An advertisement bill of the puppet show has been copied out in Groans of Great Britain, once credited to Daniel Defoe but since reattributed to Charles Gildon (d. 1724), with a description of some of the many extraneously added characters and elements: At Punch's Theater in the Little Piazza, Covent-Garden, this present Evening will be performed an Entertainment, called, The History of Sir Richard Whittington, shewing his Rise from a Scullion to be Lord-Mayor of London, with the Comical Humours of Old Madge, the jolly Chamber-maid, and the Representation of the Sea, and the Court of Great Britain, concluding with the Court of Aldermen, and Whittington Lord-Mayor, honoured with the Presence of K. Hen.

Punch also gave his "reflections on the French" that was a breach of "the Moral", as was King Harry (Henry VIII) resting his leg on his queen in an immodest manner.

[88] "King Rataplan (Rat-a-plan)" occurs even earlier, alongside "Queen Olivebranch" who assigns Cupid to uplift Dick Whittington from poverty, in a Charles Millward script for the Theatre Royal, Birmingham production of 1870.

[106] The portrait painting that did exist at Mercers' Hall, affixed with a 1536 date had been witnessed and described by James Peller Malcolm (d. 1815) in Londinium Redivivum, Vol.

According to Malcolm, this portrait of Whittington's had "on the left hand ... a black and white cat, whose right ear reaches up to the band or broad turning down to the shirt of the figure".

This engraving, entitled the "True Portraicture" or Vera Effigies Preclarmi Domini Richardi Whittington Equi Aurat is reproduced in the inset of Lyson's work.

It has also been noted that the engraving originally depicted Whittington with a skull under his hand, but had been replaced with a cat underneath, to cater to public taste, "as the common people did not care to buy the print without it".

This "assertion that a carved figure of a cat existed on Newgate gaol before the great fire is an unsupported assumption", or so it was pronounced by historian Charles Lethbridge Kingsford.