Cath Palug


Cath Palug, also Cath Paluc, Cath Balug, Cath Balwg, literally "Palug's cat", was a monstrous cat in Welsh legend, given birth in Gwynedd by the Henwen the pig of Cornwall; the cat was later to haunt the Isle of Anglesey, and said to have killed 180 warriors when Sir Kay went to hunt it on the island.
Chapalu is the French name of it. Vicious poem were composed by Frenchmen claiming it killed King Arthur, according to a 12th-century Anglo-Norman author. A cat analogous to Chapalu is eradicated by Arthur in the Vulgate cycle's prose Estoire de Merlin.

Etymology

In the name Cat Palug may mean "scratching cat", but this is just one of a range of possible meanings.
The word palug is theorized to have a common pal- stem, which may mean: "hit, strike" "cut, lop" "scratch, claw", or even "dig, pierce".
Chapalu, the French form can be broken down into chat "cat" + palu "bog", hence "the bog cat"; and in the Anglo-Norman poem Chapalu and palu are connected in the story.

Aquatic nature

It was a sort of fish-cat which was the killer of King Arthur in a fragmentary German poem. The monstrous cat of Lausanne, which was the analogue in the Vulgate Merlin started out as a black kitten caught by a fisherman in his net.
The Cath Palug is always localised nearby water ; lake of Bourget and Lake of Geneva in France, the sea in Wales.

Welsh sources

Cath Palug is mentioned in just two works among early Welsh sources, the triads and a fragmentary poem.

Triads

Cath Palug's birth origins are given in "The Powerful Swineherds" in the Welsh Triads.
According to this source, it started life as a black kitten, given birth by the great white sow Henwen at the black rock in. There the kitten was cast into the sea, but it crossed the Menai Strait and was found on Ynys Môn, where the sons of Palug raised it, not realizing Cath Palug was to become one of the three great plagues of the island.

Pa Gur

Cath Palug was fought and slain by Cai, or so it is implied, in the incomplete poem "Pa Gur yv y Porthaur", found in the Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin. Kay had gone to destroy lleown in Môn. In the encounter, nine score warriors were killed by the cat.
The fragmentary poem states that Kay's shield is mynud against the cat, which has been construed in various ways, but plausibly interpreted as "polished against Palug's cat". This description coincides with the Middle English story in the Lambeth ms., in which Arthur raises a shield causing the cats to attack their own shadows reflected in it.

Arthur's fight with the cat

Outside of Wales, the cat's opponent has been transposed to King Arthur himself.
The chapalu is the equivalent monster in Old French and Anglo-Norman sources.
Several works relate a battle between the chapalu with King Arthur himself. Sometimes the beast wins, sometimes King Arthur wins.
Some of the works only speak of an anonymous cat or cats, but are considered examples of chapalu encounters by commentators, due to the parallels. The cat of Lausanne that fought Arthur, in the Vulgate cycle is a notable example of the cat not being named.
The king is the victor in the Vulgate prose Merlin and in a Middle-English romance in the Lambert ms. noted above. His defeat is noted in several romances that are essentially non-Arthurian but, and can be viewed as a French joke against the English, although some researchers believed some genuine tradition of an alternative death of Arthur.

Li Romanz des Franceis

In the early 13th century, the Anglo-Norman poet André de Coutance rebuked the French for having written a vindictive poem describing King Arthur's death by a cat. André indignantly added that this was an utter lie.
This passage in André's work Li Romanz des Franceis has been excerpted and commented in various studies. André's short résumé of the French work was that Chapalu kicked Arthur into a bog, afterwards killed Arthur, swam to England and became king in his place.

Manuel und Amande

A French original is thought to have existed to the fragmentary, Middle German poem Manuel und Amande written between 1170 and the beginning of the 13th century. It implies that slain by a sort of a "fish-cat", or strictly according to the text, it was a fish which at the same time "had the form of a cat ". This was considered to be a work in the same tradition as the French works that told of Arthur's dishonorable demise, such as polemicized against by André the Norman.

Vulgate Merlin

L'Estoire de Merlin. A man fishing in the lake of Lausanne swears that he will dedicate to God the first creature that he catches, but fails to keep his oath. At the third cast of his line he catches a black kitten, which he takes home, only for it to grow to gigantic proportions. The giant cat then kills the fisherman, his entire family, and subsequently any traveller unwise enough to come near the lake. It is, however, finally killed by King Arthur.

Galeran de Bretagne

Galeran de Bretagne is another work that refers to Arthur's combat with the cat. According to the summary given by , Galeran of Brittany beats his German opponent Guynant, and the latter tries to rile up the Breton by repeating the contrueve that the great cat killed Arthur in a pitched battle.
There is some issue of dissent regarding this interpretation. The text can be read in the converse, so that the German knight says Arthur had killed the cat. Freymond noted that while this was grammatically possible, it was not an allowable interpretation in the context. Gaston Paris agreed on this point. However, John Beston translated the portion at issue as "the proverb about King Arthur killing the cat".

Spanish[Book of the Knight Zifar] chivalric romance

The oldest chivalric romance in Spanish, The Book of the Knight Zifar speaks of a perilous situation figuratively, as tantamount to King Arthur facing the "Gato Paul", which is considered a reference to King Arthur fighting the monstrous cat.

Other heroes

The chapalu is encountered by heroes from the Charlemagne cycle, in either late interpolations or later prose sequels to the original chanson de geste.

La Bataille Loquifer

Chapalu is fought by the knight Rainouart in a late version of in the Guillaume d'Orange cycle. The epic originally written ca. 1170 did not contain the episode, but a late-13th century interpolation to it introduced Arthurian elements.
An extract containing the chapalu portion was published by Antoine Le Roux de Lincy in 1836, Paulin Paris wrote summaries based on a different manuscript.
Chapalu here was the son born after the lutin Gringalet raped the fée Brunehold while she bathed in the fountain of Oricon. Although Chapalu was beautiful, his mother could not bear her shame and turned him into a hideously shaped monster, and this curse could only be lifted when he has sucked a few drops of Rainouart's blood.
The description of the Chapalu after his metamorphosis was that he had a cat's head with red eyes, a horse's body, a griffon's talons, and a lion's tail.
Rainouart is then brought to Avalon by three fées, and Arthur the king of Avalon commands Chapalu to fight this newcomer. In the ensuing battle, Chapalu laps some blood from his opponent's heel, and his human form is restored.

Ogier

Ogier de Danemarche / Ogier the Dane., Probably inspired by The battle of Loquifer. The fight between king Arthur and the Chapalu is presented in the form of a tale of disenchantment, in which only defeat in single combat can free the Chapalu from the curse that trapped it in monster form. When it is vanquished in battle the Chapalu becomes a human called Benoit.

Representation

The fight between King Arthur and Cath Palug is figurated on a mosaic in the Cathedral of Otranto. The creature believed to represent the Cath Palug is a spotted feline, seeming to attack King Arthur mounted on some horned animal, wearing a crown, and holding a club. The crown on Arthur and the horns on the mounting beast appear to be artefacts of the restorer, based on preserved drawings of the mosaic from earlier.

Localisation

The legend about a fight between Arthur and the devil cat of the Lake of Lausanne is now considered to have been localized in near the Savoie region of France near Lake Bourget, where could be found the. This conforms with the account in the Estoire de Merlin that Arthur, in order to commemorate his victory over the cat, renamed a place that was called "Mont du Lac" as "Mont du Chat".
The modern rediscovery of the Arthurian lore here is credited to, who initially searched for local tradition or onomastics around Lausanne, in vain, then crossing the border into France, and found this spot. The community still retained vestigial lore of encounters with the monstrous cat, though Arthur did not figure in them. There was also a piece of 13th century writing by Etienne de Bourbon saying that King Arthur carried out a hunt at Mont du chat.
The Welsh tradition gives as localisation the Isle of Anglesey but born at Llanveir.

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