Grimalkin

Grimalkin and Greymalkin have various uses:

Cats

Grimalkin was the name of the cat of Nostradamus [Stall (2007), p. 143.] , and later the witches' cat "Gray-Malkin" in Macbeth [ Shakespeare, written circa 1603-1606, published in the first folio 1623; see image in Wikipedia article Macbeth.] by William Shakespeare.

A grimalkin is an old or evil-looking she-cat. The term stems from "gray" (the color) plus "malkin", an obsolete term for a cat, derived from the hypocoristic form of the female name Maud. [OED] Scottish legend makes reference to the grimalkin as a faery cat which dwells in the highlands.

The term/name may first come from "Beware the Cat" (published 1570) by William Baldwin [ Baldwin (1570)] , who relates the story of Grimalkin's death. According to its editors, the story, and thus the name, originates with Baldwin. It is also spelled Grimmalkin or Grimolochin.

During the early modern period, the name grimalkin - and cats in general - became associated with the devil and witchcraft. Women tried as witches in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries were often accused of having a familiar, frequently a grimalkin.

In "Tom Jones", Henry Fielding relates a story from a 17th-century collection of fables in which Grimalkin is a cat whose owner falls passionately in love with her. He prays to Venus, who changes the cat into a woman. Lying in bed, however, she spots a mouse and leaps up after it, "Puss", even when she's a "Madam", will be a mouser still."

Nathaniel Hawthorne, in The House of Seven Gables, Ch. XVI, mentions "...a strange grimalkin... was seen by Hepzibah while she was looking into the back-yard garden for Clifford." In the next sentence he gives definition to grimalkin as "...this cat seemed to have more than ordinary mischief in his thoughts,..."

The Godolphin Arabian, one of the stallions that helped found the line of Thoroughbred racing horses, was very close to a companion cat called Grimalkin. (Racehorses tend to be very high-strung and nervous animals, and often form a close bond with a companion animal; the tactic of trying to sabotage a race by abducting a racehorse's companion animal the night before the race is thought to have given rise to the term "getting someone's goat.")

In the television show "Batman", and later "The New Adventures of Batman", Catwoman (played by Julie Newmar) operated the "Grimalkin Novelty Company", at the corner of Cattail Lane and Nine Lives Alley.

In the 2008 series , the pizza parlor "Jungle Karma Pizza", which serves as a social hangout for the show's main cast, houses a pinball machine going by the name "Grimalkin Gauntlet".

The governess/witch in the novel "The Midnight Folk" by John Masefield has two familiars named Greymalkin and Blackmalkin.

A grimalkin is briefly mentioned in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft, in which sentient cats play a major role.

In the Wardstone Chronicles, written by Joseph Delaney, Grimalkin is the name given to the assasin witch of the Malkin family.

Other uses

*In the X-Men series of comic books:
**The space station "Greymalkin"
**The home address of the X-Mansion on Greymalkin Lane
**See Greymalkin (comics) for the Young X-Men character
*A racing yacht which was a casualty in the 1979 Fastnet race storm. The yacht did not sink, has been refurbished and is still sailing.

In Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Mr. Lockwood shares a set of two benches in the back kitchen of Healthcliff's manor with a Grimalkin described as a "brindled, grey cat, which crept from the ashes, and sluted me with a querulous mew."

ee also

*Malkin
*Robene and Makyne genre names in pastoral

Notes

References

* Baldwin, William (1570). "Beware the Cat: The First English Novel", edited by William A. Ringler, Jr. and Michael Flachmann, Huntington Library Press, ISBN 0873280873 hardcover (1988), ISBN 0873281543 softcover (1995).
* OED. "Oxford English Dictionary".
* Shakespeare (c.1603-1606). Macbeth, first folio appearance 1623.
* Stall, Sam (2007). "100 Cats Who Changed Civilization: History's Most Influential Felines", Quirk Books, ISBN 1-59474-163-8 hardcover.

External links