Had hatch'd her young Ones in a stately Oak,
Whose Middle-part was by a Cat possest,
And near the Root with Litter warmly drest,
A teeming Sow had made her peaceful Nest.
(Thus Palaces are cramm'd from Roof to Ground,
And Animals, as various, in them found.)’
(lines 1-7)
The Eagle,
the Sow, and the Cat
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea
(published 1713)
It sounds like the start of a joke, but the only
humour here is of the darkest kind.
Three animals are
all living in the same tree, but one of them sees a
chance of monopolising the situation and takes it. By playing upon the fears of his neighbours,
the cat finds a cunning way of coming out on top; there is no hero in this story, only a stark warning about being careful when taking advice that the advisor doesn't have their own best interests at heart.
 |
| Illustration from 1668 edition of Jean de La Fontaine's Fables, Book III. Woodcut by François Chauveau. This image courtesy of: http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net/aiglaichat.htm |
The basic storyline comes from a French poem by
Jean de La Fontaine, entitled ‘L’Aigle, la Laie, et la Chatte’, published in
1668 with the accompanying illustration by François Chauveau.
Yet Anne Finch’s poem is far more than a simple translation. In analysing Finch’s work, both Charles H.
Himnant and Paula R. Backsheider have noted how in Finch’s hands this little
fable becomes a subtle political comment.
In 1688 William and Mary of Orange deposed Mary’s father, James II of
England; differences of religion were the focus of the coup. Yet while this incident is frequently
referred to as the ‘Glorious Revolution’ because of the comparative peacefulness with which it took place, there were those who opposed the change. Anne Finch and her husband, Heneage Finch,
were amongst those who refused to support the new monarchs.
Fleeing London for the safety of the country, they remained active in
support of James (with Heneage even ending up imprisoned for a time for having attempted to join James's exiled court in France). For Anne, this
activity was in the form of writing; through the cat’s smooth assumption of
power in ‘The Eagle, the Sow, and the Cat’ it is easy to see, as Paula
Backsheider points out, the character of ‘the wily courtier, a figure risen
from the middle ranks, who rejoices in sowing dissent’ (p. 47). Though this is not strictly allegorical, and
the politics surrounding the ‘Glorious Revolution’ is much more complex and
intricate than there is space to discuss here, this is certainly a poem that
assumes a highly critical tone of those who use deceit and betrayal to usurp
power.
I don’t want to get too heavy though: I originally
chose this poem for inclusion here because, at least on first reading, it does seem
rather funny. A bit like an Aesop
fable, it conveys a serious moral message through the means of
entertainment. It’s the kind of poem
designed to make you first laugh at the gullibility of the eagle and the
sow - then stop and realise that, actually, the author has quite a serious point. Not least, it's aim is to provoke reflection upon gullibility more generally, and on the importance of not letting the selfish concern
for personal safety create destructive panic.
The eagle and the sow both abandon their young because of the cat’s
machinations, yet this is as much a result of their own preoccupation with
self-preservation as of the cat’s deceit.
One or two points to note before you read this:
the first two lines look like a clumsy attempt at rhyme, but it’s useful to
remember that pronunciation of words has changed a lot over time. Linguistic historians would probably be able
to explain it better, but basically don’t write her off as a poet just because
her first couplet doesn’t seem to work; when she was writing, it probably did rhyme.
Also, when the poem refers to ‘Sow’s paps’ as a great delicacy, it is
referring to mammary glands (I know, sounds disgusting: but then the cat is the
villain of the piece, remember). The 'sycophant' referred to in the moral describes a person
who is ingratiating towards another simply for their own gain (in this poem, the cat).
Happy reading! And apologies to all the internet
cat lovers out there!
As always, feel free to leave comments and ask
questions!
You can
find this poem:
(editions of Anne Finch’s poetry are not always easy to come by, so I would recommend readers use this free version of the poem available online, and from which I have taken the reading that follows.)
Other poems
by Anne Finch can be found here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/anne-finch#about
(Poetry Foundation online: great free resource!!)
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, Selected Poems, ed. by Denys Thompson
(Carcanet Press Ltd,
2003)
(this is pretty much what it says on the tin:
selected poems by Anne Finch. Available
from numerous places; I just put the link to Waterstones for variety. And because they have a points card system…)
Roger Lonsdale (ed.), Eighteenth-century women poets: an Oxford anthology (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990)
(available from numerous book shops online and on
the high street: an excellent volume!
Last time this came up in a blog post I entered up ordering a copy,
which arrived in the post the other day… Look out for future blogs referring to
poems in this exciting little anthology! There are plenty of economical priced
second-hand copies of this available online too!)
The
information for this blogpost was taken from the following sources:
Paula R. Backscheider, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing
Genre (JHU Press, 2005), p. 47
(This looks to be a fascinating and clear book;
like many works of literary criticism, this might be a little expensive for
small budgets (like mine), so I’ve attached a link to the pages relating to
this poem, available via a preview on googlebooks)
Charles H. Himnant, The Poetry of Anne Finch: An Essay in Interpretation (University of
Delaware, 1994) pp. 194-6
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NPJuMBADoYAC&pg=PA194&lpg=PA194&dq=anne+finch+the+eagle+the+sow+and+the+cat&source=bl&ots=mK9qsHosPB&sig=S2QdnbXZfpMgRFrqWTPUBnx3P8g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAWoVChMIo6ec793hxgIVQZ8UCh0zVgB5#v=onepage&q=anne%20finch%20the%20eagle%20the%20sow%20and%20the%20cat&f=false
(The link should lead to a googlebooks preview of the book that gives most of the relevant information about this poem)
Barbara McGovern, ‘Finch, Anne, countess of
Winchilsea (1661-1720)’, Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9426
[accessed 16 July 2015]
(sadly, this resource is accessible by subscription
only)
Leslie
Clifford Sykes, “Jean de La Fontaine”, Encyclopædia Britannica.
Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2015
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-de-La-Fontaine [accessed 17 July 2015]
(an excellent, and free, resource!)http://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-de-La-Fontaine [accessed 17 July 2015]
(a website all about Jean de La Fontaine, written in French but accessible to to English-only speakers via google translate)
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com
(a useful free dictionary online! Always worth looking up unfamiliar words!)
You can
also find out more about Anne Finch on her Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Finch,_Countess_of_Winchilsea
