Gammer Gurton's Cat of Sorrows

Abstract

The cat Gib in Gammer Gurton's Needle participates in a tradition of cat‐abuse that originates in pagan charms and is assimilated to medieval Catholicism in the forms of witch‐lore and calendar festivity. This same body of tradition enters the field of Reformation polemic as evidence of Catholic superstition, and it is in this capacity that it appears in Gammer Gurton's Needle. Similar Protestant appropriations of cat‐abuse may be found in early modern English historical records and related Reformation satirical works such as William Baldwin's Beware the Cat. (B.B.)