were lit, fiddlers scraped their bows, and—crowning relish of the entertainment—cats, fastened to long poles, were dropped into the heart of the flames, while the children danced merrily, hand in hand, laughing and screaming with delight. The Flemish peasants, more stolid and unimaginative, carried their cats in bags to the top of steeple or belfry, and dropped the poor creatures from this cruel height. A statute of 1618 forbids the inhabitants of Ypres the pleasure of hurling a cat from their tower on the second Wednesday in Lent, as had been their honoured custom for years.
To Brussels is due the unenviable distinction of having produced the first cat organ, in 1549. This triumph of ingenuity was designed to lend merriment to the street pageant in honour of Philip the Second, and is described by Juan Cristoval, a Spaniard in attendance upon the King.
"The organ," says Cristoval, "was carried on a car, with a great bear for the musician. In place of pipes, it had twenty cats separately confined. in narrow cases, from which they could not stir. Their tails were tied to cords attached to the keyboard of the organ. When the bear pounded the keys, the cords were jerked, and this pulled the tails of the cats, and made them mew in bass or treble notes, according to the nature of the airs."
Such an invention could have afforded, at best,
