County Kilkenny is located
in the south east of Ireland in the province of Leinster.
It is named after Kilkenny, the main city in the region.
Inhabitants of Kilkenny are often referred to as "Kilkenny
Cats;" the phrase is also used to describe the Kilkenny
Hurling team, one of the strongest in the country.
The county is steeped in history,
having been occupied by Celts,
Vikings, and Normans over the
ages. Kilkenny is rich in ancient
sites, monastic ruins, castles,
and burial sites.
In the 6th century a learned
monk named St. Canice founded
a monastery at Aghaboe, which
later became the seat of the
diocese of Ossory around the
year 1118. He is said to have
founded a monastery near the
present site of St. Canice's
Cathedral in Kilkenny.
Kilkenny Cats
The term Kilkenny Cat refers to anyone who is a tenacious
fighter. The origin of the term is now lost so there
are many stories purporting to give the true meaning.
To "fight like a Kilkenny cat" refers to
an old story about two cats who fought to the death
and ate each other up such that only their tails were
left. There is also a limerick about the two cats.
The story has many roots. One involves soldiers based
in Kilkenny City. However, who exactly these soldiers
were and when they were stationed in Kilkenny is subject
to some conjecture. Some people think they were English
and some think they were Germans under the pay of the
King of England.
One version was told in detail in Notes & Queries
in 1864. It was said that a group of German soldiers
were stationed in Kilkenny, either during the revolution
of 1798 or possibly that of 1803. To relieve the boredom
in barracks, soldiers would tie two cats together by
their tails, hang them over a washing line and leave
them to fight.
A different soldier based story tells that in the
mid 17th century Oliver Cromwell's soldiers tied the
tails of all the cats in Kilkenny in pairs of two and
hung them over a wire. The cats then fought until they
had killed each other. The final cat was then beheaded.
Another story has a thousand Kilkenny cats fighting
a thousand cats from the rest of Ireland in a field
outside Kilkenny City. All the cats died in battle.
This may be a parable based on dissents of the period
between the people of the Kilkenny area and other parts
of Ireland.
After the Statutes of Kilkenny, the city was divided
into two townships called Irishtown and Englishtown,
a situation that wasn’t uncommon in a country
occupied for so long by the English. For religious,
cultural, and political reasons there were deep divisions
between the two groups. This may lend itself to the
story of two cats fighting. Because the rights and
duties of the two townships hadn’t been made
clear by statute this led to three centuries of dispute
between the rival municipal bodies that ended in beggaring
both of them.
It was formerly the Kingdom of Osraige, which existed
from at least the 2nd century A.D. until the 13th century.
The current Catholic ecclesiastical dioceses of that
area is still known as Ossory however the original kingdom
was bounded by two of the Three Sisters the rivers Barrow
and Suir. The northern limit was, generally, the Slieve
Bloom Mountains.
