The court · Bretha Étgid, “Judgments of Inadvertence”, with its later commentary, the 7th and 8th centuries

The Cat in the Kitchen

A neighbour’s cat comes into the kitchen and eats the fish left out for supper. Does the cat’s owner have to pay?

Basis. Rests on Kelly’s account of the law, not on the Old Irish text itself. Open questions are set out below.

Topics: Neighbours, Animals on other people’s ground.

The scene Our telling

Sadb had a trout for the supper, a fat one, and she was pleased with it. She cleaned it and laid it on the bench in the kitchen. Then the cows came lowing to the gate, with the sun still well up, and she took her pail and went out to them, and left the door open behind her.

Méone lived next door. She was a kitchen cat, grey and broad, and she knew every house on the hill by its smell. When Sadb came back with the milk there was a head on the bench, and a tail, and a clean line of bones between them. Méone was on the wall outside, washing her face.

Sadb went straight to her neighbour Derbáil. A trout was owed, she said, and a good one. Derbáil said that she had left no fish on any bench, and that a cat was a cat.

What would you decide?

Answer first, then read the law. Your first answer is the one kept. It is stored only on this device.

By Bretha Étgid and its commentary, does Derbáil owe Sadb a trout?

Choose an answer and open it to see what the law says of it. Then read the law below.

Yes. Her cat ate the fish, so she must give one as good.

This answer differs from the law as Kelly sets it out. That was the commentary’s rule when a cat got at food in a secure store or a vessel: its owner had to make good what it ate or spoiled. This fish had been left out on the bench.

Yes, and a fine besides, because a cat ought to be kept in.

This answer differs from the law as Kelly sets it out. The one fine in Kelly’s account of the commentary is for a cat that had done the same before, and it comes with the duty to replace the food. Nothing we have read says a cat had to be kept in. One version of the commentary, on a cat that hurts pets, makes its owner liable by day and not by night, and Kelly takes that to mean that the pets were to be shut in.

No. The fish lay unwatched in the kitchen, and there she is not liable.

This matches the law as Kelly sets it out. Bretha Étgid, in Kelly’s translation, says “the kitchen is an immunity for cats”. The commentary on it, as Kelly reports it, frees the cat’s owner where the food was left lying in the kitchen through carelessness, with nobody minding it. Sadb left the trout on the bench and went out to the cows.

Read the law, the commentary and the sources

The law

The law, as Kelly gives itAmong the animals kept about a farm, Kelly says, the cat is the one most apt to take food from the house next door. For thefts of that kind Bretha Étgid has a general principle, which he translates “the kitchen is an immunity for cats”.

NoteThe Irish word for the immunity is blaí. It is the word of another line in the same text, “the immunity of hammers is an anvil”, which Kelly presumes to mean that nobody pays when a person is hurt by going too close to a smith at work. That line is the rule in our case of The Smith’s Forge.

The law, as Kelly gives itThe commentary that goes with the text explains it. Where the food had been left lying in the kitchen through carelessness, with no one minding it, the cat’s owner owed nothing. Where the cat got at food kept in a secure store, or in a vessel, its owner had to make good what it ate or spoiled. And where the cat had done the same before, there was a fine on top.

NoteKelly gives the commentary’s words for the two places: daingen tige for the secure store and lestar for the vessel. On another page he calls them a larder and a food-vessel, and cites the same lines for a harsher rule: a householder was free to kill a neighbour’s cat that he caught in either. He does not say how large the fine was.

The law, as Kelly gives itOne version of the commentary on the same text deals with a cat that hurts pets. If it does so during the night, its owner is not liable. If it does so during the day, he is.

NoteKelly’s reading is that pets were to be shut in at night, and perhaps also that the cat was to be left free for its night’s work of hunting mice. He adds that Irish church law has the same principle in a general form: for a cat’s offence by night the owner does not pay, and for one by day he does.

The law, as Kelly gives itA cat was property with a price. Legal commentary based on Catslechtae, “cat-sections”, a law-text of which only a few fragments survive, puts three cows on a cat that can both purr and keep the mice out of the barn, the mill and the corn-drying kiln. A cat that can only purr is worth one and a half.

NoteBy a fragment of Catslechtae the cowherd takes a third of the three séts that fell due when a cat was killed or hurt. Kelly puts this down to cats being drawn to the warmth and the fresh milk of the cowshed.

The commentary

Scholars sayIn the legal material, Kelly observes, the cat tends to keep company with women, with children and with the kitchen. The dog, and the hunting dog most of all, stands nearer the head of the household. The cat’s chief use, he says, was as a mouser in its owner’s house and grain-store, and people also prized it as a pet. A law-text quotes a saying that takes the cat’s love of milk for granted: “beer with me, fresh milk with a cat”.

Scholars sayThe fragments of Catslechtae keep what seem to be pet-names of cats. Méone, “little meow”, is used of a kitchen cat. Cruibne, “little paws”, is used of a cat of the barn, the mill and the drying kiln. Bréone means “little flame”, and Kelly suggests it could refer to an orange cat. O’Davoren’s Glossary quotes, presumably from the same text, a Glas nenta, “nettle-grey”, evidently of little value, since the payment for it was only one sét. Kelly cannot tell whether that is one cat or a kind of cat. Our scene borrows the first of these names.

Where we are not sure

Scholars sayOnly the principle, a single short line, is given by Kelly as the law-text’s. He gives the rule about carelessness to the commentary that accompanies it, and goes straight on to the food replaced and the fine for a repeat offence, which we take to be commentary too. He does not date this commentary. Of glosses and commentary in general he says that their main period was the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, and that they must be used with caution as evidence for the time of the law-texts.

Scholars sayKelly gives the kitchen rule without noting any dispute over it. But church law, in the line he quotes, has the owner pay for a cat’s offence by day and not by night, and that line says nothing of kitchens. Sadb’s trout went in daylight. Kelly does not say how the two rules sat together, and we cannot. Our answer follows Bretha Étgid and its commentary.

Scholars sayKelly translates the two safe places twice: a secure place of storage and a vessel on one page, a larder and a food-vessel on another. Elsewhere he translates cuile, the kitchen of the principle, as “larder”. So we cannot say where the open kitchen ended and the secure store began. That is why the fish in our scene lies on an open bench, with the door standing open. Had Sadb put it away in a larder or a vessel, the commentary would have her neighbour replace it.

Where this comes from

Fergus Kelly, Early Irish Farming (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1997), p. 145 on theft of food, citing Bretha Étgid at CIH 290.32 and 1647.1 and reporting its commentary; p. 160 on the cat caught in a larder or a food-vessel (CIH 290.32 to 34); p. 181 on a cat that hurts pets by night or by day (CIH 1647.6 to 7) and on the church-law rule; pp. 121 to 124 on cats, their value and their names, from the fragments of Catslechtae, commentary based on it and O’Davoren’s Glossary; p. 362 on the larder; and pp. 11 to 12 on the date of glosses and commentary.
Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988), p. 149 on Bretha Étgid and the word blaí, and Appendix 1, nos. 33 and 49.
We have read Kelly’s account, not the Old Irish text.

Last checked against these books: 2026-10-06. How we read our sources · Corrections