The Owl and the Pussycat

No, our title does not refer to a pub in London. If it did, I would certainly be having a pint there right now. Rather it is the title of a poem by nineteenth century poet Edmund Lear, a man more famous in kindergartens than in universities.

Edmund Lear is identified as an author of “nonsense” poems and stories, a charge he readily accepts. How not? His collected works include such titles as Nonsense Songs & Stories and The Book of Nonsense.

Most critics have been content to accept Lear’s self-identification at face value. But what if there is something more going on here? Consider the words of St. Paul. In his First Letter to Corinthians, he writes:

“The message of the cross is foolishness…we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”

But he also writes, “Yet we do speak a wisdom to those who are mature…we speak God’s wisdom, mysterious, hidden.”

Is it possible that something similar could be going on with Lear? Could there be wisdom ‘hidden’ in his apparent nonsense. And if so, what deeper meaning might lie beneath the surface of his work? Let’s take a close look at Lear’s most famous work,The Owl and the Pussy-cat:

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat, they took some honey, and plenty of money wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above and sang to a small guitar, “O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love, what a beautiful Pussy you are, you are, you are! What a beautiful Pussy you are!

Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl! How charmingly sweet you sing! Oh let us be married, too long we have tarried: But what shall we do for a ring?”

They sailed away for a year and a day to the land where the Bong-tree grows, and there in the wood, a Piggy-wig stood, with a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose, with a ring at the end of his nose.

“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.” So they took it away and were married next day by the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince and slices of quince, which they ate with a runcible spoon; and hand in hand on the edge of the sand, they danced in the light of the moon, the moon, the moon, they danced by the light of the moon.

No prosecutor worth his salt would have a moment’s difficulty making a prime facie case for nonsense here. The defense on the other hand, contending that there is method in this madness, certainly has its work cut out for it. But let’s give it a go!

Our argument starts with the very first line…and with the title itself. An owl and a pussycat, indeed! Tales of animosity between birds and cats permeate all of literature right down to Sylvester and Tweety. The notion that an owl and a pussycat could peacefully co-exist, much less fall in love, seems absurd. Yet it is the premise of this poem.

Oddly though, this juxtaposition is reminiscent of another story told 2500 years earlier by the prophet Isaiah (11:6): “Then the wolf will be the guest of the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the young goat; the calf and the young lion shall browse together with a little child to lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, together their young shall lie down; the lion shall eat hay like the ox.”

Isaiah’s imagery introduces the Messiah, and with the Messiah, the Eschaton, Isaiah’s vision of the Kingdom of Heaven. The resonance of the Lear and Isaiah texts alerts us to the notion that there may be eschatological issues at state in Lear’s poem.

We learn early that our amorous pair is by no means skint. In fact, they have ‘plenty of money’, so much in fact that they can afford to use a ₤5 note like a rubber band. “Plenty of money” - I doubt even you would say that – affluent though you are.

Besides money, they took honey – an interesting choice for a long voyage. (What are they, 5 years old?) Even more interesting because neither species ever eats honey. Owls and cats are both carnivorous predators; so why would they take honey? Again, we turn to Isaiah: “…The lion shall eat hay like the ox.” 

But there is yet another way to read this. Honey is the archetypical spiritual food (“the nectar of the gods”). Mead, the beverage of choice among the divine set, is made from honey. In this reading, the ‘honey’ is not a dietary item at all but the currency of gnosis. The image balances the spiritual (honey) and the secular (money). 

Our couple feels it needs a ring, but apparently not just any ring will do. If it would, they have access to many fine jewelers in London and, as we know, they have ‘plenty of money’. They are not bargain hunting. They need a ring that recognizes the inviolable equality and independence of the marriage partners, even as it celebrates their union. 

Our couple does not wish to consecrate their marriage with a symbol of division and exclusion. So of course they do exactly what you and I would have done in similar circumstances: they sail away for a year and a day to the land where the Bong-tree grows, because I mean you know you can’t find a suitable ring anywhere in London!  

They’ve landed. Now for that ring? “How much must a ring cost on Bong Island if even Harrod’s couldn’t meet their needs?” I wonder. Voicelessly, I warn my animal friends, “You’d better shop around, get multiple quotes, haggle with the merchants.” But they had barely disembarked when they spied a Piggy-wig, standing in a wood nearby with a ring at the end of its nose. 

Apparently, our intrepid adventurers are not shoppers. (I can’t imagine why you’d go to an exotic island if not to shop for knickknacks, machine made in China?) Nor are they in any mood to bargain; and we shan’t even discuss the wisdom of buying a piece of jewelry from a pig on a beach, especially after it has spent time in his porcine snout.

Our pair makes a ridiculously low offer for the ring, ‘one shilling’, and it is accepted immediately. Now for our EU cousins, a shilling is 1/5th of a British Pound, equivalent to about a ‘Quarter’ US. But don’t forget inflation. Lear’s shilling would be worth about 3 pounds today. Still not a stretch for our lovers; after all, they use ₤5 notes as fasteners.

So obviously the entire story makes no sense (quelle surprise!)…unless there’s something very, very special about that ring, something you can’t get at Harrod’s. Well, how about a whole new ‘topology’ (i.e. ‘cosmic shape’)? 

When you buy a ring at Tiffany’s it will always have an inside and an out, no exceptions, not for any amount of money. Every ring divides the world in two (in/outside).The sacrament of marriage, on the other hand, is about eliminating such divisions: ‘and two shall be one flesh’. If a ring is to symbolize the sacramental power of matrimony, it can’t be any ring we’ve ever seen. So, it’s Bong Island…here we come!

To properly symbolize marriage we would need a ring with just one side, with no inside or out. Imagine showing that off at your next high school reunion! Unfortunately though, it’s not available in New York or London…or even in Paris, or anywhere else in a cosmos plagued with an orientable (inside/out) topology. 

But what if were available on Bong Island? A one sided mathematical object exists but only in a cosmos with a ‘non-orientable topology’; it’s called a Mobius strip. Could it be that Piggy-wig’s ring is just such a one sided object? 

On a Mobius strip, there are no fixed beginnings or ends and no fixed orientation (e.g. ‘up or down’). It allows you to travel around it continuously, always coming back to an arbitrary starting point; however, each time you return to the starting point, your orientation has been reversed. Therefore, symmetry requires 720° rather than the 360° we’re used to. 

So, ring bought, now it’s off to be married by some ‘fool on a hill’, some Turkey. (I’ve heard members of the clergy referred to as ‘turkeys’ before but here I think Lear is taking about an actual bird…who knows?)

First the wedding, then off to the reception for dancing, dancing, dancing…and a feast! One catch though: no knives or forks. The only utensil provided by this traditional Bong Island wedding venue is a ‘runcible spoon’ – whatever that is.  

And so we now have two mysteries to explain: the spoon…and of course the ring!

‘Runcible’ is a neologism unique to Lear. Its meaning, if indeed it has one, is entirely uncertain. If there’s a consensus, based mostly on context, I suppose it would be ‘slotted spoon’. If so, that would make it a very poor eating utensil indeed…and that might have been Lear’s point exactly.

I would make a case, however, for a slightly different interpretation based on the possible etymology of the root word, ‘runc’. I must tell you, however, that I am indebted to Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 for much of this analysis:

Old English ‘hruncian’ (to wrinkle) could have been Lear’s primary source for the root in ‘runcible’. It derives from a Proto-Germanic verb ‘hrunkon’ (to wrinkle, crease or fold). That root appears as well in Middle English as ‘ronke’ (wrinkle) and in Old Norse as ‘hrukka’ (also wrinkle). And this makes linguistic sense: phonological developments from ‘hr’ to ‘r’ and between ‘o’ and ‘u’ are common in Germanic languages.

So, by this analysis, a ‘runcible spoon’ is a wrinkled, creased or folded spoon… Heck, we were better off with ‘slotted spoon’ even though there is exactly zero textual support for that choice. A wrinkled, creased or folded spoon would be almost as difficult to eat with as a slotted spoon…but at least it respects the language of Beowulf.  

Plus it ties back to the ring. Suppose the spoon is an extension of the same non-orientable topology as the ring. Three dimensional objects (spoons) that embed a Mobius strip are called ‘Klein Bottles’. 

In our world of 3 spatial dimensions, Klein Bottles are not physically realizable, but if they were, they could hold no liquid. Why? Because like all non-orientable objects, they are one sided and therefore have no inside or out. In this admittedly speculative interpretation, the ‘runcible spoon’ is the 3-d correlate (Klein) of the Piggy-wig’s nose ring (Mobius). It suggests that there is a consistently non-orientable topology in play on “the land where the Bong-tree grows”…as there was in Eden.

What better way to end our tale than a dance: “Hand in hand…on the edge of the sand…by the light of the moon”. What a climax! A dance of Sufi dervishes! What better metaphor than dance to symbolize the resolution of all conflict into universal harmony (Isaiah) and what better place to dance than at the ‘edge’ of the world, the point where orientable spacetime disappears: Sandymount Strand (James Joyce), Finis Terra (Santiago di Compostela), the Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Douglass Adams), Bong Island (Edmund Lear).

This transubstantiation of our humdrum orientable universe has a sacramental aspect. The topology of Eden was undoubtedly non-orientable. It was only by eating the apple that dualities were manifest: naked/clothed, good/evil, life/death. 

Fast forward, the scourge of orientability colors every aspect of life in our ‘fallen’ world: “I’m in with the in crowd; you are odd man out; Warsaw Pact vs. NATO, citizen vs. alien; 1% vs. 99; labor vs. management; red state vs. blue; Yankees vs. Red Sox.” As contrasts, these dualities are enriching; but as conflicts, they impoverish us. 

So in every way, this is the wedding of the ages. It restores primal non-orientability, both symbolically and physically. In Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, Christ is identified as the Alpha and the Omega and in the non-orientable topology of the Eschaton, Alpha and Omega are one!

David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com.

purpose and devotion.

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