Breaded cats

I don’t know whether people know what belling the cat means now. In an allusive language like ours, some references sink out of sight. But the old tale is that a council of mice resolved to hang a bell round a cat’s neck, to warn them of its approach. Which of them would have the temerity to hang the bell on the cat?

The tale pre-dates Langland, who, in Piers Plowman in the 1370s, referred to the plan to get ‘a belle of brasse… And hangen it up-on the cattes hals’.