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The legend..........                                                     Back

Where does the legend of the Cheshire Cat come from?

Most people will think of the Cheshire Cat in the stories of Alice in Wonderland. The author Lewis Carroll, or Charles Dodgson to give him his real name, came from Daresbury in Cheshire and he includes many local legends in his stories about Alice. The grinning Cheshire Cat was just one. In the stories the cat regularly appears then mysteriously disappears, before reappearing again, always with a wide grin on his face. Alice is perplexed by its behaviour, but then she lives in a wonderful world of mad tea parties, together with remarkable characters like the Mad Hatter, the Duchess and the Mock Turtle as well as the Cheshire Cat.

However the grinning Cheshire Cat probably predates these stories by many hundreds of years. Some say that it comes from as long ago as 1086, when in an engraving of the coat of arms of Hugh Lupus, the Norman Earl of Chester, the artist has given the head of the wolf a wide grin, which might be mistaken for that of a cat. Another legend says that early Cheshire cheeses were made in an oval shape, which looked like a curled up cat, and perhaps the cat would be pleased at the thought of eating the cheese.

A further interpretation says that when pub signs were painted with emblems of a lion or leopard they were known as cats, for example, The Red Lion in Christleton. These creatures were always portrayed by heraldic carvers and artists with a mouth that curved upwards right up to the extremity, hence giving it a wide grin. In Chester, the Arms of the first Earl was inscribed along with the Lions of England hence the possible interpretation of a Cheshire Cat.
 

Wherever the legend originates from, it's certainly well known throughout the world............