# Finn M'Cool and his Cat *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 20 Apr 1998* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Tony Ellis *20 Apr 1998, 12:03* 20/04/98 13:02 Finn M'Cool and his Cat > Rostrum wrote: > The story of Finn M'Cool and his cat.... > This is one story that seems to invite allegorical interpretation with the > exchange: "Who are they? Well, one is wickedness, and the other a fairy > cat." But while I enjoy this tall tale, I'm hard pressed to find any > connections with Weer's story or tease out the allegory. I've pondered this too, and my best guess is that the story is meant as an allegory of the founding of America. It's connection with the rest of the novel is that America is the subject of the rest of the novel, just as much as Weer is. The last line of the story is something to the effect that the pieces the Cat and the Rat are tearing off each other are running off into the trees, the implication being (it has always semed to me) that these pieces will now colonize the new world. Thus America is born out of a mix of magic and wickedness. This is very much the way America is portrayed in the novel as a whole. There is compelling evidence, by the way, that the voyage of St Brendan really did take place, and that the Irish got to America before even the Vikings did. Wolfe backs this theory in Castle of the Otter. ---