Smile like a cheshire cat

Posted by Henry Williams on December 19, 1999

In Reply to: Smile like a cheshire cat posted by Stella Sach on December 17, 1999

: I belive the true origin of smile like a cheshire cat actually comes way before Lewis Carroll wrote his books on Alice's adventures in Wonderland. I belive it was a court jester whose name was Cat Kaitlin from Cheshire. People wanted to be as happy as the court jester and the term smile like the Cheshire cat was this a tribute to him.

: Let me know

All my efforts to verify that a court jester named Cat Kaitlin ever existed have come to nought. However Kaitlin is a a variant of the Celtic name Kathleen and also has Greek origins. It certainly does not appear very high in the ranking of popular family names in Cheshire: in fact I've not found it at all, not even skulking at the bottom of the list.

Where am I going wrong? Where's the evidence?