What is a "trasy"? (in Robert Herrick's-Grange, or Private Wealth)

[falesia]

Hello all

I was wondering if anyone could help me with the meaning of the word Trasy in Herrick's poem about his cat:

A Cat
I keep, that playes about my House,
Grown fat,
With eating many a miching Mouse.
To these
A Trasy I do keep, whereby
I please
The more my rurall privacie:
Which are
But toyes, to give my heart some ease:
Where care
None is, slight things do lightly please.

It's not in the online OED or in dictionary.com and I'm no expert on C17th poetry.

If anyone has any ideas I'd be most grateful to hear your suggestions.

[OrphanPip]

The poem isn't really about his cat.

The first four lines say he keeps a cat to kill the mice, and the next four say he keeps a "Tracy" to keep him from getting lonely.

Thanks to the wonders of Norton editors, we can find that Tracy was the name of Herrick's dog.

[falesia]

Thank you OrphanPip, that's most interesting and helpful and adds a colour to the poem that I have missed. A friend of mine suggested "faithful friend" as trasy's definition, which, being a dog, is a synonym of sorts I suppose.

[Rob_Godfrey]

Hi falesia. OrphanPip is quite correct: Herrick had a spaniel named Tracy. He also had a sparrow named Phil. Both Tracy and Phil had poems written for them (see below), and rumour has it that Herrick also kept a tame pig which he taught to drink beer out of a tankard. This was while he was the vicar of Dean Prior, in what was then deepest, darkest Devonshire.

I've recently published a book about Herrick, called The Poetry of Robert Herrick – who was Julia? If interested you can find it on Amazon.

Upon his Spaniell Tracie

Now thou art dead, no eye shall ever see,
For shape and service, Spaniell like to thee.
This shall my love doe, give thy sad death one
Teare, that deserves of me a million.


Upon the death of his Sparrow. An Elegie

Why doe not all fresh maids appeare
To work Love's Sampler onely here,
Where spring-time smiles throughout the yeare?
Are not here Rose-buds, Pinks, all flowers,
Nature begets by th'Sun and showers,
Met in one Hearce-cloth, to ore-spred
The body of the under-dead?
Phill, the late dead, the late dead Deare,
O! may no eye distill a Teare
For you once lost, who weep not here!
Had Lesbia (too-too-kind) but known
This Sparrow, she had scorn'd her own:
And for this dead which under-lies,
Wept out our heart, as well as eyes.
But endlesse Peace, sit here, and keep
My Phill, the time he has to sleep,
And thousand Virgins come and weep,
To make these flowrie Carpets show
Fresh, as their blood; and ever grow,
Till passengers shall spend their doome,
Not Virgil's Gnat had such a Tomb.