What is the origin of the mountain pass "Cat and Fiddle"?

Question

Someone has said that it is to do with landownership by a family called "Caton" or "Catton".

Is this a family myth?

Answer 1

We are talking about the Cat and Fiddle on the Buxton road? I live over t'hill in Bollington. Would also like to know....

Answer 2

I'm guessing that you mean the pass at Buxton - in which case it derives its name from the famous Cat and Fiddle pub.

The origin of the pub's name is as per this extract from the link below,

There are many theories about the origin of the 'Cat and Fiddle' name for pubs — but no one knows for certain which, if any, is correct. One proposal often met is that it is a corruption of a French sign, 'Le Chat Fidèle', which was made to commemorate a favourite cat, but this explanation is not generally accepted. An earlier landlord of the famous 'Cat and Fiddle' inn on the moors above Buxton distributed a postcard with a poem that offered what is considered to be a much more likely origin. The poem is to be found in the book British Inn Signs and their Stories, by Eric Delderfield, published first in 1966, and it is paraphrased here.

It says that 'in the brave days of old', when England was having one of its fairly frequent wars with France, the French port of Calais had been taken by the English and was being held by forces under the command of a worthy knight called Caton. He was known by the French as 'Caton le fidèle' because of his unswerving loyalty to the king of England; and one of the men who fought with him was a country peasant from the town of Buxton. When the war was over and this man returned home, he built a house on the site of the present inn, from which he sold ale, wine and mead. His business became very successful — but his alehouse had no name. Dreaming one night of his former master Caton, he proclaimed that the house would be named after the knight and called 'Caton le fidele'. This puzzled the local folk, who struggled with the French pronunciation — and their version became 'The Cat and Fiddle'.