The Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles The Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles "(Of) The Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles" (Together with Some Account of the Participation of the Pugs and the Poms and the Intervention of the Great Rumpus Cat) is a poem by T. S. Eliot, which appears in the book, "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" (published 1939). Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "Cats" is adapted from the book, and "The Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles" is included in the musical, in which it is sung mostly by Munkustrap. It describes a battle between two neighbouring
T. S. Eliot most forcefully in a study by Anthony Julius: "T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form" (1996). In "Gerontion", Eliot writes, in the voice of the poem's elderly narrator, "And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner [of my building] / Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp." Another well-known example appears in the poem, "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar". In this poem, Eliot wrote, "The rats are underneath the piles. / The jew is underneath the lot. / Money in furs." Interpreting the line as an indirect comparison of Jews to rats, Julius writes, "The anti-Semitism