An example from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.

The Book of Kells contains a wealth of decoration, featuring not only abstract interlacing patterns and zoomorphic motifs but portraits of the Evangelists, of Christ, and of the Virgin and Child. The patterns that flank this portrait are typical of the Hiberno-Saxon style of manuscript illumination.

Book of Kells : Book of Kells, largest and most sumptuously decorated of the few illuminated Gospel books to survive from monasteries in Ireland and the north of Britain between the 7th and the 9th centuries. The date and place of origin of the Book of Kells have long been disputed. The rich monasteries of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, and Kells, in County Meath, Ireland, could well have produced such a lavish illuminated manuscript, whose vellum pages required over 185 calf-skins. It may have been begun at Iona in the late 8th century and then taken to Kells, where in ad 807 a monastery was established as a refuge from Viking raids.

The manuscript is incomplete and now comprises 680 pages of the Gospels in Latin preceded by canon tables and other introductory text pages usual in such manuscripts. Much of the Gospel of St John is missing.

The manuscript’s glory lies in its decoration. Illustrations include the symbols of the Evangelists, their portraits, and those of Christ, and the Virgin and Child. The additional scenes of the Temptation and Arrest of Christ are the earliest narrative scenes to survive in a Gospel manuscript. Each Gospel opens with a richly decorated initial. The text is filled with abstract and zoomorphic (animal-form) interlace patterns which characterize not only this manuscript but also the other Hiberno-Saxon gospel books, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels or the Book of Durrow. It is the use of the human figure, the unusual colours, and the wealth of decoration that set aside the Book of Kells from the other manuscripts. It is not known how many scribes contributed to the elegant and confident majuscule text (written in large letters), nor whether they were also the artists who produced the intricate and magnificent decoration that makes the Book of Kells one of the finest exemplars of the Insular, or Hiberno-Saxon, style (the British and Irish style of manuscript illumination).

The Book of Kells is in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. [Image : Bridgeman Art Library, London / New York / The Board of Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland]

One reference is to a seemingly innocent, but vicious, killer rabbit in the Earth’s cult classic “Monty Python & the Holy Grail” film…

ARTHUR: What, behind the rabbit?
TIM: It *is* the rabbit.
ARTHUR: You silly sod!
TIM: What?
ARTHUR: You got us all worked up!
TIM: Well, that’s no ordinary rabbit!
ARTHUR: Ohh?
TIM: That’s the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
ROBIN: You tit! I soiled my armour I was so scared!
TIM: Look, that rabbit’s got a vicious streak a mile wide! It’s a killer!
GALAHAD: Get stuffed!
TIM: He’ll do you up a treat, mate.
GALAHAD: Oh, yeah?
ROBIN: You mangy Scots git!
TIM: I’m warning you!
ROBIN: What’s he do, nibble your bum?
TIM: He’s got huge, sharp– eh– he can leap about– look at the bones!
ARTHUR: Go on, Bors. Chop his head off!
BORS: Right! Silly little bleeder. One rabbit stew comin’ right up!
TIM: Look!
[squeak]
BORS: Aaaugh!
[dramatic chord]
[clunk]
ARTHUR: Jesus Christ!
TIM: I warned you!
ROBIN: I done it again!
TIM: I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knew it all, didn’t you? Oh, it’s just a harmless little bunny, isn’t it? Well, it’s always the same. I always tell them–
ARTHUR: Oh, shut up!
TIM: Do they listen to me?
ARTHUR: Right!
TIM: Oh, no…

And it continues from there.

There is also a second reported incident in Earth’s history having to do with the Killer Rabbit, and the then President of the United States, Jimmy Carter. The rabbit incident happened on April 20, 1979, while Carter was taking a few days off in Plains, Georgia. He was fishing from a canoe in a pond when he spotted the fateful rabbit swimming toward him. It was never precisely determined what the rabbit’s problem was. Carter, always trying to look at things from the other guy’s point of view, later speculated that it was fleeing a predator. Whatever the case, it was definitely a troubled rabbit. “It was hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared and making straight for the president,” a press account said. The Secret Service having been caught flatfooted–I’ll grant you an amphibious rabbit assault is a tough thing to defend against–the President did what he could to protect himself. Initially it was reported that he had hit the rabbit with his paddle. Realizing this would not play well with the Rabbit Lovers Guild, Carter later clarified that he had merely splashed water at the rabbit, which then swam off toward shore. A White House photographer, ever alert to history’s pivotal moments, snapped a picture of the encounter for posterity’s sake. Good thing, too. Carter’s own staff was skeptical when he told the rabbit story back at the White House. Some ventured the opinion that rabbits couldn’t swim, didn’t attack people, and sure weren’t about to take on a sitting president, even if it was Jimmy Carter. Miffed, Jimmy ordered up a print of the aforementioned photo, but this failed to resolve the issue. The picture showed the president with his paddle raised, and there was something in the water, “but you couldn’t tell what it was,” an anonymous staffer was quoted as saying. The average politician would have said, “Goddamit, I’m President of the United States and I say it was a rabbit!” But Carter was not that kind of guy. He ordered a blowup made, establishing at last that his attacker was, well, a bunny, or “swamp rabbit,” to use press secretary Jody Powell’s somewhat fiercer sounding term. OK, not one of the shining moments of Carter’s career, but so far not a major train wreck, inasmuch as nobody outside the White House knew anything about it. Jody Powell took care of that problem the following August when he told the rabbit story to Associated Press reporter Brooks Jackson over a cup of tea. Powell ought to have known that you cannot tell anything to reporters in August because there is nothing else to write about and they will make any fool thing into a front page scandal. Which is exactly what happened. The Washington Post put the bunny story on page one complete with a cartoon takeoff of the famous “Jaws” movie poster entitled “Paws.” The media ran with the story for a week, the worst aspect from Carter’s perspective undoubtedly being the columnists, who basically all said, yeah, it’s just a rabbit, but it shows you the kind of President we’ve got here. The administration refused to release the photos, although I seem to recall that Reagan’s people later found and leaked them. Carter’s subsequent drubbing at the polls was a foregone conclusion, hostage crisis or not. Lesson for life #1: if it moves, kill it. Lesson for life #2: if you can’t kill it, for God’s sake don’t talk about it to the Associated Press.

Aaaaiiiieeee!

1. Irish goddess; daughter of Dagda “The Good” : In her triple aspect she was patroness of poets, healers and smiths. One side of her face was ugly, but the other side was very comely. The meaning of her name was Breosaighit, “a fiery arrow.â€? Her primal function is that of fire and illumination. Her son by Bres, Ruadan, was slain by Goibnui, the Master Smith. For him she made the first keening (caoining) that was ever heard in Ireland. She was subsumed in the cult and person of…

2. Saint Brigit of Kildare (450-523 AD) who founded the first female religious community after Christianity had been established in Ireland. The sanctuary of the nunnery at Kildare had a perpetual fire, tended by the sisterhood, which was not extinguished until the Reformation. Saint Brigit is the secondary patron saint of Ireland. Within Scottish tradition Brigid (the saint and the goddess) is associated with the lambing season and the coming of spring, when she ousts the winter reign of the Cailleach Bheur (the Crone). The saint is further known as the ‘Mary of the Gaels’ and is credited with being the midwife to the Virgin. A folk-story tells how she played the fool by lighting a crown of candles and wearing it on her head to distract Herod’s soldiers from the Holy Infant. Traces of Brigit can be discerned in the name Brigantia.

3. Brigantia in Britain was a goddess of water and of pastoral activities.

Also see: Church of the Subgenius, J.R. “Bob” Dobbs, High Epopt, Living Slack Master

bó-aire = cattle owner