
Killer Rabbits in Medieval Manuscripts - lelf
http://www.openculture.com/2019/03/killer-rabbits-in-medieval-manuscripts-why-so-many-drawings-in-the-margins-depict-bunnies-going-bad.html
======
ims
My great aunt wrote some of the original scholarship on this type of
marginalia: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5064937-images-in-the-
ma...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5064937-images-in-the-margins-of-
gothic-manuscripts)

It's a shame that she is not mentioned. In answer to one of the other posters
wondering about _Monty Python_ , the answer is yes. She told me that Eric Idle
or possibly Terry Jones (?) at one point had a fascination with these
illustrations and I believe they corresponded. In any case, it wasn't just the
rabbit sketch - some of the interstitial animations between skits are taken
directly from tropes in these drawings.

~~~
julianz
Terry Gilliam, most likely.

~~~
ims
Indeed - I asked her yesterday and it was Terry Gilliam.

------
swiftcoder
> like a barber with a wooden leg (which, for reasons that escape me, was the
> height of medieval comedy)

Surely this is no great mystery? Barbers acted as amateur surgeons across the
mediaeval world. They'd typically be the ones amputating the limbs, not the
ones having amputated...

~~~
wavefunction
Barbers acted as professional surgeons across the world until surgery became a
formalized profession. Maybe 200 years ago at best?

~~~
CamperBob2
Correct. No self-respecting "doctor" wanted anything to do with the messy
business of surgery.

I found _The Devil 's Doctor_ by Philip Ball to be an interesting book on this
sort of thing.

~~~
glangdale
This is more of a ex-British empire thing, but at least some surgeons I have
heard of in Australia insist, among medical company, of being called "Mister"
not "Doctor", to set them apart from "mere doctors".

I think this is a formal distinction in the UK, but in Australia I think both
groups _can_ be called Dr.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1119265/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1119265/)

~~~
Nursie
In the UK the 'Dr' title is dropped for a doctor who has risen to become a
consultant. Never heard of it working that way for surgeons

~~~
codeulike
Are you sure? I've met lots of consultants who are titled Doctor.

~~~
Nursie
You might be right - could be the consultants I've encountered gave all been
surgeons.

------
phamilton
Let us never forget the Jimmy Carter rabbit incident.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident)

~~~
protomyth
I think that article overestimates the number of people that saw "Monty Python
and the Holy Grail" in the USA when it came out.

~~~
gumby
I don't know, it was a pretty big deal. A major film.

~~~
protomyth
Not in the USA[1] in 1975[2]

1) [https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Monty-Python-and-the-
Holy-...](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Monty-Python-and-the-Holy-
Grail-\(1975\)#tab=summary)

2) [https://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-
records/domestic/all-...](https://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-
records/domestic/all-movies/cumulative/released-in-1975)

~~~
tingletech
But it was the CBS late night movie in 1977. Also, the wikipedia page just
says "some people" \-- not sure that "overestimates" the number of people who
would have been aware of killer bunnies.

~~~
protomyth
Yeah, I'm thinking a movie that aired on CBS starting at 11:30 p.m (ET/PT) in
1977 probably wasn't well watched even in the 3 (or 4) channel era.

The Wikipedia writer wanted to put Monty Python in the article and ignored the
actual history and provided no actual link or cited source of the link.

~~~
tingletech
Where did you live in 1977 that only had 3 channels? I was in the greater LA
media market and I think we received about 20 terrestrial channels counting
all the UHF. About every other VHF channel picked something up.

Also, my recollection is that TV airing of movies that were a couple of years
old was a bfd back then. My father worked 2pm to 10pm in 1977 and he and my
mom were huge monty python fans, so I bet they watched it.

It also aired on PBS, the dates are not in the wikipedia article, but by the
time the Carter incident became public it might have aired a few times.

And 1975 is when Monty Python started to show on public television in the US
(vs 1969 on BBC). I was only 7 in 1979, but I know we as a family watched
flying circus when it aired (I didn't control the TV during prime time, but
flying circus, dr who, nova, macneil lehrer newshour, some business news show,
and yoga are all shows I remember watching with my parents on PBS)
[https://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/26/archives/monty-pythons-
fl...](https://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/26/archives/monty-pythons-flying-
circus-is-barnstorming-here.html?searchResultPosition=2)

A 1979 NYT article called it a "killer rabbit"
[https://www.nytimes.com/1979/08/30/archives/a-tale-of-
carter...](https://www.nytimes.com/1979/08/30/archives/a-tale-of-carter-and-
the-killer-rabbit-president-orders-photograph.html)

I find it hard to believe there were not any people who made some humorous
connections between the killer rabbit of caerbannog and the killer rabbit of a
Plains, Georgia pond.

~~~
protomyth
Cable wasn't much of a thing outside the big metros until the 80's. Most of
the rural area in 75 had over the air. LA and NYC were there own world, and it
showed from some of the writings of the time.

Someone might have, but it sure wasn't enough to justify the entry, and given
the author didn't cite a source, I'm pretty sure it was just the author.

~~~
tingletech
I didn't say anything about cable. From what I know of the history of cable,
it started for places that were geographically isolated from receiving
terrestrial broadcast (because of a valley of whatever). Terrestrial == over-
the-air.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_television](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_television)

Not sure why they NYT would have called it a "killer rabbit" if it was not a
monty python reference.

------
h2odragon
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Lepus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Lepus)

The killer rabbit _needs_ to be the next zombie fad. Hollywould can do nothing
but remakes, let's have a modern CGI extravaganza remake of this please.

~~~
p1necone
I am reminded of this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sheep_(2006_New_Zealand_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sheep_\(2006_New_Zealand_film\))

~~~
h2odragon
oh thank you for reminding me of that, Netflix has it now.

------
fourseventy
Is it behind the rabbit?

~~~
username223
_Run away!_

I never would have thought that the Pythons were inspired by medieval meme
culture...

~~~
brianzelip
It’s got fangs! Look at the bones!!

~~~
hercynium
What's he do, nibble your bum?

------
twic
Hare-raising stuff.

------
lettergram
“Drolleries sometimes also depicted comedic scenes, like a barber with a
wooden leg (which, for reasons that escape me, was the height of medieval
comedy) or a man sawing a branch out from under himself“

... because how could the barber amputate his own leg? Ahaha...

------
medecau
I'm getting a "403 Forbidden" on this link.

Screen:
[https://screenshots.firefox.com/iVgcEiymPOnHrmIX/www.opencul...](https://screenshots.firefox.com/iVgcEiymPOnHrmIX/www.openculture.com)

------
slowhadoken
I thought this was Inkulinati by Yaza Games for a second
[https://mobile.twitter.com/YazaGames](https://mobile.twitter.com/YazaGames)

------
RickJWagner
The only defense was the Holy Handgranade.

~~~
darkhorn
Then it appeared in the Worms.
[https://youtu.be/4dKnnUcNrwU](https://youtu.be/4dKnnUcNrwU)

~~~
Doxin
Where it is the weapon with by far the biggest blast radius, but alas you only
get one per game under the default settings.

------
ginko
These look more like hares to me.

