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https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/06/this-15th-century-manuscript-mentions-a-monty-python-esque-killer-rabbit/

This 15th-century manuscript mentions a Monty Python-esque killer rabbit
Richard Heege was clearly a medieval scribe with a sense of humor.
JENNIFER OUELLETTE - 6/15/2023, 3:53 PM

Scholar: The 15th-century "Heege manuscript" could be a rare written
record of a live minstrel performance.
Enlarge / Scholar: The 15th-century "Heege manuscript" could be a rare
written record of a live minstrel performance.
YouTube/University of Cambridge

One of many standout scenes in the 1975 classic Monty Python and the
Holy Grail features King Arthur and his knights facing down the Killer
Rabbit of Caerbannog, a seemingly innocuous bunny who soon proves to be
a devastating adversary, forcing the knights to retreat ("Run away! Run
away!"). Killer rabbits are a kind of mainstay of medieval literature,
featuring prominently in marginal illustrations, as well as a mention in
Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. In fact, the Python crew drew
inspiration for their version from a scene on the facade of Notre Dame
in Paris, depicting a knight fleeing a rabbit.

Killer rabbits might even have been a common trope among traveling
minstrels, according to one scholar's discovery of a written record of a
live performance preserved in a 15th-century manuscript, which also
includes one of the earliest recorded uses of the phrase "red herring."
Cambridge University's James Wade, author of a recent paper published in
The Review of English Studies, stumbled across the manuscript while
doing research in the National Library of Scotland.

The scribe identified himself in the text as Richard Heege, a household
cleric and tutor to the Sherbrooke family of Derbyshire. Heege's
manuscript, with its inclusion of low-brow nonsense verse, a mock
sermon, and a burlesque romance, "gives us the rarest glimpse of a
medieval world rich in oral storytelling and popular entertainments,”
said Wade.

Scribe's note: "By me, Richard Heege, because I was at that feast and
did not have a drink."
Enlarge / Scribe's note: "By me, Richard Heege, because I was at that
feast and did not have a drink."
National Library of Scotland
Minstrels in the Middle Ages traveled from town to town, amusing the
people in baronial halls, taverns, and fairs with their performances.
Fictional minstrels are frequently mentioned in medieval literature, but
according to Wade, it's rare to find a reference to a real minstrel, and
there are few, if any, written records of them. Most are records of
payments made to minstrels, listed by their first names and instruments
played.

While there are many medieval works with "oral" or "minstrel" tags, per
Wade, "No single text survives that we can confidently tether to a
medieval minstrel, as composer, owner, or performer." Wade is careful to
emphasize that he is not claiming the discovery of a manuscript actually
written by a medieval minstrel. But he thinks the Heege manuscript was
either a transcript of a live minstrel performance or copied from a
minstrel's now-lost written notes (an aide-memoire). Among the evidence
Wade cites is the note scrawled on the bottom of one page that reads,
"By me, Richard Heege, because I was at that feast and did not have a
drink"—implying that Heege was sober enough to write about a minstrel's
performance at said feast.

The Heege manuscript consists of nine miscellaneous booklets, and while
it has been studied before, that prior work focused on how it had been
made, not the actual text. Wade's paper focuses on three texts in the
first booklet. One is an alliterative nonsense verse called "The Battle
of Brackonwet," featuring fragments of drinking songs, Robin Hood,
jousting bears, warring bumblebees, and pigs on a bender. A second is a
mock sermon in prose ridiculing the aristocracy, describing three
gluttonous kings who eat so much that 24 oxen burst from their bellies
and engage in a sword fight. The oxen reduce each other to three "red
herrings."

Finally, there is a tail-rhyme burlesque romance called "The Hunting of
the Hare," which contains the brief reference to a killer rabbit
(technically a hare). It's the story of a group of peasants—Wyll of the
Gappe, Dave of the Dale, Hob, Sym, and so on—who decide to "course" a
hare and end up brawling with each other and their dogs instead. In the
end, the wives cart off the dead in wheelbarrows. "There is really not
much hunting going on," Wade wrote. It's more of a crude, bawdy
slapstick comedy, with jokes about incontinence and plenty of pointless
violence.

Part of "The Hunting of the Hare" poem in the Heege Manuscript featuring
a killer rabbit. The first lines read: "Jack Wade was never so sad / As
when the hare trod on his head / In case she would have ripped out his
throat."
Enlarge / Part of "The Hunting of the Hare" poem in the Heege Manuscript
featuring a killer rabbit. The first lines read: "Jack Wade was never so
sad / As when the hare trod on his head / In case she would have ripped
out his throat."
National Library of Scotland
“Most medieval poetry, song and storytelling has been lost," said Wade.
“Manuscripts often preserve relics of high art. This is something else.
It’s mad and offensive, but just as valuable. These texts are far more
comedic and they serve up everything from the satirical, ironic, and
nonsensical to the topical, interactive and meta-comedic. It’s a comedy
feast.”

While Wade admits his case is circumstantial, he still believes it to be
relatively strong. "There is no positive evidence of duplication from
circulating exemplars, as all three texts survive in this booklet only,"
he wrote. "All three are clearly interactive pieces intended for live
performance, evidently for mixed-estate audiences who are assumed to be
in the throes of merry-making." Further, the texts are wholly original,
i.e., not translations or derived from another known source material.
And all three mention local settings, with one—"The Battle of
Brakonwet"—making reference to villages near where Heege is believed to
have lived.

While it is unlikely that scholars will ever unearth a medieval
manuscript that can be definitively tied to a minstrel as its owner
and/or author, Wade believes his discovery shows that there are other
valuable forms of evidence to learn more about medieval minstrelry.
"Richard Heege left us scripts more mediated and less mobile than a
traveling minstrel manuscript," he wrote. "He left us a record of
materials for minstrel performance rather than the materials themselves,
but for all that, his record seems hardly less an authentic witness to
live storytelling from later medieval England."

DOI: Review of English Studies, 2023. 10.1093/res/hgad053 (About DOIs).

A unique record of medieval live comedy performance has been identified
in a 15th-century manuscript.
Listing image by YouTube/University of Cambridge

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JENNIFER OUELLETTE
Jennifer is a senior reporter at Ars Technica with a particular focus on
where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and
related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series.
Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll,
and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.