Professor Butter Beard and “Killer Rabbits”
“Shh. Do not make any sound. I am searching for wabbits. Huh-huh-huh-huh!” -Elmer Fudd
Oh, Elmer! Your worst nightmare is about to come true. Recently, I re-watched “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (a personal Easter ritual), and you must remember the scene when the vicious killer bunny attacks King Arthur and the knights. It may look random, ridiculous, and surreal, but honestly, it has some roots in the dark, mysterious history of medieval manuscripts. So, ladies and gentlemen, here I present to you: the “Killer Rabbits.” And I must warn you – there will be blood.
Before around 1440, when the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the publishing press, important religious books were meticulously copied by hand. In the Middle Ages, this challenging work was done by the brotherhood of monks living in remote monasteries. Most of these books were also “illuminated” – meaning they had some additional illustrations or drawings. And some of these books included so-called “marginalia” – the marks made in the margins where we can find quite particular images of monsters, beasts, animals, and fantastical images of human-animal hybrids. These types of comedic marginalia are known as the drolleries, and they became most popular in the 14th and 15th centuries.
“Often, in medieval manuscripts’ marginalia we find odd images with all sorts of monsters, half man-beasts, monkeys, and more,” writes Marjolein de Vos. “Even in religious books the margins sometimes have drawings that simply are making fun of monks, nuns and bishops” (my personal favorite giggles). And according to art historian Margaret Rickert’s 1954 book “Painting in Britain: The Middle Ages,” medieval scribes painted “cocks with human heads, dogs carrying human masks, archers winding out of a fish's mouth and bird-like dragons with an elephant's head on the back.”
In early medieval art (such as Adam and Eve etchings by Albrecht Dürer), fluffy white rabbits, bunnies, and hares were typically motifs of innocence, venerability, and purity. However, more in sync with these animals’ rate of reproduction, they later came to represent fertility. I just wish I could have been sipping mead with the clever monk that gloriously transformed the sweetly grinning bunny into a horrifically murderous Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Yes, Elmer – “Killer Wabbits!”
Perhaps the most elaborate example of this “killer bunny theme” appears in the “Smithfield Decretals,” illuminated in London in the 1340s. This manuscript contains multiple series of marginal scenes in which stories unfold over consecutive pages like a modern comic strip. In this series of scenes, we see how a group of giant beefy rabbits get their gruesome revenge on a unexpecting hunter. First a rabbit archer shoots the hunter in the back, then the rabbits tie him up and haul him before a rabbit judge to be tried. After a guilty verdict is delivered, the ruthless rabbits drag the hunter away and behead him. And we thought “Alice in Wonderland” was nightmare inducing!
It has been suggested that to interpret these apparently awful scenarios, we must think in reverse, so as to better suit a topsy-turvy environment of a magical inverse world. Rabbits in this world are fluffy and innocent prey animals, so it makes perfect sense that they would become violent administrators of justice, punishing human hunters who killed rabbits, in the upside-down world.
Hunting scenes, Marjolein de Vos adds, commonly appear in medieval marginalia, and “this usually means that the bunny is the hunted; however, as we discovered, often the illuminators decided to change the roles around.” Vincent Robert-Nicoud’s writes that the words “upside down” and “inverse” were used in the same way we might use the words “weird” or “freaky,” most often to describe abnormal or unnatural objects or occurrences. “The topos of the world upside down,” he writes, “brings to mind a world returned to its initial state of primaeval chaos, in which everything is inside-out, topsy-turvy and out of bounds.”
That may attempt to explain the drawings of bunnies making their attacks while mounted on snails, with snail combats being, “just another popular staple of drolleries, with groups of peasants seen fighting snails with sticks, or saddling them and attempting to ride them.”
“Why, you wascally wabbit!”
This season, I prefer my bunnies calm and full of butter, sugar, fresh ginger, drunken golden raisins and spectacularly bright orange carrots. Small and still, guarding their basket nests filled with the darkest of dark chocolate Easter eggs and sour cherry jellybeans. Last month, I happened upon a King Arthur Spring Catalogue at the doctor’s office and immediately ordered their “Nordic Ware Bunny Pans.” I couldn’t not have them! My only wish is that as the baked bunny pound cakes peacefully rest overnight before being presented as Easter gifts, they don’t magically come alive and start their hunt, mounted on human snails with bows and arrows, searching for elusive buried carrots. For we know, according to Elmer Fudd, “Wabbits love to eat carrots.”
Mini Bunny Easter Pound Cakes
One Dozen Mini Bunnies – Using two King Arthur Bunny Pans
1 cup golden raisins (soaked overnight in apple cider)
2 cups granulated sugar
1” fresh ginger root
8 ounces unsalted butter (2 sticks), room temperature
4 large eggs, room temperature
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp fine sea salt
2 tsp ground ginger
1 cup whole milk
2 large carrots (preferably orange)
1) Soak your golden raisins overnight in just enough apple cider to fully cover them.
2) The next morning, spray two King Arthur Bunny Pans with baking spray with flour and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
3) In the bowl of a food processor, add the sugar and then grate the fresh ginger over the sugar. Mix on a low speed with the paddle until the ginger is evenly distributed and the sugar mix appears damp.
4) Add the room temperature butter and mix on medium until light and fluffy – about 4-5 minutes.
5) In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, fine sea salt and ground ginger. Drain the raisins, saving the cider for a glaze. Grate the carrots with a box grater.
6) Add the eggs, one at a time, to the creamed butter/sugar. Turn the mixer to low and add 1/3 of the dry, half the milk, another 1/3 of the dry, remaining milk and then remaining dry. Fold in the raisins and then the grated carrots.
7) Portion the batter into the prepared pans, filling them to ½” from the top of the pan. Place the first tray in the oven on the center rack. Close the oven door and reduce the heat to 325 degrees. Bake for 20 minutes, rotate the pan and bake for an additional 8 minutes until the top is cracked and springy to the touch. Remove from the oven to a wire rack. Increase the oven to 350 degrees and then bake the second pan exactly the same way.
8) Place the reserved cider and any leftover small pieces of ginger in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer for 4-5 minutes to slightly reduce. Set aside to cool.
9) Once the bunny cakes have cooled for ten minutes, remove them from the pan and place on a wire rack to fully cool. While still warm, brush the bunny cakes with the cider glaze and sprinkle the cakes with sanding sugar (optional).
