Battle Snail vs. Battle Bunny

Battle Snail vs. Battle Bunny

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Copyright, Michael Meissner 2016, All rights reserved
Olympus E-M1-I camera with Olympus-m43 12-40mm f/2.8 lens
f/5.0, ISO 200, 1/200 sec, 27.0mm, auto mode, vivid color, SHQ, center weight metering, bias 0.3, image stabilization (mode 4), noise reduction auto, noise filter low, anti-shock
35mm equivalent focal length 54.0mm
Programs used: gimp
Taken by Michael Meissner on August 21, 2016 10:19:09
Last modified on August 23, 2016 at 22:22
Kate Holly-Clark has come out with a series of battle snails and battle bunnies taken from medieval manuscripts. I decided to make a battle snail and a battle bunny.

One of the battle bunny pictures was of a bunny with a bagpipe, so that formed the basis of battle bunny. Obviously, the bunny had to be Scottish. Liz made him a kilt. We decided to call him Alistair, which is a Anglicised form of the Scottish Gaelic Alasdair. The latter is a Scottish Gaelic form of the English Alexander.

The battle snail was a little harder, since snails are primarily ridden in the illustrations, and they didn't have weapons of their own. We decided the snail had to be French, since the French consider escargot a delicacy. At some point, I hope to fashion a beret for the snail, and put on a pencil mustache, and give the snail a proper French name. Of course if the snails are French, it immediately led me to the French taunter from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I figure, if the French knights and their snails win the battle, they will dine on rabbit (lapin) afterwards, and if they lose, I would imagine they will eat escargot, and have to train a new herd of battle snails.

Here are the battle snail and battle bunny books, if you want your own copy:

  • The Culture of the Battle Snails of the Middle Ages: A Partial Visual Survey by K. Holly-Clark;
  • The Culture of the Battle Rabbit of the Middle Ages: A Partial Visual Survey by K. Holly-Clark.

    Links to the 2016-08 album this picture is contained in:


    mrmweb@the-meissners.org