Alack, poor mouse!

A cat chases a mouse with a host - from the Book of #Kells. The line above reads:

'Ask, and it [the Eucharist] shall be given you'. pic.twitter.com/plrHdIIDPn

— Dark Cloud (@DarkCloudBeing) January 17, 2017

Reminds me of something I read a number of years ago. Anne Askew, Protestant martyr during the English Reformation under King Henry VIII. At one point she was arrested and interrogated by the Catholic Church on some of the finer points of religious strictures regarding the Eucharist and the sacramental bread (host.)

Interrogator: Sayest thou that the priests cannot make the body of Christ

Askew: I say so, my lord; for I have read that God made man, but that man can make God I have never yet read.

Interrogator: What if a mouse eat of the bread after the consecration? What shall become of the mouse, thou foolish woman?

Askew: What shall become of her say you, my lord?

Interrogator: I say that that mouse is damned!

Askew: Alaek, poor mouse !

I don't recall where I read of the incident but that sweet, so human response to a helpless creature suffering such torments for unconscious behavior has stuck with me over the years. "Alack, poor mouse!"