The Glass Was Fine. The Book Was Not.

I am told a copy of the Book of Kells left St Colmcille’s Church in Kells between 1 and 8 November 2014, and that the glass cabinet was grand throughout. Untouched, the sergeant said. Which is a polite way of saying the copy stood up and walked, or somebody with a key, or a quiet pair of hands, decided the town would not mind.

The town did not mind. Not for a week, anyway. The thing was gone before anyone whose job it was to look at it had looked. I am not claiming a plot. I am claiming a cabinet that did not have to be broken, and a week in which Kells was down one book and up zero alarms. If the people minding the copy had no brains that week, say so. Brains are not a security system. Neither is a joke.

The joke arrived on time. A magician had predicted the Book of Kells would be stolen, and the papers had their headline. Lucy Reilly, who was chair of the Kells and District Tourism Forum, went on the radio and said if this was a prank it was not funny, and would they bring it back. Fair. A prank is still a theft when the thing does not come home. I have not found the report that says it did.

They cannot even agree what was taken. Some papers said about €15,000 and one of a Swiss run. The Examiner said €1,500 and one of three copies the public could see, all of them in Kells. The other two were in St Columba’s Church and the Town Hall. So the town that does not have the book had three stand-ins, and then it had two, and the glass looked as if nothing had happened.

Here is the opinion, since that is what this is. An undamaged case is at least a bit suspicious. A missing week is worse. Neither of those facts is a court case, and I am not handing you one. What I will hand you is the shape of it. Kells is trusted with a photocopy of its own pages and cannot keep the photocopy. Dublin reads that as proof the real book must never come the 69 kilometres home. Handy. The copy goes, the argument stays, and Trinity still sells tickets to the original.

You can call that bad luck and an open door. You can call it a town asleep. You can call it, if you are feeling sharp, a very convenient week. I am not in the business of inventing a hand on the latch. I am in the business of noticing that the latch did not have to break, that nobody noticed, and that the moral drawn in Dublin is always the same moral. Kells cannot be trusted. Leave the book where the queue is.

No. A facsimile was never the book. Losing one is sad. Using the loss as another reason to keep the real thing in a ticket hall is the part that should make you angry. The glass in Kells was fine. The custody story is not. Bring the book home. Not a loan. Not a copy. The book.