DUBLIN — A jam jar of air collected in Kells has failed an inspection at Trinity College Dublin. Reviewers have concluded that the atmosphere of the town is not suitable for the Book of Kells, a manuscript that was made in it.
The jar was filled on the main street on a dry morning, sealed with a screw lid and a strip of tape, and labelled in biro: "Kells. Ordinary day. Please test." It was posted to Dublin, 69 km down the road, by a fictional composite of people who have grown tired of hearing that the Book cannot come home because of the air.
"Every time we ask, it comes back to the air," she said. "Security, preservation, environment. Fine. Here is the environment. Test it. It is the same air the monks were breathing while they made the thing."
The jar came back within the week with a form letter and a red stamp. The stamp read UNSUITABLE. The letter, signed by nobody in particular, explained that the sample showed "an elevated presence of Meath." It also flagged "traces of the place of origin," which it described as a known risk for manuscripts that might start to feel at home.
The reviewers' notes are thorough. They record that Kells air contains weather. They record that it carries the smell of a town going about its day, which they classify as "uncontrolled." They note, with some alarm, that the sample moved slightly when the lid came off. Air in Dublin, the notes concede, also moves, but it moves under supervision.
Kells has heard the environmental argument before. Trinity refused loans of the Book in 2000 and again in 2011, and the grounds each time leaned on security and conservation. The town was never asking for a loan. It is asking for the manuscript back. But since the air keeps coming up, the air has now been posted.
Another fictional composite, standing in for the people who keep the spare keys in town and know which radiators work, said: "If the problem is a room, we can build a room. If the problem is a case, we can get a case. People do that every day. What we cannot do is make the air in Kells come from Dublin. That seems to be the actual test."
That is the clause hidden in the result. A sealed room is a sealed room in any town in Ireland. Controlled humidity does not check a postcode. A security camera does not ask which county it is in. The only property of the jar that cannot be fixed with skill and plain care is its address, and the address is the part the stamp objected to.
The Book has been held at Trinity since the 1660s. The jar was there for a week. Both were told the same thing about Kells, and only the jar was allowed to leave.
It has since been returned to the town and placed on a shelf in a shop window, beside a small handwritten card: "Rejected by Trinity. Book made in this." Visitors stop to look. Some take photographs. It may be the only exhibit in the country where the thing on display was refused and the town around it was proven right.
Another fictional composite, a man who said he had breathed Kells air his whole life without once being declared unsuitable, said: "They are welcome to their controls. Bring the controls with it. Put the Book in a sealed room, in Kells, with the same care and the same cameras. Then open the window, just once, so it remembers where it is."
The jar is not going back to Dublin. It has done its work. The Book should come the other way. Home, not on loan.