Asdaftasus the Celt was having a hard morning.

His bean crop sagged, battered by gales. His oat yield was enough for about three bowls of coarse porridge.

It wouldn't last a week, never mind a winter. He stood on the edge of his strip lynchet, leaning on his flint-and-antler hoe, and cursing his fate, the weather, his ravenous family and his corns.

Suddenly there was an Italianate throat-clearing just behind him.

He turned to see a Roman centurion in bronze and leather, with open-toed sandals and a curious furry fringe around the edge of his helmet.

With the air of a conjuror, he produced a wicker basket from behind him.

'Mornin' squire,' he said. 'Having problems? Let me solve them with a set of these.'

He flipped open the basket lid and pulled out something like a large rat with very big ears, which he placed on the ground. It immediately started nuzzling and nibbling the grass.

'What is it?' asked Asdaftasus.

'We call em cuniculus,' said the centurion.

'Cunicu-what?'

'Cuniculus'.

'It's a funny lookin' little b---,' said Asdaftasus. 'Wot do yer do with 'em?'

'You can eat 'em,' said the Centurion. 'Then you can use the skin to make clothes. Very warm they are. There's even some daft sods who'll buy the bits with the claws in to use as good luck charms.'

'Eeeh, there's no accounting for taste,' said the Celt. 'So there's no waste with 'em, then. It's all used?'

'Just about,' said the Roman. 'We've had a problem with what to do with the tails but there's a bloke back in Gaul, Maximus Factorius, who's putting dried red mud in little tin boxes. All the women there are going daft, patting it on their cheeks with a cuniculus tail. They reckon it makes them look prettier.'

'What about the ears, though? I mean, it's got big ears, an't it? Are they any use?'

'Blimey, woddyer want, jam on it?' said the centurion.

'What's jam?' asked Asdaftasus.

'Never mind,' said the Roman. 'Look, are you interested or not? I've a bloke waiting in Keighley to have a look at this lot and he's come all the way from Oxenhope. If you don't want 'em, I'll have to get off.'

Asdaftasus thought for a long minute. 'One thing: 'ow often do they breed?'

'They breed non-stop,' said the centurion. 'They're famous for it. Get a male and a female and a year later you can't move for them.'

'What do they eat?' asked the Celt.

'Grass,' said the Roman.

''Ow much?' asked the Celt.

'Ten sesterces the lot,' said the Roman.

'Done,' said the Celt.

Twenty minutes later he was back home with the dozen or so cuniculi in a wicker basket.

'Mother!', he called to his wife, who was pounding nettles in a quern in a vain bid to find a cure for scabies in their three children.

'What you got there?' she asked, peering into the basket.

'Our fortune, Mother, that's what I've got here,' said Asdaftasus.

'They're called Cuniculi, you breed 'em for meat, you can wear the skins, some folk'll buy the paws and some women will use the bit at the back for putting mud on their faces,' he said, getting breathless towards the end.

'We can open a butcher's shop, a furriers, a beauty parlour and you can wrap a rag around your head and start telling fortunes and selling paws.'

'That's a lot of shops,' said Mrs Asdaftasus. 'Where will we put 'em?'

'On that flat bit at the top of the hill,' said her spouse. 'That bit where the Romans do their drill. North Parade they call it.'

'And what do you say they're called?' asked Mrs Asdafasus.

'Cuniculi' said her husband already mentally ordering a new chariot from Rollus and Roycus.

'That's a funny name,' said Mrs Asdaftasus.

'Never mind funny names,' said her husband. 'Apparently they breed like rabbits.'

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