On bite of a rabbit is better than two bites of a cat.
Note: This week’s proverb may seem at first glance to be obscure as well as macabre. You might ask yourself what sort of barbarian would eat a cat? With our tongue only slightly in our cheek, we can suggest that the answer is a hungry barbarian. Is maith an t-anlann an t-ocras. Of course, that is hard for us to understand in this Industrial Age. Ní thuigeann an sách an seang. Hunger will make a barbarian of us all. In any case, a rabbit is surely more tasty that a cat.
Perhaps, a less barbaric way to make this point is to use the English proverb, “Quality is better than quantity.” This proverb probably came from the Latin. Non multa sed multum. (Not quantity, but quality. Literally Not many, but much.) Lucius Annaeus Seneca wrote a letter in the first century of the last millennium that said, “It is quality rather than quantity that matters.” This is true in our case since a bite of a tasty rabbit is clearly preferable to two bites of a less tasty cat.
