Rash, rushing headlong en masse, indicative of mass panic, rashly destructive. [From the swine of Gadara, Bible, Matthew Chapter 8, verse 28].
This is the age of Law; even miracles are severely forbidden, and if the herd of Gadarene swine had miraculously perished in this generation and country, our Lord and His disciples would have inevitably been sued for damages.
"Our opponents are engaged in a hopelessly uphill struggle, and they know it," he chirruped, defiantly; "they've become possessed, like the Gadarene swine, with a whole legion of - "
"Surely the Gadarene swine went downhill," put in Lady Caroline in a gently enquiring voice.
Henry Greech hastily abandoned simile and fell back on platitude and the safer kinds of fact.
Saki (H. H. Munro), The Unbearable Bassington. Amazon
That is all the more remarkable, because he gave it pride of place in his speech at the Labour Party conference, when he warned his party against joining the Government in the "Gadarene rush" to equalise retirement at 65. Who are the mad swine who are joining in the Gadarene rush? My right hon. and hon. Friends will recall that those who performed the Gadarene rush were swine possessed of a devil that had been cast out by our Lord.
We are being joined in the Gadarene rush by none other than the Commission on Social Justice. It does not think that it is a mad idea.
The more visceral Stern's subject, the fancier his writing: A pig escaping the slaughterer is described as scrambling for the stock pond in a ''gadarene slalom,'' while Saul, who performs bedpan duty for Aunt Keni, catches ''the mustard-scented purgations of her gravy-like stools.''
Fernanda Eberstadt, The New York Times, 20 March 2005, New York Times
reviewing Steve Stern's The Angel of Forgetfulness. Amazon
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