Of Easter bunnies, and other hare-brained myths

Never on a runway, perhaps, but hares in grassy places at Dublin Airport are reminders to travellers of different times. A pair was seen there last week. This was once a regular sight.

There was a time when you could walk to an aeroplane with bag in hand to get what was then marketed as a “dawn flight”, with the hares to see you off like the sprinters and March jumpers in the fields beside where you lived.

An giorria, symbol on a coin, was the fellow you followed as a schoolboy from field to field carrying a wooden butter-box for a bookie’s viewing perch at an open coursing meeting, to be rewarded with a two-shilling piece at the end of a long day.

The hare is not part of an Irish tradition at Easter, though it is the real Easter bunny (rather than a rabbit — a sales gimmick that probably came from America and widely displayed now as chocolate figurines).

In northern Europe, however, the hare has significance, being linked to a pre-Christian goddess called Eastre, gambolling about her image, for which the rites of spring were celebrated at the vernal equinox just passed.

One Easter time I had a close look at a ‘hare display’ in a Dublin shop, the animals holding eggs in nests of faux hay and twigs with small birds. These were German-sourced. This figured, as they say. The mixed species scenes are from associating hares with ground-nesting birds such as lapwings and plovers which lay eggs in grassy places near hare ‘forms’ or lairs where newly born hares, or leverets, crouch in hiding until the mother returns at nightfall. The birds’ nests and ‘forms’ appear similar, so linking them could be a normal progression. Perhaps too, in remote spots safe from human intrusion, there could be species overlapping for convenient incubation. In the Caribbean, hatching eggs by surrogate can occur when man lends a hand — or, in at least one instance, an armpit! This occurred in Martinique when a wily politician with a reputation for sleight of hand claimed to be incubating a domestic hen’s egg, which would hatch out at Easter as a manikin obeying his every wish. This creature would enter ballot boxes on polling day and deface opponents’ voting slips. The particular politician had a reputation for wizardry, and his claims were believed so much that his own supporters were the only voters! (The story is from The Travellers Tree, about a voyage through the West Indies, by Patrick Leigh Fermor.)

In an older Ireland, Lent was a time of strict culinary observance with meat on Sundays only. Easter weekend was widely welcomed — more so by the victualling trades, which had been starved of income. The butchers celebrated by going through the streets carrying fish tied to long poles, whipping them with sticks and finally throwing the shreds into rivers. They then returned to town carrying beribboned legs of lamb, singing and collecting money to help for their period of penury. A happy Easter time for them — and for all readers today. And don’t overindulge

on the chocolate bunny-hares!