Various hares throughout history
DRIVING over Saddleworth Moor always makes me feel good about life, not least because it links my past days at Bleak House with my present day eyrie in Top Mossley, from where I can see the curvaceous cleft in the hills that separates here from there.
Early morning trips are usually the most productive at this time of year, especially when the sun strikes through the first layers of the previous night’s frost and the birds are just beginning to stir and no one’s about.
There was no frost this morning, but I came across two dead mammals which left me thoroughly fed up.
They were both hares, but one was blue and the other brown, two distinctive species.
The former was where you might expect it, high up near Holme Moss Mast, and likewise with the latter, near the side of Woodhead Reservoir.
The only plus on this find, was that the blue or mountain hare had only recently been dealt a glancing blow and was destined for the pot.
The brown hare, although recognisable, was not edible.
Evolution has not been kind to some of our flattened fauna, and even though it is over one hundred years since cars arrived on our roads, hares, rabbits, deer and the like have still to develop effective avoidance strategies, and some kind of Darwinian green-cross code is needed, but chance would be a fine thing.
Truth is that, hares have always been a touchstone of mine and, come to think of it, the hare has been a prominent creature in the life of man ever since Noah appropriated a number of hares feet to plug holes in the Ark.
Perhaps he used hares’ foot inkcap, a kind of fungi, and no real-life hares were involved in the saving of the Ark.
Stories can change, or be exaggerated down the millenia, but I would bet an empty pack of cheese and onion that the following tales are cast iron truths.
For example, a hares’ foot when eaten with the gall stone of a ring ouzel ‘can move a man to boldness, so that he fears not death’.
The said recipe when mixed with the heart of a weasel was a popular concoction for hunting dog owners.
Apparently when fed to the dog before a hunt ‘it will make no noise from thenceforth, even if he is being killed’.
Perhaps not so popular would be the teething paste for boys from around the time of Shakespeare.
Natural Historian, HW Seager claimed ‘with the hares’ brain, boys’ gums are cleaned, for it has the property to make the teeth come quickly and without pain’.
A receding hairline would have had any gentleman reaching for his copy of Seager’s book for the cure: ‘burn a hares head with bear grease and use it as a poultice to encourage new growth’.
It is a fact, honest, that Queen Boadicea kept a hare close to her bosom on the day of battle, and just before hostilities commenced, she would whip out the hare and watch which way it ran off.
Depending on the direction the hare escaped the Queen could plan her attack.
Some fishermen believed that to see a hare on the way to your boat meant they would catch nothing; a decent excuse to make straight for the tavern if you ask me.
Others would blame witches for the lack of fish, as it was thought that the poor critters could turn themselves into hares at will. Not that it would do them any good being dragged to the stake, but they could have blamed one of their own, Isabel Gowdie, a Scottish witch who foolishly wrote down the following spell: ‘I sall goe intill ane haire, with sorrow and sych, and making caire, and I sall go in the Divellis name, ay will com hom again’.
My favourite story about the hare involves a performer like myself.
As you can see from the illustration here, the animal is playing an instrument like the bodhran which I play in the Curragh Sons these past 40 years.
The drawing was made to commemorate the hare playing to a sell-out crowd at Sadler’s Wells theatre 400 years ago.
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