Luck of the Hare

On the first of this month, if you say, “Rabbit” three times when you wake up you will have good luck for the rest of the month. Or variations like “Rabbit, rabbit, white rabbit”, or “White rabbit, white rabbit, white rabbit”. The custom originated in England and is still practiced. It is just one of many superstitions associated with the rabbit, or the hare, from around the world.

Some sources have described the hare as sacred to Andraste, the Celtic goddess of war. This seems to derive from a misreading of the passage in Dio Cassius in which Boudica releases a hare from her gown:

“Let us, therefore, go against (the Romans), trusting boldly to good fortune. Let us show them that they are hares and foxes trying to rule over dogs and wolves." When she had finished speaking, she employed a species of divination, letting a hare escape from the fold of her dress; and since it ran on what they considered the auspicious side, the whole multitude shouted with pleasure, and Boudica, raising her hand toward heaven, said: "I thank thee, Andraste, and call upon thee as woman speaking to woman.”

The hare's release is described as a technique of divination, with an augury drawn from the direction in which it runs. This appears to be similar to the Roman methods of divination which ascribe meaning to the directions in which birds fly, with the left side being auspicious and the right side inauspicious. Taking an augury at this point before a battle is thus a means of testing the 'good fortune' of which Boudica speaks, with no implication that the hare is sacred to Andraste.

The art of augury concerns the taking and interpreting signs from nature in order to determine the will of the gods. In Roman times, this was done mainly with birds.

Augury is distinct from haruspicy, which looks at the entrails of sacrificial animals to see if they had been acceptable to the gods.

In 1648 Sir Thomas Browne says it was deemed unlucky when a hare crossed one's path. In England, seeing a hare in the street meant there would be a fire. Besides England and other northern European countries, the belief also exists in Macedonian, Indian, and Russian folklore that a hare crossing your path is unlucky. Seeing a hare in town can also portend a fire. Children in Swbia, Germany used to be told not to make shadows of hares on the wall because they represent the sacred moon. In many other cultures as well the hare has associations with the moon.

The hare has been considered the embodiment of the Corn-Spirit (corn being grain in Europe, rather than what we know as corn).  They frequently took refuge in the last patch of standing grain as it was harvested and as they rushed out, were identified with the escaping spirit of the crop. In some parts of Britain, cutting the last sheaf is called “cutting the hare”. In Germany, the last sheaf itself is called the hare. In Transylvania, when reapers get to the last patch, they cry, “We have the hare!” In many European countries it is said of the man who cuts the last sheaf, “He is killing the hare!” The Norwegian man who “kills the hare” must give “hare’s blood” in the form of brandy to his fellow workers.

It was considered unlucky in Scotland to have a hare on your boat and the name of the hare could not be spoken at sea. It was not an unknown practice for a dead rabbit to mysteriously appear on a rival’s boat. One anonymous Middle English poem which Seamus Heaney has translated advises anyone who meets a hare to praise it. The poet rehearses the names of the hare:

the quick-scut, the dew-flirt,
the grass-biter, the goibert
the home-late, the do-the-dirt

the starer, the wood-cat
the purblnd, the furze cat,
the skulker, the bleary-eyed
the wall-eyed, the glance-aside

the stag sprouting a suede horn
the creature living in the crn
the creature bearing all men's scorn,
the creature no one dares to name.

The negative superstitions associated with the hare may have appeared after the advent of Christianity, since hares, maybe more than other animals are associated, in Europe, with the most common shapeshifting disguise of witches. On a positive note, the Romans believed that eating hare’s flesh for seven days would make you beautiful. There is a custom in Tuscany that you if catch a rabbit and you let it go it will take disorder with it.

In Albania people would not kill hares or even touch them if they were dead. Ancient Celts would not eat hare, except at Beltane. They thought it was like “eating your grandmother”, which may have come from the belief that old wise women could shape-shift into hares.

The Cornish tin miners also have a relationship with the rabbit. Rabbits are an alchemical symbol for tin. To the tin miners of Cornwall and Devon, who also lived by burrowing tunnels into the earth, rabbits were considered lucky, feet included. Their symbol is three intertwined hares. The Three Hares also feature in roof bosses (carved wooden fixtures) in the ceilings in almost 30 medieval churches in Devon, England (particularly Dartmoor), and they are called "tinner's rabbits" - three tin rabbits joined at the ear. They are found as well on churches in France and Germany, in 13th century Mongol metal work, and on a copper coin, found in Iran, dated to 1281.  One theory pertaining to the spread of the motif is that it was transported across Asia and as far as the south west of England by merchants traveling the Silk Road. This is supported by the date of the surviving occurrences in China. However the majority of representations of the three hares occur in England and northern Germany. This supports a view that the Three Hares are English or early German symbols. Some are found alongside symbols of the Green man.

 

Rabbit’s Feet and other parts:

In Wales an old belief is that a new-born child rubbed all over with a rabbit's foot will be lucky for life. Mothers in Britain would place a rabbit’s foot in their baby buggies when taking babies out for walks, and actors commonly kept rabbit’ feet for luck in the early twentieth century.  Hare’s heads were worn by Arab women as amulets.

The American custom of carrying a rabbit’s foot for luck, not practiced much nowadays, is thought to originate in the system of African-American folk magic known a Hoodoo. Not any foot from a rabbit will do: it is the left hind foot of a rabbit that is useful as a charm. And not any left hind foot of a rabbit will do; the rabbit must have been shot or otherwise captured in a cemetery. Third, at least according to some sources, not any left hind foot of a rabbit shot in a cemetery will do: the phase of the moon is also important.