The Hare: Divine Shapeshifter

“Witches were also considered frequently to change themselves into hares, and thus run with great rapidity on their mischievous errands; and there prevailed a belief amongst the common people in Ireland, that they were invulnerable by leaden bullets, and could be shot only by a sixpence, or other piece of silver, or a silver ball. The wizards, or male conjurors, were also held in high esteem, particularly in Scotland. The doctrines of witchcraft, sorcery, and necromancy, were probably derived from Druidism, the witches being nearly the same as the Druidesses of more ancient days, and hence ban-draoi, or a Druidical woman, was also applied to a witch.”

Owen Connellan, The Annals of Ireland

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Cover art by Hans Hoffman

The hare has always fascinated me since I was a young child. I often wonder what movie I watched or book I read that lended to such fascination… or maybe it was just the inundation of rabbits in cartoons. Although, hares are quite different from rabbits being a bit larger in size, having longer ears and legs and living more solitary lives above the ground while ground rabbits live in larger familial groups of up to 20. Hares have quite emotive and large eyes that seem to bare down on your soul as they gaze at you. 

To lock eyes with one is quite a mystical experience although they undoubtedly have a much different experience looking at us, likely in fear, confusion or trying to anticipate our next move. Interestingly though, I have had interactions with hares that for better or worse had become accustomed to human development… that let me get within a few yards. When they did take a look in my direction, there was a sense of playful curiosity more than fear and the same mystical energetic exchange. I have no questions whatsoever why hares were and still remain associated with the Aos Sidhe, with goddesses and the feminine, with magical arts, witches and witchcraft.

“They’re quick as a March hare.” – Old Irish saying

The hare has a relatively large cross cultural symbolism of fertility, rebirth, cleverness, intuition, luck, divination, seership, the moon and shapeshifting. Just a few of these examples are that in Egyptian culture, the goddess Unut, the ‘swift one’ was often depicted with a hare head and ears presiding over rites relating to fertility and sexual desire. In Chinese and Japanese cultures, the moon Goddess Chang’e was often accompanied by a jade hare which symbolized immortality and lived on the moon. In Buddhism, the Buddha spent one of his former lives as a ‘selfless hare’. In another famous Indian tale, The Lion and the Hare, a hare tricked a lion into fighting his own reflection to allude danger. In Germanic legends, the goddess Eostre is ambiguously related in some capacity to the hare and to eggs, hence her connection to the modern holiday of Easter. Of course, scarcely a person hasn’t heard of the Aesop’s Fable of the Tortoise and the Hare. It was amazingly still tradition to carry around a rabbit’s foot for good luck well into at least the early 90’s when I was growing up and into the present day.

In Ireland and Scotland, the great Cailleach herself was said to have the capability of transforming into a hare and often in journeys with the Cailleach, she will appear as a hare instead of as the ‘veiled one’. In fact, in Irish folk belief, sometimes when harvesters got to the end of a field and the last plants for harvesting, they would shout loudly “Drive the Cailleach to the next field!” for good luck. If a hare was genuinely witnessed running out of the last row of crops, it was considered a good omen. In some instances, as mentioned in previous articles, a corn dolly was made of the last sheaf representing the Cailleach and either kept in an auspicious place in the house until Christmas or passed to a neighbor that was not done plowing their fields. 

 “It happened one day that Cormac was out hunting and a hare started up from the north-east of Si Chleithigh. It was here that his hounds began to chase the hare and all Cormac’s companions followed on behind, leaving Cormac alone. A dense fog descended and sleep overcame him at the fairy hill. So thick was the dark fog that he thought night had fallen and if the music of the pipes had been played to him he would have slept no sounder than he did, lulled as he was by the baying of the hounds in the surrounding hills. It was then that he heard a voice above him and this is what it said: ‘Arise, O Cormac, gentle sleeper of Cleitheach. Cormac rose up then and his tiredness vanished as he saw at his right hand side a radiant white-armed woman. Of all the women in the world she was the most fair. She wore a beautiful tunic and next to her skin a dress of golden thread. She proceeded to make Cormac welcome. ‘Who is it that welcomes me?’ asked Cormac. ‘I am Báirinn Bhláith Bhairche, daughter of the King of Sí Bhairche in the province of Leinster. I have fallen in love with you, but until this moment I had no opportunity of speaking to you.’ ‘Actually, I was asleep,’ said Cormac, ‘until you woke me up. The baying of the hounds made me doze off.’ ‘Upon my word,’ said the girl, ‘it is not becoming for a man of your standing to be hunting hares at all. You should be hunting wild boar, or deer, as high kings before you have been wont to do. Hare hunting is only for youths and it snaps their energy.’

And then the girl said: ‘Come with me, O Cormac inside the sí (fairy palace) of Cleitheach where my tutor Ulcán Mac Bláir lives and my nurse Maol Mhisceadach, so that I may obtain you as my husband and companion of my bed with their blessing.’ ‘I will not go,’ said Cormac, ‘unless I receive a reward. ‘O Cormac,’ said she, ‘I know what you are about to ask and I know what is on your mind. You are going to ask for reinforcements to accompany you on your expedition. I will give you a company of druids surpassing those of any of your predecessors and whom no stranger can resist. These are the three daughters of Maol Mhisceadach – Eirge, Eang and Eangain. And they will assume the form of three brown sheep with heads of bone and beaks of iron: they are equal in prowess to a hundred warriors. No one can escape from them alive for they have the speed of the swallow and the agility of the weasel, and if the swords and axes of the world were to be directed against them not a hair or joint of theirs would be severed.’ ‘As well as these, we have two male druids who will accompany you also. These are Colpa and Lorga, the two sons of Cíochúil Choinbhleachtach. They will kill in single combat all the warriors of which ever province they enter, at least all those who do not flee before them for they are such that no one can injure them with spear or sword-thrust. And as long as they are with you accept nobody’s advice but theirs.’ Cormac was elated at hearing this and his sadness left him. He followed the fairy queen into the sí and slept with her in one bed and he remained there for three days and three nights, and he was given the promised reinforcements. He then returned to Tara. From this on he paid no further attention to his own druids, nor did he take their advice but paid honour to the strangers and accepted their counsel”

This folk motif would continue being told for ages whether it was a fairy woman or witch, the tale was very similar and the legends involving shapeshifting hares were very common throughout the entirety of the isles as well as Western Europe. W.B. Yeats himself said that in Ireland, the hare and cat were the two chief animals that witches were said to transform themselves into. 

The Irish witch in particular was said to shapeshift into a hare so that she could more easily steal the milk from cows and were often caught drinking from the cows in the fields at night.¹ Ireland’s first president, Douglas Hyde recorded a wonderful tale relating to this as well called The Hags of the Long Teeth where a hare ran under the house of 6 renowned witches who had very long teeth, were quite frightful to locals and eventually driven off. While not as a common motif, some women were forcibly changed into a hare, and were cursed by a witch rather than being a witch themselves. Often their enchantment was broken by a man and sometimes, a relationship formed from this rescue.^2,3

A fanciful folktale from Cornwall from Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall by William Bottrell, 1873 also worth quoting in full…

“We hunted all the way down, both sides of the Bottom, from Trove to Lamorna without seeing a hare. It was then dark, but for the starlight: we turned to come home, and, up by Bosava, out popped a hare, from a brake of ferns close beside the water. She (the hare) took up the moors; we followed close after, through bogs, furze, and brambles, helter-skelter, amongst mire and water. For miles we chased her, the finest hare that ever was seen, most in the dogs’ mouths all the way, yet they couldn’t catch her at all. By the starlight we had her in sight all the way till far up the Bottom, between Trove and Boleigh; there we lost all sight and scent of her at last, but not till, tearing through brakes of brambles and thorns, we found ourselves in the Grambler Grove. And now, I know for certain that what old folks is true… 

I believe what we took for a hare was a witch that we chased into this haunted wood. Looking through the thickets I spied, on a bare spot, surrounded by old withered oaks, a glimmering flame rising through clouds of smoke. The dogs skulked back and stood around me like scared things. Getting nearer, and looking through an opening, I saw scores of women, some old and ugly, others young and passable as far as looks go. Most of them were busy gathering withered ferns or dry sticks, to the fire. I noted, too, that other witches, if one might judge by their dress,were constantly arriving flying in over the trees, some mounted on ragworts, brooms, ladles, furze-pikes, or anything they could get astride. Others came on through the smoke as comfortable as you please, sitting on three-legged stools; and alighted by the fire, with their black cats on their laps. Many came in through the thickets like hares, made a spring through the flame, and came out of it as decent lasses. A good large bonfire soon blazed up; then, by its light, I saw, a little way back sitting under a tree, who should ‘e think ? Why no less than old witch Bet, of the Mill.”

The Púcaí/Púca (Irish), Pwca (Welsh), Púki (Norwegian) or Pouque (French) were said to be trickster and demon-like fairies that often lived near old burial stone structures whom could shape shift into many various forms and animals, one being the hare. Overall, the connection with the hare to Otherworldly phenomenon may have been the reason that it was said by Caesar that Britons would not eat hares as it was considered taboo. Aside from Otherworldly phenomenon, their connection to the goddess and divine feminine as well may have lended them as off limits lest you may reap ‘her’ wrath. The hare being taboo to eat was in some texts as true for ancient Ireland except for newly inaugurated kings who were made to eat the Hares of Naas during sacred buadha, ritual, and if they did not, they were not considered fit to be king. 

Juxtapositionally, hundreds of years later in Britain, hare hunting became ritual near mountains or places that ever so curiously had an association with ancient goddesses such as the Dane Hills outside Leicester.^4,5 However, in folkloric references there was still a negative connotation with eating the hare as it was considered a ‘melancholy’ animal that would transfer it’s sadness once eaten.⁶ In this regard, I find it’s quite possible, the hare may have been hunted for sport but still not commonly eaten. The hare’s movements once it was released from capture were in at least one reference used for divination in ritual. It is said that the ancient Briton warrior and leader, Boudicca used a hare in this way just before her famous battle with the Romans. I wonder if the bones of hares weren’t used for divination purposes as well. The hare was also used medicinally for various purposes and fascinatingly included in the famous Materia Medica by Tadgh O’Cuinn…

“Lepus: i.e. the hare; cold and dry by nature. If Its blood be put on the eyes, it will clean cataract and web of the eyes. If its head be burnt and powder made of it, and it be applied with oil to the head, the hair will grow. If the hare’s head be burnt and eaten, it will help with the shaking of the limbs, and it will relieve paralysis. If the brain of the hare be roasted and rubbed on the gums of a child, the child’s teeth will grow without pain. If its blood be consumed by people with dysentery, it will help them; it helps with apostumes of the intestines. If the rennet of the hare be consumed the third day after menstruation, the foetus will develop promptly. If powder be made of the blood of the hare in an earthenware vessel, and the powder of its skin be burnt and mixed with white wine, this will break the urinary stones, however long-standing they may be.”

In Welsh legend, the young poet Gwion famously shapeshifted into a hare to escape a voraciously angry Ceridwen after he accidentally stole the wisdom she was brewing in her cauldron for her son. The hare was also frequently found in ancient burial sites, possibly to bring good fortune in the Otherworld. They become quite active in March and really the entirety of spring time during their mating season. This is likely one of the main reasons they became weaved within the Germanic holiday of Ostara, the Christian Easter, the Spring Equinox or Bealtaine and with Spring in general. Hares are also typically most active at night which may lend in part, their connection to the moon as well as archetypal feminine and goddess energies. In many parts of the world, the hare continues to be celebrated. The legendary Irish ‘White Hare of Creggan’ can be seen at the An Creagan Visitor Centre in County Tyrone, Ireland where its white silhouette still adorns local houses…

“In the lowland of Creggan, there lives a white hare

As swift as the swallow that flies through that air.

You may tramp the world over but none can compare

With the pride of low Creggan, the bonnie white hare.”

The Creggan White Hare, Irish folk ballad

References

1. W. B. Yeats, ed. & sel., Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. 1888. Pg. 146.
2. Leodhas, Sorche Nic. Thistle and thyme tales and legends from Scotland. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962. 1898-1969.
3. The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0025, Page 0012
4. Spence, Lewis. The Minor Traditions of British Mythology. New York: Benjamin Blom, Inc., 1972, pg. 92. 
5. Straffon, Cheryl. The Earth Goddess: Celtic and Pagan Legacy of the Landscape. London: Blandford, 1997, pg. 124. 
6. Timbs, John. Things Not Generally Known. Kent and Co., London, 1856. Pg. 25.

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