#hare witch

“We tend to associate witches with black cats that operate as their familiar spirits, but more traditionally the witch transforms herself into a hare in order to steal milk from the neighbors’ cows. The witch-hare has other moneymaking sidelines, however: in one rather jolly tale from Tavistock in Devon, she gives the hare hunters a run for their money. In a letter written in 1833, a certain Mrs. Bray relates how a young boy would earn money by starting hares for the local hare hunters – he was always able to find one when they seemed scarce. Somehow, the hare always managed to get away. This made the huntsman suspicious, so on one occasion the hounds were teed up to to get on to their prey’s trail more quickly. The hare zigged and zagged to cries from the boy of ’Granny! Quick! Run for your life!’ Aha! The hare just made it into the boy’s grandmother’s cottage through a little hole. When the huntsmen broke in, no animal was to be seen. But the old woman was quite out of breath, and she had scratches as if she had been running through brambles.” Carolyne Larrington -The Land of the Green Men: A Journey Through the Supernatural Landscape of the British Isles (2015) image: Hans Hoffman - a hare among plants (1582)