Field Notes: THE BROWN HARE
Hello and welcome.
If you've found your way here it means something in this month's Field Note caught your attention, which is lovely to hear.
What follows is an attempt to flesh out a little what was in March's note — the poems, the folk tales, the music and the books that this remarkable and mysterious creature has inspired over the centuries. Some of it you may already know and some of it I hope will be new.
Take your time. Follow whatever catches your eye. And if something here leads you somewhere unexpected, so much the better. Enjoy!
If you've found your way here it means something in this month's Field Note caught your attention, which is lovely to hear.
What follows is an attempt to flesh out a little what was in March's note — the poems, the folk tales, the music and the books that this remarkable and mysterious creature has inspired over the centuries. Some of it you may already know and some of it I hope will be new.
Take your time. Follow whatever catches your eye. And if something here leads you somewhere unexpected, so much the better. Enjoy!
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Poetry
Ben Whishaw Reads Seamus Heaney's The Names of the Hare A medieval poem listing around seventy folk names for the hare — among them the stag of the stubble, the dew-hammer, the hedge-squatter, the lurker in ditches and the white-bellied one. The idea behind it was that if you encountered a hare you could ward off bad luck by naming it correctly. The original Middle English version is in the public domain. Seamus Heaney produced a celebrated translation — worth seeking out. Hares at Play — John Clare (1793–1864) Fourteen lines of Northamptonshire dialect observing hares throwing off their daylight fears to dance in the lanes at dusk, dabbling in the grain and licking dew from the barley's beard. The word 'sturt' throughout means a sudden startled movement. One of the finest short nature poems in the English language and entirely in the public domain — worth reading in full. A Calendar of Hares — Anna Crowe A living poet — full copyright applies — but the poem is available to read in full on the Scottish Poetry Library website at scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk. It describes watching two jack-hares boxing in a March field and feeling, simultaneously, an unborn daughter quicken. It also contains the observation that if you catch a hare and look into its eye you will see the whole world. Worth finding. |
Albrecht Dürer
'Young Hare' 1502 |
Folk Tale
The folk tale that appears on the back of this month's field note is retold from a West Country tradition belonging to a much wider British folklore of hare shapeshifting stories, documented by Victorian folklorists including Anna Eliza Bray and Edwin Sidney Hartland. The tale itself is almost certainly considerably older than either written record. Across Britain the hare was long considered a witch's preferred disguise. The standard tale runs along familiar lines — a hare that cannot be caught, silver shot substituted for lead, a blood trail followed to an old woman's door, an injury that has no innocent explanation. The most documented case of hare shapeshifting in British history is that of Isobel Gowdie, tried for witchcraft in Auldearn in the Scottish Highlands in 1662. She included in her confessions a Scots Gaelic spell for transforming into a hare — the spell itself is extraordinary vernacular Scots and worth seeking out in full. Gowdie's confessions are remarkable documents, apparently volunteered without coercion and in extraordinary detail. Historians have argued about their meaning ever since. In Ancient Egypt the hare hieroglyph was used for the word denoting existence itself. Myths across the world associate the hare with the moon, with transformation, and with the boundary between the ordinary world and whatever lies just beyond it. For a creature that can vanish into a field you thought was empty, perhaps that's not surprising. |
Fern Maddie
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Music
Fern Maddie — Hares on the Mountain. Fern Maddie's version of one of the most enduring songs in the British folk tradition. Hares on the Mountain has been passed between singers for generations — collected from traditional singers across Southern England and East Anglia, it gained wider recognition when Shirley Collins recorded it in 1959. Scholars have suggested it may be an echo of ancient songs of metamorphosis, in which a pursued woman runs out of transformations. Fern Maddie brings something fresh and quietly unsettling to it. Shirley Collins — Hares on the Mountain. The foundational modern recording. Collins recorded it first in 1959 for her debut LP Sweet England, again in 1964 with guitarist Davy Graham for Folk Roots, New Routes, and returned to it a third time on her 2023 album Archangel Hill. If you want to understand where British folk revival comes from, Collins is the place to start. Lankum — False Lankum. Irish folk at its most atmospheric and unsettling. Radie Peat of Lankum recorded her own version of Hares on the Mountain in 2018 — worth seeking out separately. But False Lankum as an album captures something of the darkness and strangeness that the hare's folklore inhabits. Shapeshifting, moonlit fields, the boundary between the ordinary and the other. Extraordinary music. Hania Rani — Esja Something entirely different. Hania Rani is a Polish pianist and composer whose minimalist solo piano music sits at the edge of contemporary classical and ambient. Her connection to the hare is entirely oblique — but her music has exactly the quality of stillness and something glimpsed briefly before it disappears that I associate with every hare sighting I've ever had. A good deal quieter than Lankum. Worth trying both and seeing which fits the mood. |
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Books
The Hare with Amber Eyes — Edmund de Waal. Not about hares at all. It follows a collection of 264 tiny Japanese netsuke carvings across a century of European history — from fin de siècle Paris through Nazi-occupied Vienna to postwar Tokyo. One of the finest books about objects, memory and making that I have read. The hare in the title is one of those netsuke figurines. A journey worth taking even if you came here looking for something else entirely. The Running Hare — John Lewis-Stempel. A farmer spending a year restoring a traditional hay meadow specifically to bring hares back to his land. Grounded, seasonal, quietly hopeful. Perhaps the most practically optimistic book about British wildlife I know. Raising Hare — Chloe Dalton. Named Hay Festival Book of the Year 2024 and winner of the 2025 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing. It keeps appearing on the desks of people whose taste I trust — the story of finding a newborn leveret no bigger than the palm of a hand and what follows. I haven't read it yet but it's next. If you get there before me, I'd love to know what you think. |
A Note on How to Find Everything - I've provided links (just tap on either the names or the illustrations).
If you'd like to listen to any of the music mentioned here, Bandcamp is the best place to find it. Artists receive a significantly larger share of revenue through Bandcamp than through the major streaming platforms — and on the first Friday of every month Bandcamp waive their own fees entirely, meaning every penny goes directly to the artist. This month that falls on Friday 4th April — worth timing your purchases accordingly.
For the books, your local independent bookshop is always the first port of call. If you need to order online, Bookshop.org supports independent bookshops across the UK and is a genuinely meaningful alternative to the obvious options — you can find them at uk.bookshop.org. Worth noting they currently deliver within the UK only, so overseas subscribers may need to seek out a good independent bookseller closer to home.
Until Next Month
Thank you for following the brown hare this far down the 'rabbit hole'. April brings something entirely different, and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you. In the meantime subscribers to Field Note gain access to an exclusive discount code over on my Etsy shop. Each month the discount will change so just click here to see what is available this month.
If you'd like to listen to any of the music mentioned here, Bandcamp is the best place to find it. Artists receive a significantly larger share of revenue through Bandcamp than through the major streaming platforms — and on the first Friday of every month Bandcamp waive their own fees entirely, meaning every penny goes directly to the artist. This month that falls on Friday 4th April — worth timing your purchases accordingly.
For the books, your local independent bookshop is always the first port of call. If you need to order online, Bookshop.org supports independent bookshops across the UK and is a genuinely meaningful alternative to the obvious options — you can find them at uk.bookshop.org. Worth noting they currently deliver within the UK only, so overseas subscribers may need to seek out a good independent bookseller closer to home.
Until Next Month
Thank you for following the brown hare this far down the 'rabbit hole'. April brings something entirely different, and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you. In the meantime subscribers to Field Note gain access to an exclusive discount code over on my Etsy shop. Each month the discount will change so just click here to see what is available this month.