The Hare that Got Away April 16, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Here is a short paragraph from the late nineteenth century about Pendle in Lancashire.
He who visits Pendle will yet find that charms are generally resorted to amongst the lower classes; that there are hares, which in their persuasion, never can be caught, and which survive only to baffle and confound the huntsman; that each small hamlet has its peculiar and gifted personage, who it is dangerous to offend; that the wise men and wise women (the white witches of our ancestors) still continue their investigations of truth, undisturbed by the rural police or the progress of the school-master; that each locality has its haunted house; that apparitions still walk their ghostly rounds – and little would his reputation for piety avail that clergyman who should refuse to lay those ‘extravagant and erring spirits,’ when requested by those due liturgic ceremonies which the tradition of orthodoxy requires.
Beach nodded his way through all of this apart from the mysterious hare. What is a hare that can ‘never be caught, and which survive only to baffle and confound the huntsman.’ Pendle is witch country and the obvious sense would be that there were certain witches who had transformed into hares and could run very fast: witches it will be remembered were for ever morphing into rabbits or hares. The author, a Dr. Laycock, gives some more information.
Though we have become more skeptical during the last few years, yet it is not long since there was a Bent Hill Wood hare that defied the hounds, as Mr. Bennet has told us, and there are few of the older inhabitants who have not heard of fruit trees that boys durst not climb for fear of being held there until it suited the purposes of the witch to loose them; or of old women whose presence was sure to turn the milk sour, hinder the churning, or prevent the dough from rising.
Beach has been unable to find Bent Hill in the Pendle area but the notion is clear. In Bent Hill Wood there was a Roald Dahl style hare that outdid his pursuers. Note the witch trees that follow…
Again was the Bent Hill Wood Hare actually believed to be a local witch; or is this reading too much into this unusual account?
Are there other unhuntable animals: drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com particularly hares.
Source: Dr. Laycock, ‘Pendle Forest Witches’, Burnley Express (27 Sep 1899), 4
