Surprisingly

Writes artist Martin Ridley:

There are many different strategies which animals adopt to cope with danger. The powerful legs of hares give a clue as to theirs.

Most animals hide away in cover for protection but hares rely on seeing any danger coming. With eyes placed high on their heads, hares have exceptional all round vision and, if a predator approaches, their speed will prevail and carry them to safety.

Brown hares are predominantly active during the hours of darkness, during the day they rest up in a shallow scrape in the ground called a form. Surprisingly the hare sits right out in the open and is only partly concealed.


Image: Benjamin.

Morning Light XIII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

The Hare's Dream

On the twentieth of January and in the seventieth year
The morning being beautiful, charming, bright and clear
I being disturbed by dreams as I lay in my den
I dreamed of heathery mountain, high rock and low glen

As I sat in my form for to view the plains round
I being trembling and shaking for fear of the hounds
And seeing no danger appearing to me
I quickly walked up to the top of the Sligue

They hunted me up and they hunted me down
At the loop of the burn they did me surround
When up come the huntsman to end all the strife
He says, Leave the hare down and give her play for her life

Bad luck to all sportsmen, to Bowman and Ringwood
They sprinkled the plain with my innocent blood
They let Reynard go free, that cunning old fox
That ate up all the chickens, fat hens and game cocks

Yes now I’m for dying but I know not the crime
To the value of sixpence I ne’er wronged mankind
I never was given to rob or to steal
All the harm that I ever done was crop the heads of green kale

- Traditional

Image: Brown Hare by Carl Baggott.

Tan Lines III

Continuing The Leveret’s appreciation and celebration of tan lines . . .


Image: Carlinhos Freire, Tayrone Lemos, and Felipe Caffé photographed by Fernando Torquatto.

One of the Mysteries

The following is excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson.

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The baby hare begins its solitude soon after birth. Its mother gives birth to it, and to two or three brothers and sisters, in an open nest called a form. They are born fully furred and active, with eyes wide open. . . . Baby rabbits start life pink and naked, blind and deaf and cuddle together with their mother, except when she goes out to feed, in a well hidden cosy place. Baby hares often live alone from a very early age, apart from their mother and brothers or sisters, each in its own separate nest or form. Until they are weaned their mother visits each in turn, and suckles them one by one where they nestle alone. It has been suggested that she gives birth to each separately in a different place, but this seems improbable because new-born litters are very often found in the same nest. The purpose of the separation is clear when one thinks of the dangers of a nursery on the surface of the land; only one can be taken by predators at a time. But how the move is done, if move there is, remains one of the mysteries on which observers contradict each other.


Image: “Harebell and Leveret” by Isabelle Brent.

Morning Light XII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

The Irish Hare

“The most glorious distinction of the Irish hare . . . is the beauty of its coat, especially in summer. It is never the smokey blue of the mountain hare and seldom so dark a brown as the common hare. It has a preponderance of yellowy-orange, a rusty look, rich as a fox, not glossy but reflective of many shades of light. Pale yellow individuals are not uncommon, and dark ones – so dark that two of our informants called them black – are sometimes seen, but rarely. Ears and tail are longer than the mountain hare’s but the same shape – the ears somewhat rounded or even squarish at the tips, the tail fluffy and entirely white both in summer and winter. The furry soles of the feet are brownish.”

– Excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson.


Image: NatureHug.com.

Tan Lines II

Continuing with The Leveret’s appreciation and celebration of tan lines . . .


Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Vile, Gluttonous, and Cruel

Following is an excerpt from blogger Mark Farley’s September 2007 response to author and celebrity chef Clarissa Dickson Wright’s support of the “sport” of hare coursing.

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Hare coursing is an act, banned in 2004, involving dogs racing against each other in an attempt to catch hare. A practice (until quite recently) that had it’s own league, events and championship, the Waterloo Cup.

. . . With Clarissa’s new book, Spilling the Beans . . . she may have done her case no good by not only being equally in support of blood sports but in particular her passion for coursing, in particular. Some of the things she has said in the book may not go in her favour, as she gives the impression that whatever “psycho” Tony Blair puts into law, she is going to whatever the hell she likes regardless.

First of all she tells us that she fell in love with coursing (“a great rural and social resource”) around ten years ago and was proud and steadforth (Sgt Major, Sir!) when she was asked to become a member and outspoken voice for the National Coursing Club, who still house a very pointless website quoting a roman called Arrian who said, “The true sportsman does not take out his dog to destroy the hares, but for the sake of the course and the contest between the dogs and the hares, and is glad if the hare escapes,” like it means anything and is going to help them in any way.

Then she waxes lyrically about the history of the practice stating that the “sport” was depicted on early Greek pottery and that Romans introduced the brown hare into England for the purpose of coursing.

Clarissa, that doesn’t make it right. An educated person like you must realise that one thing history or a passion for has taught us that is that in the past . . . we have been complete arseholes.

“The aim is not to kill the hare,” she says “but to test the respective abilities of two greyhounds in pursuit of it. The points are given for the first dog to pull ahead of the other. No points are awarded for a kill.”

Thank you for the lesson in the illegal sport, my dear. But that’s not the point. The killing does happen, which is why it’s banned. It’s wrong to take enjoyment in taking the life of something for the sake of pastime. Sure, I like to eat meat just like the next man, but I like to try and be ethical about how it suffered instead of standing in a field with a jug of Pimms, gorging on deer pate and guffawing with glee at the splendour of the achievement of one animal’s fight over another much lesser and smaller than thee.

“Opponents of the sport say that the hare is terrified but I have seen hares peacefully grazing on the coursing field a few hours after the event.”

I have seen them take tea, indulge in some light snacks, perhaps a small pork and egg pie. They canter aloofly and bound gracefully, chuckling Wodehouse-like witticisms between them without a care in the world. Look here, I even have a signed affidavit from one such creature, saying that there was no mental distress whatsoever.

My favourite part of her argument is that farmers will shoot the hares regardless if they are not allowed to course, whereas if they are, they will be tolerated for the sake of the event, even if they are constantly eating away at their vegetation.

That’s right. Hare coursing in their best interests. So basically, your conclusion is . . . fuck them. They’re gonna die anyway, yeah? Spoken like a true product of privilege: vile, gluttonous and cruel. I raise my hip flask and salute you!


Image 1: “Greyhounds Coursing a Hare” by Dean Wolstenholme.
Image 2: Photographer unknown.

Morning Light XI

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

The Leaper

The following is excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson.

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A symbol is a sign or object that stands not exactly, but by association or resemblance, for something else. In primitive writing a picture stands for the object named, but as the art of writing develops the same picture is adapted and used for abstract ideas.

This process can be traced in language too: “haring away” for running off in action or thought, “hare-brained” for foolish or a mind that takes unpredictable leaps. The hare is, literally in several languages, the leaper, the one who springs or starts up, and so becomes linked with creation, the springing up of life, and with the quick mind. We often speak of an intelligent mind as one which leaps to a truth where others plod their way by stages; the fool and the genius share essential qualities.


Image: 1: Paul Jenkins
Image2: Sarah Cheese