Saint Godric and the Hare

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

In Beasts and Saints (1934) her collection of stories written from the fourth to the end of the twelfth century, Helen Waddell included the story of St. Godric and the hare. The saint planted vegetables in his garden to feed the poor but a thief began to steal them. One day the saint came upon the thief in the garden. It was a hare. "The saint caught it and struck it with his rod; and binding a bundle of vegetables on its shoulders sent it off with these words:'See to it that neither thyself nor any of they acquaintance come to the place again; nor dare encroach on what was meant for the need of the poor.' And so it befel." Thereafter the hare, presumably in a state of grace, came under the saint's protection; and if a hare was caught in a snare the saint would release it; and if a hare was fleeing from the huntsman he would take it into his house and protect it until the hunt had gone away.

– George Ewart Evans & David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
p. 223

See also the previous posts:
• Melangell, Patron Saint of Hares
• The Hare and the Great Flood
• The Easter Hare

Opening Image: Ernie Janes.

Morning Light

Image: "Ali" by JR Christiansen.

The Self-Sacrificing Hare

Writes Simon Carnell in Hare:

In India, in one of the Jataka stories reputed to have been told by the Buddha himself, Bodhisattva is born in one of his incarnations as a hare. In this form he preaches to several other animals the necessity of giving alms, and when they are visited by the god Sakka in the form of a hungry Brahmin, each of them offers food. But only the hare does so in an appropriate form, following the law that no life should be destroyed. He not only offers to sacrifice himself by leaping into a fire, but shakes his body three times to rid it of any creatures living in his fur. The offer is declined but, as a reward for his virtue, the incident is commemorated by the god by painting the hare's image on the moon. In another version the hare begins to carefully pick the insects from his fur in preparation for his death, and in a Sri Lankan version it is the Buddha himself who meets the self-sacrificing hare, rescues him from the fire and puts him on the moon.


Image: Takagi Haruyama (1850).