Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Hare o’ the Tabor


“. . . Meanwhile the company talk, and one relates that he has already seen in the Fair, the eagle; the black wolf; the bull with five legs, which ‘was a calf at Uxbridge Fair two years agone;’ the dogs that dance the morrice; and ‘the hare o’ the taber.’”

Bartholomew Fair in 1614


Ben Jonson’s mention of the hare that beat the tabor at Bartholomew Fair in his time, is noticed by the indefatigable and accurate Strutt; who gives the [above] representation of the feat itself, which he affirms, when he copied it from a drawing in the Harleian collection, to have been upwards of four hundred years old.”

– William Hone, Hone’s Everyday Book (1826)

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