civilised British were themselves ignorant of the reason of this taboo, is of course probable, and they may have regarded hares merely as domestic pets, who were kept, as Cæsar says, "for amusement and pleasure", but to whom there clung nevertheless some strange and venerable superstitions.
III. In some places there still lingers a stong objection to utter the name of the hare—a superstition which has its roots among the earliest strata of religious prejudice. Mr. Gregor says that among the inhabitants of the north-east coast of Scotland, "the word 'hare' is never pronounced at sea",[1] and the same superstition is also found among the fishermen in the West of Ireland.[2]
In Western Brittany the peasants, not many years ago, "could hardly endure to hear the hare's name".[3]
IV. Both in accepted systems of divination, and in the prejudices of the vulgar, the hare is a fertile source of omens. The prophecy of Kalkas, foretelling the fall of Troy, and
- ↑ F.-L. Journal., i, 87.
- ↑ Ibid., ii, 260. "So great is their aversion to a fox, hare, or rabbit, that they never so much as mention their names themselves, nor endure even to hear them named by others. If a fisherman of Claddagh happened to see one of these animals or hear its name mentioned, he would not on that day venture to sea; and the cause of this strange superstition they neither know themselves, nor can anyone else account for it."
- ↑ Elton, op. cit., p. 286.
article on "Semitic Religions", suggests another explanation of this taboo: "Savage men have very generally supposed that the qualities of the animal eaten are absorbed by the eater; . . . that the cowardice of the hare may result from feeding on its flesh, which is sometimes allowed to women, but not to men." This explanation does not appear wide enough, however, to cover all the cases. The reason of the hare being allowed to women among the Hottentots, but not to men, is possibly due to a wish to exclude women from the penetralia of religious worship, such as exists in the strictest form among the aboriginal Ainus of Japan. Cf. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, Edinburgh, 1889, p. 216, note.
