Hare

In human culture

Food

Meat

Hares and rabbits are plentiful in many areas, adapt to a wide variety of conditions, and reproduce quickly, so hunting is often less regulated than for other varieties of game. They are a common source of protein worldwide. Because of their extremely low fat content, they are a poor choice as a survival food.

Hares can be prepared in the same manner as rabbits—commonly roasted or parted for breading and frying.

Hasenpfeffer (also spelled Hasenfeffer) is a traditional German stew made from marinated rabbit or hare, seasoned with black pepper (German Pfeffer) and other spices. Wine or vinegar is also a prominent ingredient, to lend a sourness to the recipe.

Lagos stifado (Λαγός στιφάδο)—hare stew with pearl onions, vinegar, red wine, and cinnamon—is a much-prized dish enjoyed in Greece and Cyprus and communities in the diaspora.

The hare (and in recent times, the rabbit) is a staple of Maltese cuisine. The dish was presented to the island's Grandmasters of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, as well as Renaissance Inquisitors resident on the island, several of whom went on to become pope.

According to Jewish tradition, the hare is among mammals deemed not kosher, and therefore not eaten by observant Jews. Muslims deem coney meat (rabbit, pika, hyrax) to be halal, and in Egypt, hare and rabbit are popular meats for mulukhiyah (jute leaf soup), especially in Cairo.

Blood

The blood of a freshly killed hare can be collected for consumption in a stew or casserole in a cooking process known as jugging. First the entrails are removed from the hare carcass before it is hung in a larder by its hind legs, which causes blood to accumulate in the chest cavity. One method of preserving the blood after draining it from the hare (since the hare is usually hung for a week or more) is to mix it with red wine vinegar to prevent coagulation, and then to store it in a freezer.

Jugged hare, known as civet de lièvre in France, is a whole hare, cut into pieces, marinated, and cooked with red wine and juniper berries in a tall jug that stands in a pan of water. It traditionally is served with the hare's blood (or the blood is added right at the end of the cooking process) and port wine.

Jugged hare is described in an influential 18th-century English cookbook, The Art of Cookery by Hannah Glasse, with a recipe titled, "A Jugged Hare", that begins, "Cut it into little pieces, lard them here and there ..." The recipe goes on to describe cooking the pieces of hare in water in a jug set within a bath of boiling water to cook for three hours. In the 19th century, a myth arose that Glasse's recipe began with the words "First, catch your hare."

Many other British cookbooks from before the middle of the 20th century have recipes for jugged hare. Merle and Reitch have this to say about jugged hare, for example:

The best part of the hare, when roasted, is the loin and the thick part of the hind leg; the other parts are only fit for stewing, hashing, or jugging. It is usual to roast a hare first, and to stew or jug the portion which is not eaten the first day. ...

To Jug A Hare. This mode of cooking a hare is very desirable when there is any doubt as to its age, as an old hare, which would be otherwise uneatable, may be made into an agreeable dish.

In 2006, a survey of 2021 people for the UKTV Food television channel found only 1.6% of the people under 25 recognized jugged hare by name. Seven of ten stated they would refuse to eat jugged hare if it were served at the house of a friend or a relative.

In England, a rarely served dish is potted hare. The hare meat is cooked, then covered in at least one inch (preferably more) of butter. The butter is a preservative (excludes air); the dish can be stored for up to several months. It is served cold, often on bread or as an appetizer.

Taming

No extant domesticated hares exist. A breed of European rabbit known as the Belgian hare was selectively bred to resemble a hare. Hare remains have been found in a wide range of human settlement sites, with some showing signs of use beyond simple hunting and eating:

• A European brown hare was buried alongside an older woman mid fifth millennium BC, in a grave discovered in today's Hungary.
• 12 Mountain hare metapodials were found in a Swedish grave from third millennium BC.
• The Tolai hare (originally described as a Cape hare, amended according to range) was tamed by northern Chinese people in the neolithic period (~third millennium BC) and fed millets.

In mythology and folklore

The hare in African folk tales is a trickster; some of the stories about the hare were retold among enslaved Africans in America and are the basis of the Br'er Rabbit stories. The hare appears in English folklore in the saying "as mad as a March hare", and in the legend of the White Hare, which alternatively tells of a witch who takes the form of a white hare and goes out looking for prey at night, or of the spirit of a broken-hearted maiden who cannot rest and who haunts her unfaithful lover.

The constellation Lepus is taken to represent a hare, having been named by the Greco-Roman scholar Ptolemy c. 150 CE. Hares are associated with moon deities in various cultures. In Wales, they are strongly associated with the saint Melangell.

The hare was once regarded as an animal sacred to Aphrodite and Eros because of its high libido. Live hares were often presented as a gift of love. In European witchcraft, hares were either witches' familiars or a witch who had transformed themself into a hare. Pop mythology associates the hare with the Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre as an explanation for the Easter Bunny.

In European tradition, the hare symbolises the two qualities of swiftness and timidity. The latter resulted in the scientific name Lepus timidus that was given to the mountain hare by Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus. Several ancient fables depict the Hare in flight: In one, The Hares and the Frogs, they decide to commit mass suicide to relieve the angst of constantly fleeing threats, but reconsider when they startle frogs on the way to throwing themselves into the river. Conversely, in The Tortoise and the Hare, perhaps the best-known among Aesop's Fables, the hare loses a race through being too confident in its swiftness. In Irish folklore, the hare is often associated with the Aos sí or other pagan elements. In these stories, characters who harm hares often suffer dreadful consequences.

In the Otia Imperialia, the author Gervase of Tilbury describes a creature called a "Grant" as a fire omen. The creature allegedly looks like a bipedal foal that runs through the streets to warn of fire. One interpretation is that the Grant is an exaggerated hare. Hares as fire omens have persisted in parts of England into modernity.

In literature and art

In fiction

In art

Three hares

A study in 2004 followed the history and migration of a symbolic image of three hares with conjoined ears. In this image, three hares are seen chasing each other in a circle with their heads near its centre. While each of the animals appears to have two ears, only three ears are depicted. The ears form a triangle at the centre of the circle and each is shared by two of the hares. The image has been traced from Christian churches in the English county of Devon right back along the Silk Road to China, via western and eastern Europe and the Middle East. Before its appearance in China, it was possibly first depicted in the Middle East before being reimported centuries later. Its use is associated with Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Buddhist sites stretching back to about 600 AD.

Place names

The hare has given rise to local place names, as they can often be observed in favoured localities. An example in Scotland is "Murchland", murchen being a Scots word for a hare.