Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/460

452 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", and the same superstition is also found among the fishermen in the West of Ireland.

In Western Brittany the peasants, not many years ago, "could hardly endure to hear the hare's name".

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