MYTHS RELATING TO THE EASTER BUNNY

According to my new book on Hares, the Easter Bunny is actually a hare. There are lots of myths, legends and stories linking the hare with the celebration of Easter, there is a well known story linking the hare and the lapwing.

While rabbits live in warrens deep under the groud, hares spend their whole lives above ground. They nest and hide from predators in "forms" shallow indentations in the ground. As it happens, lapwings also scrape out a shallow nest, and often live in the same grassy farmland that hares inhabit. And the birds will sometimes steal hares forms to nest and lay eggs in.

So it was that in Anglo Saxon times, it was widely believed that hares laid eggs. During the Anglo Saxon month of Eosturmonath, or April, as we know it, country folk searched for fresh laid eggs in the fields. It was common practice to eat all kinds of wild birds' eggs, and lapwing eggs were particularly rich and tasty and so were very popular. They were also hard to find in the long grass, and many historians believe that this spring activity was the origin of modern Easter egg hunts for children.

It's easy to understand how finding a lapwing nest with hare droppings in, or scaring a hare out of hiding before stumbling upon a nest of eggs, would have led the Anglo Saxons to believe that the eggs were laid by the hares. And so the whole idea of the Easter Bunny hiding eggs around the garden early on Easter morning was born.