72 words for hare

Richard Feynman made a big ToDo about the names of birbs being irrelevant: the birbs don't giveadamn: they care more about the right song, the right food, the right number of eggs-per-clutch. But Feynman is not quite right because the labels we apply to the things in the world help us get on the same page of understanding how things tick. I've riffed on what do you call a dandelion? by abstracting a list from Geoffrey Grigson's wonderful compendium An Englishman's Flora. When gifts must be given, it's safe in our home to present naturist natural history books. That's how The Running Hare:The Secret Life of Farmland by John Lewis-Stempel appeared in the house sometime last year. JLS is a farmer-writer from the Welsh Marches in Herefordshire, and he's not above shooting and eating grey squirrels Sciurus carolinensis. [as R] Mais revenons-nous à nos lièvres Lepus timidus! Early on in the book there is a mention of the medieval poem called The Names of the Hare, which include

þe hare, þe scotart,
þe bigge, þe bouchart,
þe scotewine, be skikart,
þe turpin, þe tirart,
þe wei-betere, þe ballart,
þe gobidich, þe soillart,
þe wimount, þe babbart,
þe stele-awai, þe momelart,
þe cuele-I-met, þe babbart,
þe scot, þe deubert,
þe gras-bitere, þe goibert,
þe late-at-hom, þe swikebert,
and so on and on

Abstracted from þis manuscript which is more than half footnotes¹. For updated here's Ben Whishaw reading Seamus Heaney's version of the litany. Or for a guitar-driven gallop. The take-home seems to be that it's okay not to like hares very much . . . except after they have been slow-braised with onions carrots bay-leaves and whatever you're having yourself. And on inventory, it's always nice to have an excuse to read Henry Reed's 1942 anti-war poem Naming of Parts "The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers: They call it easing the Spring."

 JLS, for his part, loves hares and wants to give them a bit of a sanctuary, if only for a two year tenancy on a peculiar property, part of which he gives over to nature as a spray-free traditional wheat field with all the weeds wildflowers that entails. Its a quixotic endeavour but also a proof of concept showing that wheat can be grown, harvested, threshed and fed to animals - and peeps - without involving Bayer or Monsanto. As well as the wildflowers, the wheatfield becomes a haven for birds, badgers, foxes, toads and . . . hares. All of which the author observes from his Landrover or from the lee of a hedge. Towards the end of the book he asserts:

I have seen hares by moonglow,
and I've gazed into the heavens.
I've felt the true peace of the World.

And good for him!

¹Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Literary and Historical Section 3.6 (1935).