The Names of a Hare in English (titled in French Les Nouns de un leure en engleis) is a short Middle English poem, recorded in the late 13th century, which describes a protective charm to be performed upon encountering a hare. Written in rhyme, it consists chiefly of a list of seventy-seven names or euphemisms for a hare, many of which are derogatory, and which contain a large number of hapax legomena[1].
The text is recorded in the Bodleian MS Digby 86, a collection of miscellanea, written in the main hand of the manuscript.
Notes
edit- ^ Ross 1935, p. 348
References
edit- Ross, Alan Strode Campbell (1935). "The Middle English Poem on the Names of a Hare", Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Literary and Historical Section, 3 (1932-5) (347-377).
External links
edit- Full text as published in Reliquiae Antiquae (1845), on The Internet Archive.
- The man that the hare I-met in the Index of Middle English Verse.