The White Hare

‘I shall go into a hare!’ There are some who have the talent, the patience perhaps, to a become a hare and to run as fleet as one across the fields. But in the old days hares were hunted. Four hunters would leave their tools at the cottage of an old woman who lived alone in the Valley of Stones below Littlebredy. One night they saw a strange thing – a pure white hare – and they vowed to catch her. She was fast. She soon got away. But the men were determined. By splitting up they cornered her and the dogs got her. But, although wounded, she managed to get away. When the men returned to the cottage the door was open. Peering in, they saw the old woman lying bleeding on the floor. She was the hare! The hare was her! Three of the men fled, but the youngest stayed and tended to the woman’s wounds until she was well once more. The old woman and the hunters are long dead now, but still some say that you can see a white hare out among the stones.