The month of April is the time of the full Hare Moon, or Planters Moon, when the sowing of the crops takes place and early blossoms and shy wildflowers unfurl with the rapidly awakening Earth. The name April could be linked to that of Aphrodite the Greek goddess of love, but to the Anglo Saxons this was the month of Eostre, goddess of spring and fertility. Her name has survived in both the Christian festival of Easter and the hormone oestrogen, responsible for orchestrating the female reproductive cycle and therefore birth. She was also linked to the growing light and budding of Spring, like Eos the Indo-European goddess of the dawn.
In the British countryside it was once the call of the lapwing (plover) that heralded the birth of spring, along with that of the cuckoo, and her eggs were particularly highly sought after. Unusually for a bird, the lapwing lays her eggs in the ground, and it was customary to find them and gift them at Easter, probably the origins of the Easter egg hunt. Unfortunately during Victorian times the hunt took on epic proportions and so many eggs were harvested that the lapwing was brought to near extinction and they are sadly rarely seen today.[1]
The lapwings shares the same territory as hares, leading to a remarkable misunderstanding. Hares live solely above ground and make indentations in the Earth in which to sit and sleep. When abandoned, the lapwing would come along and lay her eggs in these same idents, which then led to the notion that it was the hares who had laid them. This all added to the mystery of these nocturnal creatures: not only were they deemed to lay eggs, but it was also believed they changed sex every year, as well as participating in frenzied boxing matches most often seen in March. Their appearance at spring, their breeding and egg laying habits and the fact they sat in rings, led to an association with rebirth, resurrection and new life.
Hare bones were often found in ritual pits, showing their sacredness in ancient times, and there were taboos around eating their flesh. Later when the Romans took over the land, hare coursing (hunting) became a favoured past time, again drastically reducing the numbers of the original indigenous species, the Arctic hare. Under Christian domination, the rabbit took their place as prime fertility symbol, and Easter would not be complete today without the ‘Easter bunny’ and the distribution of chocolate eggs in place of the older land-based customs.
The hare was also sacred to another more shadowy goddess in Anglo-Celtic Britain, Andraste, goddess of love, fertility – and battle. Andraste was the patron goddess of the Iceni tribe, a pre-Roman Brittonic people who inhabited parts of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. Boudicca was their queen, and famously fought the Romans, with some success, before being brutally subdued along with her tribe. On the eve of battle, Boudicca was said to evoke the goddess Andraste and a hare was used in divination. According to the classical write Dion, Boudicca would address her people then let a hare escape from the fold her dress. [2]The success of the battle could be foretold according to the direction in which the hare chose to run. It could have been the left side that was unlucky (the origins of the word ‘sinister’ from ‘sinistre,’ left) but there is no record attesting to this. It is also said that the Iceni took no captives in battle, but those that were defeated were dispatched to Andraste, showing that she accepted sacrifice of human blood. [3]
In more peaceful times, she was worshipped in the sacred groves as a woodland/lunar goddess, presiding over the life death cycle of nature, as is the natural order of things. This notion of life, death and rebirth is still enshrined in the festival of Easter to an extent, though it has now been separated from the cycle of nature and projected onto the figure of Jesus.
[1] See ‘The Lapwing – unsung hero of Easter and farmland icon’ by Rebecca Hoskins, www.permaculture.co.uk (Accessed 5.5.2020)
[2] ‘The Druid Animal Oracle’ by Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm
[3] www.thewhitegoddess.co.uk (Accessed 7.4.2020)
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