Hare Symbolism: The Moon Hare, Folklore and the Easter Hare

The hare is one of the most mysterious animals in folklore: fast, nocturnal, solitary and hard to catch. Across the world it has been linked with the moon, with magic and with spring. In Britain and northern Europe it also carries an Easter story.

The moon hare

In China, Japan and Korea, the markings on the full moon are seen not as a face but as a hare, or rabbit, pounding something with a pestle and mortar: the elixir of immortality in Chinese tradition, rice cakes in Japanese. The moon hare appears in poetry, festivals and decorative art throughout East Asia.

The hare in Britain

The hare has a long, strange history in Britain. Julius Caesar noted that the Britons did not eat hare, and the Roman historian Cassius Dio tells how Boudica released a hare from her cloak before battle and read its run as an omen. In later folklore witches were said to turn themselves into hares, which gave the animal an uncanny reputation.

The Easter hare

The Easter hare, the German Osterhase, is first recorded in south-western Germany in the late seventeenth century, as the bringer of Easter eggs. German emigrants carried the custom abroad, where the hare often became the Easter bunny. The link between the hare and the Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre is much later still, a nineteenth-century suggestion rather than an ancient tradition.

Hares in Islamic art

Hares also appear in medieval Islamic art, in hunting scenes and in images of paradise, a reminder that the animal's symbolism is far from only European.

The hare in jewellery

A hare design can reference the moon, spring, British folklore or Easter. See the AURYN Hare charm, or read our guide to animal symbolism.