Mind Your Language | 11 September 2004

‘In my opinion,’ said Doris Eades, 74, ‘the council has so much money it doesn’t know what to do with it and comes up with hair-brained schemes like this.’ So said a newspaper report on a scheme by Wolverhampton to get people to use bicycles. But was it hair-brained or hare-brained? The hare once played a larger part in the folk consciousness of England than the rabbit. The rabbit, or coney as it was called, was introduced by the Romans perhaps, but was popularised as a reserve of meat and fur by the Normans. I rather think the Anglo-Saxons, before they settled on the British mainland, were familiar with hares. Certainly in about the year 800 the English word hare is matched to the Latin lepus in the so-called Epinal Glossary, named after the town where the manuscript was later found.Michael Quinion, in his excellent Port Out, Starboard Home and Other Language Myths, suggests that hair was an alternative way of spelling hare in English in the 16th century, when hare-brained was coined.