The Rabbit in Folklore
September 28, 2021
It’s no secret around here that we like bunnies :P.
Perhaps you saw our article in this Autumn’s Enchanted Living Magazine on Witch-Hares (complete with a gorgeous illustration by Guinevere Von Sneeden)?
Or maybe our ridiculous behind-the-scenes TikTok video?
Let’s just say we’re fans!
So when our wonderful Patreon supporter Ann Tabor asked us to make her special Fairy Godmother-tier patron lecture all about the folklore of rabbits, we were more than happy to oblige… AND she is letting us share it with all of you!
So, without further ado, allow us to present:
The Ann Tabor Lecture: The Folklore of Rabbits
We hope you enjoy!
1. The Easter rabbit is most certainly rabbit sized.
2. I wrote a review for Airy Nothing – a new book I found to be fabulous, luminous. I ended up talking to it’s author in Facebook for a while today. I believe she will contact you. Clarissa pattern.
hi 🙂 I really enjoyed your “Rabbit” discussion and, since you asked, wanted to share my family’s take on the Easter Bunny: I always inferred that the E.B. was rabbit sized. Additionally, my dad used to tell us, on Easter morning — when we kids woke up and discovered the eggs we had colored were missing and needed to be found — that he had just seen the E.B. scampering away across the lawn and through the front yard, and that he (dad) had seen that the E.B.’s white cotton tail was splotched with colors — pink, green, yellow, blue — as if the E.B. had, himself, been involved in coloring eggs with his tail himself. Interestingly, the E.B. dad described was distinctly male. Thank you, again! — Carrie.
This was a lovely lecture, thank you, and thank you to Ann, for sharing!
Growing up, I was always opposed to the humans-in-suits Easter Bunnies because they were /clearly/ not real rabbits and I was one of those children who had a healthy fear of mascot suits LOL. The Easter bunny was not the same size as an adult human, the humans-in-suits were clearly all fakers. But interestingly, in my own little child head to accommodate for the different sizes in books or movies etc, I assumed the Easter bunny could change sizes at will. That was how the Easter bunny could hop into everyone’s yards undetected – being a small, regular size bunny. And then the Easter bunny would grow bigger as needed to distribute the baskets or eggs etc. Easter baskets were definitely transported by magic, probably the same kind of magic as Mary Poppin’s bag! 🙂
We say the Easter bunny is rabbit-sized! We are fortunate to live with a small gray bunny named Emma. Emma listened to your lecture along with us, and the three of us enjoyed it mightily. We are going to explore the further reading. Thank you both!
This was a wonderful discussion, and I learned a lot. I really loved the Sailor Moon reference particularly. But, I was quite surprised that you didn’t mention my go to book whenever rabbits are mentioned – Alice in Wonderland – which features 2 bunnies: the March Hare and the White Rabbit. However, I will forgive you for the lapse. 🙂. As to the Easter Bunny, I guess I thought of him as a regular bunny a la Peter Cottontail, but of a larger size than a regular bun. Definitely did not think of it as humanoid or human sized, just maybe about 4 feet in height more or less. While I am not well versed in either Santa Claus or Easter Bunny mythology, I always definitely saw connections between these 2 characters as the similarities seem pretty apparent – though maybe more so in retrospect for some. At any rate, thanks for this delightful lecture. I love all of your work!