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White Rabbits

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carole

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This isn't really Forteana, more of a folklore thing, but does anyone know why or where saying "white rabbits" or "White Rabbit, White Rabbit bring me good luck" on the first day of the month (before you've said anything else that day) originated?

I've looked it up in various folklore dictionaries, but at best they merely mention it in passing and don't give any background.

Carole
 
As you say, some of the expected sources are surprisingly unhelpful.

Art Books drawing on Medieval Bestiaries would give the
traditional associations of rabbits. [As a Catholic kid, I remember a
very tolerant teacher who allowed us to fill the Christmas
Crib with some extra animals. There were little pot cats, rabbits
and, most startlingly, a squeaky toy of Sweep from The Sooty Show!
I now suspect the teacher may have been a heretic.]

Not sure if white ones are the worst, but the main thing about
rabbits is their reputation for reproduction. So Easter bunnies
go well with the eggs as symbols. From fertility symbol to general
good luck charm seems a short route. You should see some of
the charms of Naples!

My mother just said Rabbits! on the first day of a month with an R
in it. I assumed it was because she was as mad as a March Hare;)
 
I don't know if this just adds to the confusion but my mother in law from Somerset reckons that as a child, when someone was given a "pinch and a punch for the first day of the month", they would then cry out: "White rabbit".

Was the association of luck originally with the hare rather than the rabbit, then got swapped over to the rabbit as it got more plentiful after it's introduction to Britain, supposedly by the Normans? I think it was Pliny writing in the first century A.D. who claimed that the Britons would not eat hare and didn't Boadicia take a hare into one of her battles? I think it was mentioned in Tacitus.
 
Slight digression here, but wasn't the rabbit introduced by the Romans (along with the dormouse and indoor plumbing)?

Anyway, they didn't stay in my part of the country for too long, so what do I know?;)
 
I'm no authority, but some people say the rabbit came in with the Romans, others say the Normans!!! I think however that there's only one place in Britain where just a few rabbit bones were found and could be dated prior to the Norman invasion and the Normans seem to have needed to provide special warrens and warreners to look after the rabbits on their estates, suggesting that rabbits were a newly introduced, non-hardy species at that time.

But back to the original question, why "White Rabbit", it's the sort of thing that niggles me?
 
Just to add my vote for 'white rabbit' traditionally coming after, 'a pinch, a punch, the first of the month.' I have no footling idea why but I suspect it has something to do with rabbits. Possibly white ones.
 
tinfoilpants said:
I have no footling idea why but I suspect it has something to do with rabbits. Possibly white ones.
Click to expand...

The only other white rabbit I know of was the one in Alice (Wonderland, not Springs). Oh, and there was that poem about the rabbit saving the fairy from drowning and being turned white as a reward . . .

Carole
 
carole said:
rabbit saving the fairy from drowning and being turned white as a reward . . .Carole
Click to expand...

As a reward? Wouldn't being white be a positive step backwards for rabbit kind? Unless they lived somewhere snowy.
 
The white hare is associated with the Celtic Goddess Ostara (from whose name the word "Easter" evolved - it was HER celebration, long before Jesus was born). She was said to have the power to turn into a White Hare, and this got changed to a rabbit as they became more common. That's why we have the Easter Bunny, but why the White Rabbit should be used on the first day of every month, I do not know.
 
To apply a charm at the start of any calendar period would
seem a natural extension of its power, if it was presumed
to work at other times.

There would seem to be some sort of continuity of symbol,
as you suggest from white hare to white rabbit but people
tend to adapt them to their own needs. So there are so
many variants of the Rabbit charm.

In the version traditional to my mother's family, the word Rabbits!
was recited on rising on the first day of the month from September
through to April, these being the months with an R in them. There
may have been some cross-fertilization here between a good luck
charm and a culinary precaution as the warmer Summer months,
without an R, were regarded as unsafe for certain foods. My
grandmother regarded the hot weather rendered pork unsavoury.

Whether Rabbit was also off the menu I cannot recall. :rolleyes:
 
No, never heard it before. I've heard of people carrying rabbit feet with them but thats all...
 
White Rabbits? Could it be that the rabbit has displaced the hare as a lunar animal? Might explain the association with the first of the month, too ...
 
Rabbit rabbit

My family has a tradition of saying "Rabbit, rabbit" on the first day of every month, for good luck. A few years ago, my grandmother told me that my uncle had invented this ritual when he was little. More recently, she told me that he had learned it at school. Some of the other families on our street do this, too, but I think they picked it up from my family. Does anyone else do this?
 
The way I know it , you have to say rabbit or white rabbit three times on the first day of the month,I seem to remember it is supposed to be the first thing you say , or it won't work .
 
my husband's family (and now mine!) say white rabbits on the first day of every month, and it has to be before 12 midday otherwise it's bad luck.
 
No, you have to cross your fingers and say, "White rabbit, white rabbit, bring me good luck." on the first day of each month. And you have to say it before you say anything else on that day, or it won't be valid.

Carole
 
?????????

The only one I ever knew was "pinch, punch first of the month"
 
We always used to say 'Pinch, punch first of the month, no returns. White rabbit' as you pinched someone before 12 on the first of the month.

If you didn't say no returns or white rabbit then you'd get pinched back.

So it looks like in deepest darkest cornwall we combined the whole lot together. It must have been like that for a while because it was my grandfather that said it to me first.

Gjinn
 
My grandmother taught me that you said the white rabbit chant on the first day of the month as soon as you woke up & before you spoke to anyone else, BUT only on months that had an "r" in them, otherwise bad luck would occur to you. She came from Cockermouth in Cumberland, and learned this as a child, which would be in the 1860/70's.
 
My parents do the "White Rabbit" three times thing.

I try to repeat a May Day something I picked up out of Illuminatus:
Horray! Horray! The First of May! Outdoor Fucking Starts Today!"
Click to expand...
For some reason not saying it it seems to preclude me from the aformetioned.

Niles "...It wasn't so lucky for the rabbit" Calder
 
Yeah, we're supposed to say it before we say anything else, or else it won't work.

I like the pinching thing--I think I'll start doing that.

Thanks!
 
White Rabbits - First of the month

Anyone know why you are supposed to say "White Rabbit" three times before you do anything on the first of the month? A quick google doesn't seem to be providing much explanation... it seems to go back a long way but what I want to know is why??

Looking forward to being enlightened!
 
As a youth we used to say "A pinch and a punch, first day of the month!" performing actions to fit words. If you were slick you'd add "... and no returns!" to save being pinched/punched back. Oddly, part of the ritual involved the rule that it only counted before midday.
 
My mother still asks me if I've remembered to say 'White Rabbits' on the first day of the month.

You have to say, 'White Rabbit, White Rabbit, bring me good luck' first thing in the morning before you say anything else, or it won't work. If you manage to do this, apparently you'll have a lucky month.

Had a look in the Penguine Guide to Superstitions, and it doesn't add much more that the info in Pete's link.

It does say, however, that it appears to be a comparatively recent custom - the earliest concrete dating is found in a correspondence from the Saturday Westminster Gazette of March/April 1919, where many of the correspondents regarded it as relatively new.

It adds that the basic principle involved is most probably the marking of a nother beginning within the cycle of months, but no plausible suggestion as to why it is rabbits has been suggested.

I wonder if there is a connection with the old Celtic hare? I found this link:

"The hare was a sacred animal for Celts, a symbol of abundance, good fortune and prosperity. As a lunar animal, it represented the dawn, spiritual rebirth and the immortality of the soul. It was the totem animal of many moon goddesses, deities who were controllers of fate and weavers of destiny. The hare was an intermediary between mortals and deities, a celestial messenger, but also a trickster with powers of transformation and a bringer of change. Its erratic movements were thought to foretell future events. The word Easter is derived from Oestre, an Anglo-Saxon hare goddess of Spring, whose April festival celebrated the rebirth of the natural world."

The Celtic hare as a symbol of rebirth - saying White Rabbits at the beginning of a month? There may be a connection . . .

Carole

*edit* - the link above was for jewellery.

Here's a better one!
 
Thanks for all that. If it does only go back to 1919 or thereabouts, maybe it is all tied in with Alice in Wonderland after all, which was written in the early 1860s I think. I don't know why, I thought it went back further than that. It still seems quite a random thing to do to bring good luck, but then I suppose most of these customs are!!
 
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