Dictionaries hazard merely the guess that the wild hyacinths known as harebell, so common in England and Scotland, were “perhaps” so named because they grow in places frequented by hares, but we prefer to think the ancient Saxons had a more poetic notion.
“Yes,” they may have said, “they are plentiful where hares abide, and the hares love to tinkle them as they pass, so we shall call them the harebell.”
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