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20 Jun 17 - 06:52 AM (#3861875) Subject: Whistling jacket, catch me a hare From: Steve Taylor-Howlett I was listening to a programme on Radio 4 about hares. I remembered hearing a song with the lines: Whistling jacket, catch me a hare And I'll sell it [next Tuesday?] at [Tum-ti-tum] Fair. The premis of the song was an old Gypsy tradition that if you threw this particular jacket on the ground and whistled, a hare would come and sit on it. You could then grab the creature as it would be hypnotised. I think Nic Jones sang it, but I could be wrong. (You read it here first!) Does anyone have any information about the song, or about the tradition of hare-catching in this way. There is a famous painting by Stubbs of a horse called Whistlejacket, who was apparently named after a cough remedy containing gin and treacle (!) so the expression, or something like it, was known in the 18th C. |
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20 Jun 17 - 08:07 AM (#3861892) Subject: RE: Whistling jacket, catch me a hare From: DaveRo I found a reference to the song 'Whistling Jacket' on a CD by John Timpany. Taken from Fred Rookes legends that a Romany can hunt hares without traps, snares or a gun.http://www.johntimpany.co.uk/ |