Extraordinary creatures

Like many people I’m trying to learn another language, and for some reason, a few years ago, when I joined Duolingo, I decided to learn Danish. Maybe it was because I used to watch a lot of Danish TV series with English subtitles of course, or maybe I was just thought it might be interesting. Anyway, I’ve been plodding on with it, but have no-one to practice speaking with so I guess my pronunciation is probably poor to terrible and no Danish person would understand me. However, my reading isn’t bad – and I’ve begun to read an Agatha Christie book in Danish, and whenever we buy anything with multiple versions of the instructions, I stumble my way through the Dansk.

To be honest, although I persevere with Duolingo, I don’t think it’s the best possible language learning site, and I have some specific criticisms of it. Occasionally I’m completely foxed with my Danish and fortunately, although there is no community group on the site anymore, there is a group on Facebook.  The people there are really kind and helpful, for example, today there were some exercises about Fasterlavn which I discovered is a Shrove Tuesday festival. Duo didn’t explain what it was, didn’t explain what certain food items were, or certain traditions, so it would have been an absolute mystery and I would’ve got every answer wrong, except for the Facebook gang.

Having discovered more about Fasterlavn I investigated more and you know what it’s like with Wikipedia, you’re pulled in various directions, but I eventually came up with the story of Jesper  Harehyrde – Jesper Hareherder, which immediately intrigued me. Hares seem such extraordinary creatures – and these days rare creatures, with so many myths and legends and folk tales attached to them. Jesper was a poor boy who was set various challenges in order to win the hand of the princess:

Then he was set to herd a hundred hares. Using the whistle, he kept them together. The king heard of it and resolved to stop him. A shabby girl begged for a hare to feed for guests; finally, Jesper agreed to give her one in return for a kiss, but then he whistled it back. A stout old woman, in peasant dress, came next. He agreed to give her one if she would tiptoe about him cackling like a hen, and then he whistled it back. A fat old man in a royal groom’s livery came, and Jesper agreed to give him one if he stood on his head, and then whistled it back.
(Wikipedia)

It seems there are versions of this tale from many if not most European countries, including Scotland and Wales – but not England. I certainly hadn’t come across it before, despite being a great reader of all sorts of tales, myths and legends.

A book I read some time ago did involve a mythical hare, Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley, and I  wrote about it here:

https://wordpress.com/post/loiselsden.com/35187