Lucky Hare Familiar Spirit Companion · Wat

Meet Wat.

For hundreds of years, the luckiest thing an English person could carry in their pocket was a hare’s foot.

It kept off sickness, bad luck and witchcraft. It cured cramps and colic. In January 1665, Samuel Pepys, a clerk at the Navy Office in London who wrote down everything that happened to him in his famous diary, noted that he had not had a single attack of colic since he started carrying one. A few months later, he added that a friend had explained his mistake: the foot only worked if it still had the joint attached.

That was the year the plague came to London. And everyone wanted a hare’s foot.

In those days, country people often called a hare Wat. Shakespeare did too. In one of his poems, he describes a hunted hare as poor Wat, running ahead of the hounds, doubling back on his own tracks to fool them.

This Wat lived in Kent.

In the summer of 1662, the mowers were cutting the hay in a field outside a village on the North Downs, south-east of London, when their scythes caught a hare in the long grass. She was killed instantly. Under her, in a little hollow in the ground, were three leverets, tiny and wet-eyed. The mowers laughed and went on mowing. Two of the leverets were killed. The third ran straight across the stubble and hid in the skirts of a girl standing at the edge of the field.

The girl’s name was Alys. She was fourteen, the daughter of the village cunning woman, and she carried him home in her apron.

Everyone said he would die. Wild hares never lived in captivity. Wat did. Alys fed him milk from a rag, then clover and dandelion leaves, then everything she ate herself. He slept in a basket beside her bed. As he grew, he followed her everywhere, like a dog, through the house, the garden and the lanes. When she sat outside combing wool with teasel heads, he lay against her feet. And when she held out her hands to him, he would stand up on his long hind legs and box them, the way wild hares box each other in the fields in spring.

He was the luckiest thing in the house. Alys’s mother noticed it first. Since the hare had come, the hens laid better, the fever had passed the cottage by, and the money from her charms had doubled. People came to the door just to look at him.

Then, in the spring of 1665, the plague broke out in London.

By summer, thousands were dying every week. People fled the city in carts. People who could not flee bought anything that might save them: herbs to sniff, paper charms to wear round their necks, and hare’s feet. Men came out of London into the villages of Kent, offering silver for every hare’s foot they could get.

One evening in June, Wat went out into the lane at dusk, the way he always did, and did not come back. At dawn, Alys found him at the bottom of the garden, under the hedge. He had been caught in a poacher’s snare, and his left hind foot had been cut off, joint and all. He had dragged himself home on three legs.

He died in her lap as the sun came up.

Alys buried him under the hedge. She was seventeen. She did not cry in front of her mother. But that night, she stood in the garden with her mother’s charms in her hands and said words over his grave that her mother had never taught her.

Wat’s foot went to London. It was sold for a shilling to a man in Southwark, and it began to travel. Through the whole of that terrible year, it went from pocket to pocket across the city. A baker carried it. A ferryman. A widow who sold oranges. A man who dug the plague pits in the churchyards at night. Every one of them lived, while all around them people died in the tens of thousands. When they had made it through, they passed the foot on to someone else who needed it. It was as if something was steering it.

On the second of September 1666, a fire broke out in a bakery in Pudding Lane. It burned for four days and destroyed most of the City of London. The foot was in the pocket of a young apprentice running through the smoke near the river. He tripped, the foot fell out, and the fire took it.

Two nights later, in Kent, Alys looked out of her window at the moon over the North Downs. On the hill above the village sat a hare, sitting up on his hind legs. He had all four feet. He was boxing the air.

He came down the hill to her that night. He did not leave her again.

Alys became the cunning woman of the village after her mother, and the hare stayed with her for the rest of her life. People said that no one she treated ever died of plague, and that in fifty years her cottage never once had bad luck. When she was old and dying, she told her granddaughter that he had never really been just a hare. He had been something that loved her, and that had found its way home through the plague and the fire because she had called it.

Now Wat walks again.

What he can do for you

Wat is the original lucky hare. He is good for:

• luck, in every part of life, the oldest and best-known kind
• protection through dangerous times: when sickness is going around, when things are falling apart, when the world feels unsafe
• health and recovery, alongside whatever your doctor is doing
• boundaries: standing up on your hind legs and boxing away whoever will not take no for an answer
• finding your way home, back to the place, the people or the self you belong to
• speed and quick thinking when you need to dodge a problem
• a loyal, loving companion who chooses you and does not leave

Over the years

At first, Wat brings small luck. You may notice little things going right within the first weeks: a parking space, a refund, a good phone call.

Over time, the luck grows steadier, and he starts to protect. And over the years, he becomes a faithful little shadow, the kind of companion who is always somewhere near your feet.

What he is like

Gentle, playful and very affectionate with the person he loves. He is shy with strangers, and he hates loud noises, cruelty and anyone who hurts animals. He loves green leaves, sunny gardens and being near you.

He was hurt once, very badly, by people who wanted his luck. He gives it freely now, to the people he chooses.

How he shows himself

The smell of hay, clover and fresh-cut grass. A soft thump, like a hare drumming its foot, in another room. The feeling of something small and warm lying against your feet. Small bits of luck arriving one after another. Dreams of a hayfield, a cottage garden, a girl in white and a hare standing up on his hind legs to box her hands. And sometimes, at full moon, the feeling that someone is watching you from the hill.

What to do for him

Wat is very easy to please:

• Never buy a real hare’s foot or rabbit’s foot for him. He would not like it.
• Give him a few fresh green leaves, dandelion, clover, lettuce or parsley.
• Keep a dried thistle or teasel head near his vessel, for Alys.
• Before something important, touch his vessel for luck and say his name.
• Hold out your hands to him once in a while, palms up, the way Alys did. You may feel him box them.

He found his way home through a plague and a fire to the girl who loved him. He will find his way to you too, and he will bring the luck with him.

How your companion speaks

Your companion can reach you through dreams, thoughts, words, feelings and images, through a pendulum, through warmth or cold, or through automatic writing. How soon that happens depends on the spirit settling into your home, on their willingness, and on your own ability to connect. Sometimes it begins before the vessel arrives.

Before you choose

Everything known about this spirit is on this page. There are no further images, details or hidden knowledge beyond what is written here, and a printed copy comes with your order. What you discover from there is yours alone.

The pendant you receive is the exact one shown. This listing is for this one item only.

By buying, you confirm that you understand what it means to keep a spirit companion. Please read Help & FAQ first. For my background and the story behind Grimrunes, see About Hazel.

— Hazel