But ever after that day ill-fortune pursued the young farmer who had behaved in such a cowardly way, and though he removed to another part of the country, none of his projects prospered. Gradually he took to drink to drown his secret sorrows. He generally went out at dusk and it was noticed that a white hare constantly crossed his path. The animal was seen by many of the villagers to dart under the hoofs of his horse, and the terrified steed rushed madly forward whenever this phantom appeared.
A day came when the young farmer was found drowned in a pool at the bottom of a forsaken mine, and the frightened horse was still grazing near the mouth of the pit into which his master had fallen.
The woman he had betrayed and left to die a shameful death, having assumed the shape of a white hare, had haunted the perjured and false-hearted farmer to his death.
It is said that fatal accidents in mines are often foreshadowed by the appearance of a white hare or rabbit. At Wheal Vor, writes Mr. Hunt, in "Popular Romances of the West of England," it has always been and is now believed that a white rabbit appears in one of the engine houses when an accident may be looked for in the mine. The men say that they have chased the phantom animals without being able to catch them, and on one occasion the rabbit ran into a "windbore" which lay on the ground and escaped. Similarly in a French mine one of the miners saw a white object run into an iron pipe and hide there. He hastened forward and stopped up both ends of the tube, calling to a companion to examine the pipe. But the animal ghost had disappeared and nothing remained to explain what had taken place.
The devil appeared in the form of a hare at the hanging of two men on Warminster Down in 1813, it was said. At Longbridge the devil appeared in the form of a dog one Palm Sunday, according to the account of a labourer, who when questioned as to how this was proved, exclaimed, "Sum'at was there anyhow, and we all fled!"
A farmer in South Wilts who died about 1860, threatened to revisit his farm on a lonely moor and run about in the shape of a rat. The story does not say what he expected to gain by choosing this particular animal for transformation purposes.
Superstition gives to white birds a particular power of conveying omens.
A small white bird plays a part in warning an old harper in Wales of the destruction of a prince's palace, whither the bard had been invited to perform at festivities held on the occasion of the birth of an heir.
Tradition relates that Bala Lake was formed as a means of submerging a palace where lived a cruel and wicked prince, who practised oppression and injustice upon poor farmers of the district. The tyrant often heard a ghostly voice urging him to desist from his evil ways and saying, "Vengeance will come," but he treated the warning with contempt.