on their six-track EP The North Farm Sessions (2010) who used an altered version of the same tune. The Local Honeys (Linda Jean Stokley and Montana Hobbs) recorded a live version at SomerSessions in Kentucky in 2016. Radie Peat & Daragh Lynch of Lankum recorded a popular version in 2018 inspired by Shirley Collins, and the English indie rock trio Alt-J recorded a variation of Hares on the Mountain for the soundtrack of the 2017 movie Bright. Fern Maddie recorded her version of the song in 2022. Nora Brown has also recorded her own version with Band in a Box in 2019. Some musicians recorded completely different versions of the song originating from different sources, including Steeleye Span, Frankie Armstrong and Chris Wood / Andy Cutting. Discussion According to the folk song collector John Howson, the song "is sometimes attributed to Samuel Lover (1797–1865), who included it in his novel Rory o’ More published in 1837. However, it probably predates Lover's book...." Professor B H Bronson, published tunes for "Hares on the Mountain" in his epic work Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads because he thought it was a version of The Twa Magicians (Child 44, Roud 1350). A.L. Lloyd refers to the song as an "attenuated form" of the ballad. Roy Palmer claims that "This is not merely a series of sexual metaphors, but an echo of the ancient songs and stories of metamorphosis, in which the pursued woman runs out of transformations and falls to the man." However, Steve Roud and Julia Bishop argue that "To confuse the magical transformations in this ballad to the similes of our song, and to assume that one necessarily derives from the other, requires a giant leap of faith, backed by nothing more than the coincidence of hares, fishes, and so on." In the sleeve notes to her CD "Till the Grass O'ergrew the Corn" (1997) Frankie Armstrong comments "It is widely accepted that this song is derived from the rare ballad "The Two Magicians" (Child #44), although the conceit is surely obvious enough to have been independently invented and all traces of magic (and story) have disappeared, leaving us with a genial day-dream of lyric." References English folk songs