Hares on the Mountain

Song Meaning

This traditional folk song flips the script on traditional courtship, imagining a world where young men are prey and young women are the hunters. The opening verses pose a series of hypothetical scenarios: if men were elusive hares, would women hunt them? If they sang like birds, would women flush them out? If they were growing rushes, would women mow them down? The repeated, nonsensical chorus, "ri-fol-de-di, cal-ol-de-day, ri-fol-ai-de," acts as a playful, almost mocking, interlude, underscoring the fantastical nature of these propositions. The central tension lies in the inversion of power dynamics. The lyrics suggest a world where male desirability is framed as something to be pursued and captured, rather than passively received. The imagery of hunting and harvesting paints a picture of active, even aggressive, female pursuit. This contrasts sharply with the final verse, which brings the fantasy crashing back to reality. The narrator observes that young men are actually given to "frisking and fooling," implying a more lighthearted, perhaps less serious, approach to romance. The most striking aspect of the craft here is the consistent use of parallel structure to build the hypothetical scenarios, each ending with a different form of aggressive action by the women. The shift in the final verse from these elaborate, imagined pursuits to a simple statement of fact about the men's behavior is a masterstroke. It highlights the gap between the imagined romantic chase and the actual, more casual, interactions. Ultimately, the effectiveness of these lyrics comes from their clever subversion of expectations. By presenting a world where women are the active pursuers, the song makes a commentary on the often-unspoken rules of attraction and courtship. The final, pragmatic decision of the narrator to "attend to my schooling" rather than engage in these imagined hunts suggests a focus on self-improvement over a potentially fruitless, albeit imaginatively thrilling, pursuit.