A.L. Lloyd sang The Bonny Black Hare accompanied by fiddler Dave Swarbrick in 1965 on the Topic theme album of traditional songs of love and lust, The Bird in the Bush. He noted:
Psychiatrists tell us the cowboy’s ready gun is a “potency affirmation”. Well, maybe. Certainly, to identify sex-relations with ordnance display is an old joke. Cupid with his bow and arrows is but the fore-runner of those sailors in the bawdy songs who fire their cannon and hole their girl amidships and fall asleep with an empty shot-locker. Here, suitably enough, the central image is a sporting gun with its punning target the black hare. Not many erotic songs put the matter so delicately and yet graphically as this good-natured open-air piece, whose sly humour is accentuated by the elusive bichronal rhythm of the tune. Is the song Irish? It was got from an immigrant potato-lifter near Walberswick, but he learnt it in England. Vance Randolph found a version among the Ozark hillfolk, too coarse to publish.
Martin Carthy sang The Bonny Black Hare on his and Dave Swarbrick’s 1967 album Byker Hill; this was reissued on their compilation album This Is... Martin Carthy: The Bonny Black Hare and Other Songs. An early live recording with Dave Swarbrick at the Folkus Folk Club in 1966 is available on Both Ears and the Tail. Another one, with Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick singing in duet at the Albert Hole, Bristol, in 1993 was included in the Dave Swarbrick anthology Swarb!. Martin Carthy commented in the original recording’s sleeve notes:
The notion of identifying intercourse with ordnance, as in The Bonny Black Hare, is as old as Cupid with his bow and arrow. Just as old is the intuition connecting the images of love and hunting, as in the jokey southern counties song called The Furze Field. Restoration bucks were fond of making songs on this theme but were only annexing an ancient (perhaps sacred) piece of folk symbology. The song seems rare although it has been reported in an unmistakably British form in upper Arkansas. This version was collected from an Irish labourer, Mr Morrow, at Walberswick, Suffolk, in 1938. His tune is a member of the widespread melody family called Lough Lein but his rhythm was not very clear. Some versions he sang in a standard 9/8 (3+3+3) others a bit curtailed into a ’mixed’ 8/8 (3+2+3).
Fairport Convention sang Bonny Black Hare on their 1971 album Angel Delight and as the B-side of their single Rubber Band / Bonny Black Hare.
From: https://mainlynorfolk.info/lloyd/songs/thebonnyblackhare.html
