'Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits.'

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

This is an entirely trivial question I have long meant to ask here.

Could some kind soul please enlighten me as to why Lawrie, in response to Nick waking her on New Year's day in Run Away Home, says 'Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits'? To which Nicola responds 'Oh, rabbits, yes, I'd forgotten', after which we're told 'But was too late. She'd spoken.'

Is this somehow connected to bringing good luck in the New Year? (You say 'rabbits' before saying anything else? You invoke the talismanic power of the New Year Bunny?) Although at breakfast Lawrie is perturbed at having forgotten to see in the New Year the night before, and has to be consoled by Giles saying that having eaten twelve mince pies will balance out the bad luck - which I'd never come across before either. Clearly my New Years are very culturally impoverished.

ETA: Thanks, everyone. This was completely unfamiliar to me, and my new-found knowledge has made me resolve never to share a bed with any of you on the first of the month.

Comments

[white_hart]

We always said 'white rabbits, white rabbits' on the first of the month, except in March, when it was 'rabbits and hares'. It had to be the first thing you said, and as others have said it was a good-luck charm for the coming month.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Ditto, except for always being white rabbits (down in Surrey and Sussex), although my partner from Leicester claims it's always rabbits and hares.

[white_hart]

I was born in Hampshire, and both my parents grew up there, so that suggests it may not necessarily be a regional thing...

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

And I learnt it at boarding school...

[elizahonig.livejournal.com]

And I learned to say "rabbit, rabbit, rabbit" upon waking up on the first day of the month when I was at Bryn Mawr, in the USA; but we were very Anglophile so this does not speak at all to general American practices. We also sang a hymn to the sun, in Greek, from the top of a stone tower (design based on Magdalene College, we were told) at dawn on May Day.