Etymology Dictionary

HAREBELL,  the name of a flower.  (E.)   In Cymb. iv. 2. 222.   The word does not appear among A.S. names of plants.   Certainly compounded of hare and bell; but, owing to the absence of reason for the appellation, it has been supposed to be a corruption of hair-bell, with reference to the slenderness of the stalk of the true hairbell, the Campanula rotundifolia.   The apparent absence of reason for the name is, however, rather in favour of the etymology from hare than otherwise, as will be seen by consulting the fanciful A.S. names of plants given in Cockayne's Leechdoms, vol. iii.    To name plants from animals was the old custom; hence hare's beard, hare's-ear, hare's foot, hare's lettuce, hare's palace, hare's tail, hare-thistle, all given in Dr. Prior's Popular Names of British Plants; to which add A.S. haran-hyge (hare's foot trefoil), haran-specel (now called viper's bugloss), haran-wyrt (hare's wort), from Cockayne's Leechdoms.   The spelling hair-bell savours of modern science, but certainly not of the principles of English Etymology.   ¶ A similar modern error is to derive fox-glove from folks'-glove (with the silly interpretation of folks as being 'the good folks' or fairies), in face of the evidence that the A.S. name was foxes glófa = the glove of the fox. [†]

ADDENDA

Spelt hare-belle in the fifteenth century; Wright's Voc. i. 226, col. 2