- hare. See also Baudrons, Bawd, Bawtie. Hares are surrounded by superstition and nobody is more superstitious than fishermen. Dougal Graham demonstrates this in a quotation from 1779 in his Collected Writings (1883):
Maukens are most terrible, and have bad luck, none will go to sea that day they see a Mauken, or if a wretched body put in a Mauken's fit [foot] in their creels, they need not lift them that day.
John Galt in The Steam-boat (1822) tells of a commonly held superstition:
It is... believed... that the witches are in the practice of gallanting over field and flood, in the shape of cats and mawkins.
If the maukin is gaun up the hill, business is prospering.