Meaning & Analysis
Trying to catch a hare by beating a small drum (tabor) is futile; the noise will scare it off—so the task is effectively impossible by that method.
Insights
Wrong means
Warns that using an ill-suited tool or tactic guarantees failure; success requires methods fitted to the target, not merely energy or noise.
Futility of Bluster
Targets those who substitute showy commotion for effective action—drumming up attention rather than doing the quiet work that actually secures results.
Persuasion over Force
Hints that some aims yield to soft words and timing, not racket and pressure; clamorous approaches backfire where tact is needed.
Impatience Rebuked
Impatience gravitates to dramatic shortcuts; the proverb counsels patience and proper preparation instead of counterproductive hurry.
Means–Ends Coherence
Urges alignment between strategy and objective: if the end is delicate (a skittish quarry, a fragile deal), the means must be delicate too.
Fieldcraft Realism
Hares are wary, quick to bolt at sudden sound. Hunters relied on nets, coursing, or stillness—never drumming. The saying distills that craft wisdom into a general rule about method.
The Tabor’s Symbolism
A tabor—portable drum of dance and militia—signals spectacle, muster, and noise. Its very purpose (to rally) clashes with stealth, making it a perfect emblem of counterproductive show.
Administrative & Legal Echo
Period writers mock the poor litigant who ‘hunts hares with a tabor’—pressing a case loudly while lacking the quiet fees and forms that move courts—an image of noise without leverage.
Fair Words vs. Racket
Annotations gloss it as advice to those who scorn civility: some people or problems yield only to courtesy; disdain for ‘fair words’ turns the chase into a farce.
Action Bias
Humans prefer visible action to careful fit; the proverb exposes that bias by showing how doing ‘something’ (drumming) can be worse than waiting or choosing a subtler approach.
Rhetorical Devices
Hyperbolic Comparison
The ‘as soon catch…’ frame exaggerates impossibility, delivering a brisk, memorable verdict on the tactic.
Concrete Metaphor
Hare-catching stands in for problem-solving; the tabor embodies flashy but ineffective methods, translating abstraction into a sensory scene.
Sound Imagery
The audible beat of the drum lets listeners ‘hear’ the failure, making the lesson visceral: noise displaces success.
Antithesis (Implied)
Opposes noise to stealth, spectacle to efficacy; the proverb invites the listener to supply the missing, proper method.
Aphoristic Compression
A terse clause packs diagnosis and advice into a portable rebuke suited to many domains.
Transcription
Quotations
I haue as greate appetyte to my booke to daye as an hare to a tabre.
And yet shall we catche a hare with a taber, As soone as catche ought of them.
Reti ventos venatur, he endeuoureth to catche an hare with a taber.
You shal assone catch a Hare with a Taber, as you shal perswade youth to such seueritie of lyfe.
The poore man that gives but his bare fee, or perhaps pleads in forma pauperis, he hunteth for hares with a taber.
Hares are not to be caught by drumming.
Hee seeketh to catch an Hare with a taber.
Men catch not a Hare with the Sound of the Drumme.
So said to an impatient Person who may haue Successe with faire Words, but doth scorne to giue them.
You may catch a hare with a taber assoone.
To take a hare with a tabor.
Hares are not taken with a drum.
To catch a hare with a taber.
It is a mad Hare, that will be caught with a Tabor.
Cross References
- See Dür., I, no. 688.
- W416 He catches the wind in a net.
Annotations
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.