The Hare is the miscarrying messenger of the Khoekhoe account of how death became final, one of the most widely recorded of all Khoekhoe narratives; Bleek's 1864 collection prints several Nama versions. In the tale written down by the missionary J.G. Krönlein, the Moon first sent an insect with the promise that people, like the moon, would die and rise again; the hare, claiming to be the swifter runner, took the message and told humankind instead that, as he dies and does not rise, so they too would die and rise no more. For this the Moon struck him and split his upper lip — in one version with a hatchet, in another by burning his mouth with a hot stone — while the hare scratched the Moon's face, leaving its dark patches. Nama custom shunned the flesh of the hare, a scruple observers connected with the animal's part in bringing death or with fear of taking on its faint-heartedness.