What colour is Legolas` hair?

[Mad Baggins]

He may have received it from Rivendell as one of their many hare messengers. Then Legolas, being the greedy sod he is, may have kept it after reading the note tied to its ears. As punishment, his father Thranduil made him go to the Council of Elrond. It was white when it reached Mirkwood, but according to his purple fetish Legolas may have dyed it.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Or even in a pathetic attempt to disguise his theft. Legolas was terribly vain about his position in society, and did everything to maintain his respectability short of actually being respectable.

The use of messenger hares among the Eldar is quite well documented. It was an early idea, which was later replaced with Osanwë-Kenta. However, Tolkien does remark in a letter to Kenneth Williams that "When they became fatigued through the use of this technique, they would turn at last to the faithful hares, who had ever been their staunchest allies at need".

Círdan the Shipwright had used his awesome carpentry skills to construct a number of high-rise hutch-flets in the trees around the Grey Havens, where the rodent allies of the departing Eldar might reside until the Elves had need of them. Of course, rabbit pie is as good a foodstuff as any when you run out of Lembas. Círdan was nothing if not practical.

[Saraphim]

I do not doubt that the hare, upon the time of its birth, was white.

But Legolas, after experimenting with different colors for his own head at an early age and finding that it only made his beutiful locks brittle and lackluster, would have recieved the rabbit and then proceeded to dye it whatever color the esteemed elven princling had an urge for.

At the time of the War, it was obviously purple, as Legolas would have wanted his hare to be his favorite color to comfort his thoughts on the long nights he spent in travel.

[The Only Real Estel]

I'm fairly certain that the hare started out as black. Legolas captured it in one of his many raiding party adventures, as recounted in The Complete Tale of Legolas & Co.'s Adventures; Vol. 3. Then, as I've found in my extensive search through the 1,000 page documentary Obsecure Side-Plots of The Lord of the Rings, he trained it to sniff out dwarves that happened to be traveling through the Mirkwood Forest. One particular dwarf had the singular misfortune of having most of his blue beard hacked off, so that Legolas could expierement with fur-transfusions. Thus, Legolas's hare came to be blue, though it can be argued that Legolas later found a way to make him purple, like other posters have mentioned here.

Pets in Middle-earth were rare, particularly rodents, which have a tendency to eat beatifully crafted furniture and nibble perfect flowing locks. One of the few characters who does possess a dog, at least in early draughts of LotR, is Aragorn, whose West Highland Terrier would earn him drinks by balancing peanuts on its nose.

Aragorn was one of the few to have a dog, but Sam was the only non-Haradrim being to ever own an Oliphaunt. His journey to the Grey Havens was partially brought on by the stress of trying to keep his 'Ollie' (as he named it), & keeping all of his beloved trees safe, no easy task. In The Supposed Tales That Are Still Unfinished, it says that Sam brought Ollie across the water with him on a barge, & so the two came to the Undying Lands together. That, of course, is only partially verified-take it with a grain of salt.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

I was under the impression that Boromir had a raven colored hare, bred specifically to match those hairs on his head. However Tolkien is said to have left the hare out of the books because it didn't flow with the main storyline (once upon a time, Bori's raven hare was said to have stopped an army of Uruks from massacring an entire legion, simply by hopping in front of the enemy's lead row. The Uruks were so surprised at the audacity that they yelled in shock, waking up the good guys, who then proceeded to beat them in a very quick skirmish...).

I believe the raven hare was left out of the movies for the same reason that the raven hair was... Boromir and Faramir (who I believe had a matching raven hare) needed to look different from Aragorn. Since they changed the hair color, and really didn't want to risk upsetting die-hard color fans, rather than changing the hare color of these two's pets, they simply left them out. That's why they are thought to not exist...

Fea

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

If Legolas' hare were a balrog, would it have wings?

If it were from far Rhun, would it be the Eastern Bunny?

[Nurumaiel]

Actually, Fordim, it is interesting that you should mention the hare having wings, for just today I was fortunate enough to get a brief glimpse of The Complete Tale of Legolas & Co.'s Adventures -(which Estel mentioned earlier)- Vol. 7 which is not officially out for purchase yet. It was stated within this seventh volume that while Legolas' hare was not in fact a balrog it did have wings.

However the wings were quite useless until Legolas took it upon himself to teach the hare how to fly, wisely thinking that it would be quite useful to have a flying hare at times. Besides using it as a very handy messenger as Elves were accustomed to doing in older days, Legolas also trained the hare to be quite a successful Nazgul hunter.

It is odd that no Race of Man, nor of Hobbit, nor of Elf, nor of any race known or unknown has ever recorded in their histories the large part this flying hare in the War of the Ring. It was this very same flying hare that led the Eagles to lend their assistance towards the end of the war, and as Vol 7. states it is a commonly believed opinion that the father of this flying hare was present at the Battle of Five Armies, doing as his son and acting as leader of the Eagles.

Perhaps I should not disclose the secrets of Vol. 7, however. It will be available in paperback in the Winter of this year.

[The Only Real Estel]

I was fortunate enough to get a brief glimpse of The Complete Tale of Legolas & Co.'s Adventures -(which Estel mentioned earlier)- Vol. 7 which is not officially out for purchase yet. It was stated within this seventh volume that while Legolas' hare was not in fact a balrog it did have wings.

The 7th volume? I hadn't heard of that one...I'm eagerly awaiting it's publishing 'this Winter'.

Another hare that was mentioned in one of the books I read recently (Saruman's Lore & Pet Book, quite interesting) was the one owned by Saruman. When Saruman noticed that the Dark Lord Sauron didn't have a hare yet, he thought he'd prove his supremacy to the Dark Lord by beating him to one. Thus, Saruman owned a hare far before Sauron ever did (if indeed he did).
The hare itself was slightly curious, & I can't give you the exact color, the books said that when the hare moved, his color changed. I believe it described it as 'a coat of many colors'. Gandalf, when he was fortunate enough to be in Orthanc in FotR, was quite bewildered when he saw Saruman's new coat, but more bewildered by the site of the many-colored hare. I'm not sure why PJ left the hare out of the movies; but I hear Christopher Lee made a great push for it, only to be snubbed (again). At any rate, Saruman's hare was the most prolific, but he sometimes drove the wizard to destraction with the high palantir bills that he racked up talking to his girlfriend (a plain brown hare, looked after by Radagast, or so it's believed).