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March madness, originally, before any connections with sport or the like, was associated with the increased activity of animals and perhaps humans during the spring season. Animals are coming out of habitation, looking for a mate and often display very bizarre courtship displays. The most common and striking of these is the Mad March Hare'. The bizarre behaviour of the hare in spring time, standing up on hind legs carrying out boxing' displays captured the imaginations of writers and inspired many folklore tales. It is this image which is commonly connected with madness in March.

The first recorded mention of this apparently mad activity, was circa 1500, in Blowbol's Test reprinted by W. C. Hazlitt in Remains Early Popular Poetry of England, 1864: "Thanne [th]ey begyn to swere and to stare, And be as braynles as a Marshe hare." The phrase 'hare brained' also refers to the same behaviour. This is referenced in Edward Hall's Chronicle, 1548: "My desire is that none of you be so unadvised or harebrained as to be the occasion that ..." The first citation that uses the phrase in a form we now know it is in 1529, in Sir Thomas More's

The supplycacyon of soulys: "As mad not as a march hare, but as a madde dogge." Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) is one of the most famous to use this in stories in his, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1894). However, clearly not the first as often presumed. Most of us can visualise the mad march hare and the mad hatter from the stories, the phrase and images of , As mad as a hatter' was also connected with Lewis Carroll book although he was never formally called that in the book, his behaviour was clearly mad and he was a hatter. In Carroll's book, the hatter and the hare joined up to have mad' tea parties, the phrase, Mad hatter's tea party', is still used today. "The March Hare ... as this is May, it won't be raving mad - at least not so mad as it was in March."

This behaviour was not just limited to hares, of course, all sorts of animals are getting a bit, frisky' the poor hare was singled out for his displays of boxing, leaping and other attempts to impress the females. The words Marsh and March were used almost interchangeably. The fact the Hare lived on the Marsh and was associated by this behaviour in the spring months was why the words are both used to refer to mad hares. Humans also generally get more active in spring time. This would have been more so in times gone by, before the invention of electric lights, lighter nights would have seen more people outside. Young men, not unlike the hares, would have been trying to impress the young ladies.

As we know from today's young men this can often appear very mad. So it is difficult to pinpoint who first coined the phrase, although we can see that Carroll was not the first in literature to mention this occurrence. His book certainly increased the profile and longevity of the term; it was probably observed, if not used in these exact words, by many people before this time. It has, maybe, stuck as a saying as it is as appropriate and true today as it was in the sixteenth century. It is still in the spring time that we all awake from the darkness of winter and are more inclined to partake in activities that may seem, if not mad, a little less subdued then winter. It was indeed Lewis Carroll that who, although not the being the first the write about it, gave it the most infamous image. This is probaby why, if we ask, most people they would say Lewis Carroll was the first to coin the phrase.

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