 It has been suggested that the three animals represent the King, Lord and Church who were responsible for taxation (the lyrics go on to refer to money gained over the year and how nothing was left after seeing 'the wolf, the fox and the hare').In Europe, in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, foxes, which were associated with wiliness and fraudulent behavior, were sometimes burned as symbols of the Devil.In early Mesopotamian mythology, the fox is one of the sacred animals of the goddess Ninhursag.