Br'er Rabbit

fictional rabbit in Uncle Remus folklore

Br'er Rabbit (also spelled Bre'r Rabbit or Brer Rabbit or Bruh Rabbit, with the title "Br'er" pronounced /ˈbrɛər/) is an important character in the Uncle Remus stories in the Southern United States. He is a tricky character, and usually wins or escapes because he is clever, not because he is strong.

Br'er Rabbit's dream, from Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation, 1881.

Br'er Rabbit came from both African and Cherokee cultures. Disney later used the character for their The Song of the South.

In a Cherokee story, "the fox and the wolf throw the trickster rabbit into a thicket from which the rabbit quickly escapes."[1] There was a "melding (mixing) of the Cherokee rabbit-trickster ... into the culture of African slaves."[2] "In fact, most of the Br'er Rabbit stories originated in (came from) Cherokee myths."[3]

References change

  1. Latin American Indian Literatures Journal. Vol. 6. Department of Foreign Languages at Geneva College. 1985. p. 10.
  2. Weaver, Jace (1997). That the People Might Live: Native American Literatures and Native American Community. Oxford University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-19-534421-9.
  3. "Cherokee Place Names in the Southeastern U.S., Part 6 « Chenocetah's Weblog". Chenocetah.wordpress.com. 2007-11-12. Archived from the original on 2010-08-23. Retrieved 2010-07-03.

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