Br'er Rabbit

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

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 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 | change source]

  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.

Other websites[change | change source]