Talk:Br'er Rabbit

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[edit] Articles

Apparently there were once articles linking to Br'er Rabbit; perhaps the links were changed to Brer Rabbit to link to this talk's article. But IMO the apostrophe is needed (the origin is "Brother". I would create such a link, since that is the spelling i would try first (if i didn't find it by searching Uncle Remus first), except that that would impede moving Brer Rabbit to Br'er Rabbit (using "Move this page", of course, rather than cut-and-paste), which i would also advocate. Input would be welcome. --Jerzy 05:23, 2004 Jan 16 (UTC)

I agree, and have gone ahead and made the page move. This is the correct spelling to the best of my knowledge; unfortunately I don't have a copy of the book at hand to double-check. If there are issues please contact me on my talk page. - Hephaestos 05:30, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Graphic

_ _ User:24.141.61.47 complains

removed image; it seems inappropriate to apply a commercial image to the main entry for folk mythology

but folk mythology is folk mythology whether its puveyor profits from developing their expertise by making themself more indispensible to their village's life or by getting housing on the beach in Malibu: commerce is universal and pervasive; every culture's artists get a payoff, and every culture's best artists also sneak in art for art's sake. In this case, images of that 60-year-old vintage are pretty much the current embodiment of what remains a folk character.
_ _ That being said, an illustration from an edition in JCH's lifetime, or a West African image (preferably pre-colonization) might well be more valuable for that difference. More importantly, everything but the hard-to-notice noose is nondescript, and surely we can come up with an illustration that conveys more of Brer Rabbit's character than a smiley-face graphic would.
_ _ A better image is possible and welcome; no image is a step backwards. (And when we have a better image, we will know more about whether this image and the next, together, are better than the better image alone.
_ _ So i'm rv'g pending appearance of the better image.
--Jerzy·t 02:32, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

I've replaced it with a free image. It's not the best by any means; it makes Br'er Rabbit look like a London fop. But there are a few more freebies available on the web that I will try to upload tonight. One of those should work just fine. — Amcaja 22:48, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Note, disussion of this issue at Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#Am_I_doing_this_right.3F (will be archived within a few weeks of posting this)Wikidemo 19:49, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History

The article certainly doesn't give much in the way of a history of the oral tradition of Br'er Rabbit. Do we just not know where he came from? When the first stories showed up? If he has any connection to Old Man Coyote or ol' Anansi the spider? Etc etc etc. 68.103.3.22 19:10, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll add a reference to Gullah_language, which may be a start. 217.43.41.129 00:04, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation

how do you pronounce Brer?

[edit] Deletion

It is requested that assertions to the effect that Brer Rabbit is of African origin be deleted; since it has been thoroughly proven that decades before any Afro-American versions of this was recorded, it was recorded from among the Cherokee in North Carolina.

It is requested that you provide a reliable source to back up your claims, which sound to me to be entirely false. — Amcaja (talk) 11:22, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah, sorry; I see you did add sources that back of the Cherokee claim. It still sounds ludicrous, since slaves were telling Br'er Rabbit stories up and down the Atlantic seaboard and throughout the south. There are also equally convincing studies that trade the stories back to regions of West Africa and claim the Native Americans adopted the tales from the slaves. What's certain is that the two folklores did merge and mingle. I think what we need to do is provide both stories, with reliable sources to back them up, and state what scholarly consensus is on it, if there is one.

As for your citations, they're better than nothing, but some of them are not reliable, and they all need to give a page number. Could you revisit them and address these points? — Amcaja (talk) 22:40, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Story summary

I'm not American, and I don't really get the gist of the meaning of "briar patch" even after reading the full article. I'd appreciate if someone could contribute a short summary of the plot near the top of the article so that readers without prior knowledge can get the gist of the story quickly, especially how it relates to the expression "briar patch". Goodnewsfortheinsane (talk) 17:11, 31 May 2008 (UTC)