El-ahrairah
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El-ahrairah is a fictional character, the rabbit trickster folk hero in Richard Adams's Watership Down and the protagonist of nearly all of the rabbits' stories. Adams said: "What Robin Hood is to the English and John Henry to the American Negroes, Elil-Hrair-Rah—The Prince with a Thousand Enemies—is to rabbits." He represents what every rabbit wants to be: smart, devious, tricky, and devoted to the well-being of his warren. (We are told that the stress is to be put, aptly, in the same syllables in his name as in the phrase "never say die".) Adams created a complex folklore around the character in both Watership Down and Tales from Watership Down.
The character, Dandelion, is the rabbits' main storyteller and the majority of El-ahrairah lore is told by him. However, it is clear that these stories are old and have been retold by many generations of rabbits.
El-ahrairah is said to be the only animal at the beginning of the world who does not come to receive his blessing from Frith—the rabbits' name for the personification of the sun (the Creator god). He instead digs a hole with his backside in the air and when Frith comes says, "You will have to bless my bottom." Frith complies, and that, according to rabbit legend, is how rabbits first came to have fast, strong hind legs and a flashing white tail.
El-ahrairah has a sidekick named Rabscuttle who joins him on nearly all of his adventures. Together they dupe many creatures:
- A river pike: They repeatedly drop a rabbit statue into the river so when they swim across themselves, the pike will assume them to be statues and leave them alone;
- King Darzin: An old adversary, they falsely lead him to believe all his prized lettuce is poisoned, so that it's all delivered to El-ahrairah's people;
- Prince Rainbow: Frith's own sidekick, they trick him into believing that his rabbit-spy Hufsa is completely mad, and therefore must be making El-ahrairah out to be more badly-behaved than he really is.
He is recognised by the starlight in his ears that Frith gave him after his greatest triumph in persuading the Black Rabbit of Inlé (the Lapine personification of death) into protecting his people from King Darzin.
It seems that the El-ahrairah's events are based, at least partially, on real events within the rabbit world. Near the end of Watership Down, the last story told about him concerning how he moved his people from one district to another is an exaggerated version of the story already told concerning Hazel (the Chief Rabbit) and the rabbits he led from the Sandelford Warren to the warren with the Honeycomb "hall".
In Adams's Lapine language, the name is a contraction of the phrase Elil-Hrair-Rah, meaning prince with a thousand enemies.
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