• Welcome to the Internet Infidels Discussion Board.

Brer Rabbit

 
 
 
RavenSky

RavenSky

The Doctor's Wife
Joined
Oct 19, 2011
Messages
10,705
Location
Miami, Florida
Basic Beliefs
atheist
This may not be the correct forum, but I don't want to derail the other thread...

Sarpedon said:
The answer is: not really. In the most important elements, such as the existence of the world and the creator, there seems to be little agreement. Bantu-mythology has the world and nature as pre-existing and eternally existing, with humans being 'new' and created. Other ones have a univerisal creator, or not.

One common element, possibly is the trickster character: Anansi the spider in some of the west african independent groups, and Brer rabbit in the bantu. But the trickster is an almost universal human mythology character, so I don't know if you want to try to get milage out of that.

Over-simplistic categories are a hindrance to understanding. There's even less cohesion in African culture than there is in Indian. India at least had writing and a shared advanced economy from an early age to bring things together, and it still ended up incredibly diverse. Its better to study spread of ideas and culture rather than try to pigeonhole things.
Click to expand...

The bolded caught my attention.

I always knew "Brer Rabbit" as a character from the Uncle Remus stories - Southern American folklore. Almost as quickly as I read your comment, I realized that it mad perfect sense for a trickster rabbit from Bantu mythology to turn up in southern American folk stories told by slaves.

I would love to have more information about this connection, though, if you can?
 
I'm afraid I don't have much more information. Much ink has been spilled on the subject of cultural links to Africa, but my reading of it has been pretty superficial. You might try the funk and wagnalls dictionary of folklore. It has all kinds of information of that sort. I'll try to find my copy when I have time. All I really know is that Brer Rabbit and anansi are two characters that made the trip. I'm sure that several folktale figures of that sort came over, but I can't say definitively.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Thanks.

I did do a bit of googling after starting this thread. Found a bit that supports what you said, but not much more detail yet. Interesting stuff, though
 
So I looked it up in my Funk & Wagnall's, and it wasn't much help, other than pointing out that in other parts of africa, the equivalent of brer rabbit and anansi is alternately a turtle or a kind of small deer.

It also mentioned that in America, African mythology mixed freely with Native American mythology.
 
Sarpedon said:
So I looked it up in my Funk & Wagnall's, and it wasn't much help, other than pointing out that in other parts of africa, the equivalent of brer rabbit and anansi is alternately a turtle or a kind of small deer.

It also mentioned that in America, African mythology mixed freely with Native American mythology.
Click to expand...

I remember hearing a Seminole creation story that was influenced by Christianity and African mythology.
It was similar to Garden of Eden story , but it had Brer Rabbit tempting Eve to eat the forbidden fruit instead of the Serpent
It had Brer Rabbit
 
That version of Brer Rabbit goes much further than most!

Dark and Edgy Brer Rabbit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom