1. BRER RABBIT TALES Southern, African-American Folklore

2. FOLKLORE Stories passed down by word of mouth for many generations
Intended to teach morals and values; explain beliefs of a culture; and to entertain
A fable is a type of folklore that uses human-like animal characters in a short story to teach a lesson about human behavior.
A trickster tale involves a “little guy” who gets the better of a bigger opponent using wit and wisdom.

3. Brer Rabbit: Trickster Tales
The Brer Rabbit stories are
considered trickster tales.
The characters are human-like animals, like in fables, but the stories do not generally teach good moral lessons.
Brer Rabbit does not possess the highest of virtues. He is lazy, greedy, silly, and selfish. (The reader admires his childlike charm and quick wit.)

4. Origin of Brer Rabbit: Can you guess?

5. Brer Rabbit Tales: Out of Slavery
Brer Rabbit stories were brought to the American South by black slaves who came against their will.
Many of the stories have roots in Africa; others originated on the plantations.
Brer Rabbit, small and helpless, always defeats his adversaries—larger animals. Brer Rabbit was the favorite character of Plantation Era storytellers in the South.

6. Joel Chandler Harris
In the late 1800s, Harris collected hundreds of tales from slaves and published them.
His volumes are recognized as the largest single collection of African-American folktales ever published.

7. Harris invented a narrator for the tales: Uncle Remus, an elderly black plantation slave who told the stories of Brer Rabbit to a young white boy.
Harris recorded the stories the way he heard them, rich in the dialect of African-American slaves.

8. Dialect
Dialect is a way of speaking that is characteristic of a certain geographical area or group of people.
“Brer” is short for “brother,” an affectionate term used to explain family feelings.

9. Today we will:
View storyteller Jackie Torrence retelling a Brer Rabbit story;
Eat Brer Rabbit Biscuits and molasses cookies; and
Drink Fox Blood!

10. Brer Rabbit Biscuits
1. First we opens up a big, ole, cat-head biscuit.
2. Den we slaps some sweet butter on da plate.
3. We pours some mo-lasses over da butta.
4. Den we mixes, and we mixes.
5. And we sops, and we eats, and we eats, and we sops.