“Sources and analogues of the Uncle Remus tales”

….And yet, Harris is the first white writer to be recognized as transcribing
African-American speech and folklore. As Robert Bone noted in 1975, the
subversive folk hero Brer Rabbitt provided “the missing link between the
Afro-American folktale and the Afro-American short story” (Bickley 1981:
130). In fact, since the first volume of Uncle Remus tales published in 1880,
considerable efforts have been made to accurately identify the folklore
sources for Harris’s rabbit and the various adventures he and the other
animals have. Among those generally mentioned are the hare of Kenya
transposed into American Slave Culture, the rabbit in Hindu traditions,
and Cherokee and Algonquin folktales that also speak of a smart trickster
rabbit.2
As Florence Baer remarked, Harris’s “early tales were collected as
much as possible from former plantation slaves” (1980: 165), and since
Harris collected his tales over a thirty year period, they were “bound to
reflect changing values and conditions of tellers and audience” (1980:
165)…

FF Communications 228