You are
sitting around a fire after a hard day of work. The air cools and
the sun sets, the frogs and crickets begin singing as the sky
darkens. Suddenly the person you have been eagerly awaiting leaps to
the center of the circle. Your Shaman begins her story. You have
heard the story a hundred times, but the antics of the animals and
the wisdom in the story never fail to give you pleasure. As she
weaves her tale, the knowledge that every thing is alive, carrying
its own power and wisdom, soothes your soul.
Let us join
together, in this virtual circle, and share these Animal Tales. Let
us once again feel how the stories connect us to the natural world
and remind us that we are all part of a vast Circle of Life. Listen
now as the Shaman's animal stories whisper tales of that power and
wisdom in your ear.
Tonight it is
a Brer Rabbit tale. Brer Rabbit is a trickster of the
African-American South. But the Rabbit as trickster can also be can
be seen in the Cherokee’s tales of the Great Hare. Rabbits teach us
about being creative, and looking at our fears and creative ways to
face them. This time of year these are lessons to help us move into
the dark of the year.
Brer Rabbit Earns a
Dollar-A-Minute
retold by S. E. Schlosser
http://www.americanfolklore.net/folktales/ga7.html
One fine
morning, Brer Fox decided to plant him a patch of goober peas. He
set to with a will and before you know it, he had raked and hoed out
a beautiful patch of ground and he put in a fine planting of peas.
It didn't take too long before those goober vines grew tall and long
and the peas ripened up good and smart.
Now Brer Rabbit, he'd watched Brer Fox planting the
goobers and he told his children and Miz Rabbit where they could
find the patch. Soon as those peas were ripe, the little Rabbits and
Brer Rabbit would sneak on in and grab up them goobers by the
handfuls. It got so bad that when Brer Fox came to the goober patch,
he could hardly find a pea to call his own.
Well, Brer Fox, he was plenty mad that he'd worked so
hard on those peas only to have them eaten by someone else. He
suspected that Brer Rabbit was to blame for this, but the rascally
rabbit had covered his tracks so well that Brer Fox couldn't catch
him. So Brer Fox came up with a plan. He found a smooth spot in his
fence where a cunning rabbit could sneak in, and he set a trap for
Brer Rabbit at that spot. He tied a rope to a nearby hickory sapling
and bent it nearly double. Then he took the other end of the rope
and made a loop knot that he fastened with a trigger right around
the hole in the fence. If anybody came through the crack to steal
his peas, the knot would tighten around their body, the sapling
would spring upright, and they would be left hanging from the tree
for everyone to see.
The next morning, Brer Rabbit came a-slipping through
the hole in the fence. At once, the trigger sprung, the knot
tightened on his forelegs, and the hickory tree snapped upright,
quick as you please. Brer Rabbit found himself swung aloft betwixt
the heaven and the earth, swinging from the hickory sapling. He
couldn't go up and he couldn't go down. He just went back and forth.
Brer Rabbit was in a fix, no mistake. He was trying
to come up with some glib explanation for Brer Fox when he heard
someone a-rumbling and a-bumbling down the road. It was Brer Bear,
looking for a bee-tree so he could get him some honey. As soon as
Brer Rabbit saw Brer Bear, he came up with a plan to get himself
free.
"Howdy, Brer Bear," he called cheerfully. Brer Bear
squinted around here and there, wondering where the voice had come
from. Then he looked up and saw Brer Rabbit swinging from the
sapling.
"Howdy Brer Rabbit," he rumbled. "How are you this
morning?"
"Middling, Brer Bear," Rabbit replied. "Just
middling."
Brer Bear was wondering why Brer Rabbit was up in the
tree, so he asked him about it. Brer Rabbit grinned and said that he
was earning a dollar-a-minute from Brer Fox.
"A dollar-a-minute!" Brer Bear exclaimed. "What for?"
"I'm keeping the crows away from his goober patch,"
Brer Rabbit explained, and went on to say that Brer Fox was paying a
dollar-a-minute to whomever would act as a scarecrow for him.
Well, Brer Bear liked the sound of that. He had a big
family to feed, and he could use the money. When Brer Rabbit asked
him if he would like to have the job, Brer Bear agreed. Brer Rabbit
showed him how to bend the sapling down and remove the knot from his
forepaws. When Brer Rabbit was free, Brer Bear climbed into the knot
and soon he was hanging aloft betwixt heaven and earth, swing to and
from the sapling and growling at the birds to keep them away from
the goober patch.
Brer Rabbit laughed and laughed at the sight of Brer
Bear up in the sapling. He scampered down the road to Brer Fox's
place and told him that his trap was sprung and the goober thief was
hanging from the hickory tree. Brer Fox grabbed his walking stick
and ran down the road after Brer Rabbit. When he saw Brer Bear
hanging there, Brer Fox called him a goober thief. Brer Fox ranted
and raved and threatened to hit Brer Bear with his walking stick. He
yelled so loud that Brer Bear didn't have time to explain nothing!
Brer Rabbit knew that Brer Bear would be plenty mad
at him when he found out he had been tricked, and so he ran down the
road and hid in the mud beside the pond, so that only his eyeballs
stuck out, making him look like a big old bullfrog. By and by, a
very grumpy Brer Bear came lumbering down the road.
"Howdy, Brer Bullfrog," Brer Bear said when he saw
Brer Rabbit's eyes sticking out of the mud. "You seen Brer Rabbit
anywhere?"
"Brer Rabbit jest ran on down the road," he told the
grumpy Brer Bear in a deep croaking voice that sounded just like the
voice of a frog. Brer Bear thanked him and trotted down the road,
growling fiercely.
When Brer Bear was out of sight, Brer Rabbit jumped
out of the mud. He washed himself off in the pond and then scampered
home, chuckling to himself at how he'd escaped from Brer Fox and
Brer Bear, and already thinking up a new way to get into Brer Fox's
goober patch to get him some peas to eat.
۞ ۞
۞
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Tales Column brought to you by Kamala.
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