Brer Rabbit

Brer (Brother) Rabbit is the main character of folktales told in the South; a tricky guy who outsmarts Brer Fox and Brer Bear who want to do him harm, as well as others who just have something Brer Rabbit wants. The most famous of these is the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. He's been Disneyfied in the movie Song of the South and assorted merchandise found in the Splash Mountain gift shop, but the original Uncle Remus story collections compiled by Joel Chandler Harris are in a dialect that's very hard to read now.

Originally an African trickster, Brer (or Br'er, short for "brother") Rabbit was passed down through the oral tradition of the slaves, and committed to print by Robert Roosevelt in Harper's Weekly, and later by Joel Chandler Harris in the 1880s. If you grew up in Louisiana, you might also know this clever rabbit as Compair Lapin (Creole French for Godfather Rabbit).