Fortunately for Maui, his father found him more endearing than his mother did, and gave him a magic fishing hook. Finally, his mother got fed up and sent him away to his father Mekea, who was the lord of the underworld. In response, he acted out for attention, tangling his brother’s fishing lines and engaging in other such hijinx. He had a lot of siblings, so she couldn’t quite give him the time of day. Maui is the name of a popular Hawaiian island-but did you know it’s also the name of the polynesian trickster god? Maui literally means “little thing” in Hawaiian, and it refers to the fact that Maui’s mother was not particularly fond of him. After the log plummets down the chute, you’ll be immersed in the world of this trickster figure from the American South. In any case, since you most likely won’t find the movie, you can experience the ride at Disney theme parks: Log Mountain. Since rabbits are comfortable prancing between the briars, Brer Rabbit outruns Brer Fox. He pleads with the fox not to throw him the briar patch, which of course Brer Fox to do just that. But clever Brer Rabbit won’t get eaten at the end of this tale. Kicking and punching the tar baby, Brer Rabbit gets stuck…which is exactly what the hungry Brer Fox was hoping for. In his most popular story, Brer Rabbit faces off against a tar baby, whose silence infuriates him. Like many tricksters, Brer Rabbit uses his brains over his brawn, which somewhat speaks to the difficulty slaves faced in their physical subjugation to Southern plantation owners. ![]() 5: Brer Rabbit (American)īrer Rabbit is a figure right out of American folklore and featured in the Disney Movie Song of the South (good luck getting your hands on a copy-it’s out of production). Come Ragnarok, Loki will break free from his bonds and fight against the gods, alongside Fenrir and Jörmungandr (his children). ![]() Ultimately, any positive connection he has with the other gods ends when they decide to bind him with the entrails of his sons. Throughout Norse mythological cycles, he shape shifts into a variety of creatures such as a salmon, a fly, a horse, and an old man. Loki’s relationship with the other gods was sometimes good and sometimes bad. Loki is quite the shape-shifter, because he is also the mother of Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged horse. Through his union to Angrboda (herself a jotunn, a type of undefined creature), he is also the father of the great wolf Fenrir, the world-serpent Jörmungandr, and Hel, the goddess of the underworld. Loki is the trickster-god from the Norse pantheon. As Africans were enslaved and brought to North America and the Caribbean, they brought along these trickster narratives, some of which became stories about Brer Rabbit (featured later in this list). Oftentimes his antics are beneficial for mankind, such as the way he obtained rain. Though they are not codified in written, but rather extend to a diverse range of verbal retellings, most of them celebrate his shape-shifting abilities and clever wit, which he leverages to get what he wants out of creatures and beings who are much bigger than he is. ![]() He is most commonly featured in the narratives from the Ashanti people of Ghana. 1: Anansi the Spider (African)Īnansi the Spider is probably one of the most recognizable trickster figures in the world repository of folklore. Let’s take a look now at some of the more memorable mischief-makers of world folklore, as we learn about these 9 mythological tricksters from around the world. In fact, there is good cause to say that many of the amusing trickster figures of modern day (such as Bugs Bunny) are descendants of these original tricksters. From tribal Africa to ancient Greece to Baroque France, these trickster figures carry both an entertainment and didactic function they make us smile, and help us understand how certain phenomena came to be-through their ruses, or as fallouts from those hijinx. Though their motivations can range from selfish to selfless, their clever ruses have delighted listeners through the ages. Trickster figures abound in folklore around the world.
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