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From: mtepper@panix.com (Michele Tepper)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Ring around the rosey . . .
Date: 8 Mar 1997 18:03:08 -0500

In article <331F23AD.7809B8FA@loc251.tandem.com>, Matthew Rabuzzi <rabuzzi.....@loc251.tandem.com> wrote: >Michele Tepper: It's "Little *Rabbit* Foo-Foo"!
>Harry MF Teasley: It's "Little Bunny Foo Foo" and you know it.
>Michele Tepper: "Rabbit Foo-Foo." Rabbit, rabbit, RABBIT!
>
>You call yourself an Eng Lit grad student?

Not unless required to for purposes of legal identification, no, not generally.

>Lapin Lazuli's classic recension _Leporine Leapers_ lucidly labels
>the "rabbit" variant as spurious, introduced by Sinclair Lewis and
>furthered by John Updike. The original model was Glooscap,
>the Trickster Hare of North American Indian myth, who became the
>mischievous Bunny Foo-Foo of the poem and later Bugs Bunny of film fame.

You honestly expect me to believe the Lazuli book when he cites Mel Blanc in the acknowledgements? I know scholarship for sale when I see it.

In addition to the two unimpeachable cites that have already been posted which support the righteous rabbit cause, I would direct your attention to the 1449 manuscript, now held at the Bodleian, of "Rabbits Leapyinge-Tale" attributed to a poet of Suffolk, although the metric system -- so reminiscent of the Scottish Chaucerians -- has led some to contest that attribution of late. It's quite clear that the rabbit version is the originary one, and the "bunny" tale a degraded variant. As to your so-called "Trickster Hare," Lazuli's inability to name the Native nation from which this so-called mythic figure arose, as well as the fact that the story does not fit the standard trickster mythic pattern, has to cast very grave doubts indeed on the standards of his scholarship.

You may ask why I said none of this to Mr Teasley. Well, knowing young Harry as I do, I can tell you that he is a young man entirely deaf to the sweet voice of reason. Delightful and well-brought-up, yes, but the only way to get anything through his little skull is with a sledgehammer.

Michele "lament for the makaris" Tepper