Story: Day-time Trouble: Rabbit and Anansi
Storyteller: Susan Watkins (Claremont, St. Ann Parish, Jamaica)
Book: Jamaica Anansi Stories
Author(s): Martha Warren Beckwith
Published: 1924
Internet Archive link.

Notes: I have removed the eye-dialect, along with editing for punctuation and paragraphing. Where the story says “Reindeer” I have changed it to “Deer,” and where the story says “daytime trouble,” I have just changed that to “trouble.” The story of someone “wanting to know trouble” is a widespread folktale type. Beckwith includes two other versions of this story, one about Anansi and Rat, and the other about Anansi and goat. I chose this version to show the two tricksters with Anansi being the wiser of the two this time.

Anansi Shows Rabbit What Trouble Is

Brer Anansi and Brer Rabbit went for a walk one day. Brer Rabbit ask Brer Anansi to show him trouble.

And while they go on, Brer Anansi saw Tiger den with a lot of young Tiger in it. Brer Anansi took out one and kill it and give Rabbit a basket with a piece of the Tiger’s meat to carry for the Tiger’s father, and took Rabbit along with him to Tiger’s house and told Brer Rabbit to hand Tiger the basket.

Anansi run, and Tiger catch at Rabbit to kill him, but he get away.

Brer Anansi run up a tree and say, “Run, Brer Rabbit, run! Run for hole!” Took a razor and give it to Rabbit.

And Tiger got up a lot of men to get Rabbit out the hole and Tiger sent for Deer to dig him out, as he had a long neck to put down his head and dig him out.

But Anansi told Rabbit when Deer put down his head in the hole, he must take the razor and cut it off. A lot of people gather to see Deer take Rabbit out of the hole, but instead, Deer head was taken off and he drop and was dead and the whole crowd run away with fright.

After Rabbit come out, Brer Anansi say to him, “Brer Rabbit, so trouble stay. So, as long as you live, never ask anybody to show it to you again!”

Spider in web from Wikimedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spider_middle_of_web.jpg