Variations on the tar-baby legend are found in the folklore of more than one culture. In the
Journal of American Folklore in 1943,
Aurelio M. Espinosa discussed various different motifs within 267 versions of the tar-baby story that were ostensibly 'in his possession'. Espinosa used the existence of similar motifs to argue that the tar baby story and hundreds of other myths throughout the world, despite the significant variations between them, originate from a single ancient Indian myth. The next year, Archer Taylor added a list of tar baby stories from more sources around the world, citing scholarly claims of its earliest origins in
India and
Iran. Espinosa later published documentation on tar baby stories from a variety of language communities around the world. Anthropologist
Elsie Clews Parsons compiled an extensive list of references of the
Tar Baby stories, from North American, Latin American and African publications on folklore. A very similar
West African tale is told of the
mythical hero
Anansi the Spider. In this version, Anansi creates a wooden doll and covers it over with gum, then puts a plate of yams in its lap, in order to capture the she-fairy Mmoatia (sometimes described as an "elf" or "dwarf"). Mmoatia takes the bait and eats the yams, but grows angry when the doll does not respond and strikes it, becoming stuck in the process. From
The Bahamas, the tar-baby story was published by
The Journal of American Folklore in 1891 in
Some Tales from Bahama Folk-Lore by
Charles Lincoln Edwards. Edwards had collected the stories from Green Turtle Cay, Abaco in the summer of 1888. In the tale, B' Rabby refused to dig for water, and didn't help grow the field. He tricked B' Lizard and B' Bouki while they were standing watch by the water and the field. The other animals got tired of his tricks, got together and created a tar-baby. B' Rabby was caught by the tar-baby and the other animals who wanted to throw him into the sea, but he talked them into throwing him into a bush, and eventually got away. In a variant recorded in
Jamaica, Anansi himself was once similarly trapped with a tar-baby made by the eldest son of Mrs. Anansi, after Anansi pretended to be dead in order to steal her peas. In a
Spanish language version told in the mountainous parts of
Colombia, an unnamed rabbit is trapped by the
Muñeco de Brea (tar doll). A
Buddhist myth tells of Prince Five-weapons (the future Buddha) who encounters the
ogre Sticky-Hair in a forest. The tar-baby theme is present in the folklore of various tribes of Meso-America and of South America: it is found in such stories as the
Nahuatl (of Mexico) "Lazy Boy and Little Rabbit" (González Casanova 1946, pp. 55–67),
Pipil (of El Salvador) "Rabbit and Little Fox" (Schultes 1977, pp. 113–116), and
Palenquero (of Colombia) "Rabbit, Toad, and Tiger" (Patiño Rosselli 1983, pp. 224–229). In Mexico, the tar baby story is also found among
Mixtec,
Zapotec, and
Popoluca. In North America, the tale appears in
White Mountain Apache lore as "Coyote Fights a Lump of Pitch". In this story, white men are said to have erected the pitch-man that ensnares
Coyote. the tar-baby story may have been influenced in America by the
Cherokee "Tar Wolf" story, considered unlikely to have been derived from similar African stories: "Some of these animal stories are common to widely separated [Native American] tribes among whom there can be no suspicion of [African] influences. Thus the famous "tar baby" story has variants, not only among the Cherokee, but also in New Mexico, Washington [State], and southern Alaska—wherever, in fact, the pine supplies enough gum to be molded into a ball for [Native American] uses". In the Tar Wolf story, the animals were thirsty during a dry spell, and agreed to dig a well. The lazy rabbit refused to help dig, and so had no right to drink from the well. But she was thirsty, and stole from the well at night. The other animals fashioned a
wolf out of tar and placed it near the well to scare the thief. The rabbit was scared at first, but when the tar wolf did not respond to her questions, she struck it and was held fast. Then she struggled with it and became so ensnared that she could not move. The next morning, the animals discovered the rabbit and proposed various ways of killing her, such as cutting her head off, and the rabbit responded to each idea saying that it would not harm her. Then an animal suggested throwing the rabbit into the thicket to die. At this, the rabbit protested vigorously and pleaded for her life. The animals threw the rabbit into the thicket. The rabbit then gave a whoop and bounded away, calling out to the other animals "This is where I live!" ==Idiomatic references==