The Tar-Baby is the second of the Uncle Remus stories published in 1880; it is about a doll made of tar and turpentine used by the villainous Brer Fox to entrap Brer Rabbit. The more that Brer Rabbit fights the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he becomes.

In modern usage, tar baby refers to any sticky situation that is only aggravated by additional involvement with it.

In one tale, Brer Fox constructs a doll out of a lump of tar and dresses it with some clothes. When Brer Rabbit comes along, he addresses the tar baby amiably, but receives no response. Brer Rabbit becomes offended by what he perceives as the tar babys lack of manners, punches it and, in doing so, becomes stuck. The more Brer Rabbit punches and kicks the tar baby out of rage, the worse he gets stuck.

Now that Brer Rabbit is stuck, Brer Fox ponders how to dispose of him. The helpless but cunning Brer Rabbit pleads, Do anything you want with me --- roas me, hang me, skin me, drown me --- but please, Brer Fox, dont fling me in dat brier-patch, prompting the sadistic Brer Fox to do exactly that because he gullibly believes it will inflict the maximum pain on Brer Rabbit. As rabbits are at home in thickets, however, the resourceful Brer Rabbit escapes.

The story was originally published in Harpers Weekly by Robert Roosevelt; years later Joel Chandler Harris wrote of the Tar-Baby in his Uncle Remus stories.

Variations on the tar-baby legend are found in the folklore of more than one culture. In the Journal of American Folklore, Aurelio M. Espinosa examined 267 versions of the tar-baby story.[1] The next year, Archer Taylor added a list of tarbaby stories from more sources around the world, citing scholarly claims of its earliest origins in India and Iran.[2] Espinosa later published documentation on tarbaby stories from a variety of language communities around the world.[3]

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,