tar baby

Tar-Baby was a doll made of tar and turpentine, used to entrap Br'er Rabbit in the second of the Uncle Remus stories. The more that Br'er Rabbit fought the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he became. In contemporary usage a tar baby refers to any "sticky situation" that is only aggravated by efforts to solve it.
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Br'er Rabbit (also spelled Bre'r Rabbit or Brer Rabbit) is a central figure in the Uncle Remus stories derived from African American folktales of the Southern United States. The stories can be traced back to trickster figures in Africa, particularly the hare that figures prominently in the storytelling traditions in Central and Southern Africa. These tales continue to be part of the traditional folklore of Bantu-speaking peoples throughout that region. In West Africa, the trickster is usually the spider (see Anansi), though the plots of spider tales are often identical to those of rabbit stories.
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