Day 109. Rabbit and ribbons

I did some research this morning for the version of Tortoise and Hare I want to write for my Week 3 story in Myth-Folklore, and I had one of those great folklore moments: in Harris's version, there is reference to Rabbit wearing ribbons (not so tortoise), and the illustrators pick up on that, but it's not motivated in the story at all. But if you look at Native American versions of the story, there are references to the contestants wearing ribbons or feathers (and so Turtle has to supply his substitutes with those markers also). I don't know if that is Native American innovation (which then passed on to Harris's informant), or if that is also in the African stories; I didn't have time to read through the African stories yet to look, but they are definitely in some Native American versions, so I will include that in mine too for sure. Here's Rabbit with ribbons: