Foxes, particularly the red fox, appear in the folklore and arts of many human cultures, but especially European and East Asian, as a mythical figure characteristic of cunning, trickery and deception, or as a familiar animal possessed of magical or supernatural powers, and sometimes associated with shapeshifting and seductiveness. Literature, film, television, games, music, and other forms of cultural expression may reflect the folklore image and reputation.
The term "foxy" ("having the qualities of a fox") and "vixen" (female fox) in English can also connote attractiveness, sexiness, or being red-haired. The term "to outfox" means "to beat in a competition of wits", similarly to "outguess", "outsmart", and "outwit".
In folklore and wisdom Africa In Dogon mythology, the fox is reported to be either the trickster god of the desert, who embodies chaos or a messenger for the gods.
There is a Tswana riddle that says that "Phokoje go tsela o dithetsenya [Only the muddy fox lives] meaning that, in a philosophical sense, 'only an active person who does not mind getting muddy gets to progress in life.'
Europe Kuma Lisa is a female fox from Bulgarian folklore and Russian folklore who usually plays the role of the trickster. Kuma Lisa is encountered with another character known as Kumcho Vulcho – a wolf which is opposite to her and very often suffers from her tricks. Veronika Makarova writes that in Western European folklore, words relating to foxes, such as French "renard", have a masculine grammatical gender, which is why Western European foxes are usually depicted as male foxes, but the word лисa (lisa) in Russian has a feminine grammatical gender, which is why nearly all depictions of foxes in Russian folklore are female.
In Scotland, the trickster figure of the fox (or tod in traditional Scots) was represented as Lowrence, as in the Morall Fabillis of Robert Henryson.
In Finnish mythology, the fox is usually depicted as a cunning trickster, but seldom evil. The fox, while weaker, in the end outsmarts both the evil and voracious wolf and the strong but not-so-cunning bear. It symbolizes the victory of intelligence over both malevolence and brute strength. In Northern Finland, the fox is said to conjure the aurora borealis while it runs through the snowy hills. When the fox’s fur touches the snow it creates magical sparks and sets the sky ablaze. Still today, the Finnish word for the aurora is "revontulet" which literally translates to "fox-fires".
An Occitan song dating from the Middle Ages, Ai Vis lo Lop, features a wolf (lo lop), a fox (lo rainard) and a hare (lebre) dancing and circling a tree. It has been suggested that the three animals represent the King, Lord and Church who were responsible for taxation (the lyrics go on to refer to money gained over the year and how nothing was left after seeing 'the wolf, the fox and the hare').
In Europe, in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, foxes, which were associated with wiliness and fraudulent behavior, were sometimes burned as symbols of the Devil. In the medieval cycle of Reynard the Fox, he is a trickster interacting with other anthropomorphic animals in a satire of medieval society.
In ancient Greek mythology, the Teumessian fox was a gigantic fox destined to never be caught. When the hound Laelaps, who was destined to catch anything he hunted, tried to catch the Temessian fox, Zeus was forced to transform them both into the constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor to solve the paradox.
Middle East
In early Mesopotamian mythology, the fox is one of the sacred animals of the goddess Ninhursag. The fox acts as her messenger.
The Bible's Song of Solomon (2:15) includes a well-known verse "Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom" which had been given many interpretations over the centuries by Jewish and Christian Bible commentators.
To the Jewish sage Matteya ben Heresh, of the 2nd century CE, is attributed the maxim: "Meet each man with friendly greeting; be the tail among lions rather than the head among foxes". "The head among foxes" in this context is similar to the English expression "A big fish in a small pond". "Fox fables" are attributed to Rabbi Meir and Johanan ben Zakai, and appeared in a compilation under that name by Berechiah ha-Nakdan; the term in fact refers also to fables featuring animals other than foxes.
East Asia
In Classic of Mountains and Seas (edited by Liu Xiang in the Han Dynasty and probably composed before the Qin Dynasty), foxes eat people and predict war. In Investiture of the Gods, the femme fatale Su Daji is a malevolent vixen tasked by Nüwa to corrupt King Zhou and bring forth the fall of the Shang dynasty.
In Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese folklores, "fox spirits" (huli jing in China, kitsune in Japan, kumiho in Korea, and hồ ly tinh in Vietnam) are powerful spirits that are known for their highly mischievous and cunning nature, and they often take on the form of beautiful women to seduce or trick men. In Modern Chinese, the word huli jing is often used to negatively describe a mistress of an extramarital affair. In ancient Korean tales, fox spirits are portrayed as anti-deities that threaten the deity-dragons. In Shinto of Japan, kitsune sometimes help people as an errand of their deity, Inari.
Americas The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped animals and often depicted the fox in their art.Katherine Berrin & Larco Museum (1997). The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. New York: Thames and Hudson. The Moche people believed the fox to be a warrior that would use his mind to fight. The fox would not ever use physical attack, only mental.
In the Uncle Remus collection of 19th-century African-American folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris, "Br'er Fox" is a major character, often acting as the antagonist towards the stories' main character, "Br'er Rabbit".
Vladimir Bogoraz wrote down a creation myth he allegedly heard from the Chukchi people, in which the yellow fox attempts to deceive the Creator of the world for food, but fails, and the arctic fox is cowardly.
In language As an epithet The Medieval Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard was nicknamed "Robert the Fox" as well as the Resourceful, the Cunning, the Wily – underlining the identification of such qualities with foxes.
During the American Revolution Continental Army Officer Francis Marion became so adept at attacking and ambushing British forces in the swamps of South Carolina that he became known as the "Swamp Fox".
During World War II, the German commander in North Africa, Erwin Rommel, was grudgingly nicknamed the "Desert Fox" by his British adversaries, as a tribute to his cunning and skill in operational art.
The Italian sociologist and economist Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923) in his Trattato di Sociologia Generale (1916) developed the concept of an elite social class, which he divided into cunning 'foxes' and violent 'lions'. In his view of society, the power constantly passes from the 'foxes' to the 'lions' and vice versa.
Figures of speech The words fox and foxy have become slang in English-speaking societies for an individual (most often female) with sex appeal. The word vixen, which is normally the common name for a female fox, is also used to describe an attractive woman—although, in the case of humans, "vixen" tends to imply that the woman in question has a few nasty qualities.
The word shenanigan (a deceitful confidence trick, or mischief) is considered to be derived from the Irish expression sionnachuighim, meaning "I play the fox."
Literature (in chronological order)
4 BC – Aesop's Fables from classical antiquity, contain numerous tales involving a fox. 800 – "Renshi zhuan" (任氏传) [The story of Lady Ren] by Shen Ji-ji,: Story of a love affair between Zheng and a were-fox named Ren. 921 – Kuzunoha: Abe no Seimei's mother is a kitsune (fox spirit) named Kuzunoha. 1100 – The medieval story of Reynard, a classic anthropomorphic epic. 1280s – Samguk yusa: A collection of legends from the ancient Korean peninsula. It features numerous white foxes and the black fox mountain god of Samgimountain. 1390s – Geoffrey Chaucer, The Nun's Priest's Tale, based on an incident in the Reynard cycle. 1480s – Robert Henryson, The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian, where the figure of the fox, as Lowrence, is portrayed in an ongoing rivalry with the wolf. 1532 – Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince: The successful prince must have the traits of both the lion and the fox; as the lion cannot protect himself from traps and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. 1567 - 1619 – In Investiture of the Gods (封神演義), a fox spirit named Daji manipulates King Zhou to be a tyrant. 1668 – Jean de la Fontaine (1621–1695), the French fabulist, brilliantly refashioned Aesop's fables into poems, including some involving the fox such as: The Fox and the Crow () The Fox and the Stork () The Fox and the Billy Goat () The Fox and the Grapes () 1679 – Pu Songling, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, about encounters between humans and Huli jing (fox spirits). 1880–1905 – Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus: Oral tradition including Brer Fox, from the American South.
1847 – Jeon Woo-chi Story.: The protagonist, Woo-chi, and the golden nine-tailed fox are tricksters who deceive each other. Many motifs from modern Korean kumiho culture appear. 1881–1883 – The Fox and the Cat () are a pair of fictional characters who appear in Carlo Collodi's book The Adventures of Pinocchio. Both are con-men who lead Pinocchio astray and unsuccessfully attempt to murder him. They pretend to have disabilities – the Fox to lameness and the Cat to blindness. The Fox is the more articulate, the Cat usually limiting itself to repeating the Fox's words. 1894 – "Scrapefoot". A tale with a fox as antagonist that bears striking similarities to Robert Southey's "The Story of the Three Bears" was uncovered by the folklorist Joseph Jacobs and may predate Southey's version in the oral tradition. Some sources state that it was illustrator John D. Batten who in 1894 reported a variant of the tale at least 40 years old. In this version, the three bears live in a castle in the woods and are visited by a fox called Scrapefoot who drinks their milk, sits in their chairs, and rests in their beds. 1905? – Ernest Thompson Seton, The Biography of a Silver-Fox, Or, Domino Reynard of Goldur Town: Realistic story with author's drawing, later made into a feature film. 1909 – L. Frank Baum, The Road to Oz: Fox king Dox of Foxville changes a boy's head into fox's. 1920 – Rudolf Těsnohlídek, Liška Bystrouška (Vixen Sharpears or The Cunning Little Vixen). 1922 – David Garnett, Lady into Fox is about transformation into animal, first physical, then mental. 1924 – Hugh Lofting, Doctor Dolittle's Circus – Doctor Dolittle, the animals' friend, hides the vixen Nightshade and her cubs in his jacket to save them from fox hunters. 1932 – Niimi Nankichi, Gon, the Little Fox: The fox was misunderstood, and it was shot. The moral is about the result of revenge. 1938 – B.B., Wild Lone: The Story of a Pytchley Fox: A novel about a fox's life in Northamptonshire, the home of the Pytchley Hunt. 1943 – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince: A fox indicates the true value of friendship. 1953 – Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox. 1957 – Ted Hughes, The Thought-Fox: A poem featured in Hughes's The Hawk in the Rain. 1960 – Vercors, Sylva, inspired by David Garnett where a fox changes into a lady. 1965 – István Fekete Vuk, about the life of an abandoned fox and his revenge on a hunter. Also made into an animated film. 1967 – Daniel P. Mannix, The Fox and the Hound stars a fox named Tod as one of the two protagonists. Made into an animated film by Disney.