Things Better Left Unvisited:
Exactly What It Sounds Like, Mates.
If you had to think of something racially offensive that someone could never ever EVER get away with in today's society... well, you'd come up with a lot of things, thankfully. Now think of one that actually happened in the past. You'd still come up with a lot, especially if you're an American, and thankfully people can't get away with these things any more.
No one told the Redwallers this.
Now, in the midst of my rereading Marlfox in order to better lay out some of the OTHER racist things the goodbeasts get away with, I came across a scene which seemed disturbingly familiar with something I knew to happen in the Big Ol' Racism Era (again, especially the U.S. What is WRONG with us?).
It's blackface. Goodbeasts in "vermin" blackface. Says it all...
*Jim Crow, An Actual Crow*
"Wait, there's no crow in this scene!" Florian snapped. The sparrow, who had been about to prove that the sparrows were indeed still there, hung her head as she shuffled off, literally painted black to look more crow-y.
"H'aaaaandaaah naoooooow, I'm goin' to speeeak in such a waaaaay, that nooooobeeeeast caaan f'reeeeakiiiiiiiing understand meeeeee!" The hare announced dramatically before Roop the poorly-named mole slapped him upside the head, "Geez! Okay, okay! I'll bloody talk normal, wot!"
"As close t' normal as 'e gets..." Runktipp the hedgehog grumbled. Florian pretended he didn't hear as he took a note to fire the erizine later.
Then, after Florian put on a stupid-looking costume and spewed out a completely overdone and unnecessary introduction, the two otters Borrakul and Elachim bounded out on the stage, clad in things everybeast knew made good creatures look highly vermin-y. Specifically, raggedy breechclouts, excessive ear jewelry, and a pair of suspiciously Turkish-looking fake swords.
"Yarr, grrr, yah, gerrim!" the otters let stereotypes pour out of their bigoted mouths like vomit, "Yarr, we're ferrets! We're sooo evil! Cuz everybeast knows this is what all ferrets're like! Ain't we right, mates?"
Cheers ensued, with little Dibbuns egging their stage hero the hare on as he defeated the ferrets with insults...somehow. After the show an Abbey squirrel spoke to Florian and the others.
"Sir, you said that was an 'actual incident'. How in Hellgates did Ballaw survive that if those ferrets were really as villainous as they were portrayed? He was unarmed and they had swords!"
Florian shuffled uncomfortably, so Runktipp explained because he's underrated.
"Well... Florian did embellish the tale just a bit," he glared at the hare, "Ballaw De Quincewold really did encounter those two ferrets, but he was cutting across the ferrets' farmland." The hare snorted, not liking imagining his ancestor as anything other than a kickass, butt-kicking heroism (racism) machine, "When the ferrets came out to challenge him, uh... Ballaw cussed the crap outta them and bullied them back into their house. Of course they weren't pirate-y, it just gets a bigger audience when we show 'em like that."
"Oh." the squirrel blinked, "Well... that makes sense... but you don't get paid more here if you have a bigger audience. That's... that's a little bit dishonest, isn't it..?"
"Nope! Shut your pie-hole now, we need to rehearse our next scene and apply our blackface! You know, so hard to get those nasty vermin features right, wot wot!"
More may follow. If you like, you may leave an as-of-yet unanswered bit of unusual Redwall yore as a suggestion, but it is more than likely I'll cover the grand majority of oddness and unmentioned unmentionableness.