Motif: Heyo, House!

Today's story — "The Hare and the Lion" — is from Zanzibar Tales Told by Natives of the East Coast of Africa by George Bateman, published in 1901 (for more stories, see the index). You can listen to today's story via LibriVox and which you can read online at the Internet Archive. The story is item 3 in the audiobook playlist:

The stories in this book come from Swahili-speaking storytellers on the island of Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania), as retold in English by George Bateman, who uses the Swahili names for the animals: Sungura is the trickster hare, Simba is the lion, etc. 

The book is illustrated by Walter Bobbett, and here is one of his illustrations for this story. This illustration shows the moment in the story when Rabbit first escapes from Lion (look closely and you'll see him escaping behind Lion's back!). Later, Lion hides in Rabbit's house in order to catch him, which is when the Rabbit tricks him by pretending that the house normally greets him.

One of the folktale motifs in this story is "Heyo, House!" This motif is one of many ways that trickster can escape his enemies. This trick is used when the enemy is hiding, lying in wait to catch the trickster in the trickster's own home. The trickster shouts out, "Heyo, House!" and when there is no reply, he asks the house why it doesn't reply as it usually does. The dupe decides he should reply, and when he does, the trickster mocks him and makes his escape. This is a motif that most likely came to Africa from India, as it is found both in the Panchatantra (where the lion is hiding in the trickster jackal's cave), and in Vanarinda-Jataka (where the crocodile pretends to be a rock, and the monkey asks the rock why it does not greet him as it usually does).

To see this motif in another story, take a look here:

"Heyo, House!" in Uncle Remus and His Friends by Joel Chandler Harris. In this story, it is Brer Wolf who has decided to his in Brer Rabbit's house.