JUNIORCLASSICS

CHILDREN’SFAVOURITES

NA325012D

Rudyard Kipling

JUST SO STORIESRead by Geoffrey Palmer

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How the Whale got his Throat 6:52

– ‘When the cabin port-holes are dark green’ 1:00

How the Camel got his Hump 5.46

– ‘The Camel’s hump is an ugly hump’ 1:32

How the Rhinoceros got his Skin 5:30

– ‘This Uninhabited Island’ 3:38

How the Leopard got his Spots 13:07

– ‘“Now come along…”’ 1:55

The Elephant’s Child 8:53

– ‘Then the Elephant’s Child sat back on his little haunches, and pulled…’ 8:09

– ‘Keep six honest serving-men…’ 0:59

The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo 6:44

– ‘This is the mouth-filling song…’ 1:27

The Beginning of the Armadillos 7:26

– ‘“That was a very narrow escape,” said Stickly-Prickly.’ 10:11

– ‘I’ve never sailed the Amazon.’ 1:1616

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How the First Letter was Written 12:15

– ‘As soon as Teshumai saw the picture she screamed like anything…’ 9:06

– ‘There runs a road by Merrow Down – …’ 1:41

How the Alphabet was Made 8:35

– ‘“Now look,” said her Daddy. “’S’pose you saw this…”’ 9:44

– ‘Then the carp-mouth open.’ 6:04

– ‘And after thousands and thousands and thousands of years…’ 1:02

– ‘Of all the tribe of Tegumai…’ 1:23

The Crab that Played with the Sea 7:11

– ‘Then all the beasts, birds and fishes said together, “Eldest Magician…”’ 5:46

– ‘“Now,” said the Magician, “make a Magic Pau Amma…”’ 10:07

– ‘CHINA-GOING P’s and O’s…’ 2:0928

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The Cat that Walked by Himself 5:34

– ‘When the Man waked up…’ 4:28

– ‘Next day, the Cat waited to see if any other Wild thing…’ 6:02

– ‘O my Enemy and Wife of my Enemy…’ 5:48

– ‘That evening when the Man and the Dog came into the Cave…’ 3:48

– ‘Pussy can sit by the fire and sing…’ 1:27

The Butterfly that Stamped 3:56

– ‘He married ever so many wives…’ 3:23

– ‘Presently two Butterflies flew under the treequarrelling.’ 7:31

– ‘Then the Butterfly stamped…’ 1:44

– ‘Suleiman-bin-Daoud could hardly speak forlaughing.’ 6:35

– ‘There was never a Queen like Balkis...’ 0:55

Total time: 3:31:03

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Rudyard Kipling first told these stories to hisown children. The full title is Just So Storiesfor little children – and were called thatbecause, he said, they had to be told ‘justso’. He told them to his daughter Elsie andhis son Charles. He had a deep, smoothvoice and he regarded them very much asbedtime stories which would help thechildren go to sleep.

They were first published in 1902. Thiswas after The Jungle Books (1894 and1895), the stories of Mowgli and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and others which remain amongthe most loved children’s stories of all time.But he started to tell them as stories manyyears before.

While he was writing the Just SoStories, his daughter Josephine died ofpneumonia at the age of six. Kipling himselfcaught it and was also very ill. This stoppedhim writing for months, but when herecovered he returned to them. The poemMerrydown in How the Alphabet was Madewas written in memory of Josephine.

Kipling was born in Bombay in India in1865, and though he went to school inEngland (having an unhappy time separated

from his parents) he went back to India as ayoung man working as a journalist. He wasa great traveller throughout his life, goinground the world by train and by paddlesteamer (some of these boats crossing theAtlantic and the Pacific at the time had sailsas well as paddles). He spent time in Africaand the Middle East, as well as Australiaand New Zealand.

His experience of these many countriesand many cultures can be seen in the JustSo Stories. Many of them are not set inany particular country, but they bear thehallmark of Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. The Whale is set, ‘Fifty North andForty West’, in the middle of the Atlantic.The Kangaroo is clearly marked Australia,and the Rhinoceros is on an island in theRed Sea (a fictional island). The grumpycamel lives in the middle of a HowlingDesert – though Arabia is suggested andDjinns come from Arabian mythology.Nevertheless, this is mythical country,because the punchayet which is mentionedmeans ‘a council of five’, a term from India.

The Leopard lives in the High Veldt ofSouth Africa, with the Wise Baviaan, the

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Rudyard Kipling

JUST SO STORIES

dog-headed Baboon, ‘Quite the WisestAnimal in All South Africa’. So theEthiopian is clearly a long way from home.It is interesting to notice that in the pictureof Baviaan, Kipling has drawn manydifferent scripts, including Amaric or Coptic(from Ethiopia), Hieroglyphic (from Egypt),Cuneiform (from Babylon), as well asBengalic (from India), Burmic (from Burma)and Hebraic (from Israel). So the storycovers a very wide range of countries!

African elephants are different to Indianelephants – they are much bigger for a start– and some experts have said that Kipling’sdrawing looks more like an Indian elephant.However, Kipling’s Elephant’s Child with‘‘satiable curtiosity’ finds his crocodile onthe banks of the great grey-green, greasyLimpopo River, and he had to go throughKhama’s country (which is Botswana inAfrica) to get there. So that is a mixture.

For the Armadillo story, we move to thebanks of the ‘turbid Amazon’, the longestriver in South America. For the Alphabetstories, we are in Neolithic times – whichmeans the later Stone Age (‘lithic’ meansstone in Greek).

Where is the Crab that Played with theSea? Somewhere around India and Malayaand Indonesia, probably, according to thenames. Kipling may have imagined The Cat

that Walked by Himself in America, wherehe once lived, because of the ‘wild rice and wild grenadillas’, but it doesn’t reallymatter.

There is no doubt, however, about theButterfly that Stamped, for Suleiman-bin-Daoud had his temple in Jerusalem. It was avery famous building.

The Just So Stories range around theglobe – which, for Kipling, was home. Heloved travelling. And just listening to them,we too can travel around the globe in ourimagination, to deserts, jungles, forests,oceans, to times past and times beforepast.

Notes by Nicolas Soames

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How the Whale got his ThroatTHIS is the picture of the Whale swallowing the Mariner with his infinite-resource-and-sagacity, and the raft and the jack-knife and his suspenders, which you must not forget.The buttony-things are the Mariner’s suspenders, and you can see the knife close by them.He is sitting on the raft, but it has tilted up sideways, so you don’t see much of it. Thewhity thing by the Mariner’s left hand is a piece of wood that he was trying to row theraft with when the Whale came along. The piece of wood is called the jaws-of-a-gaff. TheMariner left it outside when he went in. The Whale’s name was Smiler, and the Marinerwas called Mr. Henry Albert Bivvens, A.B. The little ’Stute Fish is hiding under the Whale’stummy, or else I would have drawn him. The reason that the sea looks so ooshy-skooshy isbecause the Whale is sucking it all into his mouth so as to suck in Mr. Henry Albert Bivvens and the raft and the jack-knife and the suspenders. You mustnever forget the suspenders.

HERE is the Whale looking for thelittle ’Stute Fish, who is hidingunder the Door-sills of the Equator.The little ’Stute Fish’s name wasPingle. He is hiding among theroofs of the big seaweed thatgrows in front of the Doors of theEquator. I have drawn the Doors ofthe Equator. They are shut. They arealways kept shut, because a dooraught always to be kept shut. Theropy-thing right across it is theEquator itself; and the things thatlook like rocks are the two giantsMoar and Koar, that keep theEquator in order. They drew theshadow-pictures on the doors ofthe Equator, and they carved allthose twisty fishes under the Doors.The beaky-fish are called beakedDolphins, and the other fish withthe queer heads are called Hammer-headed Sharks. The Whale neverfound the little ’Stute Fish till he gotover his temper, and then theybecame good friends again.

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How the Camel got his HumpTHIS is the picture of the Djinn making the beginnings of the Magic that brought theHumph to the Camel. First he drew a line in the air with his finger, and it became solid:and then he made a cloud, and then he made an egg – you can see them both at thebottom of the picture – and then there was a magic pumpkin that turned into a big whiteflame. Then the Djinn took his magic fan and fanned that flame till the flame turned intoa magic by itself. It was a good Magic and a very kind Magic really, though it had to givethe Camel a Humph because the Camel was lazy. The Djinn in charge of All Deserts wasone of the nicest of the Djinns, so he would never do anything really unkind.

HERE is the picture of the Djinn incharge of All Deserts guiding theMagic with his magic fan. The camelis eating a twig of acacia, and he hasjust finished saying “humph” oncetoo often (the Djinn told him he would), and so the Humph iscoming. The long towelly-thinggrowing out of the thing like anonion is the Magic, and you can seethe Humph on its shoulder. TheHumph fits on the flat part of theCamel’s back. The Camel is too busylooking at his own beautiful self inthe pool of water to know what isgoing to happen to him.

Underneath the truly picture is apicture of the World-so-new-and-all.There are two smoky volcanoes in it,some other mountains and somestones and a lake and a black islandand a twisty river and a lot of otherthings, as well as a Noah’s Ark. Icouldn’t draw all the deserts that theDjinn was in charge of, so I only drewone, but it is a most deserty desert.

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How the Rhinoceros got his SkinTHIS is the picture of theParsee beginning to eat hiscake on the UninhabitedIsland in the Red Sea on a very hot day; and of the Rhinoceros coming down from the AltogetherUninhabited Interior, which, asyou can truthfully see, is allrocky. The Rhinoceros’s skin isquite smooth, and the threebuttons that button it up areunderneath, so you can’t seethem. The squiggly things onthe Parsee’s hat are the rays of the sun reflected inmore-than-oriental splendour,because if I had drawn realrays they would have filled upall the picture. The cake hascurrants in it; and the wheel-thing lying on the sand infront belonged to one ofPharaoh’s chariots when he tried to cross the Red Sea. The Parsee found it, and kept it toplay with. The Parsee’s name was Pestonjee Bomonjee, and the Rhinoceros was calledStrorks, because he breathed through his mouth instead of his nose. I wouldn’t askanything about the cooking-stove if I were you.

THIS is the Parsee Pestonjee Bomonjeesitting in his palm-tree and watchingthe Rhinoceros Strorks bathing near thebeach of the Altogether UninhabitedIsland after Strorks had taken off hisskin. The Parsee has put the cake-crumbs into the skin, and he is smilingto think how they will tickle Strorkswhen Strorks puts it on again. The skinis just under the rocks below the palm-tree in a cool place; that is why youcan’t see it. The Parsee is wearing anew more-than-oriental-splendour hatof the sort that Parsees wear; and hehas a knife in his hand to cut his nameon palm-trees. The black things on theislands out at sea are bits of ships thatgot wrecked going down the Red Sea;but all the passengers were saved andwent home.

The black thing in the water close tothe shore is not a wreck at all. It isStrorks the Rhinoceros bathing withouthis skin. He was just as blackunderneath his skin as he was outside. Iwouldn’t ask anything about thecooking-stove if I were you.

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How the Leopard got his SpotsTHIS is Wise Baviaan, the dog-headedBaboon, Who is Quite the Wisest Animalin All South Africa. I have drawn him froma statue that I made up out of my ownhead, and I have written his name on hisbelt and on his shoulder and on the thinghe is sitting on. I have written it in what isnot called Coptic and Hierogliphic andCuneiformic and Bengalic and Burmic andHebric, all because he is so wise. He is notbeautiful, but he is very wise; and I shouldlike to paint him with paint-box colours,but I am not allowed. The umbrella-ishthing about his head is his ConventionalMane.

THIS is the picture of the Leopardand the Ethiopian after they hadtaken Wise Baviaan’s advice andthe Leopard had gone into otherspots and the Ethiopian hadchanged his skin. The Ethiopianwas really a negro, and so hisname was Sambo. The Leopardwas called Spots, and he hasbeen called Spots ever since.They are out hunting in thespickly-speckly forest, and theyare looking for Mr. One-Two-Three-Where’s-your-Breakfast. Ifyou look a little you will see Mr. One-Two-Three not far away.The Ethiopian has hidden behinda splotchy blotchy tree because it matches his skin, and theLeopard is lying beside a spickly-speckly bank of stones because itmatches his spots. Mr. One-Two-Three-Where’s-your-Breakfast isstanding up eating leaves from atall tree. This is really a puzzle-picture like ‘Find the Cat’.

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The Elephant’s ChildTHIS is the Elephant’s Childhaving his nose pulled by the Crocodile. He is muchsurprised and astonished andhurt, and he is talkingthrough his nose and saying.‘Led go! You are hurtig be!’He is pulling very hard, andso is the Crocodile: but the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake is hurrying through thewater to help the Elephant’sChild. All that black stuff isthe banks of the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River(but I am not allowed topaint these pictures), and thebottly-tree with the twistyroots and the eight leaves is one of the fever-trees that grow there.

Underneath the truly picture are shadows of African animals walking into an Africanark. There are two lions, two ostriches, two oxen, two camels, two sheep, and two otherthings that look like rats, but I think they are rock-rabbits. They don’t mean anything. I putthem in because I thought they looked pretty. They would look very fine if I were allowedto paint them.

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THIS is just a picture of the Elephant’s Child going to pull bananas off a banana-tree afterhe had got his fine new long trunk. I don’t think it is a very nice picture; but I couldn’tmake it any better, because elephants and bananas are hard to draw. The streaky thingsbehind the Elephant’s Child mean squoggy marshy country somewhere in Africa. TheElephant’s Child made most of his mud-cakes out of the mud that he found there. I thinkit would look better if you painted the banana-tree green and the Elephant’s Child red.

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The Sing-Song of Old Man KangarooTHIS is a picture of Old Man Kangaroo when he was the Different Animal with four shortlegs. I have drawn him grey and woolly, and you can see that he is very proud because hehas a wreath of flowers in his hair. He is dancing on an outcrop (that means a ledge ofrock) in the middle of Australia at six o’clock before breakfast. You can see that it is sixo’clock, because the sun is just getting up. The thing with the ears and the open mouth isLittle God Nqa. Nqa is very much surprised, because he has never seen a Kangaroo dancelike that before. Little God Nqa is just saying, ‘Go away,’ but the Kangaroo is so busydancing that he has not heard him yet.

The Kangaroo hasn’t any real name except Boomer. He lost it because he was soproud.

THIS is the picture of Old Man Kangarooat five in the afternoon, when he had gothis beautiful hind legs just as Big GodNqong had promised. You can see that itis five o’clock, because Big God Nqong’spet tame clock says so. That is Nqong, inhis bath, sticking his feet out. Old ManKangaroo is being rude to Yellow-DogDingo. Yellow-Dog Dingo has been tryingto catch Kangaroo all across Australia.You can see the marks of Kangaroo’s bignew feet running ever so far back overthe bare hills. Yellow-Dog Dingo is drawnblack, because I am not allowed to paintthese pictures with real colours out of thepaint-box; and besides, Yellow-Dog Dingogot dreadfully black and dusty afterrunning through the Flinders and theCinders.

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The Beginning of the ArmadillosTHIS is an inciting map of the TurbidAmazon. It hasn’t anything to dowith the story except that there aretwo Armadillos in it up by the top.The inciting part are the adventuresthat happened to the men whowent along the road marked by thedouble line. I meant to drawArmadillos when I began the map,and I meant to draw manatees and spider-tailed monkeys and bigsnakes and lots of Jaguars, but itwas more inciting to do the mapand the venturesome adventures.You begin at the bottom left-handcorner and follow the little arrowsall about, and then you come quiteround again to where theadventuresome people went homein a ship called the Royal Tiger. Thisis a most adventuresome picture,and all the adventures are toldabout in writing, so you can bequite sure which is an adventureand which is a tree or a boat.

THIS is a picture of the whole story of the Jaguar and the Hedgehog and theTortoise and the Armadillo all in a heap. Itlooks rather the same any way you turn it.The Tortoise is in the middle, learning howto bend, and that is why the shelly plateson his back are so spread apart. He isstanding on the Hedgehog, who iswaiting to learn how to swim. TheHedgehog is a Japanesy Hedgehog,because I couldn’t find our ownHedgehogs in the garden when I wantedto draw them. (It was daytime, and theyhad gone to bed under the dahlias.)Speckly Jaguar is looking over the edge,with his paddy-paw carefully tied up byhis mother, because he pricked himselfscooping the Hedgehog. He is muchsurprised to see what the Tortoise isdoing, and his paw is hurting him. Thesnouty thing with the little eye that Speckly Jaguar is trying to climb over is the Armadillothat the Tortoise and the Hedgehog are going to turn into when they have finishedbending and swimming. It is all a magic picture, and that is one of the reasons why Ihaven’t drawn the Jaguar’s whiskers. The other reason was that he was so young that hiswhiskers had not grown. The Jaguar’s pet name with his Mummy was Doffles.

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How the First Letter was WrittenTHIS is the story of Taffimai Metallumai carvedon an old tusk a very long time ago by theAncient Peoples. If you read my story, or haveit read to you, you can see how it is all told outon the tusk. The tusk was part of an old tribaltrumpet that belonged to the Tribe of Tegumai.The pictures were scratched on it with a nail orsomething, and then the scratches were filledup with black wax, but all the dividing linesand the five little rounds at the bottom werefilled with red wax. When it was new therewas a sort of network of beads and shells andprecious stones at one end of it; but now thathas been broken and lost – all except the littlebit that you see. The letters round the tusk aremagic – Runic magic – and if you can readthem you will find out something rather new.The tusk is of ivory – very yellow andscratched. It is two feet long and two feetround, and weighs eleven pounds nine ounces.

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How the Alphabet was Made

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ONE of the first things that Tegumai Bopsulai did after Taffy and he had made theAlphabet was to make a magic Alphabet-necklace of all the letters, so that it could be putin the Temple of Tegumai and kept for ever and ever. All the Tribe of Tegumai broughttheir most precious beads and beautiful things, and Taffy and Tegumai spent five wholeyears getting the necklace in order. This is a picture of the magic Alphabet-necklace. Thestring was made of the finest and strongest reindeer-sinew, bound round with thin copperwire.

Beginning at the top, the first bead is an old silver one that belonged to the HeadPriest of the Tribe of Tegumai; then came three black mussel-pearls; next is a clay bead(blue and gray); next a nubbly gold bead sent as a present by a tribe who got it fromAfrica (but it must have been Indian really); the next is a long flat-sided glass bead fromAfrica (the Tribe of Tegumai took it in a fight); then come two clay beads (white andgreen), with dots on one, and dots and bands on the other; next are three rather chippedamber beads; then three clay beads (red and white), two with dots, and the big one in themiddle with a toothed pattern. Then the letters begin, and between each letter is a littlewhitish clay bead with the letter repeated small. Here are the letters:A is scratched on a tooth – an elk-tusk I think. B is the Sacred Beaver of Tegumai on a bit of old glory. C is a pearly oyster-shell – inside front. D must be a sort of mussel shell – outside front. E is a twist of silver wire. F is broken, but what remains of it is a bit of stag’s horn. G is painted black on a piece of wood. (The bead after G is a small shell, and not a clay

bead. I don’t know why they did that.) H is a kind of a big brown cowie-shell. I is the inside part of a long shell ground down by hand. (It took Tegumai three months

to grind it down.) J is a fish hook in mother-of-pearl. L is the broken spear in silver. (K aught to follow J of course, but the necklace was

broken once and they mended it wrong.) K is a thin slice of bone scratched and rubbed in black.

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M is on a pale gray shell. N is a piece of what is called porphyry with a nose scratched on it. (Tegumai spent five

months polishing this stone.) O is a piece of oyster-shell with a hole in the middle. P and Q are missing. They were lost, a long time ago, in a great war, and the tribe

mended the necklace with the dried rattles of a rattlesnake, but no one ever found Pand Q. That is how the saying began, ‘You must mind your P’s and Q’s’.

R is, of course, just a shark’s tooth.S is a little silver snake.T is the end of a small bone, polished brown and shiny. U is another piece of oyster-shell.W is a twisty piece of mother-of-pearl that they found inside a big mother-of-pearl shell,

and sawed off with a wire dipped in sand and water. It took Taffy a month and a halfto polish it and drill the holes.

X is silver wire joined in the middle with a raw garnet. (Taffy found the garnet.)Y is the carp’s tail in ivory.Z is a bell-shaped piece of agate marked with Z-shaped stripes. They made the Z-snake

out of one of the stripes by picking out the soft stone and rubbing in red sand andbee’s-wax. Just in the mouth of the bell you see the clay bead repeating the Z-letter. These are all the letters. The next bead is a small round greeny lump of copper ore; the next is a lump of rough

turquoise; the next is a rough gold nugget (what they call water-gold); the next is amelon-shaped clay bead (white with green spots). Then come four flat ivory pieces, withdots on them rather like dominoes; then come three stone beads, very badly worn; thentwo soft iron beads with rust-holes at the edges (they must have been magic, becausethey look very common); and last is a very very old African bead, like glass – blue, red,white, black and yellow. Then comes the loop to slip over the big silver button at the otherend, and that is all.

I have copied the necklace very carefully. It weighs one pound seven and a half ounces.The black squiggle behind is only put in to make the beads and things look better.

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The Crab that Played with the SeaTHIS is a picture of Pau Amma the Crabrunning away while the Eldest Magicianwas talking to the Man and his Little GirlDaughter. The Eldest Magician is sittingon his magic throne, wrapped up in hisMagic Cloud. The three flowers in frontof him are the three Magic Flowers. Onthe top of the hill you can see All-the-Elephant-there-was, and All-the-Cow-there-was, and All-the-Turtle-there-wasgoing off to play as the Eldest Magiciantold them. The Cow has a hump, becauseshe was All-the-Cow-there-was; so shehad to have all there was for all the cowsthat were made afterwards. Under the hillthere are Animals who have been taughtthe game they were to play. You can seeAll-the-Tiger-there-was smiling at All-the-Bones-there-were, and you can seeAll-the-Elk-there-was, and All-the-Parrot-there-was, and All-the-Bunnies-there-were on the hill. The other Animals areon the other side of the hill, so I haven’tdrawn them. The little house up the hill isAll-the-House-there-was. The Eldest Magician made it to show the Man how to makehouses when he wanted to. The Snake round that spiky hill is All-the-Snake-there-was,and he is talking to All-the-Monkey-there-was, and the Monkey is being rude to theSnake, and the Snake is being rude to the Monkey. The Man is very busy talking to theEldest Magician. The Little Girl Daughter is looking at Pau Amma as he runs away. Thathumpy thing in the water in front is Pan Amma. He wasn’t a common Crab in those days.

He was a King Crab. That is why he looks different. The thing that looks like bricks thatthe Man is standing in, is the Big Miz-Maze. When the Man has done talking with theEldest Magician he will walk in the Big Miz-Maze, because he has to. The mark on thestone under the Man’s foot is a magic mark: and down underneath I have drawn the threeMagic Flowers all mixed up with the Magic Cloud. All this picture is Big Medicine andStrong Magic.

THIS is the picture of Pau Amma the Crabrising out of the sea as tall as the smoke ofthree volcanoes. I haven’t drawn the threevolcanoes, because Pau Amma was so big.Pau Amma is trying to make a Magic, but heis only a silly old King Crab, and so he can’tdo anything. You can see he is all legs andclaws and empty hollow shell. The canoe isthe canoe that the Man and the GirlDaughter and the Eldest Magician sailed fromthe Perak river in. The sea is all black andbobbly, because Pan Amma has just risen upout of Pusat Tasek. Pusat Tasek is underneath,so I haven’t drawn it. The Man is waving hiscurvy kris-knife at Pau Amma. The Little GirlDaughter is sitting quietly in the middle ofthe canoe. She knows she is quite safe withher Daddy. The Eldest Magician is standingup at the other end of the canoe beginning to make a Magic. He has left his magic throneon the beach, and he has taken off his clothes so as not to get wet, and he has left theMagic Cloud behind too, so as not to tip the boat over. The thing that looks like anotherlittle canoe outside the real canoe is called an outrigger. It is a piece of wood tied to sticks,and it prevents the canoe from being tipped over. The canoe is made out of one piece ofwood, and there is a paddle at one end of it.

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The Cat that Walked by HimselfTHIS is the picture of the Cave where theMan and the Woman lived first of all. It wasreally a very nice Cave, and much warmerthan it looks. The Man had a canoe. It is onthe edge of the river, being soaked in thewater to make it swell up. The tattery-looking thing across the river is the Man’ssalmon-net to catch salmon with. There arenice clean stones leading up from the river tothe mouth of the Cave, so that the Man andthe Woman could go down for waterwithout getting sand between their toes. Thethings like black-beetles far down the beachare really trunks of dead trees that floateddown the river from the Wet Wild Woods onthe other bank. The Man and the Womanused to drag them out and dry them and cutthem up for firewood. I haven’t drawn thehorse-hide curtain at the mouth of the Cave,because the Woman has just taken it downto be cleaned. All those little smudges on the sand between the Cave and the river are themarks of the Woman’s feet and the Man’s feet.

The Man and the Woman are both inside the Cave eating their dinner. They went toanother cosier Cave when the Baby came, because the Baby used to crawl down to theriver and fall in, and the Dog had to pull him out.

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THIS is the picture of the Cat that Walkedby Himself, walking by his wild lanethrough the Wet Wild Woods and wavinghis wild tail. There is nothing else in thepicture except some toadstools. They hadto grow there because the woods wereso wet. The lumpy thing on the lowbranch isn’t a bird. It is moss that grewthere because the Wild Woods were sowet.

Underneath the truly picture is apicture of the cozy Cave that the Manand the Woman went to after the Babycame. It was their summer Cave, andthey planted wheat in front of it. TheMan is riding on the Horse to find theCow and bring her back to the Cave tobe milked. He is holding up his hand tocall the Dog, who has swum across to theother side of the river, looking for rabbits.

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The Butterfly that StampedTHIS is the picture of the Animal thatcame out of the sea and ate up all thefood that Suleiman-bin-Daoud had madeready for all the animals, in all the world.He was really quite a nice Animal, and hisMummy was very fond of him and of histwenty-nine thousand nine hundred andninety-nine other brothers that lived atthe bottom of the sea. You know that hewas the smallest of them all, and so hisname was Small Porgies. He ate up allthose boxes and packets and bales andthings that had been got ready for all theanimals, without ever once taking off thelids or untying the strings, and it did nothurt him at all. The sticky-up mastsbehind the boxes of food belong toSuleiman-bin-Daoud’s ships. They werebusy bringing more food when SmallPorgies came ashore. He did not eat theships. They stopped unloading the foodsand instantly sailed away to sea till SmallPorgies had quite finished eating. You cansee some of the ships beginning to sailaway by Small Porgies’ shoulder. I have not drawn Suleiman-bin-Daoud, but he is justoutside the picture, very much astonished. The bundle hanging from the mast of the shipin the corner is really a package of wet dates for parrots to eat. I don’t know the names ofthe ships. That is all there is in that picture.

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THIS is the picture of the four gull-wingedDjinns lifting up Suleiman-bin-Daoud’sPalace the very minute after the Butterflyhad stamped. The Palace and the gardensand everything came up in one piece likea board, and they left a big hole in theground all full of dust and smoke. If youlook in the corner, close to the thing thatlooks like a lion, you will see Suleiman-bin-Daoud with his magic stick and thetwo Butterflies behind him. The thingthat looks like a lion is really a lion carvedin stone, and the thing that looks like amilt-can is really a piece of a temple or ahouse or something. Suleiman-bin-Daoudstood there so as to be out of the way ofthe dust and the smoke when the Djinnslifted up the Palace. I don’t know theDjinns’ names. They were servants ofSuleiman-bin-Daoud’s magic ring, andthey changed about every day. They werejust common gull-winged Djinns.

The thing at the bottom is a picture ofa very friendly Djinn called Akraig. Heused to feed the little fishes in the seathree times a day, and his wings weremade of pure copper. I put him in to show you what a nice Djinn is like. He did not help tolift the Palace. He was busy feeding little fishes in the Arabian Sea when it happened.

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The music on this recording has been taken from the NAXOS catalogue

How the Whale got his ThroatMOZART HORN CONCERTOS 8.553592Bournemouth Sinfonietta, Michael Thompson, horn and director

How The Camel got his HumpJANACEK MLADI 8.554173Oslo Philharmonic Wind Soloists

How the Rhinoceros got his SkinKROMMER PARTITAS FOR WIND INSTRUMENTS 8.554226Michael Thompson Wind Ensemble

How the Leopard got his SpotsVIVALDI LA STRAVAGANZA VOLUME 2 8.553324Andrew Watkinson, violin, City of London Sinfonia

The Elephant’s ChildSAINT-SAENS CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS 8.554463Johnny Morris, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ondrej Lénard

The Sing-Song of Old Man KangarooSAINT-SAENS CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS 8.554463Johnny Morris, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ondrej Lénard

The Beginning of the ArmadillosDANZI BASSOON CONCERTOS 8.554273Albrecht Holder, bassoon, Neubrandenburger Philharmonic, Nicolás Pasquet

How the First Letter was WrittenDVORAK SERENADE FOR WIND 8.554173Oslo Philharmonic Wind Soloists

How the Alphabet was MadeDVORAK SERENADE FOR WIND 8.554173Oslo Philharmonic Wind Soloists

The Crab that Played with the SeaJANACEK MLADI 8.554173Oslo Philharmonic Wind Soloists

The Cat that Walked by HimselfJANACEK MLADI 8.554173Oslo Philharmonic Wind Soloists

The Butterfly that StampedSAINT-SAENS CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS 8.554463Johnny Morris, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ondrej Lénard

Music programmed by Mike Etherden

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Produced by John Tydeman

Recorded at Motivation Sound Studios by M

ark Smith

Edited by Mike Etherden

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.U

NAU

THORISED PU

BLIC PERFORM

ANCE,

BROADCASTIN

G AN

D COPYIN

G O

F THESE COM

PACT DISCS PROHIBITED.

p 2002 N

AXOS

AudioBooks Ltd.© 2002 N

AXOS AudioBooks Ltd.

Made in G

ermany.

View our catalogue online atwww.naxosaudiobooks.com Total time

3:31:03

CD ISBN:

978-962-634-250-3

Rudyard Kipling

JUST SO STORIESRead by Geoffrey Palmer

‘I am the cat who walks by himself and all places are alike to me.’

Here are the delightful stories which Kipling first told to his own childrenbefore setting them down on paper. How the Camel got his Hump, Howthe Leopard got his Spots, How the Elephant got his Trunk, the Butterflythat Stamped and many others. They remain unforgettable – magic fablestold by a master of children’s literature. To hear them – in their unabridgedform as here – is to enjoy them in their original form.

Geoffrey Palmer has had an impressive and busy stageand screen career. Among his films are O Lucky Man, TheMadness of King George, Mrs Brown and Tomorrow NeverDies. He has also appeared in many television dramaprogrammes and comedy series, including Butterflies, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and As Time Goes By.

“A delightful recording of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories…Enjoy Geoffrey Palmer’s voice and some great music.”

THE DAILY EXPRESS