Just So Stories

by Rudyard Kipling

  Not yet,’ said Tegumai; not till we’ve gone a little further. Let’s see. Yo is bad water, but so is food cooked on the fire, isn’t it?’ And he drew this. (9.)

  Yes. Snake and egg,’ said Taffy. So that means dinner’s ready. If you saw that scratched on a tree you’d know it was time to come to the Cave. So’d I.’

  ‘My Winkie!’ said Tegumai. ‘That’s true too. But wait a minute. I see a difficulty. So means "come and have dinner", but sho means the drying-poles where we hang our hides.’

  ‘Horrid old drying-poles!’ said Taffy. ‘I hate helping to hang heavy, hot, hairy hides on them. If you drew the snake and egg, and I thought it meant dinner, and I came in from the wood and found that it meant I was to help Mummy hang the hides on the drying-poles, what would I do?’

  ‘You’d be cross. So’d Mummy. We must make a new picture for sho. We must draw a spotty snake that hisses sh-sh, and we’ll play that the plain snake only hisses ssss!

  ‘I couldn’t be sure how to put in the spots,’ said Taffy. ‘And p’raps if you were in a hurry you might leave them out, and I’d think it was so when it was sho, and then Mummy would catch me just the same. No! I think we’d better draw a picture of the horrid high drying-poles their very selves, and make quite sure. I’ll put ‘em in just after the hissy-snake. Look!’ And she drew this. (10.)

  ‘P’raps that’s safest. It’s very like our drying-poles, anyhow,’ said her Daddy, laughing. ‘Now I’ll make a new noise with a snake and drying-pole sound in it. I’ll say shi. That’s Tegumai for spear, Taffy.’ And he laughed.

  ‘Don’t make fun of me,’ said Taffy as she thought of her picture-letter and the mud in the Stranger-man’s hair. ‘You draw it, Daddy.’

  ‘We won’t have beavers or hills this time, eh?’ said her Daddy. ‘I’ll just draw a straight line for my spear.’ And he drew this. (11.)

  ‘Even Mummy couldn’t mistake that for me being killed.’

  ‘Please don’t, Daddy. It makes me uncomfy. Do some more noises. We’re getting on beautifully.’

  ‘Er-hm!’ said Tegumai, looking up. ‘We’ll say shu. That means sky.’

  Taffy drew the snake and the drying-pole. Then she stopped. ‘We must make a new picture for that end sound, mustn’t we?’

  lShu-shu-u-u-uF said her Daddy. ‘Why, it’s just like the round-egg-sound made thin.’

  ‘Then s’pose we draw a thin round egg, and pretend it’s a frog that hasn’t eaten anything for years.’

  ‘N-no,’ said her Daddy. ‘If we drew that in a hurry we might mistake it for the round egg itself. Shu-shu-shu! I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll open a little hole at the end of the round egg to show how the O-noise runs out all thin, ooo-oo-oo. Like this.’ And he drew this. (12.)

  ‘Oh, that’s lovely! Much better than a thin frog. Go on,’ said Taffy, using her shark’s tooth.

  Her Daddy went on drawing, and his hand shook with incitement. He went on till he had drawn this. (13.)

  ‘Don’t look up, Taffy,’ he said. Try if you can make out what that means in the Tegumai language. If you can, we’ve found the Secret.’

  ‘Snake – pole – broken-egg – carp-tail and carp-mouth,’ said Taffy.‘ Shu-ya. Sky-water (rain).’ Just then a drop fell on her hand, for the day had clouded over. Why, Daddy, it’s raining. Was that what you meant to tell me?’

  Of course,’ said her Daddy. And I told it you without saying a word, didn’t I?’

  Well, I think I would have known it in a minute, but that raindrop made me quite sure. I’ll always remember now. Shu-ya means rain, or "it is going to rain". Why, Daddy!’ She got up and danced round him. S’pose you went out before I was awake, and drawed Shu-ya in the smoke on the wall, I’d know it was going to rain and I’d take my beaver-skin hood. Wouldn’t Mummy be surprised!’

  Tegumai got up and danced. (Daddies didn’t mind doing those things in those days.) More than that! More than that!’ he said. S’pose I wanted to tell you it wasn’t going to rain much and you must come down to the river, what would we draw? Say the words in Tegumai-talk first.’

  ‘Shu-ya-las, ya maru. (Sky-water ending. River come to.) What a lot of new sounds! I don’t see how we can draw them.’

  ‘But I do – but I do!’ said Tegumai. ‘Just attend a minute, Taffy, and we won’t do any more today. We’ve got shu-ya all right, haven’t we? but this las is a teaser. La-la-la? and he waved his shark-tooth.

  ‘There’s the hissy-snake at the end and the carp-mouth before the snake – as-as-as. We only want la-la] said Taffy.

  ‘I know it, but we have to make la-la. And we’re the first people in all the world who’ve ever tried to do it, Taffimai!’

  ‘Well,’ said Taffy, yawning, for she was rather tired. ‘Las means breaking or finishing as well as ending, doesn’t it?’

  ‘So it does,’ said Tegumai. ‘Ya-las means that there’s no water in the tank for Mummy to cook with – just when I’m going hunting, too.’

  ‘And shi-las means that your spear is broken. If I’d only thought of that instead of drawing silly beaver-pictures for the Stranger-man!’

  ‘La! La! La!" said Tegumai, waving his stick and frowning. ‘Oh, bother!’

  ‘I could have drawn shi quite easily,’ Taffy went on. ‘Then I’d have drawn your spear all broken – this way!’ And she drew. (14.)

  ‘The very thing,’ said Tegumai. ‘That’s la all over. It isn’t like any of the other marks, either.’ And he drew this. (15.)

  ‘Now for ya. Oh, we’ve done that before. Now for maru. Mum-mum-mum. Mum shuts one’s mouth up, doesn’t it? We’ll draw a shut mouth like this.’ And he drew. (16.)

  ‘Then the carp-mouth open. That makes Ma-ma-ma! But what about this rrrrr-thing, Taffy?’

  ‘It sounds all rough and edgy, like your shark-tooth saw when you’re cutting out a plank for the canoe,’ said Taffy.

  ‘You mean all sharp at the edges, like this?’ said Tegumai. And he drew. (17.)

  "Xactly,’ said Taffy. ‘But we don’t want all those teeth: only put two.’

  ‘I’ll only put in one,’ said Tegumai. ‘If this game of ours is going to be what I think it will, is the easier we make our sound-pictures the better for everybody.’ And he drew. (18.)

  ‘Now we’ve got it,’ said Tegumai, standing on one leg. ‘I’ll draw ‘em all in a string like fish.’

  ‘Hadn’t we better put a little bit of stick or something between each word, so’s they won’t rub up against each other and jostle, same as if they were carps?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll leave a space for that,’ said her Daddy. And very incitedly he drew them all without stopping, on a big new bit of birch-bark. (19.)

  ‘Shu-ya-las-y a-maru,’ said Taffy, reading it out sound by sound.

  ‘That’s enough for today,’ said Tegumai. ‘Besides, you’re getting tired, Taffy. Never mind, dear. We’ll finish it all tomorrow, and then we’ll be remembered for years and years after the biggest trees you can see are all chopped up for firewood.’

  So they went home, and all that evening Tegumai sat on one side of the fire and Taffy on the other, drawing ya’s and yo’s and shu’s and shï’s in the smoke on the wall and giggling together till her Mummy said, ‘Really, Tegumai, you’re worse than my Taffy.’

  ‘Please don’t mind,’ said Taffy. ‘It’s only our secret-s’prise, Mummy dear, and we’ll tell you all about it the very minute it’s done; but please don’t ask me what it is now, or else I’ll have to tell.’

  So her Mummy most carefully didn’t; and bright and early next morning Tegumai went down to the river to think about new sound-pictures, and when Taffy got up she saw Ya-las (water is ending or running out) chalked on the side of the big stone water-tank, outside the Cave.

  ‘Um,’ said Taffy. ‘These picture-sounds are rather a bother! Daddy’s just as good as come here himself and told me to get more water for Mummy to cook with.’ She went to the spring at the back of the house and filled the tank from a bark bucket, and then s
he ran down to the river and pulled her Daddy’s left ear – the one that belonged to her to pull when she was good.

  ‘Now come along and we’ll draw all the leftover sound-pictures,’ said her Daddy, and they had a most inciting day of it, and a beautiful lunch in the middle, and two games of romps. When they came to T, Taffy said that as her name, and her Daddy’s, and her Mummy’s all began with that sound, they should draw a sort of family group of themselves holding hands. That was all very well to draw once or twice; but when it came to drawing it six or seven times, Taffy and Tegumai drew it scratchier and scratchier, till at last the T-sound was only a thin long Tegumai with his arms out to hold Taffy and Teshumai. You can see from these three pictures partly how it happened. (20, 21, 22.)

  Many of the other pictures were much too beautiful to begin with, especially before lunch; but as they were drawn over and over again on birch-bark, they became plainer and easier, till at last even Tegumai said he could find no fault with them. They turned the hissy-snake the other way round for the Z-sound, to show it was hissing backwards in a soft and gentle way (23); and they just made a twiddle for E, because it came into the pictures so often (24); and they drew pictures of the sacred Beaver of the Tegumais for the B-sound (25, 26, 27, 28); and because it was a nasty, nosy noise, they just drew noses for the N-sound, till they were tired (29); and they drew a picture of the big lake-pike’s mouth for the greedy Ga-sound (30); and they drew the pike’s mouth again with a spear behind it for the scratchy, hurty Ka-sound (31); and they drew pictures of a little bit of the winding Wagai river for the nice windy-windy Wa-sound (32, 33); and so on and so forth and so following till they had done and drawn all the sound-pictures that they wanted, and there was the Alphabet, all complete.

  And after thousands and thousands and thousands of years, and after Hieroglyphics, and Demotics, and Nilotics, and Cryptics, and Cufics, and Runics, and Dorics, and Ionics, and all sorts of other ricks and tricks (because the Woons, and the Neguses, and the Akhoonds, and the Repositories of Tradition would never leave a good thing alone when they saw it), the fine old easy, understandable Alphabet – A, B, C, D, E, and the rest of ‘em – got back into its proper shape again for all Best Beloveds to learn when they are old enough.

  But I remember Tegumai Bopsulai, and Taffimai Metallumai and Teshumai Tewindrow, her dear Mummy, and all the days gone by. And it was so – just so – a long time ago – on the banks of the big Wagai!

  One of the first things that Tegumai Bopsulai did after Taffy and he had made the Alphabet was to make a magic Alphabet-necklace of all the letters, so that it could be put in the Temple of Tegumai and kept for ever and ever. All the Tribe of Tegumai brought their most precious beads and beautiful things, and Taffy and Tegumai spent five whole years getting the necklace in order. This is a picture of the magic Alphabet-necklace. The string was made of the finest and strongest reindeer-sinew, bound round with thin copper wire.

  Beginning at the top, the first bead is an old silver one that belonged to the Head Priest of the Tribe of Tegumai; then come three black mussel-pearls; next is a clay bead (blue and grey); next a nubbly gold bead sent as a present by a tribe who got it from Africa (but it must have been Indian really); the next is a long flat-sided glass bead from Africa (the Tribe of Tegumai took it in a fight); then come two clay beads (white and green), with dots on one, and dots and bands on the other; next are three rather chipped amber beads; then three clay beads (red and white), two with dots, and the big one in the middle with a toothed pattern. Then the letters begin, and between each letter is a little whitish clay bead with the letter repeated small. Here are the letters –

  A is scratched on a tooth – an elk-tush, I think.

  B is the Sacred Beaver of Tegumai on a bit of old ivory.

  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 big brown cowrie-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 ought 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.

  M is on a pale grey 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 P and 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 half to 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 and bee’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 a melon-shaped clay bead (white with green spots). Then come four flat ivory pieces, with dots on them rather like dominoes; then come three stone beads, very badly worn; then two soft iron beads with rust-holes at the edges (they must have been magic, because they 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 other end, 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.

  Of all the Tribe of Tegumai

  Who cut that figure, none remain, –

  On Merrow Down the cuckoos cry –

  The silence and the sun remain.

  But as the faithful years return

  And hearts unwounded sing again,

  Comes Taffy dancing through the fern

  To lead the Surrey spring again.

  Her brows are bound with bracken-fronds,

  And golden elf-locks fly above;

  Her eyes are bright as diamonds

  And bluer than the skies above.

  In moccasins and deer-skin cloak,

  Unfearing, free and fair she flits,

  And lights her little damp-wood smoke

  To show her Daddy where she flits.

  For far – oh, very far behind,

  So far she cannot call to him,

  Comes Tegumai alone to find

  The daughter that was all to him.

  The Crab that Played with the Sea

  BEFORE the High and Far-Off Times, O my Best Beloved, came the Time of the Very Beginnings; and that was in the days when the Eldest Magician was getting Things ready. First he got the Earth ready; then he got the Sea ready; and then he told all the Animals that they could come out and play. And the Animals said, ‘O Eldest Magician, what shall we play at?’ and he said, ‘I will show you.’ He took the Elephant – All-the-Eleph
ant-there-was – and said, ‘Play at being an Elephant,’ and All-the-Elephant-there-was played. He took the Beaver – All-the-Beaver-there-was – and said, ‘Play at being a Beaver,’ and All-the-Beaver-there-was played. He took the Cow – All-the-Cow-there-was – and said, ‘Play at being a Cow,’ and All-the-Cow-there-was played. He took the Turtle – All-the-Turtle-there-was – and said, ‘Play at being a Turtle,’ and All-the-Turtle-there-was played. One by one he took all the beasts and birds and fishes and told them what to play at.

  But towards evening, when people and things grow restless and tired, there came up the Man (With his own little girl-daughter?) – Yes, with his own best-beloved little girl-daughter sitting upon his shoulder, and he said, ‘What is this play, Eldest Magician?’ And the Eldest Magician said, ‘Ho, Son of Adam, this is the play of the Very Beginning; but you are too wise for this play.’ And the Man saluted and said, ‘Yes, I am too wise for this play; but see that you make all the Animals obedient to me.’

  Now, while the two were talking together, Pau Amma the Crab, who was next in the game, scuttled off sideways and stepped into the sea, saying to himself, ‘I will play my play alone in the deep waters, and I will never be obedient to this son of Adam.’ Nobody saw him go away except the little girl-daughter where she leaned on the Man’s shoulder. And the play went on till there were no more Animals left without orders; and the Eldest Magician wiped the fine dust off his hands and walked about the world to see how the Animals were playing.

  He went North, Best Beloved, and he found All-the-Elephant-there-was digging with his tusks and stamping with his feet in the nice new clean earth that had been made ready for him.

  ‘Kun?’ said All-the-Elephant-there-was, meaning, ‘Is this right?’