History Literature / JustSoStories

* LamarckWasRight: All of the origin stories strongly resemble Lamarckian evolution, but then so do many of the folk tales which inspired Kipling. Most of the stories can be summed up as: "At some point in history, a creature did something that caused it to change, and this is why nowadays all creatures of this type have this same trait". One exception is "How the Camel Got His Hump", where the hump is given by a djinn as a punishment for being lazy and missing three days of work at the start of Creation; another is "The Crab that Played with the Sea", where Pau Amma gets the scissors as a gift from the little girl-daughter.

# "How the Whale Got His Throat": Once, the whale was a great and greedy predator, who devoured all of the other fishes in the sea. A small 'stute fish suggests he try eating man, and the whale swallowed a cast-away sailor. But the sailor torments his stomach so much that the whale spits him out again - but not before the sailor uses his suspenders to wedge a grating in the whale's throat, making him only able to eat tiny things from that day on.
# "How the Camel Got His Hump": On the first three days of the world, the camel refuses to do any work, instead rudely muttering "Humph!" when asked. For this, a ''jinni'' punishes him by making an ugly great hump of fat grow on his back, and declaring that he can now go for three days without any food. But he has never caught up on the work he skipped, and he is still lazy as ever, so he never will -- and now he's spiteful to boot.
# "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin": When a rude rhino comes out of the desert and steals the cake of a beach-dwelling Parsee, the Parsee gets his revenge by waiting until the rhino comes to the beach to bathe and filling his skin - for he can take it off like an overcoat - with stale cake crumbs. The resultant itching makes the rhino rub and scratch until he stretches out his skin into its modern ugly, lumpy, wrinkly form, but because he rubbed off the buttons and still hasn't gotten the crumbs out, he's in a perpetual bad mood.

# "The Beginning of the Armadillos": Two friends in the Amazon jungle, a hedgehog and a tortoise, use their wits and their friendship to outwit a naive jaguar cub who's learning how to hunt. But when they overhear his mother teach him a simple rhyme to help tell them apart, they begin teaching each other their special tricks - swimming for the hedgehog and curling up for the tortoise - and they change into a pair of entirely new creatures, which the mother jaguar names "armadillos", for lack of a proper name.

# "The Cat That Walked by Himself": In the prehistoric time, Woman tames Man and Dog and Horse and Cow, but the Cat refuses to be tamed. Though he tricks his way into being allowed to enter the cave and gain milk through a bargain with Woman, Man and Dog both place further demands on the Cat for the toleration of his presence - and whilst Cat agrees, he also insolently asserts his independence both times, and for that both Man and Dog vow to punish him by throwing things at him or chasing him.
# "The Butterfly That Stamped": Suleiman-bin-Daoud, a man who is gentle and humble despite being a great emperor with powerful magic at his command, is tormented by the incessant fighting of his 999 subordinate wives. When he overhears an argument between a butterfly and his wife, he offers to stand up for the butterfly -- but his chief wife, Queen Balkis, takes the side of the butterfly's wife, using the argument as a proxy to make Suleiman-bin-Daoud perform a great magic on the palace, which frightens all of the other wives into behaving themselves from that day on. This story also contains a smaller story, in which Suleiman-bin-Daoud tries to boast about his wealth by feeding all of the animals of the world, only for an enormous sea monster named Small Porgies to appear and eat the entire feast -- and then admits that not only was that not enough food for him, but he has 29,999 brothers, all much bigger.

-->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.

* NasalTrauma: Elephants have trunks because an overly-curious baby elephant made the mistake of asking a crocodile what it wanted for lunch -- and it bit down on the baby's nose, stretching it into a trunk over the course of the ensuing tug-of-war. Then, when the other elephants asked how the baby had gotten its trunk, it told them that they'd have to ask the crocodile: by the end of the story, every elephant has a trunk, which are [[LamarckWasRight somehow passed onto the next generation]].

-->Oh, now and then you will hear grown-ups say, 'Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the Leopard his spots?' I don't think even grown-ups would keep on saying such a silly thing if the Leopard and the Ethiopian hadn't done it once -- do you?

* InconvenientItch: {{Invoked|Trope}} by the Parsee in "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin". He strews cake crumbs in the Rhino's skin while the Rhino is doing something else. When the Rhino puts it back on, he feels the cake crumbs rubbing irritatingly against him all the time, and no matter how much he rubs on things, he can't get rid of the feeling.

* PublicDomainCharacter: Suleiman-bin-Daoud, better known as [[Literature/TheBible King Solomon, son of David]]. As in the one that performed the JudgmentOfSolomon. Pretty much everything about him in "The Butterfly That Stamped" is taken from The Bible, the Qur'an, or folklore about him. Balkis, of course, is the Queen of Sheba.

** "How the Leopard Got His Spots" is inspired by a verse from [[Literature/TheBible the Book of Jeremiah]] (13:23). Kipling lampshades it:

* AffectionateParody: Of various kinds of oral history. For example, ''The Butterfly That Stamped'' parodies the style of the Koran ("Now listen and attend all over again!")

* AllThereInTheManual: In ''How the Whale Got His Throat'' the Mariner, the Whale, and the 'Stute Fish are only ever referred to as such and are not named. However, in Kipling's illustrations for the story he identifies them: The Mariner is Henry Albert Bivvens, the Whale is Smiler, and the 'Stute Fish is Pingle.

* BigEater: The titular Whale from ''How the Whale Got His Throat''. He's described as a greedy creature who eats vast quantities of fish of every kind. And after he's eaten all the fish in the sea, he decides to see what man tastes like...
* {{Bowdlerise}}: In the original book the Ethiopian tells the Leopard "Plain black's best for a nigger". In more recent editions this is often changed to "Plain black's best for me" or just "plain black's best".

* CatsAreMean: Seems to be Kipling's attitude in ''The Cat Who Walked By Himself,'' though the Cat doesn't come across as particularly mean, just aloof and unwilling to be anyone's servant. This doesn't stop Kipling from ending the story with a poem about how dogs are so much better than cats because dogs are loyal and do what they're told while cats "only pretend" to love you since they aren't obedient and don't stay by your side 24/7.

* ConstantlyCurious: The Elephant's Child is full of "'satiable curtiosity" (sic), which means he asks questions about everything he experiences nearly all the time. This also gets him punished a lot.
* CorporalPunishment: The Elephant Child's various family members handle his "'satiable curtiosity" (sic!) by giving him spankings whenever he asks something.

* DisproportionateRetribution: In ''The Cat That Walked by Himself'', the Cat agrees to the terms of Man and Dog, but they still vow that they and their descendants will torment the Cat for always and always just because he spoke out of turn. Earlier on in the story, the Dog immediately renounces his friendship with the Cat and says they can never be friends again, just because the Cat didn't want to come with him to the cave.

* FantasticNamingConvention: In the three Neolithic tales the three names given all conform to the same pattern: A word consisting of three syllables, [[AlliterativeFamily beginning with "T-"]] and ending with "-mai" and a polysyllabic second word, all [[MeaningfulName descriptive of the bearer's character]]:
-->"His name was Tegumai Bopsulai, and that means, 'Man-who-does-not-put-his-foot-forward-in-a-hurry'; but we, O Best Beloved, will call him Tegumai, for short. And his wife's name was Teshumai Tewindrow, and that means, 'Lady-who-asks-a-very-many-questions'; but we, O Best Beloved, will call her Teshumai, for short. And his little girl-daughter's name was Taffimai Metallumai, and that means 'Small-person-whithout-any-manners-who-ought-to-be-spanked'; but I'm going to call her Taffy."
* FirstFriend: In "The Cat That Walked By Himself," mankind's first CanineCompanion is literally given this epithet because he was also the first wild animal to be domesticated, making the title apply to dogs in general.
* FurIsClothing: In ''How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin'', the rhinoceros can literally remove his hide like a suit. It even has buttons! However, he rubs the buttons off trying to scratch himself after the Parsee strews cake crumbs in his skin as revenge, meaning he now can't remove it and always has a bad temper from the itching.

* GuileHero: The Mariner from ''How the Whale Got His Throat''. At the start of the story he's stranded in the middle of the ocean with hardly anything and soon after he finds himself inside the stomach of a whale. Not only is he able to convince the Whale to release him, but he literally makes the beast give him a ride home. And on the way he's able to assemble a grate using nothing but his knife, suspenders, and raft which he can use to stop up the Whale's throat when he does escape so it won't swallow anyone else ever again.
* HappilyEverAfter: According to ''How the Whale Got His Throat'' after escaping the Whale's stomach the Mariner returns home, gets married, and lives happily ever after.
* HappilyMarried: Suleiman-bin-Daoud and his chief wife, Balkis. Too bad he has 999 others. Also Tegumai and Teshumai and, by all appearances, the Man and the Woman in ''The Cat That Walked By Himself'', although in both cases the wife seems to be the dominating partner.

* HaveAGayOldTime: There's lots of this. Keep in mind it was published in 1902. For example, in ''How the Leopard Got His Spots'':
-->"But if I'm all this," said the Leopard, "why didn't you go spotty too?"\\

* LamarckWasRight: All of the origin stories strongly resemble Lamarckian evolution, but then so do many of the folk tales which inspired Kipling. Most of the stories can be summed up as, "at some point in history a creature did something that caused it to change, and this is why nowadays all creatures of this type have this same trait". One exception is ''How the Camel Got His Hump'', where the hump is given by a djinn as a punishment for being lazy and missing three days of work at the start of Creation, another is ''The Crab that Played with the Sea'', where Pau Amma gets the scissors as a gift from the little girl-daughter.

-->"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."

* LaserGuidedKarma: In ''How the Whale Got His Throat'' the titular Whale is a [[MonsterWhale large carnivore]] who enjoys eating anything he can fit in his mouth. He ends up with an improvised grate stuck in his throat, courtesy of a shipwrecked mariner, which severely limits his ability to eat other creatures.
* LostAtSea: At the beginning of ''How the Whale Got His Throat'' the Mariner is stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean.

* {{Malaproper}}: Most of the characters, and indeed the narrators, use the wrong words; it's part of the humour. For instance, the Elephant's Child is said to have "'satiable curtiosity" rather than "insatiable curiosity."

* MommasBoy: The Mariner from ''How the Whale Got His Throat''. He only went to sea after first receiving his mothers permission to do so. And after he escapes the Whale's belly the first thing he does is go home to see her.
* MonsterWhale: In ''How the Whale Got His Throat'' the Whale starts out the story this way, but by the end he's been reduced to only being able to eat the smallest of fish.
* NasalTrauma: Elephants have trunks because an overly-curious baby elephant made the mistake of asking a crocodile what it wanted for lunch - and it bit down on the baby's nose, stretching it into a trunk over the course of the ensuing tug-of-war. Then, when the other elephants asked how the baby had gotten its trunk, it told them that they'd have to ask the crocodile: by the end of the story, every elephant has a trunk, which are somehow passed onto the next generation.
* NonindicativeName: Small Porgies. He's large enough to eat all the food intended for all the other animals (excluding his brothers) on earth ''combined''. He's still the runt of his family, though.

* PublicDomainCharacter: Suleiman-bin-Daoud, better known as [[Literature/TheBible King Solomon, son of David]]. As in the one that performed the JudgmentOfSolomon. Pretty much everything about him in ''The Butterfly That Stamped'' is taken from The Bible, the Koran, or folklore about him. Balkis, of course, is the Queen of Sheba.

** The Ethiopian in ''How the Leopard Got His Spots'' uses phrases like "aboriginal fauna" to refer to the local wildlife. This may play into representing him as smarter than his fellow hunter Leopard.

* SeaMonster: [[NonindicativeName Small Porgies]] and his 29,999 brothers, gigantic monsters that live at the bottom of the sea.

** Since most of the stories were originally made up for Kipling's children, there are a number of these. In particular Taffy is a portrait of Josephine ("Effie") and the poem ''Merrow Down'', while on the surface about Taffy and her father, mourns Effie's death by pneumonia at age six. Kipling's surviving daughter Elsie (who used to be nicknamed "Elsie Why") said that ''The Elephant's Child'' was "her" story. Many scholars see ''The Cat That Walked By Himself'' as a satirical portrait of the early days of Rudyard Kipling's marriage, with the Woman standing in for Carrie Kipling and either the Man or the Cat serving as an AuthorAvatar.
** In the explanations to the illustrations, the name of the Parsee in ''How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin'' is given as Pestonjee Bomonjee. That was the name of an artist who Kipling's father had taught.
** ''How the Leopard Got His Spots'' is inspired by a verse from [[Literature/TheBible The Book of Jeremiah]] (13:23). Kipling lampshades it:
-->"Oh, now and then you will hear grown-ups say, 'Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the Leopard his spots?' I don't think even grown-ups would keep on saying such a silly thing if the Leopard and the Ethiopian hadn't done it once - do you?"
* SpellMyNameWithAnS: Suleiman-bin-Daoud AKA King Solomon. As ''The Butterfly That Stamped'' is done in the style of the Koran, Kipling used the Arabic version of his name.

* VillainousGlutton: In ''How the Whale Got His Throat'' the titular Whale is a big, dumb, and greedy creature who eats whatever he can fit into his mouth.

* WomenAreWiser: Zigzagged with ''The Butterfly That Stamped''. Queen Balkis is just as clever as her husband, but the other 999 wives are squabbling shrews. The butterfly's wife isn't much better.

-->...[[TheStinger So]], ''have'' you [[RunningGag forgotten]] [[OverlyLongGag the suspenders]]?

* AluminumChristmasTrees: The bananas of the 'little short red kind' as mentioned in ''The Elephant's Child'' do exist in real life, although in most locations they're only available seasonally.

* {{Bowdlerise}}: In the original book the Ethiopian tells the Leopard "Plain black's best for a nigger". In more recent editions this is often changed to "Plain black's best for me".

* SwallowedWhole: A sailor is subjected to this by a gluttonous whale who is curious to see what man tastes like.

* VillanousGlutton: In ''How the Whale Got His Throat'' the titular Whale is a big, dumb, and greedy creature who eats whatever he can fit into his mouth.