Rudyard Stories

Rudyard Kipling wrote the Just So Stories for his daughter. As a Literacy exercise in the school where I work, a group of Year 5 and 6 pupils wrote their own versions of one of these stories. In their version, they had to make the reader have more sympathy for the subject. I thought the Camel, being such a revolting and ungainly creature, much abused by Man, might be "blue and forlorn" rather than "most 'scrutiating idle" as Kipling would have it. It looked like fun, so here's my version of "How the Camel Got his Hump."

A poem influenced by Rudyard Kipling's "White Man's Burden" discussing the themes of preference and privilege gained by people who are not worthy of specific social, economic, or authoritative ranks commonly found in Middle-Eastern societies.

Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild--as wild as wild could be--and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.