--- title: Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 1: How the Whale got his Throat — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 1: How the Whale got his Throat», a lesson of the books course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A Whale has eaten every fish in the sea except one small, clever 'Stute Fish, who hides behind the Whale' --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Books](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/) / Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 1:… # Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 1: How the Whale got his Throat Lesson 74 of the books course of Mova's primary school: 23 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/books/74-justso-whale-throat/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/0/) — A Whale has eaten every fish in the sea except one small, clever 'Stute Fish, who hides behind the Whale's right ear. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/1/) — When the Whale says he is still hungry, the little fish slyly asks whether he has ever tasted Man. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/2/) — The Whale swims to a far spot in the ocean and swallows a shipwrecked sailor in one gulp, together with his raft, his blue trousers, his braces and his pocket-knife. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/3/) — Inside, the sailor jumps, bangs and dances so wildly that the Whale gets hiccups, so the Whale carries him all the way home to the white cliffs and lets him walk out. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/4/) — But on the way the clever sailor has cut his raft into a criss-cross grating, tied it with his braces and jammed it in the Whale's throat; ever since, whales can only swallow very, very small food. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/6/) — The Just So Stories (1902) are Rudyard Kipling's made-up stories of how animals got their shapes; he first told them to his own children, who wanted them told "just so", word for word. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/7/) — The Whale ate "the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab", until only one small 'Stute Fish was left; "'Stute" is short for "astute", which means clever. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/8/) — The 'Stute Fish calls the Whale "Noble and generous Cetacean" ("Cetacean" = a member of the whale and dolphin family) and says Man is "Nice but nubbly" (nubbly = lumpy). - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/9/) — The Fish sends him to "latitude Fifty North, longitude Forty West", a real point in the cold North Atlantic Ocean, far from any land. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/10/) — The sailor (the "Mariner") is "a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity", which means he is endlessly clever and full of good sense. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/11/) — The Mariner sits on his raft trailing his toes in the water, because "he had his Mummy's leave to paddle"; the Whale opens his mouth "back and back and back till it nearly touched his tail", swallows him, then turns round three times on his tail. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/12/) — He wears blue canvas "breeches" (trousers) and "suspenders" (braces that hold trousers up), and carries a "jack-knife" (a folding pocket-knife); Kipling keeps saying "you must not forget the suspenders". - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/13/) — Inside the Whale the Mariner "stumped and he jumped and he thumped and he bumped", and danced hornpipes (a lively sailors' dance), giving the Whale "hiccoughs", an old spelling of hiccups. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/14/) — The Mariner says "Take me to my natal-shore and the white-cliffs-of-Albion": "natal" = where he was born, "Albion" = an old name for Britain, whose white chalk cliffs stand at Dover. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/15/) — On the way the Mariner cuts the raft into "a little square grating all running criss-cross", ties it with the suspenders and drags it into the Whale's throat, where it sticks. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/16/) — His rhyme is "By means of a grating / I have stopped your ating"; Kipling says he was "an Hi-ber-ni-an" (an Irishman), joking that his accent made "eating" sound like "ating". - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/17/) — The Whale shouts a train-guard's call, "Change here for Winchester, Ashuelot, Nashua, Keene", as if his mouth were a railway station, and "and stations on the Fitchburg Road"; just as he says "Fitch", the Mariner walks out onto the "shingle" (a beach of small pebbles). - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/18/) — He takes his jack-knife home with him. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/19/) — The 'Stute Fish hides in the mud under the "Door-sills of the Equator", afraid the Whale might be angry with him. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/20/) — Real biology: the biggest whales (blue, humpback) have no teeth but baleen, rows of bristly plates in the mouth that sieve tiny shrimp-like krill and small fish out of the water, a bit like a real "grating". - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/21/) — Baleen is made of keratin, the same stuff as our fingernails, and whales are born with it; no sailor put it there, and a blue whale's throat is far too narrow to swallow a person. - [22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/22/) — Whales are mammals, not fish: they breathe air through a blowhole and feed their babies on milk. - [23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/74-justso-whale-throat/23/) — The poem after the story says you are at "Fifty North and Forty West" when a ship rolls in a storm and everyone feels seasick. - ← previous: [The Wind in the Willows, chapter XII, part 4: The Return of Ulysses (Toad's last little song, an altered Toad, and the end of the book)](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/73-willows-ch12-part4-an-altered-toad/) - next →: [Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 2: How the Camel got his Hump](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/75-justso-camel-hump/) - ↑ back to [Books](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/)