--- title: Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 3: How the Rhinoceros got his Skin — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 3: How the Rhinoceros got his Skin», a lesson of the books course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: On a lonely island by the Red Sea lives a Parsee man with nothing but a shining hat, a knife and a coo --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/) [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), 3:… # Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 3: How the Rhinoceros got his Skin Lesson 76 of the books course of Mova's primary school: 20 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/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/0/) — On a lonely island by the Red Sea lives a Parsee man with nothing but a shining hat, a knife and a cooking-stove, and one day he bakes himself a gigantic cake. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/1/) — Just as he is about to eat it, a rude Rhinoceros, whose skin in those days fitted tight with no wrinkles, stomps up; the man scrambles up a palm tree, and the Rhino knocks over the stove, spikes the cake on his horn and eats it all. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/2/) — Five weeks later, in a heat wave, the Rhino takes off his skin, which then buttoned underneath like a raincoat, and leaves it on the beach while he bathes. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/3/) — The Parsee takes his revenge: he rubs the skin full of stale, tickly cake-crumbs, and when the Rhino buttons it back on, it itches so badly that he rubs against the palm tree until his skin is pushed into great folds. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/4/) — That, says the story, is why rhinos have baggy, folded skin and a very bad temper; it is a funny revenge tale with a little lesson: "Them that takes cakes ... makes dreadful mistakes." - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/5/) — A "Parsee" (today usually spelled Parsi) is one of the Parsi people, whose families came to India from Persia (Iran) long ago; in this story he lives on "an uninhabited island" (an island where nobody lives) on the shores of the Red Sea. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/6/) — He had only "his hat and his knife and a cooking-stove of the kind that you must particularly never touch", and the sun flashed brightly off his hat. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/7/) — He made "one cake which was two feet across and three feet thick", from flour, water, currants, plums and sugar; Kipling calls it "a Superior Comestible" ("comestible" = something to eat). - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/8/) — The Rhinoceros came with "a horn on his nose, two piggy eyes, and few manners"; his skin "fitted him quite tight. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/9/) — There were no wrinkles in it anywhere." - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/10/) — The Rhino said "How!", the Parsee climbed a palm tree, and the Rhino "upset the oil-stove with his nose" and "spiked that cake on the horn of his nose, and he ate it", and went away waving his tail, saying nothing whatever. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/11/) — The Parsee's rhyme: "Them that takes cakes / Which the Parsee-man bakes / Makes dreadful mistakes." ("Them that takes" is old country grammar for "those who take".) - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/12/) — "Five weeks later, there was a heat wave in the Red Sea", and "everybody took off all the clothes they had": the Parsee took off his hat (it was all he wore), but the Rhino took off his skin, which "buttoned underneath with three buttons and looked like a waterproof" (a raincoat); then he went into the sea, blowing bubbles through his nose. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/13/) — The Parsee came down from his palm tree, "smiled one smile that ran all round his face two times", danced three times round the skin, then filled his hat with crumbs and rubbed the skin full of "old, dry, stale, tickly cake-crumbs and some burned currants". (He never ate anything but cake and never swept out his camp, so there were plenty of crumbs.) - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/14/) — The Rhino "rolled and rolled and rolled", and the more he scratched the worse it tickled; then he rubbed against the palm tree so hard that he made "a great fold over his shoulders, and another fold underneath", rubbed the buttons off, and made more folds over his legs. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/15/) — The story says every rhinoceros since has "great folds in his skin and a very bad temper, all on account of the cake-crumbs inside". - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/17/) — Real biology: rhinos eat only plants (grass, leaves, shoots), never cake; their horns are made of keratin, the same stuff as hair and fingernails. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/18/) — Real biology: rhinos have poor eyesight but a very good sense of smell and hearing, which may be why some (like the black rhino) charge at things that startle them. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/19/) — Real biology: rhinos wallow in mud, which keeps them cool and protects their skin from sunburn and biting insects, so a real rhino would not "take off his skin" to cool down. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/76-justso-rhinoceros-skin/20/) — The poem at the end says the island is "off Cape Gardafui, / By the Beaches of Socotra": real places at the tip of the Horn of Africa. - ← previous: [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/) - next →: [Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 4: How the Leopard got his Spots, part 1 (the game goes into the forest)](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/77-justso-leopard-spots-1/) - ↑ back to [Books](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/)