As in “How the First Letter was Written? and “How the Alphabet was made?, the character of Taffy is based on Kipling’s older daughter Josephine, who would die of pneumonia five months after the totem story was written. Her portrait here combines with some contemporary evidence to suggest a highly-strung, overactive child.

Kipling had a copy of J.G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough(1890). Vol. I, ch. 2 of this gives an account of tabus in different communities of the world, but none of it appears to be a source for the story. In Something of Myself(p. 123), Kipling mentions a visit to the Native American collections in the Smithsonian, Washington, D.C., which may have given him some ideas.
Notes on the text


Taffimai MetallumaiSee “How the First Letter was Written? and “How the Alphabet was Made.?

unstillSee the note above.

Big Tribal Tabu-poleIn Windsor Magazine, this continued: “painted red, twelve foot long and a foot thick …?.

Taffy and Tegumai made up the AlphabetSee “How the Alphabet was Made.?


[L.L.]

©Lisa Lewis 2006 All rights reserved


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version for printing
the story


the story
"The Tabu
Tale"

Notes edited
by Lisa Lewis



[November 17 2006]

Publication

First published in Colliers Weekly. August 29, 1903, illustrated by C.L. Brill; and in Windsor Magazine, September 1903, illustrated by L. Raven-Hill. Collected in the Outward Bound edition of Kipling’s works, Vol. XX (Just So Stories) New York, 1903 and in the Sussex Edition, vol. XVI (Land and Sea Tales); also the Burwash Edition, vol. XIV (Stalky & Co. and Land and Sea Tales): all three illustrated by the author.

Background

The manuscript of the story, with the two illustrations and their captions, are in the bound volume “Just So Stories? in the British Library. According to Carrington’s notes from Mrs Kipling’s diaries, Kipling wrote a story “modelled on the totem tales? on 11 Oct. 1898.