Dear list members,
I'd like to ask a "non-English speaker" question: how do you
understand the "just so" meaning of The Just So Stories?
My question is caused by these lines in the background notes
http://www.kipling.org.uk/rg_whale1.htm
of Lisa Lewis to "How the Whale got his Throat":
'The manuscript of the story... was introduced in St Nicholas by the
following uncollected preface:
... in the evening there were stories meant to put Effie to sleep, and
you were not allowed to alter those by one single little word.
They had to be told __just so__ [separation supplied] ;
or Effie would wake up and put back the missing sentence. So at last
they came to be like charms, all three of them, - the whale tale, the
camel tale, and the rhinoceros tale. Of course little people are not
alike, but I think if you catch some Effie rather tired and rather
sleepy at the end of the day, and if you begin in a low voice and tell
the tales precisely as I have written them down, you will find that
Effie will presently curl up and go to sleep.'
It was a complete surprise for me: I have always got "The Just So
Stories" as a set expression, and numerous Russian
translations rendered it as 'just tales', ‘tales for no particular
reason' or 'That's a tale!'
I am thinking over the ways of correct translation and so would be glad to
know how you understand the "just so" meaning of The Just So
Stories.
Thank you in advance,
Yan Shapiro,
Sebastopol, Crimea
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