Plain Tales from the Hills

Plain Tales from the Hills Summary

Plain Tales from the Hills is Rudyard Kipling's first collection of short stories, published in 1888. The forty stories provide a vivid portrayal of British India, focusing on the lives of British colonials and Indian characters. Through themes of love, ambition, and cultural interactions, Kipling offers insights into the complexities of colonial society.

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Plain Tales from the Hills Excerpt

Short Summary: This collection of forty short stories delves into the experiences of British colonials and Indian natives in British India, exploring themes of love, ambition, and cultural interactions.

Excerpt from 'Lispeth':

"She was the daughter of Sonoo, a Hill-man, and Jadeh his wife. One year their maize failed, and two bears spent the night in their only poppy-field just above the Sutlej Valley on the Kotgarth side; so, next season, they turned Christian, and brought their baby to the Mission to be baptized. The Kotgarth Chaplain christened her Elizabeth, and 'Lispeth' is the Hill or pahari pronunciation.

Later, cholera came into the Kotgarth Valley and carried off Sonoo and Jadeh, and Lispeth became half-servant, half-companion to the wife of the then Chaplain of Kotgarth. This was after the reign of the Moravian missionaries, but before Kotgarth had quite forgotten her title of 'Mistress of the Northern Hills.'

Whether Christianity improved Lispeth, or whether the gods of her own people would have done as much for her under any circumstances, I do not know; but she grew very lovely. When a Hill girl grows lovely, she is worth traveling fifty miles over bad ground to look upon. Lispeth had a Greek face—one of those faces people paint so often, and see so seldom. She was of a pale, ivory color and, for her race, extremely tall. Also, she possessed eyes that were wonderful; and, had she not been dressed in the abominable print-cloths affected by Missions, you would, meeting her on the hill-side unexpectedly, have thought her the original Diana of the Romans going out to slay.

Lispeth took to Christianity readily, and did not abandon it when she reached womanhood, as do some Hill girls. Her own people hated her because she had, they said, become a memsahib and washed herself daily; and the Chaplain's wife did not know what to do with her. Somehow, one cannot ask a stately goddess, five foot ten in her shoes, to clean plates and dishes. So she played with the Chaplain's children and took classes in the Sunday School, and read all the books in the house, and grew more and more beautiful, like the Princesses in fairy tales. The Chaplain's wife said that the girl ought to take service in Simla as a nurse or something 'genteel.' But Lispeth did not want to take service. She was very happy where she was.

When travelers—there were not many in those years—came to Kotgarth, Lispeth used to lock herself into her own room for fear they might take her away to Simla, or somewhere out into the unknown world.

One day, a few months after she was seventeen years old, Lispeth went out for a walk. She did not walk in the manner of English ladies—a mile and a half out, and a ride back again. She covered between twenty and thirty miles in her little constitutionals, all about and about, between Kotgarth and Narkunda. This time she came back at full dusk, stepping down the breakneck descent into Kotgarth with something heavy in her arms. The Chaplain's wife was dozing in the drawing-room when Lispeth came in breathing hard and very exhausted with her burden. Lispeth put it down on the sofa, and said simply:

'This is my husband. I found him on the Bagi Road. He has hurt himself. We will nurse him, and when he is well, your husband shall marry him to me.'

This was the first mention Lispeth had ever made of her matrimonial views, and the Chaplain's wife shrieked with horror. However, the man on the sofa needed attention first. He was a young Englishman, and his head had been cut to the bone by something jagged. Lispeth had found him down the hillside, senseless, and, judging from his dress, he was a sahib. So she brought him in.

As the Chaplain's wife was fluttering about the room, Lispeth attended to the necessary things. He was breathing heavily, and Lispeth, who could not find anything better, covered her head with a cloth and knelt by the sofa, fanning him with a palm-leaf fan.

He was a traveler and had been on a shooting expedition, alone, when his pony had shied and thrown him down the hillside. Lispeth nursed him devotedly, refusing to let anyone else care for him. Over the following weeks, as he recovered, she spoke to him of the hills, of her life, and of the love she believed was growing between them. But to the young Englishman, Lispeth was a curiosity, a charming oddity of the hills, nothing more.

When he was well enough to travel, he left, promising to return and marry her. Lispeth waited, day after day, watching the road. Months passed, and when she finally realized the truth—that he had never intended to return—her heart hardened. She abandoned the mission house, casting off Christianity as easily as she had once embraced it, and returned to her people. But she was no longer the same. She had seen too much of the world outside the hills to ever truly belong again.