Comments on: Rudyard Kipling, New Englander (Grieving parents in war, Part III)

By: Judith

Judith — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

PS and I forgot that Bellamy was something of a maverick on the English folk scene in that he wasn't an automatic leftist. He played his political cards close to his chest, but was assumed to be "rightwing" because he wasn't loudly leftwing, and because he unabashedly loved Kipling, which was not a PC thing to do.

But he was very respected musically, so he changed some minds. Which segues into the main theme of your blog!

That link has some sound clips from the CD, so if you have Real Player you can listen to them.

By: Judith

Judith — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Another Kipling fan here.

Peter Bellamy, one of the best of the English folk revival singers, from the same area of England as Kipling, set a lot of Kipling's poems to music, under the theory that they sound like lyrics to traditional songs, and Kipling did like to hang around with working-class people and describe their expertise (you can see this in most of the Puck stories and also Captains Courageous), so maybe Kipling was influenced by traditional songs he heard and may even have had particular melodies in mind.

Bellamy made 5-6 Kipling albums. He set ALL of the poems in "Puck of Pook's Hill" and "Rewards and Fairies," and most of the "Barrackroom Ballads." And others as well. They are all out of print, but you can hear some of the songs on a 3-CD retrospective of his work (he committed suicide about 15 years ago).

He was one of my favorite artists in my favorite genre, and what he did with Kipling is wonderful. Most of them are a capella, or with concertina, and some have harmony. His setting of "My Boy Jack" is on the CD - I bet you're intrigued now!

By: David

David — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

There’s a very interesting essay on Kipling by George Orwell: I believe the title is “The Best of the Bad Poets.” (It’s more positive than the title would suggest)

By: SB

SB — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Anyone for a rousing chorus of “Jerusalem?”

By: JodyTresidder

JodyTresidder — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

I’ve always thought “Driving Miss Daisy” was our own pop culture version of “Gunga Din” – and that the movie was all the more cringe-making for basically leaning on the same robustly mawkish message as the Kipling (which at least had the excuse of its context).

Also a great fan of his writing.

We stayed this winter at the “other” Vermont Landmark Trust restored rental property – the “Amos Brown House”. (The Kipling was booked). Totally exquisite experience. Grumpy teenagers became very ungrumpy, the house had a brilliant mini-library of local history and you could play freezing ping pong in a barn next to a room with antique stations of the cross carvings high on the walls. Great snow shoe country too!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

“Rewards and Fairies”, the sequel to “Puck of Pook’s Hill”, has perhaps the finest portrayal of Elizabeth I – see “Gloriana”.

Almost all texts are online.

By: Goesh

Goesh — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Keep up the good work – there is a vast army of video game players at the door, at times I hear them braying, many of whom with but slight provocation or mere whim would burn Kippling’s books, and others….

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

Kipling was a wonderful writer, whose later short stories are among the best ever written. See “The Gardener”, for one.

After WWI, Kipling and his wife headed the British “Graves Registration”, finding and marking British graves in France and elsewhere. The irony is two-fold: people don’t know he did this; second, he never found his own son.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

en revanche. Good points, although the white man’s burden could include the Special Forces which, besides fighting, does some local versions of nation-building. Calle it, say, county-building.
Some of the shorts, Georgy-Porgy, or The Miracle of Purun Bhagat, put the Brits down–the former–or extol natives–the latter. However, it’s individuals, not races who get the attention for worse or better.

douglas. I believe that. Why, if we can’t judge laterally–which is to say other cultures today–say the cultural relativists, may we judge vertically, which is to say earlier cultures? Why aren’t we just as culturally relative with regard to, ante-bellum US, which included slavery?

Well, we know the answer, but it’s fun to ask the question in certain venues.

By: douglas

douglas — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:00:00 +0000

A further thought- Kipling was only about twenty years older than my grandfather, and I’m pretty sure my gramps thought less of blacks, and would likely not have fully approved of my father marrying an asian woman, but he raised a son who had total respect for his parents, and still found no barrier in an interracial marraige in an era when it would’ve still been illegal in some states… One must be careful to judge historical figures by todays standards.