A Poem of Empire with Woeful Geography
The next day we drove north from Bagan to Mandalay. Before, quite literally, taking the road to Mandalay, I am going to look at Kipling’s poem 'Mandalay'. Why? Because I like it (despite the geographical howlers) and
that is good enough for me.
Rudyard Kipling
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Rudyard Kipling in 1895
(Public Domain) |
As the ‘Poet of Empire’ Kipling ought to be out of fashion, but he isn't. His novels are in print, his stories are desecrated by the Disney
Corporation and If is regularly voted the ‘nation’s favourite poem.’ He may have been a colonialist, it was intellectually impossible for an Englishman (indeed any European) of his time not to have been, but his colonial attitudes were always tempered by humanity and his skill as a versifier is with out equal.
He was born in Bombay in 1865, but his parents had met in Burslem and while courting had enjoyed picnics beside Rudyard Lake. When awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 he was (and remains) the youngest
recipient of the prize, the first writing in English, and the only one to be
named after a lake in Staffordshire.
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| Rudyard Lake, North Staffordshire |
Sent home to be educated in England, he left school at 16 and returned to India, working as a journalist and writing prolifically. He came back to England in 1889, travelling
the long way round. The first leg of his journey took him to Moulmein (now Mawlamyine).
The brief stop-over was his sole experience of Burma; he never visited
Mandalay. This may account for his geographical ignorance, but he should have taken a
glance at a map when writing the poem (which he did in England in 1890). His
excuse: ‘poetry should not be taken too literally,’ is not quite good enough.
'Mandalay' the Poem, and 'On the Road to Mandalay', the Song
Mandalay is as well-known as a song as a poem (albeit under a slightly different title with slightly fewer verses). The music was written in 1907 by American singer and composer Oley Speaks. I always liked the version sung by Alfred Marks, a comic actor
and occasional bass who died in 1996, but can’t find it on YouTube. The
best I could find is a splendid, if scratchy 1923 recording by the Anglo-American baritone Louis Graveure. The worst is by Frank Sinatra (so bad I won’t
even link to it) where the clash of English and American cultures creates more dissonance
than Kipling found in the clash of east and west.
And so to the poem, a lament by a discharged British soldier nostalgic for his Burmese days.
Mandalay
Verse 1
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea
A glance
at a map shows that at Moulmein you would look WESTWARD at the sea. Some printings have ‘looking lazy at the sea’ which Kipling has in the final verse, but not here.
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
Frank
Sinatra sings ‘Burma broad a-settin’, an expression rarely used in British English,
certainly not by a 19th century British soldier, nor, indeed, by Kipling.
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they
say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to
Mandalay!"
Burma
was administered as part of British India from 1885-1948. Troops were billeted
in Mandalay’s royal palace, renamed Fort Dufferin
Chorus
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay;
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay,
British
troops were transported between Rangoon and Mandalay by the paddle steamers of
the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
Not
much. Rangoon to Mandalay is 700km, 680 of them on the Irrawaddy
River. All 64 species of flying fish live only in the sea.
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the
Bay!
Did
Kipling ever look at a map? Had he any idea where Burma was? The country’s entire
coastline is on the Bay of Bengal. ‘An’
the evenin’ falls like thunder inter India ‘crost the Bay’ is not a
good line, but at least it is accurate.
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The Road to Mandalay
A modern 'paddle steamer' cruising the Irrawaddy from Bagan to Mandalay |
Verse 2
'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green,
An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat—jes' the same as Theebaw's
Queen,
Thibaw
Min,the last independent king of Upper Burma, was deposed by the British in
1878. He and Queen Supayalat left Mandalay and lived the rest of their lives in
exile
An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot,
Burmese
cheroots are indeed white, of varying length but always thin. They are smoked in a cigarette
holder like a bowl-less pipe which holds them in a vertical position. I do not
recall seeing women smoking, but in 1889…?
An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot:
What
were Christian about her kisses? Beats me.
Bloomin' idol made o' mud—
Today
Burmese Buddhas are carefully crafted, extravagantly decorated and often
gilded. They are certainly not made o’
mud, and I doubt they were in 1889
What they called the Great Gawd Budd—
The
Buddha never claimed to be god, nor to be a messenger from god. These are the
words of a private soldier (I hope Kipling knew better) and, doubtless, many
NATO troops in Afghanistan today are equally ignorant of the religion of the
country in which they fight.
Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she
stud!
On the road to Mandalay, etc.
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| Manufacturing Burmese cheroots, Lake Inle |
Chorus
When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was
droppin' slow,
She'd git her little banjo an' she'd sing
"Kulla-lo-lo!"
Kulla-lo-lo
– ‘hello, stranger’ What sort of girls did he meet in Burma?
With 'er arm upon my shoulder an' 'er cheek agin my cheek
We uster watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak.
‘Hathi’ is
Hindi for ‘elephant’ - not that Hindi is spoken in Burma
Elephints a-pilin' teak
In the sludgy, squdgy creek,
Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was 'arf afraid to
speak!
I like
this line, pity about the one before
On the road to Mandalay, etc.
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| Sludgy, squdgy creek?, Lake Inle |
Verse 4
But that's all shove be'ind me—long ago an' fur away,
An' there ain't no 'buses runnin' from the Bank to
Mandalay;
But
there is now an Airbus from Heathrow (change at Bangkok and Rangoon)
An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year soldier
tells:
"If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never
'eed naught else."
No! you won't 'eed nothin' else
But them spicy garlic smells,
An' the sunshine an' the palm-trees an' the tinkly
temple-bells;
On the road to Mandalay, etc.
Verse 5
I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin' stones,
An' the blasted Henglish drizzle wakes the fever in my
bones;
And the
arthritis in my knuckles
Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the
Strand,
An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand?
There’s
a feminist argument here about power and relationships which I shan’t go into. And
then there’s the racism aspect and….no, I can’t be bothered
Beefy face an' grubby 'and—
Law! wot do they understand?
I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
Burma is
very green, and so is England, but perhaps not the bit between Chelsea and the
Strand.
In 1890,
with factory chimneys, coal fires and steam trains the London air was hardly
breathable and everything – building, trees and people (if they stood still
long enough) was covered with a film of soot.
In 2013
London is relatively clean; Burma is covered in litter – the curse of the
plastic bag.
On the road to Mandalay, etc.
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| Green Burma, Inwa, near Mandalay |
Verse 6
Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the
worst,
Sounds
good, but the more I think about this line, the less it means
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a
thirst;
He
certainly can. Myanmar Beer is not one of the world’s great brews, but it hits
a spot.
For the temple-bells are callin', and it's there that I
would be—
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea.
Yep, you
can look lazy, you just can’t look east
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay,
With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!
Despite
his woeful geography, Kipling remains a class act. After 56 lines setting up Burma as paradise, he
subverts the whole idea in six words
Oh the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the
Bay!
Nope. That
still can’t happen no matter how often it’s repeated
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