The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #69349 Message #1176017
Posted By: Big Jim from Jackson
01-May-04 - 02:48 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: A Smuggler's Song (Rudyard Kipling)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: four and twenty horses
This is Big Jim's sister, Doss: Betsy, if you have never read Kipling's "Puck of Pook's Hill," vol 1, let me suggest it.
This poem is found in the part called "Hal O' the Draft," which is an fascinating story about smugglers, how they lived, and how they were seen by the local village populations of the time. The poem is a brilliant ending to the story of Hal and his smuggling ways...and wares.
Kipling's poems are nearly always SO rhythmical that I've often thought t'would be fairly easy to work out tunes to so many of his great poems.