Kipling's image was certainly masculine or even could be considered "hypermasculine" as was the general idealized image of the classic Englishman of his era, particularly the colonial ("pukka sahib" and such, magnificently sent up by P.G. Wodehouse among many others), but many twentieth century readers and analysts find his intense man-to-man bondings to be rather suggestive of the homoerotic. This has been an issue in, of all things, the Boy Scouts, as Kipling was evidently a hero and model for the early Scout organizers and leaders, and if you read, with contemporary sensibilities, the earliest editions of Boy Scout handbooks and such, there is a good deal of strong discouragement of anything remotely having to do with sex in general but much that is at least ambiguous about male-male relationships.
We must remember we are reading Victorian-Edwardian era material with twenty-first century sensibilities. In the case of the older ballads, even more sociological change has ensued, but on the other hand many things (including homosexuality along with sexual activity in general) did not become as intensely suppressed until the Victorian era.
That said, the nature and much of the strength and beauty of traditional music, and particularly the old ballads, is that they can and do speak to other generations and cultures; that "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Attention paid to particular aspects of humanity change, but the humanity itself is universal. So it hardly matters, in that way, what Kipling or any other originator, known or unknown, had in mind when writing the song. If there is a good song that can be interpreted in a way that speaks to someone today, it can and will be. While the specific history of a song, and the meaning of archaic or unfamiliar terms within it, are fascinating to me, the idea of what a song "really" means is elusive at best.