Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)

Subject: Road to Mandalay
From: John J
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 08:16 AM

Anybody got the words to 'On the road to Mandalay'? There are two versions out there, one (I suspect the original) which most people know about, and the version I want, a sort of folkie version. Any help most welcome. Ta lots, John (in Manchester)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: P05139
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 08:21 AM

Is that the song about Nellie the Elephant?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: AndyG
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 08:40 AM

Kipling's Road to Mandalay.
I'm not sure what a "Folkie" version of Kipling might be (other that Bellamy's Barrack Room Ballads).

AndyG

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: bill\sables
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 08:40 AM

There was a parody when the M1 was opened.

On the M1 Motorway
Where the flying Ton-Up's play
And the Lorries roar like thunder
On the M1 Motorway

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: GUEST,John in Brisbane
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 08:51 AM

The definitive words finally materialised at the very bottom of this thread http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=11643#87542

Regards John

Subject: Lyr Add: MANDALAY (Rudyard Kipling)
From: The Walrus at work
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 09:04 AM

MANDALAY

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
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!"
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green,
An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat -- jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen,
An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot,
An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot:
Bloomin' idol made o'mud --
Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd --
Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she stud!
On the road to Mandalay . . .

When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was droppin' slow,
She'd git 'er little banjo an' she'd sing "Kulla-lo-lo!"
With 'er arm upon my shoulder an' 'er cheek agin' my cheek
We useter watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak.
Elephints a-pilin' teak
In the sludgy, squdgy creek,
Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was 'arf afraid to speak!
On the road to Mandalay . . .

But that's all shove be'ind me -- long ago an' fur away,
An' there ain't no 'busses runnin' from the Bank to Mandalay;
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 . . .

I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An' the blasted Henglish drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;
Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,
An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand?
Beefy face an' grubby 'and --
Law! wot do they understand?
I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
On the road to Mandalay . . .

Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I would be --
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay,
With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

(Lifted from :-http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/kipling_ind.html )

Hopefully, this will come out properly (for once).

Good luck.

Walrus

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: GMT
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 11:59 AM

Great post Walrus. Has anyone heard Ken Dodds version ?
Gary

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: John J
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 12:04 PM

Thanks Walrus! That's the one. Now all I've got to do is learn it! Thanks again! John

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: Susan A-R
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 09:09 PM

John Roberts and Tony Barrand have done a great recording of Kipling Songs, including that one. I'm having a great time listening to it while I do kitchen drudgery.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: alison
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 10:48 PM

I always thought it was the

"there's a litlle green eyed idol to the east of Katmandu....."

Morecambe and Wise (or possibly the 2 Ronnies) have a lot to answer for..... *grin*

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: GMT
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 03:30 AM

The 2 Ronnies Alison. There must be a dozen tunes where their words pop into my head rather than the proper ones.

Gary

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 03:38 AM

Well, well ... in the good old days we used to use Mandalay to close the club at the Songsmiths (Fitter's Arms) in Walsall. Not that we wanted to sing it, but everyone used to insist. 'Last night I dreamt I went back and sang "Mandalay"' ...

The published song version has only the first second and last verses (with some liberties taken in verse two, I think); that's the way Peter Dawson recorded it, and it's plenty long enough for most people!

Ken Dodd's version was actually Billy Benett's version from the twenties or thirties, but I can't bring it to mind right now.

Alison, you're thinking of 'The green eye of the little yellow god' by Melvin Hayes. There are two or three 'standard' comic versions, or presentations rather, of this; it's a shame nobody does it straight (except me, I do!) any more, as it's quite good, especially if you haven't heard it before and don't know the ending.

Steve

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: GUEST,Bob Schwarer
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 10:08 AM

Take a listen to the John Roberts & Tony Barrand CD "Naulakha Redux" It's a collection of 16 Rudyard Kipling songs. Most of the songs are credited to Peter Bellamy.

Bellamy's tune to "The Road to Mandalay" is also on The Friends of Fiddler's Green CD of the same name. Fiidler's Green is Ian Robb, Grit Laskin and 5 more. A nice CD.

Bob S.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: Susan A-R
Date: 18 Aug 00 - 11:08 PM

Yes Bob S, that's the one. There is some Wonderful material on that one.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: Charley Noble
Date: 27 Jul 04 - 08:24 PM

Jeff Warner sang the Peter Bellamy version of this song the other night at the Chocolate Church in Bath, ME. I felt like I could listen to it all evening.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: GUEST,weerover
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 02:41 AM

From what i remember, Bellamy's version uses the tune "10,000 Miles Away"

wr.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 12:37 PM

I think that the original setting of this poem was made by Oley Speaks, but Henry Handel Richardson (pseudonym of Ethel Florence Lindesay Robertson) is also credited with one. Robbie Williams of course also produced a song of the same title, but with completely different lyrics.

I assume that the "folk version" is the setting By Peter Bellamy which unlike the Speaks one uses the whole Kipling poem.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: Joe_F
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 06:27 PM

The text given by the Walrus, as well as the one here, has "lookin' eastward to the sea" in the first line, whereas _Rudyard Kipling's Verse: Definitive Edition_ (Doubleday, 1940, p. 416) has "lookin' lazy at the sea" both there and in the last stanza. The "eastward" reading is extremely common, and it would be interesting to know where it came from, in that it adds to the geographical perplexity of this song, which has been much argued over.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 08:26 PM

The question was raised by Joe F. in a previous thread, 11643 (linked at top). No one seems to have a copy of the first printing of the poem, so I am safe in posting this explanation.

Kipling was 3 1/2 sheets to the wind when he wrote the poem long after he left the scene of his youthful indiscretions and confused east with west. When he sobered up, he sent it off without proof-reading. After it came out, an editor happened to look at a map and changed it to lazy. 'Lazy' reads better than either eastward or westward.
The editor considered other changes, such as replacing her 'little banjo', which made the poem sound like something done by Foster when he was in his cups, with an 'ukulele, but gave that up since Kipling's writings were unlikely to survive to another edition anyway.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Road to Mandalay
From: GUEST,Ooh-Aah
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 07:15 AM

How wrong can you be - like that fellow who turned down the Beatles.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Feb 12 - 05:50 PM

I remember Dody's version; he had a backpack with saucepands etc that clanged as he moved, and a false leg on his belt with chich he'd do a "three-legged" dance. Been trying to find a clip of it for, oh, years!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 09 Feb 12 - 08:15 PM

If you'd like to enjoy the view from the old Moulmein Pagoda: Click here for view!

The Pagoda's actual name is the Kyaikthanlan Pagoda, overlooking Moulmein Harbour in Burma.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Feb 12 - 08:55 PM

Moulmein now known as Mawlamyine (Mawlamyaing); main seaport in SE Burma.
Here is a current photograph of the pagoda:
http://www.mawlamyine.com

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 02:52 AM

Wow.
It's real.
Thanks guys.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 03:22 AM

However, The Burma girl is not "lookin lazy."
She is gazing "eastward to the sea" where she had seen her soldier depart.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 08:18 AM

Q-

Thanks for the current view of the Pagoda.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 09:11 AM

Here are images of "the old flotilla," elephants piling teak, and Theebaw, King of Burma.
http://www.kipling.org.uk/rg_mandalay1.htm

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 10:58 AM

Keith-

Nice Kipling reference website.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 03:22 PM

Good close-up of the Pagoda, Keith. The one I linked shows too much construction in front of it.
Kipling's poem has her "looking lazy at the sea...." Not sure what you mean by eastward. She would be looking across Karan State to Thailand.

Mandalay is inland to the north, a long way up river (Irrawaddy) from Rangoon (old spelling).


This map shows Moulmein, Rangoon (across the bay from Mandelay) and Mandelay:
http://images.nationmaster.com/images/motw/middle_east_and_asia/burma.gif

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 03:56 PM

I only learned from that site that he changed the first verse to "looking lazy."
I only knew it as "looking Eastward" which apparantly was the original.
I have always sung "looking Eastward" in v1 and "looking lazy" in last verse.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 04:24 PM

My Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads has "lookin' lazy." 1890 reprint. Was there an earlier one?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 04:28 PM

Keith-

One can follow the discussion of "looking Eastward" or "looking lazy" back and forth. In draft I believe it was "looking Eastward" but the editors had problems with that and somehow it got changed. For some reason, the singers persist in singing the line "looking Eastward" and it's true if you look Eastward far enough you end up looking at what's West.

Kipling agreed to the change and why argue with that.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 05:08 PM

Which editors??
First edition, Lahore, Civil and Military Gazette Press. Only 350 copies. Not seen. 1886. Dunno if this had "eastward" or "lazy." Copies a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. They also printed a second edition, 1887.

Thacker, Spink Co., Calcutta, 1886; later London, 2-7th eds, 1890-1892. Second edition, 1886, had five new poems and alterations to three. Third edition, 1888, has 10 additional poems. Fourth Edition had additional poems.Fifth ed. dated 1890. The seventh ed. I think added more.

London, U. S. etc. Other editors. I assume all of these were "lazy."

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 05:29 PM

Found this- Departmental Ditties..... John Lovel, New York: ".....the first book edition (english of American) of the Ballads (including 'Gunga Din,' "Danny Deever," and 'Mandalay')...

http://www.kipling.org.uk/facts_collecting.htm

The poem written in 1890(?) and does not appear before that date.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 05:36 PM

The printer is Lovell (two l's). Date 1890

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: pdq
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 06:05 PM

Lawrence Tibbett did a spirited rendition of this song. I have it on a 12" 78 RMP record.

There is a video of him singing it on YouTube.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 08:05 PM

The Kipling website identifies "lookin' eastward" as "the original version" in stanza 1 :

http://www.kipling.org.uk/rg_mandalay1.htm

"Lookin' lazy" seems always to have been the phrase in the final stanza.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 08:22 PM

Lighter-

Good to have you weighing in on this.

So none of my Kipling anthologies have the phrase "looking eastward" in them. Which edition did the phrase appear?

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 09:23 PM

Lighter, Keith linked the Kipling website previously. If you click on "poem" to the right, the first verse has "lazy...." So naturally I assumed etc. etc.
It does give the information that the poem was published in the Scots Observer, 1890.
I must admit that I didn't read any more of the article, only looked at the pictures.

Scroll way down, and the note appears:
"lookin' lazy at the sea 'lookin' eastward at the sea' in the original version but corrected by Kipling when it was pointed out to him that Moulmein had no view of the sun rising over the Bay of Bengal, still less over China. See the notes below on the chorus."

Farther on, "As Kipling later observed [other points of jumbled geography] in the poem]: "Had I opened the chorus of the song with 'Oh' instead of 'On the road.' etc., it might have shown that the song was a sort of general mix-up of the singer's Far-Eastern memories against a background of the Bay of Bengal as seen at dawn from a troop-ship taking him there. But 'On' in this case was more singable than 'Oh.' That simple explanation may stand as a warning.""

Perhaps we should "take a warning" that our insistence on ferreting out details should not get in the way of our enjoyment of the song.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 09:30 PM

I believe that the dates in the 1880s that Q cites are for Kipling's first collection, "Departmental Ditties."

"Mandalay" first appeared on page 124 of The Scots Observer (June 21, 1890), as No. 10 of Kipling's series of "Barrack-Room Ballads." The first line reads,

"By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea."

Details for pedants only:

The same reading appears in the first book publication, p. 92 of "Departmental Ditties, Barrack-Room ballads, and Other Poems" (N.Y.: United States Book Company, Successors to John W. Lovell Company, 1890). The final stanza, like that of the Observer version, has "lookin' lazy."

Acc. to K's recent editor, Andrew Lycett, the book was first pub'd in N.Y.C. because K's "best friend in London was the American publisher Wolcott Balestier." Balestier was London agent for the United States Book Co.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Feb 12 - 10:06 PM

Q, our posts crossed.

Wasn't there some other famous writer who thought you could visit a seashore in Bohemia?

"Bill" or "Will" somebody, I think.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Feb 12 - 02:36 AM

I like "eastward" in v1.
Kipling liked it too.
He changed it to a lesser version to appease pedants.
It is an old soldier's imperfect reminiscences, not a Geography lesson.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 11 Feb 12 - 09:33 AM

"A woman is only a woman but a good cigar is a smoke!"

Whatever!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Feb 12 - 02:43 PM

For pedantic pedants only-
Bohemia. Croatia Slovenia bordered the Adriatic. When Bohemia was part of the Hapsburg Monarchy (c. 1815), Bohemia thus was part of a country that bordered a sea.

The poets technically were correct.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Snuffy
Date: 13 Feb 12 - 08:21 AM

Kansas is also part of a country that borders a sea: it is therefore correct to speak of the coast of Kansas?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Feb 12 - 01:54 PM

Gee, Snuffy, Kansas has ports on the Arkansas and Missouri Rivers, which feed into the Mississippi and thus flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Is Kansas thus a maritime region?




(OK, Snuffy, point taken.)

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: tonyteach1
Date: 13 Feb 12 - 02:25 PM

I have the Peter Dawson version of the music and used to sing it a lot until someone told me it was racist and I was a racist to sing it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Feb 12 - 03:20 PM

Oh, dear, teach- Just for you (1st draft)

By the smoky Mersey Dockland, lookin' cross-eyed at the sea,
Tere's a limey chit a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the lime trees, and St. Mary's bells thay say:
"Come you back, you Gurkha soldier, come you back to Liverpool!"
Come you back to Liverpool
Where the old flotiller lay
Can't you 'ear the cranes a hummin' from Wapping to Bath Street?
On the road to Liverpool,
Where the rummies set and drool,
And the clouds come rollin' in from Thule far away!


Her drawers were dingy gray, and 'er little arse was lean,
An' 'er name was Elizabeth, jes' the same as Blighty's queen,
And I seed her first a-puffin' on a Players Navy Cut,
An' a-wastin Hindu kisses on a Christian idol's foot:
Bloomin' marble idol
Wot they called Jesus Christ
Dash all she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she....
On the road to Liverpool....

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Lighter
Date: 13 Feb 12 - 04:56 PM

The guy wants to ditch London and head back to Burma to spend the rest of his life with his true love.

Obviously he got way over his racism.

Though not his tendency to idealize the exotic. And those are just two things that make it a great poem.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 13 Feb 12 - 05:20 PM

Q-

Where did you dig up that splendid parody?

Charley Noble