To Thread - Forum Home

The Mudcat Café TM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=87629
18 messages

Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling born 30 Dec 1865)

30 Dec 05 - 08:28 AM (#1637295)
Subject: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling)
From: Abby Sale


Happy Birthday!

Singer/songwriter Rudyard Kipling

was born

12/30/1865
(d.1/18/1936)

Of his many folkish songs & ballads, many have been set to music - eg Leslie Fish on recordings: Our Fathers Of Old, Random Factors, and largely Peter Belamy put some wonderful tunes to some - five albums worth of them. For example: 

          Old Horn to all Atlantic said:
                  A-hay O!  To me O!
          "Now where did Frankie learn his trade?
          For he ran me down with a three-reef mains'le"
                  All round the Horn!
  
                     "Frankie's Trade" by Rudyard Kipling from his story "Simple Simon" in 
                     Rewards and Fairies; Tune: Peter Bellamy

I heard this from Mystic Seaport Chanteymen at the Festival. Was knocked out. So I learned a few Kipling/Bellamy songs.

Copyright © 2005, Abby Sale - all rights reserved
What are Happy's all about? See Clicky

30 Dec 05 - 09:45 AM (#1637339)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling)
From: JohnB

Really old joke.
What do you think of Kipling?
Don't know I've never kippled!
JohnB

30 Dec 05 - 10:29 PM (#1637888)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling)
From: GUEST,Joe_F

ObSongs:

Then Disko obliged with his second song, to an old-fashioned creaky tune, and all joined in the chorus. This is one stanza:

"Now Aprile is over and melted the snow,

And outer Noo Bedford we shortly must tow;

Yes out p' Noo Bedford we shortlly must clear,

We're the whalers that never see wheat in the ear."



Here the fiddle went very softly for a while by itself, and then:



"Wheat-in-the-ear, my true-love's posy blowin';

Wheat-in-the-ear, we're goin' off to sea;

Wheat-in-the-ear, I left you fit for sowin';

When I come back a loaf o' bread you'll be!"



That made Harvey almost weep, though he could not tell why....



-- _Captains Courageous_

--- Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||: When we admire people, we seldom ask "What did their parents do right?". :||

30 Dec 05 - 10:50 PM (#1637899)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling)
From: katlaughing

Ah wonderfully Happy, yes!

One of our cats is named after Kipling. My daughter called from the vet's where she'd taken him to be neutered. He was a stray yet to be named. I told her he reminded me of the Cat Who Walked by Himself, so Kipling it was!

He loves it when I singsong his name and draw it out to Kip-il-leeng...makes him so happy. My grandson is now learning about Baloo, Mowgli, Bagheera (another borrowed name for a long ago black cat) and others, as well as had Yellow Dog Dingo read to him as my mom did me years ago.

Thanks, Abby,

kat

30 Dec 05 - 10:51 PM (#1637901)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling)
From: Peace

And a Happy Birthday to ya, old boy.

30 Dec 05 - 11:37 PM (#1637950)
Subject: RE: Happy! 쳌EDec 30 (Kipling)
From: Naemanson

I think I'll try tippling to old Kipling tonight!

Happy birthday and thanks to you Rudyard.

31 Dec 05 - 06:07 PM (#1638352)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling)
From: Barry Finn

Has anyone ever done a Kipling Night? In the same kind of fashion as a Burns Night. The Scottish have a well deserved todo for R. Burns. I'm (I'm not English so please set me straight if I'm wrong) thinking that the same sort of reverence would be held for Kipling by the English people as Burns is for the Scottish, no? "Danny Dever" could 'March in the Mutton' by fiddle, 'Frankie the butcher by Trade' could commence with the carving. Then "Tommy" could recite "We Have Fed Our Sea" & at the evenings' end every one would lineup behind 'Sir Richard' & march out as he sang "Follow Me Home".
Be good for a "Lark in the Morning" eh?
Barry

01 Jan 06 - 06:31 AM (#1638660)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling)
From: Les in Chorlton

Of all the trees that grow so fair
Over England to adorn
Greater are none, beneath the Sun
Than Oak and Ash and Thorn [A Tree Song]

Sing ..............

01 Jan 06 - 07:17 AM (#1638678)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling)
From: CET

Brilliant idea, Barry, although I think you will find, alas, that the English have nowhere near the same reverence for Kipling that the Scots have for Burns. As I understand it, some English folkies didn't think Peter Bellamy should be putting Kipling to music because Kipling was racist, imperialist, etc. I think his Kipling songs were the best work he ever did. Many of the tunes were traditional, but it was an act of genius to know the right tune for the right poem.

Kipling was a complicated man. He did suffer from racial prejudice, but he was often able to transcend it. Some of his early poems make me cringe, but some are absolute works of genius. I think Danny Deever, for example, ranks with anything ever written in English.

So, let's have a Kipling dinner. You'll have a hard time finding a butcher that will sell you mutton, though.

Edmund

01 Jan 06 - 10:30 AM (#1638753)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling)
From: Dave Hanson

He was a good writer, but his cakes are shite.

eric

01 Jan 06 - 04:21 PM (#1638973)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling)
From: sapper82

CET:- So, let's have a Kipling dinner. You'll have a hard time finding a butcher that will sell you mutton, though.

Let me know when you want it and I'll have a word with my farming brother-in-law!!

01 Jan 06 - 05:51 PM (#1639008)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling)
From: alanabit

He definitely had some ideas, which we don't admire these days. I agree he was full of paradoxes though. I believe his son was killed in the First World War, which caused him to have something of a rethink about the glory of battle and war.
Danny Deever and several other of his poems are gems. I thought some of the "Barrack Room Ballads" were very subversive too. Maybe his best work came when his instinct took over from those imperialistic ideas of his. To be fair to him, that way of thinking appeared to be perfectly good sense to many people of his age.

01 Jan 06 - 06:13 PM (#1639028)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling)
From: GUEST,Puck

High time Kipling was celebrated for the genius he was. A Kipling dinner sounds wholly suitable and high time also that the english celebrate their litrerary genius's[ genieiii] for their own merit and in their own time span which lacked the political correctness of present day soapy wishy washy-ness. Not that I am in the slightest a condoner of racism - or P C -ness at all, neither one nor the other - just an admirer of a talent that was alive at a different time and under different political circumstance.

Time to organize such an event!!!
P

17 Nov 10 - 07:19 PM (#3034725)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling born 30 Dec 1865)
From: Joe Offer

You'll find plenty of Kipling songs on Jon Boden's A Folk Song a Day. The song for November 18 is Kipling's Cholera Camp.

-Joe-

18 Nov 10 - 05:47 PM (#3035484)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling born 30 Dec 1865)
From: Joe_F

As I observed on another thread, it's hard to hate Kipling. Indeed, I think a substantial & amusing anthology of criticism could be assembled under that title. I particularly recommend George Orwell's essay.

Racist, sexist, imperialist. Wears well.

18 Nov 10 - 06:02 PM (#3035494)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling born 30 Dec 1865)
From: Steve Parkes

You have to judge people against the standards of their time, not ours; not always easy. RK was ahead of his in some ways. He believed there are some qualities that transcend differences of race and class -- think of The Ballad of East & West, Gunga Din -- but he also believed some races to be superior to others. But in those days most people would have ben what we call racists.

Lighter note: I might raise a smile with my New Ballad of E & W, a true story (more or less).

18 Nov 10 - 07:05 PM (#3035533)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling born 30 Dec 1865)
From: Sandy Mc Lean

"If" is my all time favourite poem! As for his racism we must remember that he lived in very racist times. On that subject the black cook in Captains Courageous, IE the Gaelic speaking "Ni**er from the innards of Cape Breton" character, was based on George Maxwell, a real man whose descendants I number among my friends.

19 Nov 10 - 06:43 PM (#3036331)
Subject: RE: Happy! – Dec 30 (Kipling born 30 Dec 1865)
From: Joe_F

Against the misogyny in "The Betrothed" & "The Female of the Species", one might weigh the sympathy in "Mary, Pity Women!". And as to racism, note his remarkable poem "Our Mother-Lodge", in praise of the racially & religiously mixed Freemasons in India.

Note also "Jobson's Amen". No-one who hates missionaries can be all bad. %^)