12. fakirs: Ascetic beggar-priests (Hobson-Jobson).
13. Sahib: Lord, Master: honorific used by colonial Indians to address Europeans.
14. a Deccanee Brahmin: Member of a priestly caste, from the south (Hobson-Jobson).
15. Caste-mark: Mark on the forehead indicating caste.
16. continuations: Trousers (slang).
17. ghat: Hindu funeral pyre (Hobson-Jobson).
18. Okara Station: City in the Punjab, now Pakistan (NRG).
19. tiffin: Light luncheon (Hobson-Jobson).
20. Rs.9-8-5: Equivalent to £33.37 today. A rupee was a silver coin, the equivalent of one shilling in Victorian England, worth £3.50 or $ US 5 in contemporary currency. The anna is one-sixteenth of a rupee; a pie (pl. pice) one-quarter of an anna.
21. as bakshish: For tipping.
22. chapatti: Flat Indian bread.
23. nausea of the Channel passage: Seasickness when crossing the English Channel, which can be very rough.
24. women aged to all appearance as the Fates themselves: In Greek mythology, the Fates were represented as old women.
25. videlicet: Namely (Latin).
26. canon: Law.
27. The crew of the ill-fated Mignonette: In July 1884 the three-man crew of the wrecked yacht Mignonette, having escaped in a dinghy without water, cut the cabin-boy’s throat and drank his blood. They were later convicted of murder.
28. bents: Reeds.
29. greatest good of greatest number is political maxim: ‘The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation’: Jeremy Bentham, utilitarian philosopher (1748–1832).
30. Feringhi: A derogatory term for an European in India (Hobson-Jobson).
31. Vishnu: ‘The Preserver’; Hindu deity, second in the triad Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, representing the supreme spirit.
32. punkah-ropes: A punkah was a large swinging fan suspended from a ceiling, pulled by a coolie.
LISPETH
First published in Civil and Military Gazette, 29 November 1886; collected in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888).
1. Kotgarh: Town 30 miles east of Simla on the Tibet road (NRG).
2. pahari: Mountainous or hilly, sometimes ‘hard’ (NRG).
3. Moravian missionaries: The Moravians were a Protestant sect from Saxony, responsible for the first large-scale Protestant missionary movement.
4. Diana of the Romans: Roman goddess of virginity and hunting.
5. ‘globe-trotters’: Derogatory term for tourists.
6. The P. & O. fleet: The Peninsular and Orient Fleet, sailing regularly between Britain and India, often mentioned by Kipling.
7. Simla: The summer capital of the British in India from 1864.
8. Narkanda: A beauty spot 12 miles from Kotgarh (NRG).
9. Tarka Devi: Goddess of the dawn (NRG).
BEYOND THE PALE
First published in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888). The title means ‘out of bounds’. In the Middle Ages the ‘Pale’ divided a strip of eastern Ireland under English jurisdiction from the mainland where English laws did not hold.
1. bustee: Inhabited quarter, village (NRG).
2. Gully: A narrow alley.
3. cow-byre: The cows or buffaloes kept for milk in Indian cities were kept in their sheds.
4. dhak: East Indian tree bearing a profusion of intense vermilion velvet-textured blooms, sometimes called ‘Flame of the Forest’ (Hobson-Jobson).
5. boorka: Or ‘burka’, a veil covering a Muslim woman from the head down, with holes for the eyes.
DRAY WARA YOW DEE
First published in The Week’s News, Allahabad, 28 April 1888; reprinted in In Black and White, no. 3 of the Indian Railway Library (1888); collected in Soldiers Three and Other Stories (1895). The title (as translated in the text) means. ‘All three are one’.
1. Tirah: Valley south-west of the Khyber Pass.
2. trulls: Trollops, prostitutes.
3. Peshawur: Peshawar; ancient capital and garrison of the north-west province of Pakistan.
4. Amir: Emir of Afghanistan.
5. Pubbi: Town on the Grand Trunk Road near Peshawar (NRG).
6. Bokhariot belt: Belt manufactured in Bokhara, Uzbekistan.
7. Thana: police station (Hobson-Jobson).
8. a sweeper … lizard-men: low-caste men, lizard-eaters.
9. eight annas: Half a rupee, worth about sixpence in Victorian currency, c. £1.50 today.
10. an Afridi: Member of a Pathan tribe.
11. Abazai: Another Pathan tribe.
12. Rahman: Abdul Rahman Baba (1653–1711), Pushtu and member of the Sufis, a mystical Muslim sect.
13. Uzbegs: Cavalry lancers in the Afghan army (NRG).
14. from the Fakr to the Isha: From the dawn prayer to the sunset prayer (NRG).
15. Cherat: Hill station and cantonment in the Peshawar district.
16. matchlock: Musket using a fuse to light the gunpowder.
17. Kabul river: Rises in the Hindu Kush, joins the Swat east of the city and the Indus at Attock or Uttock (NRG).
18. charpoy: Bedstead (Hobson-Jobson).
19. Dora: Darra, the pass between Peshawar and Kohat (NRG, which also identifies the other places in the Punjab where the speaker journeys before he loses his bearings when he goes south of Delhi, not glossed here).
20. Black Water: The ocean, also the penal colony in the Andaman Islands.
21. Jamun: Sweet fruit (Hobson-Jobson).
22. Ak: Thorn-tree (Hobson-Jobson).
23. Alghias! Alghias!: Exclamation of sorrow.
24. Djinns: Spirits.
AT THE PIT’S MOUTH
First published in Under the Deodars, no.4 of the Indian Railway Library (1888); collected in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories (1895).
1. Men say … ‘Enderby’: ‘The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire (1571)’ by Jean Ingelow (1820–97). In this Victorian ballad, which Kipling also quotes in the later story ‘My Son’s Wife’, (A Diversity of Creatures, 1917), a totally unexpected flood brings death to the unwary ‘Elizabeth’ and her children. Probably quoting from memory, Kipling here edits and rearranges lines 1–4 of Ingelow’s stanza 2 and lines 6–7 of stanza 17 into a single stanza.
2. Tertium Quid: ‘Third Something’; also the speaker of Book 4 of Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book (1869), a long poem dramatizing conflicting perspectives on a drama of adultery and death. Here, the wife’s lover is implied.
3. Jakko or Observatory Hill: On the outskirts of Simla (NRG).
4. four-hundred-rupee bracelets: Expensive bracelets; 400 rupees represents more than £1,000 today.
5. Elysium: North of the Mashobra Tunnel, which is 5 miles east of Simla (NRG).
6. as far as the Tara Devi gap: Four miles south of Simla (NRG).
7. ayahs: Indian nannies (Hobson-Jobson).
8. cantonments: Military stations.
9. ulster: Overcoat.
10. Fagoo: Fagu, 5 miles east of Mashobra Tunnel on the Simla–Tibet road (NRG).
11. snaffle: Jointed bit, giving less control of a horse than a curb bit.
12. Indian corn: maize.
13. Medusa: In Greek mythology, a monstrous woman with serpents in her hair, whose glaring eyes turned live things to stone.
A WAYSIDE COMEDY
First published in The Week’s News, 21 January 1888; issued in Under the Deodars, no.4 of the Indian Railway Library (1888); collected in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories (1895).
1. jhils: Ponds (Hobson-Jobson).
2. Kashima … Dosehri hills … Narkarra: Fictitious places.
3. masonry platform: Terrace.
4. Samson broke the pillars of Gaza: Samson, after being captured, chained and blinded by the Philistines, was brought into their palace at Gaza, containing three thousand men and women, and pulled down its pillars ‘So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life’: Judges 16: 21–30.
5. two days’ dâk: Two days’ travel. A dak or dawk is a relay of men or horses carrying post (Hobson-Jobson).
6. terai hat: Wide-brimmed hat with ventilation holes worn by Anglo-Indians (Hobson-Jobson).
7. purdah: Curtain, often separating women’s quarters in Hindu or Muslim homes (Hobson-Jobson).
8. mashing: Flirting with.
9. to give ‘satisfaction’: To allow the injured husband to avenge the insult by fighting a duel.
10. sais: Groom (Hobson-Jobson).
THE STORY OF MUHAMMAD DIN
First published in the Civil and Military Gazette, 8 September 1886; collected in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888).
1. Munichandra: Believed to be from the Sanskrit ‘Hymns of the Saints’, trans. Peter Peterson (NRG).
2. khitmutgar: Butler (Hobson-Jobson).
3. budmash: Criminal (Hobson-Jobson).
4. jail-khana: Prison.
5. Salaam: Greeting.
6. rude: Roughly drawn.
LITTLE TOBRAH
First published in the Civil and Military Gazette, 17 July 1888, collected in Life’s Handicap (1891). A ‘tobrah’ is the leather nosebag in which a horse’s feed is administered (Hobson-Jobson).
1. voyage across the other Black Water: Little Tobrah fears that if he survives, he could be sent to the Andaman Islands used after the 1857 Mutiny as a much-feared penal colony.
2. net: Slung beneath a cart to hold forage, etc.
3. Telis: Members of a business caste, makers of edible oil (NRG). The oil would be pressed from seeds, crushed in a simple mill worked by a bullock harnessed to a central beam.
4. Bapri-bap: Exclamation of surprise.
5. bunnia-folk: Corn-dealers, money-lenders.
6. seven annas and six pies: Equivalent to about £2 in today’s currency.
THE FINANCES OF THE GODS
First published in Life’s Handicap (1891). This story of the god Ganesh is also told in John Lockwood Kipling’s Beast and Man in India: A Popular Sketch of Indian Animals in Their Relations with the People (Macmillan, 1892), pp. 211–13.
1. Dhunni Bhagat’s Chubara: Monastery in north India, affectionately described in Kipling’s ‘Preface’ to Life’s Handicap, a centre for wandering mendicants and for ancient holy men.
2. Gobind: Holy mendicant and storyteller who has retired to the Chubara, described in the same ‘Preface’.
3. cow-dung cakes: Dried cow-dung used for fuel.
4. slate: A piece of slate framed in wood, on which school exercises were written and erased, used in Victorian schools.
5. Perlay-ball. Ow-at! Ran, ran, ran!: Hindi approximation of the cricketing phrases ‘Play the ball’, ‘How’s that?’ ‘Run, run, run!’
6. Arré, arré, arré!: Words of encouragement.
7. jujube-trees: Zikzyphus trees bearing edible berries.
8. Ganesh of the elephant head: Hindu god of good luck and prosperity, represented with an elephant’s head.
9. lakh: One hundred thousand (Hobson-Jobson).
BAA BAA, BLACK SHEEP
First published in the Christmas supplement to The Week’s News, 21 December 1888; collected in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories (1895).
This autobiographical story closely corresponds to Kipling’s briefer but equally bitter account of the experiences which he and his sister Alice, ‘Punch’ and ‘Judy’ of this story, endured in the ‘House of Desolation’ (Lorne Lodge, Southsea) in his posthumous memoir Something of Myself. It is also borne out by his sister’s memoir, ‘Some Childhood Memories of Rudyard Kipling’, Mrs A. M. Fleming, Chambers’ Journal, March 1939.
1. ‘When I was in my father’s house, I was in a better place’: As You Like It,Act 2, scene 4: ‘When I was at home, I was in a better place.’
2. ayah: Nanny.
3. hamal: Bath attendant (NRG).
4. Meeta, the big Surti boy: In Something of Myself, Kipling names ‘Meeta’ as his own ‘bearer’ (Something of Myself and Other Autobiographical Writings, ed. Thomas Pinney (Cambridge University Press 1985), p.3). Surti: from Surat (NRG).
5. Punch-baba: ‘Baba’, from Turki ‘father’, was used as affectionate diminutive to children (Hobson-Jobson).
6. give me put-put: Smack me.
7. Ghauts: Landing-places (Hobson-Jobson).
8. Belait: Britain (Hobson-Jobson).
9. brougham: Carriage.
10. Apollo Bunder: Main quay at Bombay, now Mumbai (NRG).
11. broom-gharri: That is, a smart carriage or brougham, from Hindi gharri, carriage (Hobson-Jobson).
12. rune: In this context, a charm or spell.
13. ‘Sonny, my soul’: ‘Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear/ It is not night if thou be near’: no. 24 of Hymns Ancient and Modern: for use in Church Services with the Accompanying Tunes, ed. H. Monk (1861).
14. Downe Lodge: Fictionalized name of Lorne Lodge, home of the foster-parents, the Holloways.
15. a woman in black: The original of ‘Antirosa’ was Sarah Holloway.
16. a man, big, bony, grey, and lame as to one leg: The original of ‘Uncle Harry’ was Captain Pryse Agar Holloway.
17. a boy of twelve: The original of ‘Harry’ was Henry Thomas Pryse Holloway, b. 1860.
18. Navarino: Site of a naval battle in 1824.
19. curse God and die: Job 2: 9.
20. Rocklington: Fictionalized Southsea.
21. The City of Dreadful Night: Misattribution for the verses slightly misquoted from A. H. Clough’s poem ‘Easter Day, Naples 1849’: ‘Eat, drink and die, for we are souls bereaved’.
22. harbours where ships lay at anchor: Southsea is close to Portsmouth, a major naval base.
23. sovereigns: gold coins worth £1, roughly £70 today.
24. the wadding of a bullet: Bullets for muzzle-loading rifles were rammed down on the gunpowder with a piece of cloth called ‘wadding’, a fragment of which might be driven into a wound.
25. a ‘falchion’: A broad curved sword.
26. pot-hooks: curved lines made by children learning to write.
27. Tilbury: Two-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle.
28. Black Sheep: A bad character, disreputable member of the family.
29. Cometh up as a Flower: Novel by Rhoda Broughton (1840–1920).
30. Journeys end … doth know: From Feste’s song ‘O mistress mine’, Twelfth Night, Act 2, scene 3.
31. hubshi: A black man, African (Hobson-Jobson).
32. tout court: Simply; that is, without any further name.
33. the offence of Cain: Cain who killed his brother Abel was accursed as the first murderer. See Genesis 4: 1–15.
34. board-wages: Wages allowed to servants to pay for their food.
35. the Fear of the Lord was … the beginning of falsehood: Apt misquotation from Psalm 111: 10: ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
First published in The Phantom ’Rickshaw, no.5 of the Indian Railway Library (1888); collected in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories (1895).
1. ‘Brother to a Prince … worthy’: From Kipling’s own poem ‘Banquet Night’.
2. The Law: The Masonic Law.
3. upon the road to Mhow from Ajmir: The line from Ajmir on which Kipling himself had travelled to reach Udaipur, when in 1887 the Pioneer newspaper sent him to travel in the Native States of Rajputana and report what he saw. These travel articles, entitled ‘Letters of Marque’, were published in the Pioneer and later collected in From Sea to Sea (1899). Mhow is a town and cantonment and Ajmir is the capital of Rajputana (NRG).
Kipling wrote a long letter describing his experiences on this assignment to his cousin Margaret Burne-Jones, including the incident when he was asked by an unknown fellow Mason to deliver a mysterious message to another Mason, also unknown, who was travelling through a desert by a night express (see The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, ed. Thomas Pinney (Macmillan, 1990), vol.1, p. 153), just as in this story.
4. Eurasian: Pers
on of mixed Indian and European race, regarded as inferior by the colonial English.
5. Backwoodsman: Nickname of the Pioneer newspaper.
6. going to the West … From the East … for the sake of my Mother: phrases from the Masonic ritual of the Third Degree (NRG).
7. Harun-al-Raschid: (763–809), Caliph of Baghdad, hero of the Arabian Nights.
8. I did business with divers Kings: Cf. Kipling’s letter to Margaret Burne-Jones: ‘I railed and rode and drove and tramped and slept in Kings’ palaces or under the stars themselves … and came to stately Residences where I feasted in fine linen and came to desolate way stations where I slept with natives upon cotton bales’ (Letters, ed. Pinney, vol.1, p.151).
9. Princes and Politicals: Rulers of independent Native States and the resident British officials advising them.
10. Zenana-mission ladies: Missionaries to Indian women secluded in the women’s quarters.
11. Mister Gladstone: Liberal Prime Minister, disliked by Kipling.
12. as blank as Modred’s shield: This was ‘blank as death’: Tennyson, ‘Gareth and Lynette’, line 409.
13. two strong men can Sar-a-whack: Allusion to James Brooke, who became Rajah of Sarawak, Borneo, in 1841.
14. Kafiristan: remote area in north-east of Hindu Kush Afghanistan, inhabited by polytheistic tribes who were subdued and Islamicized by the Emir of Afghanistan in 1895–6, after the date of this story.
15. Roberts’ Army: In the Second Afghan War (1878–80), the British forces were commanded by Sir Frederick (subsequently Lord) Roberts.
16. Wood on the Sources of the Oxus: Captain John Wood, A Journey to the Source of the Oxus (1841).
17. United Services’ Institute: The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, Whitehall, which had a branch in Simla (NRG).
18. Bellew: Henry Walter Bellew, Our Punjab Frontier, being a concise account of the various tribes (1868).