First published in McCall’s Magazine, March 1928; collected in Limits and Renewals (1932).
1. C’estmoi … Et qui chante pour toi!: From the ‘gothic’ French writer Charles Nodier (1780–1844): ‘It is I, it is I, it is I! I am the Mandragora! The daughter of the good days who wakes at dawn / And who sings for you!’ Mandragora (mandrake) is a plant of the nightshade family with narcotic and poisonous properties.
2. cuts: Woodcut illustrations.
3. a couple of sovereigns: gold coins worth £1, roughly £70 today.
4. Upas-tree: Legendary poisonous tree said to kill everything underneath it (Hobson-Jobson).
5. three-guinea: Three pounds and three shillings (£3.15), worth about £200 today.
6. thirteen-and-sevenpence ha’penny: Thirteen shillings and seven and a half pence (67 p); roughly equivalent to £24.50 today.
7. Wardour Street: See ‘The Finest Story in the World’, n.28, above.
8. Supreme Pontiff: The Pope of Chaucer studies.
9. learned Hun: German scholar.
10. from Upsala to Seville: From Sweden to Spain.
11. gadzooking and vitalstapping: Writing dialogue full of sham archaisms: ‘Gadzooks!’ and ‘Stap my vitals!’
12. Vulgate: Latin translation of the Bible by St Jerome, used throughout the Middle Ages.
13. thirty-five shillings: one pound fifteen shillings (£1.75), roughly £120 today.
14. Alva and the Dutch: The Duke of Alva suppressed the Dutch Protestant rebellion against Roman Catholic Spanish rule in the Netherlands in 1567, with notorious brutality.
15. our Dan: Cf. ‘Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled / On Fame’s eternal beadroll worthy to be filed’: Edward Spenser, Faerie Queene, book iv, canto ii, line 23.
16. intoning to the gas: Declaiming to an empty room. Victorian rooms were commonly illuminated by gaslight.
17. KBE: Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
18. you had been faithful, Cynara, in your fashion: From Ernest Dowson’s fin de siècle poem ‘Non sum qualis eram’: ‘But I was desolate and sick of an old passion / I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.’
19. ‘Illa alma Mater ecca, secum afferens me acceptum. Nicolus Atrib.’: ‘Lo that bounteous Mother who accepts me and takes me with her. Nicolas Atrib[us].’ As shown in Kipling’s footnote on p. 517, reading the first letters of each word and then the second gives the acrostic ‘IAMES A MANALLACE FECIT’: ‘James A Manallace made [it]’. ‘Fecit’ is, appropriately, pro-nounced ‘fake it’.
20. black-letter: Gothic minuscule, used throughout Europe in the Middle Ages.
21. “verray parfit, gentil Knyght”: ‘true, perfect, gentle knight’; Chaucer, ‘Prologue’ to The Canterbury Tales, line 72.
22. old vellum: Old parchment.
23. his Gladstone: His suitcase.
THE MANNER OF MEN
First published in the London Magazine, September 1930; collected in Limits and Renewals (1932).
1. cinnabar-tinted: Coloured with red mercuric sulphate, used for dressing Roman sails (NRG).
2. verdigris in their dole-bread: The grain meant for distribution to the Roman people will be tainted by the copper ballast.
3. dressed African leathers on your private account: The captain is getting free transport for his private cargo of hides, used as bin-linings (NRG).
4. wings: Spaces between the grain-bins and the ship’s sides (NRG).
5. single-banker, eleven a side: A rowing-galley of twenty-two oars.
6. flesh-traffic: Slave trade.
7. Free Trader: Pirate.
8. Euxine: Black Sea.
9. a passenger, our last trip together, who wanted to see Caesar: The apostle Paul, whose shipwreck on his journey to Rome is related in Acts of the Apostles 27. Quabil’s account closely follows the Bible story.
10. sutlers: Sellers of provisions to the army.
11. Myra: Ancient port on the Lycian (Turkish) coast, now named Dembre: cf. Acts 27: 5.
12. Fairhaven: Acts 27: 8: ‘a place which is called the fair havens: nigh whereunto was the city of Lasea.’
13. bight: Loop of rope. Paul has things neatly sorted out.
14. lictor’s work … Jew scourgings: For Paul’s record of punishment, see 2 Corinthians 11: 24–5.
15. three-banker: Trireme galley.
16. the yelp of a bank being speeded up: Cries of oarsmen being whipped to row faster.
17. line his hold for a week in advance: Eat heartily while he still could.
18. pooped: Overwhelmed by a wave breaking over the poop (after-deck) from behind.
19. bo’sun-captain: One who has risen from seaman to captain.
20. kedge: Lightest ship’s anchor.
21. achatours: Purveyors.
22. under-Lebanon: Quabil’s home.
23. Thessalian jugglery with a snake: Acts 28: 3–6.
24. canvas I can cut: Paul was trained as a tent-maker (NRG).
*‘Not real. A trick.’
*Under coverture.
*Now first of the foemen of Boh Da Thone
Was Captain O’Neil of the Black Tyrone.
The Ballad of Boh Da Thone
*‘Get out, you dog.’
* Hop-picking
*‘The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat.’ A Diversity of Creatures.
*Officially it was on account of his good work in the Department of Co-ordinated Supervisals, but many true lovers of Literature knew the real reason, and told the papers so.
*Illa
alma
Mater
ecca
secum
afferens
me
acceptum
Nicolaus
Atrib.
*Quabil meant the coasters who worked their way by listening to the cocks crowing on the beaches they passed. The insult is nearly as old as sail.
Rudyard Kipling, The Man Who Would Be King
(Series: # )
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