Mandalay (poem)
"Mandalay" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling that was first published in the collection Barrack-Room Ballads, and Other Verses, the first series, published in 1892. The poem colourfully illustrates the nostalgia and longing of a soldier of the British Empire for Asia's exoticism, and generally for the countries and cultures located "East of Suez", as compared to the cold, damp and foggy climates and to the social disciplines and conventions of the UK and Northern Europe.
Background to the poem
The Mandalay referred to in this poem was the sometime capital city of Burma, which was a British protectorate from 1885 to 1948. It mentions the old Moulmein pagoda, Moulmein being the Anglicised version of present-day Mawlamyine, in South eastern Burma, on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Martaban.
The British troops stationed in Burma were taken up (or down) the Irrawaddy River by paddle steamers run by the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company (IFC). Rangoon to Mandalay was a 700 km trip each way. During the Third Anglo-Burmese War of 1885 9,000 British and Indian soldiers had been transported by a fleet of paddle steamers ("the old flotilla" of the poem) and other boats from Rangoon to Mandalay. Guerrilla warfare followed the occupation of Mandalay and British regiments remained in Burma for several years.
Rudyard Kipling's poem "Mandalay" was written in March or April 1890, when the British poet was 24 years old. He had arrived in England in October the previous year, after seven years in India. He had taken an eastward route home, traveling by steamship from Calcutta to Japan, then to San Francisco, then across the United States, in company with his friends Alex and "Ted" (Edmonia) Hill. Rangoon had been the first port of call after Calcutta; then there was an unscheduled stop at Moulmein. It is plain that Kipling was struck by the beauty of the Burmese girls. He wrote at the time:
I love the Burman with the blind favouritism born of first impression. When I die I will be a Burman … and I will always walk about with a pretty almond-coloured girl who shall laugh and jest too, as a young maiden ought. She shall not pull a sari over her head when a man looks at her and glare suggestively from behind it, nor shall she tramp behind me when I walk: for these are the customs of India. She shall look all the world between the eyes, in honesty and good fellowship, and I will teach her not to defile her pretty mouth with chopped tobacco in a cabbage leaf, but to inhale good cigarettes of Egypt's best brand.
Kipling claimed that when in Moulmein, he had paid no attention to the pagoda his poem later made famous, because he was so struck by a Burmese beauty on the steps. The attraction seems to have been common among the English: Maung Htin Aung, in his essay on George Orwell's Burmese Days (those days that produced the novel Burmese Days) notes: "Even that proud conqueror of Ava, Lord Dufferin, although he was received with dark looks by the Burmese during his state visit to Mandalay early in 1886, wrote back to a friend in England, extolling the grace, charm and freedom of Burmese women."
Text
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at 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,
Where the flyin' fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China
'crost the Bay!
When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was droppin' slow,
She'd git 'er little banjo and 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.
Elephants 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,
Where the flyin' fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China
'crost the Bay!
But that's all above be'ind me - long ago an' fur away,
An' there ain't no buses 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,
Where the flyin' fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China
'crost the Bay!
I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An' the blasted English 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 what 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,
Where the flyin' fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China
'crost the Bay!
Ship me somewhere's 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, lookin' 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!
In popular culture
The poem is quoted in the 1992 movie The Last of His Tribe. During a campfire, Dr. Saxton Pope, played by David Ogden Stiers, gives expression to most of the poem in dramatic fashion.[1]
In The Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion quotes Mandalay during his famous "Courage" speech. "What makes the dawn come up like THUNDER?! – Courage." [2]
In Noël Coward's 1950 musical Ace of Clubs, Harry, a sailor knowing every world's port, confesses in his song, I like America, that he'd "exploded the myth__Of those Flying Fith__On the Road to Mandalay." [3]
A sung rendition of the poem is performed in an episode of Rumpole of the Bailey, "Rumpole and the Show Folk".[4]
Two parodic quotes ("takes a heap of loving" and "on the road to where the flying fishes play") appear in a nonsense poem, "A Few Lines", written by Groucho Marx for Animal Crackers. [5]
Songs
Kipling's text was adapted for the song "On the Road to Mandalay" by Oley Speaks (among others). The song was popularised by Peter Dawson. It appears in the album Come Fly with Me by Frank Sinatra.
The song is published with only first, second and last verse of the poem, with the chorus; although singers sometimes omit the second verse. The Kipling family objected to Sinatra's version of the song. When the album was initially released in the UK, the song "French Foreign Legion" replaced "Mandalay", whilst apparently the song "Chicago" (and "It Happened in Monterey" on some pressings) were used in other parts of the British Commonwealth. Sinatra sang the song in Australia, in 1959, and relayed the story of the Kipling family objection to the song. In 2008, in the Family Guy episode Tales of a Third Grade Nothing, Frank Sinatra Jr. and Seth MacFarlane spoofed the song.
There is also a song of Russian singer Vera Matveeva "On the road to Mandalay" translated by E. Polonskaya.
A Danish translation by Karl Friis Møller became popular in Denmark in 1961 where it was performed by the quartet Four Jacks.
Bertolt Brecht referred to Kipling′s poem in his "Mandalay Song", which was set to music by Kurt Weill for "Happy End" and "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny".
"Blackmore's Night" has a song called "Way to Mandalay".
See also
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References
- ↑ The Last of His Tribe - 1992, The poem is given dramatic representation for 1 minute 10 seconds from 51:10 to 52:20 into the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqVArigvh_Q.
- ↑ American Rhetoric: Movie Speech "The Wizard of Oz" (1939), The Cowardly Lion On Courage.
- ↑ According to the Noël Coward Society, this song originated in 1949, and went into Ace Of Clubs the following year. ( 'Songfacts' webpage contains published lyrics.)
- ↑ > under ALLUSIONS tab > Rumpole quotes from Rudyard Kipling's poem Mandalay.
- ↑ "A Few Lines", by Groucho Marx; within full page of information on "Animal Crackers".
