Barrack-Room Ballads

Rudyard Kipling was in his mid twenties when these ballads began appearing in the press in 1890, written in the dropped aitches and slang of the ordinary British soldier rather than the polished English of drawing room verse. Tommy Atkins gets the microphone. He complains about civilians who cheer him in wartime and bar him from the pub in peacetime, watches a comrade put to death in “Danny Deever,” remembers a girl in Burma in “Mandalay,” and admits in “Gunga Din” that the water carrier he abused was the better man. The imperial politics belong to their moment and are worth arguing with. The ear for speech and rhythm is extraordinary and has never really been matched.