Has anyone—other than Peter Bellamy—done any serious work on Kipling's relationship with and contributions to the folk tradition? Yesterday I was flipping through a copy of Captains Courageous (1897) that I found on the used-book shelf in Stop & Shop and noted the number of sea-songs he either references or quotes explicitly, and while I am sure he did not write "The Dreadnought," I am still looking for a version of "Wheat in the Ear" that is not spliced into a Southern game-song by Gordon Bok. This is not a new thought. I have had various of the Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) stuck in my head since last summer. Fragments of The Seven Seas (1896) keep turning up in my stories. And I am hardly the first person to notice how many of his poems are written like songs, as though to invite setting; there is even an ongoing catalogue being compiled. So I want to know: where's the scholarship on it?
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- 1: Because brick-braided alleys make steep, sleeping valleys seem level and clear
- 2: Don't look round, but I think we're taking off
- 3: Did you see the closing window? Did you hear the slamming door?
- 4: Sing the praise of Alexander, he's no use to me
- 5: The hedges and fields are clothed all around with several sorts of green
- 6: Chinatown, London Underground, you know it all sounds good to me
- 7: Take us roaming in the gloaming, your Ross rifle by your side
- 8: I'm singing out this poem all the way back home
- 9: Pa vez o pellaat da vag, ha ma c'hoantaez c'hoazh?
- 10: I spoke of crimes and of my friends in the same breath
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