"Danny Deever" by Rudyard Kipling (poetry reading)

This was the first poem by Rudyard Kipling in the voice of the ordinary Tommy.

It could be based on the execution of Private Flaxman, The Leicestershire Regiment, for the murder of a sergeant, which happened at Lucknow in India in 1887. The poem was written in 1890.

"The garrison paraded at 8.15 a.m., the band played the "Dead March in Saul" as the condemned man was marched onto the parade ground with his coffin on a gun carriage in front of him. After the execution, the garrison was marched off parade past the scaffold on which the corpse of the executed man still hung."

The picture shows the regiment in hollow square formation similar to, but not actually, an execution.
http://www.kipling.org.uk/bookmart_fra.htm

The accent is just an impression - I'm not claiming that it's authentic.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Danny
• Deever
• Rudyard
• Kipling

[thallassocracy]

Given the enormous popularity of this 1890 poem (still a popular recitation at wedding receptions (!) in the early 1960's) Oscar Wilde must have had half an eye on it when he was writing the Ballad of Reading Gaol.

Kipling pushes Flaxman under our noses; Wilde keeps Wooldridge from ever quite appearing.

Wooldridge is the one I remember in nightmares.

[solarisqs]

Thanks for this, love your rendition.

Scarey stuff still