Danny Deever is an 1890 poem by Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

, one of the first of the Barrack-Room Ballads

Barrack-Room Ballads

The Barrack-Room Ballads, and Other Verses are a set of martial songs and poems by Rudyard Kipling originally published in two parts: the first set in 1892, the second in 1896...

. It received wide critical and popular acclaim, and is often regarded as one of the most significant pieces of Kipling's early verse. The poem, a ballad

Ballad

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

, describes the execution of a British soldier in India for murder. His execution is viewed by his regiment, paraded to watch it, and the poem is composed of the comments they exchange as they see him hanged.

Context

The poem was first published on 22 February 1890 in the Scots Observer, in America later in the year, and printed as part of the Barrack-Room Ballads

Barrack-Room Ballads

The Barrack-Room Ballads, and Other Verses are a set of martial songs and poems by Rudyard Kipling originally published in two parts: the first set in 1892, the second in 1896...

 shortly thereafter.

It is generally read as being set in India, though it gives no details of the actual situation. Some research has suggested that the poem was written with a specific incident in mind, the execution of one Private Flaxman of The Leicestershire Regiment, at Lucknow

Lucknow

Lucknow is the capital city of Uttar Pradesh in India. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of Lucknow District and Lucknow Division....

 in 1887. A number of details of this execution correspond to the occasion described by Kipling in the poem, and he later used a story similar to that of Flaxman's as a basis for the story Black Jack.

Kipling apparently wrote the various Barrack-Room Ballads in early 1890, about a year since he had last been in India, and three years since Flaxman's execution. Though he wrote large amounts of occasional verse, he usually added a note beneath the title giving the context of the poem. Danny Deever does not have any such notes, but "Cleared" (a topical poem on the Parnell Commission

Parnell Commission

The Parnell Commission was a judicial inquiry in the late 1880s into allegations of crimes by Irish parliamentarian Charles Stewart Parnell which resulted in his vindication.-Background:...

), written in the same month as Danny Deever, does. This suggests that it was not thought by Kipling to be inspired by a specific incident, though it is quite possible that he remembered the Flaxman case.

Summary

The form is a dialogue

Dialogue

Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....

, between a young and inexperienced soldier (or soldiers; he is given as "Files-on-Parade", suggesting a group) and a more experienced and older NCO

Non-commissioned officer

A non-commissioned officer , called a sub-officer in some countries, is a military officer who has not been given a commission...

 ("the Colour-Sergeant"). The setting is an execution, generally presumed to be somewhere in India

British Raj

British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...

; a soldier, one Danny Deever, has been tried and sentenced to death for murdering a comrade, and his battalion is paraded to see the hanging

Hanging

Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...

. This procedure strengthened discipline in the unit, by a process of deterrence, and helped inure inexperienced soldiers to the sight of death.

The young soldier is unaware of what is happening, at first - he asks why the bugles

Bugle (instrument)

The bugle is one of the simplest brass instruments, having no valves or other pitch-altering devices. All pitch control is done by varying the player's embouchure, since the bugle has no other mechanism for controlling pitch. Consequently, the bugle is limited to notes within the harmonic series...

 are blowing, and why the Sergeant looks so pale, but is told that Deever is being hanged, and that the regiment is drawn up in "[h]ollow square" to see it. He presses the Sergeant further, in the second verse - why are people breathing so hard? why are some men collapsing? These signs of the effect that watching the hanging has upon the men of the regiment are explained away by the Sergeant as being due to the cold weather or the bright sun. The voice is reassuring, keeping the young soldier calm in the sight of death, just as the Sergeant will calm him with his voice in combat. In the third verse, Files thinks of Deever, saying that he slept alongside him, and drank with him, but the Sergeant reminds him that Deever is now alone, that he sleeps "out an' far to-night", and reminds the soldier of the magnitude of Deever's crime -

For 'e shot a comrade sleepin' -- you must look 'im in the face;

Nine 'undred of 'is county an' the regiment's disgrace,

(Nine hundred was roughly the number of men in a single infantry battalion

Battalion

A battalion is a military unit of around 300–1,200 soldiers usually consisting of between two and seven companies and typically commanded by either a Lieutenant Colonel or a Colonel...

, and as regiments were formed on local lines, most would have been from the same county; it is thus emphasised that his crime is a black mark against both the regiment, as a whole, and against his comrades.) The fourth verse comes to the hanging; Files sees the body against the sun, and then feels his soul as it "whimpers" overhead; the term reflects a shudder in the ranks as they watch Deever die. Finally, the Sergeant moves the men away; though it is not directly mentioned in the poem, they would be marched past the corpse on the gallows - reflecting that the recruits are shaking after their ordeal, and that "they'll want their beer to-day".

Structure

The poem is composed of four eight-line verses, containing a dialogue

Dialogue

Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....

 between two (or three) voices:

"What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.

"To turn you out, to turn you out", the Colour-Sergeant said.

"What makes you look so white, so white?" said Files-on-Parade.

"I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch", the Colour-Sergeant said.

For they're hangin' Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play,

The regiment's in 'ollow square -- they're hangin' him to-day;

They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,

An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.

It is immediately noticeable that the poem is written in a vernacular

Vernacular

A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...

 English. Though the Barrack-Room Ballads have made this appear a common feature of Kipling's work, at the time it was quite unusual; this was the first of his published works to be written in the voice of the common soldier. The speech is not a direct representation of any single dialect, but it serves to give a very clear effect of a working class

Working class

Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...

 English voice of the period. Note the "taken of his buttons off", a deliberate error, to add to the stylised speech; it refers to the ceremony of military degradation, where the man to be executed is formally stripped of any marks of rank, such as his stripes, or of significant parts of his uniform - the buttons bore the regimental crest.

The four verses each consist of two questions asked by "Files" and answered by the Sergeant- a call-and-response form - and then another four lines of the Sergeant explaining, as above. In some interpretations, the second four lines are taken to be spoken by a third voice, another "file-on-parade". These verses are strongly rhythmic - the first four lines always ending with the same words, and the latter three with an aaab rhyme scheme

Rhyme scheme

A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyme between lines of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme. In other words, it is the pattern of end rhymes or lines...

 - which serves to reinforce the idea of drilling infantry by giving the effect of marching feet. The quick speed of the chorus contrasts sharply with the "grave iambs" of the main stanzas, forcing the sad mood into a brisk march. Eliot noted the imperfect rhyme scheme - parade and said do not quite rhyme - as strongly contributing to this effect, with the slight interruption supporting the feel of a large number of men marching together, not quite in harmony.

Critical reaction

Danny Deever is often seen as one of Kipling's most powerful early works, and was greeted with acclaim when first published. David Masson

David Masson

David Masson , was a Scottish writer.He was born in Aberdeen, and educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and at Marischal College, University of Aberdeen. Intending to enter the Church, he proceeded to Edinburgh University, where he studied theology under Dr Thomas Chalmers, with whom he remained...

, a professor of literature at the University of Edinburgh

University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...

, is often reported (perhaps apocryphally) to have waved the magazine in which it appeared at his students, crying "Here's literature! Here's literature at last!". William Henley

William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley was an English poet, critic and editor, best remembered for his 1875 poem "Invictus".-Life and career:...

, the editor of the Scots Observer, is even said to have danced on his wooden leg when he first received the text.

It was later commented on by William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

, who noted that "[Kipling] interests a critical audience today by the grotesque tragedy of Danny Deever". T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

 called the poem "technically (as well as in content) remarkable", holding it up as one of the best of Kipling's ballads. Both Yeats and Eliot were writing shortly after Kipling's death, in 1936 and 1941, when critical opinion of his poetry was at a low point; both, nonetheless, drew out Danny Deever for attention as a significant work.

An example, while at the same time a refutation, of that low critical opinion is a 1942 essay by George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

, which referred to Danny Deever as an example of Kipling "at his worst, and also his most vital ... almost a shameful pleasure, like the taste for cheap sweets that some people secretly carry into middle life". He felt the work was an example of what he described as "good bad poetry"; verse which is essentially vulgar, yet undeniably seductive and "a sign of the emotional overlap between the intellectual and the ordinary
man."

Music

The Barrack-Room Ballads, as the name suggests, are songs of soldiers. Written by Kipling, they share a form and a style with traditional Army songs. Kipling was one of the first to pay attention to these works; Carrington noted that in contrast to the songs of sailors, "no-one had thought of collecting genuine soldiers' songs, and when Kipling wrote in this traditional style it was not recognised as traditional". Kipling himself was fond of singing his poetry, of writing it to fit the rhythm of a particular tune. In this specific case, the musical source has been suggested as the Army's "grotesque bawdy song" Barnacle Bill the Sailor

Barnacle Bill (song)

"Barnacle Bill the Sailor" is an American drinking song adapted from "Bollocky Bill the Sailor", a traditional folk song originally titled "Abraham Brown"....

, but it is possible that some other popular tune of the period was used.

However, the ballads were not published with any music, and though they were quickly adapted to be sung, new musical settings were written; a musical setting by Walter Damrosch was described as "Teddy Roosevelt's

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

 favourite song", and is sometimes encountered on its own as a tune entitled They're Hanging Danny Deever In The Morning. To date, at least a dozen published recordings are known, made from 1893 to 1985.

The tune "They're Hanging Danny Deever in the Morning" was played from the Campanile at UC Berkeley at the end of the last day of classes for the Spring Semester of 1930, and has been repeated every year since, making it one of the oldest campus traditions.

External links

• Text of Danny Deever at the Online Literature Network
• Spoken version of Danny Deever, by Jane Aker, as an mp3 file
• Two recordings of the Walter Damrosch setting of Danny Deever at the Library of Congress
  Library of Congress
  The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...