Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgement Seat.Įighteen-ninety was Rudyard Kipling’s year. Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, The December number of Macmillan’s Magazine contained one of his ballads which set the town on fire, with words which are not likely to be forgotten: Of ballads to sell, and with two or three introductions to editors. xix.):Īt the end of the year a young man arrived in London with a sheaf The two young men return to ‘Fort Bukloh’ and: ‘the boy who last night was ‘a Border-thief’ is now ‘a man of the Guides.’ Some critical opinionsĬharles Carrington writes of the year 1889 (p. Kamal instead gives back the mare with the ‘lifter’s dower’ of his own jewelled accoutrements, and when the Colonel’s son in return offers him the gift of his remaining pistol Kamal, not to be outdone in generosity, whistles up his ’only son’ to be the companion and fellow-soldier of the Englishman. Take up the mare and keep her – by God she has carried a man. His jesting defiance wins the tribute: ‘May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath’ from Kamal, and the Colonel’s son responds in kind: When his own horse collapses from exhaustion the Colonel’s son, having lost a pistol to Kamal and being threatened with the prospect of making a meal for the jackals and crows, ‘lightly’ responds by promising vengeance:īut count who come for the broken meats before thou makest a feast’. The ballad tells how, when Kamal the border thief steals a prize bay mare, the Colonel’s son (not named) follows them into enemy territory. … Kipling’s justly famous ‘Ballad of East and West’, in which an English officer and an Afghan horse-thief Kamal discover friendship by respecting one another’s courage and chivalry. This is neatly encapsulated by Jan Montefiore (p. Other ballads, tragic and light-hearted, are in the “Other Verses” section of Barrack-Room Ballads see also “The Dove of Dacca”.
It was first called “Kamal”, and attributed to “Yussuf”, one of the pen-names used by Kipling in his young days on the Civil and Military Gazette and Pioneer.
See the new (Feb 2010) Bibliography by David Alan Richards (p. This poem was first published in the Pioneer of 2 December 1889, The Week’s News of December 28, and Macmillan’s Magazine for December the same year.
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