Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads

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Room Ballads by Rudyard Kipling
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Title: Departmental Ditties & Barrack Room Ballads
Author: Rudyard Kipling
Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7846]
[This file was first posted
on May 22, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES & BARRACK ROOM BALLADS
***
Ted Garvin
DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES and BALLADS AND BARRACK
ROOM BALLADS
BY
RUDYARD KIPLING
CONTENTS
VOLUME I: DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND OTHER
VERSES
Prelude
General Summary
Army Headquarters
Study of an
Elevation, in Indian Ink
A Legend of the Foreign Office
The Story
of Uriah
The Post that Fitted
Public Waste
Delilah
What
Happened
Pink Dominoes
The Man Who Could Write
Municipal

A Code of Morals
The Last Department
VOLUME II: BALLADS AND BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS
The Ballad of East and West
The Last Suttee
The Ballad of the
King's Mercy
The Ballad of the King's Jest
The Ballad of Boh Da
Thone
The Lament of the Border Cattle Thief
The Rhyme of the
Three Captains
The Ballad of the "Clampherdown"
The Ballad of
the "Bolivar"
The English Flag
Cleared
An Imperial Rescript

Tomlinson
Danny Deever
Tommy
Fuzzy-Wuzzv
Soldier,
Soldier
Screw-Guns
Gunga Din
Oonts
Loot
"Snarleyow"

The Widow at Windsor
Belts

The Young British Soldier

Mandalay
Troopin'
Ford O' Kabul River
Route-Marchin'
DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES
I have eaten your bread and salt,

I have drunk your water and wine,
The deaths ye died I have watched
beside,
And the lives that ye led were mine.
Was there aught that I did not share
In vigil or toil or ease,
One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear hearts across the seas?
I have written the tale of our life
For a sheltered people's mirth,
In jesting guise--but ye are wise,

And ye know what the jest is worth.
GENERAL SUMMARY
We are very slightly changed
From the semi-apes who ranged
India's prehistoric clay;
Whoso drew the longest bow,
Ran his
brother down, you know,
As we run men down today.
"Dowb," the first of all his race,
Met the Mammoth face to face
On the lake or in the cave,
Stole the steadiest canoe,
Ate the quarry
others slew,
Died--and took the finest grave.
When they scratched the reindeer-bone
Someone made the sketch his
own,
Filched it from the artist--then,
Even in those early days,
Won a
simple Viceroy's praise

Through the toil of other men.
Ere they hewed the Sphinx's visage
Favoritism governed kissage,

Even as it does in this age.
Who shall doubt the secret hid
Under Cheops' pyramid
Was that the
contractor did
Cheops out of several millions?
Or that Joseph's sudden rise
To
Comptroller of Supplies
Was a fraud of monstrous size
On King Pharoah's swart Civilians?
Thus, the artless songs I sing
Do not deal with anything
New or never said before.
As it was in the beginning,
Is today official sinning,
And shall be forevermore.
ARMY HEADQUARTERS
Old is the song that I sing--
Old as my unpaid bills--
Old as the chicken that kitmutgars bring

Men at dak-bungalows--old as the Hills.
Ahasuerus Jenkins of the "Operatic Own"
Was dowered with a tenor
voice of super-Santley tone.
His views on equitation were, perhaps, a trifle queer;
He had no seat
worth mentioning, but oh! he had an ear.
He clubbed his wretched company a dozen times a day,
He used to
quit his charger in a parabolic way,
His method of saluting was the
joy of all beholders,
But Ahasuerus Jenkins had a head upon his

shoulders.
He took two months to Simla when the year was at the spring, And
underneath the deodars eternally did sing.
He warbled like a bulbul, but particularly at
Cornelia Agrippina who
was musical and fat.
She controlled a humble husband, who, in turn, controlled a Dept.,
Where Cornelia Agrippina's human singing-birds were kept
From
April to October on a plump retaining fee,
Supplied, of course, per
mensem, by the Indian Treasury.
Cornelia used to sing with him, and Jenkins used to play;
He praised
unblushingly her notes, for he was false as they: So when the winds of
April turned the budding roses brown,
Cornelia told her husband:
"Tom, you mustn't send him down."
They haled him from his regiment which didn't much regret him; They
found for him an office-stool, and on that stool they set him, To play
with maps and catalogues three idle