Selected Stories by Rudyard Kipling by Rudyard Kipling
3. Bouverie-Byzantine style: Elaborate journalese, Bouverie Street, off Fleet Street in London, being the place of publication of several newspapers.
4. Dinah: See ‘The Courting of Dinah Shadd’.
5. garance: A red dye from the madder root.
6. chow-chow: Chinese preserve of ginger, orange peel etc., in syrup.
7. deaf as the adders o’ Scripture: Psalms 58:4: ‘even like the deaf adder which stoppeth her ears; which refuseth to hear the voice of the charmer: charm he never so wisely.’
8. Shekinah: Vision of the divine presence; with a sense here of what he reveres most.
9. compound: Engine with multiple stages in which steam used in one is used again in another.
10. donkeys: Donkey-engines; small auxiliary engines for loading cargo, etc.
11. non plus ultra: More correctly ne plus ultra: the ultimate limit (Latin).
12. Quem Deus vult… dementat: Whom God wishes to destroy he first drives mad (Latin).
13. Hoor: Whore. (Cf. Revelation 17:1–18.)
14. Gehenna: Hell.
15. cuddy: Cabin.
16. gyte: Mad.
17. seriatim: In sequence (Latin).
18. speered: Enquired.
19. Gowk: Idiot.
20. bitts: Strong posts on a ship’s deck for securing mooring lines.
21. lazareetes: Sc. lazarettes, small lockers at the stern or between the decks of a ship.
22. crack: Up to the mark.
23. Eddystone: A lighthouse marking dangerous rocks.
24. Judeeas Apella: Sc. Judaeus Apella, Apella the Jew, in Horace, Satires, i:5.
‘They’
1. ‘They’: First published in Scribner’s Magazine, August 1904; collected in Traffics and Discoveries, 1904. Behind the delicate pathos of this story lies Kipling’s grief at the death of his little daughter Josephine, aged six, in 1899.
2. that precise hamlet: Washington, in Sussex (though Washington, DC, is named after the first President of the United States, not after this village).
3. the Egg: A reference to the ancient belief that the world was egg-shaped and derived from an egg hatched by a Creator – sometimes this is termed the mundane egg. Here it seems to image spiritual reality.
4. tax cart: Light farm-cart exempt from taxation.
5. Æculapius: God of medicine. The oath is the Hippocratic Oath (Hippocrates being ‘the father of medicine’ and a follower of Aesculapius) in which doctors undertake to practise their art for the benefit of their patients.
6. the Fathers: i.e., the Fathers of the Church.
7. In the pleasant orchard-closes…: From ‘The Lost Bower’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61).
8. no unpassable iron: Referring to the folklore belief that iron could drive away spirits or stop them from entering.
The Mother Hive
1. The Mother Hive: First published in Collier’s Weekly, 20 November 1908; collected in Actions and Reactions, 1909.
2. Melissa: Greek word for a bee.
3. carissima: dearest (Italian).
4. what the trumpet was to Job’s war-horse: A summons to battle, joyfully accepted. (‘He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting’ Job 39:2.)
5. La Reine le veult: The Queen wishes it. In parliamentary usage this phrase indicates the Royal Assent.
6. garmed: Smeared.
7. kopje: Boer word for small hill.
8. Ygdrasil: In Norse mythology the world-tree, connecting heaven, earth and hell.
9. Hymettus: Mountain near Athens, famous for its honey.
10. post hoc with propter hoc: After this with because of this.
Marklake Witches
1. Marklake Witches: First published in Rewards and Fairies, 1910.
2. Dan and Una: Dan and Una are based on Kipling’s children John and Elsie, figure in Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) and Rewards and Fairies (1910), in both of which Puck, a benevolent hobgoblin, introduces them to characters who lived in Sussex in past ages.
3. a great French physician: Kipling is alluding to René Théophile Hyacinthe Laennec (1781–1826), a well-known French physician, later Professor of Medicine at the Collège de France, who began experiments which resulted in the development of the stethoscope.
4. from Wesley to Wellesley: Sir Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), spelt his name ‘Wesley’ until 1798, when he adopted the form ‘Wellesley’.
5. confrère: Colleague.
6. canaille: Roughs, rabble.
7. syncope: Fainting-fit.
8. vandyked: With a large series of points, forming a border.
9. morone: Maroon.
10. en grande tenue: In full dress.
11. Assaye: The battle in which Wellesley inflicted a major defeat on the Mahrattas in 1803.
12. accablés: Overwhelmed.
13. Assez… Assez: Enough, Mademoiselle! It is too much for me! Enough!
The Knife and the Naked Chalk
1. The Knife and the Naked Chalk: First published in Harper’s Magazine, December 1909; collected in Rewards and Fairies.
2. bivvering: Hovering.
3. baffed: Brushed.
4. What else could I have done?: The leitmotif, according to Kipling, of the stories in Rewards and Fairies. Cf. p. 422 above.
5. Tyr: The god of war and victory in Scandinavian mythology (the Teutonic Tiw), one of whose hands was bitten off by the demonic wolf Fenris, in whose mouth Tyr had placed it as a pledge.
6. Oak, and Ash, and Thorn: Used by Puck as a spell to make the children forget what they have heard, for the time being.
‘My Son’s Wife’
1. ‘My Son’s Wife’: First published in A Diversity of Creatures, 1917, but attributed by Kipling to 1913. The title is provided by a phrase from Jean Ingelow’s poem ‘The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire, 1571’, which is quoted throughout the story (cf. ‘At the Pit’s Mouth’, note 2).
2. the disease of the century: Mal du siècle – a pervasive sense of melancholy and disenchantment.
3. vie intime: Private and secret life.
4. Liris – out of Horace: Horace’s Odes, iii:17, contains a reference to ‘the Liris where it floods Marica’s shores’, and there is another reference to this stream in Odes, i:31.
5. Eliphaz… Naamathite: Job’s comforters (Job 2:11–13) who came to mourn with him in his misfortune.
6. Ne sit ancillae: From Horace, Odes, ii:4: ‘Let not the love of thy handmaiden shame thee.’
7. Bartolozzi: Painter and engraver (1728–1815).
8. preserved: i.e., reared pheasants, which the hunt would have disturbed.
9. James Pigg – and Batsey: Characters in the works of R. S. Surtees (1805–64) which include Handley Cross (1843), and which portray the hunting world, especially the exploits of Mr Jorrocks, a London sportsman–grocer.
10. ‘the set grey life and apathetic end’: From Tennyson’s poem, ‘Love and Duty’, 1842.
11. Alsatia: Whitefriars district of London which was once a sanctuary for criminals.
12. the young man… horse-flesh: A not wholly accurate quotation from Surtees’s Handley Cross.
13. cubbing: Hunting young foxes.
14. Injecto ter pulvere: Dust having been thrown on it three times (Latin).
15. Sortes Surteesianae: By analogy with sortes Virgilianae – a kind of divination by opening Virgil’s work at random and reading whatever lines presented themselves.
Mary Postgate
1. Mary Postgate: First published in Nash’s Magazine and the Century Magazine, September 1915 (the month before Kipling’s son John was killed in the Battle of Loos); collected in A Diversity of Creatures.
2. Contrexeville: French mineral water from the spa of that name.
3. Laty: Lady.
4. Cassée. Tout cassée: Broken. All broken (French).
5. Che me rends. Le médicin: I surrender. The doctor (French
6. Ich haben… gesehn: I have seen the dead child (German).
The Wish House
1. The Wish House: First published in Maclean’s Magazine, 15 October 1924; collected in Debits and Credits, 1926.
2. list-bound: Bound with cheap cloth-material.
3. rugg: Tear, pull violently.
4. hoppin’: ‘Hop-picking’ (Kipling).
The Gardener
1. The Gardener: First published in McCall’s Magazine, April 1925; collected in Debits and Credits.
2. William the Conqueror: William was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Normandy.
3. threw themselves into the Line: Enlisted as privates so as to get to the Front quickly.
4. K.: Field Marshal Lord Kitchener (1850–1916), then Secretary of State for War.
5. the Salient: At Ypres.
6. found, identified, and re-interred: Kipling became a member of the Imperial War Graves Commission in 1917. His own son’s body was never found after he was listed ‘Missing’ in October 1915.
7. A.S.C.: Army Service Corps.
8. supposing him to be the gardener: Cf. John 20:15: ‘Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him…’
Rudyard Kipling, Selected Stories by Rudyard Kipling
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