Ford o’ Kabul River

I was probably about six when I read Kipling’s Just So Stories for myself (my mother had read some of them aloud to me when I was little). I was only a little bit older when I read The Jungle Books. It was after I read The Jungle Books that I began to spend time as a wolf.

On the strength of this passion for The Jungle Books, a year or two later I was given a large number of old Tauchnitz editions of Kipling's stories and poems, all bound in black, some of them repaired with cloth tape, that had come down through the family since, I would guess, the time of my mother's grandfather. Strong meat for a child, some of those stories. And The Phantom Rickshaw had to go back into the cupboard for a few years because it gave me nightmares. But on the whole, I loved those books passionately; reread them continually; dreamed of sea serpents, and British Tommies in India, and reincarnated galley slaves; and gradually learned to understand them.

Kipling has been given a bad press for decades now. He is accused of being an imperialist – which he was; he was, after all, an Anglo-Indian; and he is called a racist, which I am not at all sure is exactly fair. Certainly, he was notably philo-Semite for his time (contrast the egregiously anti-Semitic John Buchan) and if he sometimes mocked and patronised the Indians he wrote about, he also often mocked, with far more savagery, the obtuseness of the Britons who presumed to govern them without understanding them. And in many places in his work he strikes a note of deep respect, admiration and warmth for the Indian characters he writes about.

He has also been attacked by at least one critic for adopting a Cockney accent and idiom for his ‘Barrack Room Ballads’. Damned if I can see a reason, apart from good old traditional Establishment snobbery. Well, I am a Greater London cockney, and poetry in a cockney accent sounds okay to me.

Ford o’ Kabul River

Kabul town’s by Kabul river
Blow the bugle, draw the sword—
There I lef’ my mate for ever,
Wet an’ drippin’ by the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
There’s the river up and brimmin’,
     an’ there’s ’arf a squadron swimmin’
’Cross the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark.

Kabul town’s a blasted place
Blow the bugle, draw the sword—
’Strewth I shan’t forget ‘is face
Wet an’ drippin’ by the ford!
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
Keep the crossing-stakes beside you,
     an’ they will surely guide you
’Cross the ford of Kabul river in the dark.

Kabul town is sun and dust
Blow the bugle, draw the sword—
I’d ha’ sooner drownded fust
’Stead of ’im beside the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
You can ’ear the ’orses threshin’,
     you can ’ear the men a-splashin’,
’Cross the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark.

Kabul town was ours to take
Blow the bugle, draw the sword—
I’d ha’ left it for ’is sake—
’Im that left me by the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
It’s none so bloomin’ dry there;
     ain’t you never comin’ nigh there,
’Cross the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark?

Kabul town’ll go to hell
Blow the bugle, draw the sword—
’Fore I see him ’live an’ well—
’Im the best beside the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
Gawd ’elp ’em if they blunder,
     for their boots’ll pull ’em under,
By the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark.

Turn your ’orse from Kabul town
Blow the bugle, draw the sword—
’Im an’ ’arf my troop is down,
Down an’ drownded by the ford.
Ford, ford, ford o’ Kabul river,
Ford o’ Kabul river in the dark!
There’s the river low an’ fallin’,
     but it ain’t no use o’ callin’
’Cross the ford o’ Kabul river in the dark.

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)


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