'Eathen, The

DESCRIPTION: "The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood an' stone... An' then comes up the Regiment an' pokes the 'eathen out." "All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess, All along o' doin' things rather-more-or-less," the recruit learns to be a soldier
AUTHOR: Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
EARLIEST DATE: 1896 (McClure's Magazine, according to the Kipling Society page for the poem)
KEYWORDS: soldier foreigner
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood, p. 169, "All along of dirtiness, all along of mess" (1 fragment)
Roud #25406
NOTES [129 words]: The first lines of this are derived from two lines in the hymn, "From Greenland's Icy Mountains": "The heathen in his blindness Bows down to wood and stone" (last two lines in the second verse of the version I found online). The Kipling Society page explains that Kipling is comparing the process of turning a recruit into a soldier to that of converting a "heathen" into a Christian -- more specifically, probably, an Anglican. The Kipling Society thinks (and I also think) that Kipling was not as insistent upon this conversion as were many of the mindless, bumbling junior officers who often served in British colonies -- men who were often the excess sons of useless noble and gentry families. (And I say that as one who generally approves of the British aristocracy.) - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: KSUC169A

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