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Second Educational Section, Third Cover Page

BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

No. MCCCXLII.'

AUGUST 1927.

VOL. CCXXII.

SOME KIPLING ORIGINS.

BY LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR GEORGE MACMUNN, K.C.B., K.C.S.I., D.S.O.

TERENCE MULVANEY.

THE story recently come home from India of the finding of two children, aged two and eight, children of an aboriginal tribe, in a wolf's lair in Bengal has revived interest in Mowgli, the wolf-cub-imp of charming memory in the Kipling story. But it is only one more instance of the genuine nature of the origins from which Mr Kipling's stories and characters have been woven.

It has been my happy lot to soldier for the last thirtyseven years, and to spend twenty-five of them covering the length and breadth of India and Burma: sometimes at the head of a party of mounted infantry, sometimes on the mountain-side "along of my old brown mule," sometimes at the head of a battery of field artillery, lately as the Quartermaster-General of the

VOL. CCXXII. NO. MCCCXLII.

Army. When I first went out to the shiny East, the earlier stories of Rudyard Kipling were just appearing in volume form, to the huge delight of the services-' Plain Tales from the Hills,' 'Wee Willie Winkie,' and the like, and they at once stirred my imagination to observe, and enjoy all that the East could show me. It has since been my pleasure to look for the origins of these wonderful stories, and sometimes I have found them in simple places, and sometimes in tortuous ways. The old soldier in those early days in the Army had not quite disappeared, and a few were still to be seen not many, but sufficient of the Mulvaney type to show how true the study was to nature. The whole British Army in the first half of the nineteenth century was full of Irishry

F

The European troops of the Honourable East India Company were almost entirely drawn from the Emerald Isle, as witness the names on the battle memorials at Ferozeshah, Chillianwallah, and Delhi; and hence that delightful story of Namgay Doolah, the offspring of an Irish soldier married to a hill girl of the Himalaya, the shrine with the old shakoe and the wreath of marigolds, and the perverted folk-song that once was "The wearing o' the green."

But the wealth of his Irish colour Mr Kipling picked up from Quartermaster - Sergeant Bancroft, late of the 1st Troop, Second Brigade, Bengal Horse Artillery, who had settled in the bills near Simla, and from whom Kipling must have either heard by word of mouth, or else seen the manuscript of an obscure and fascinating pamphlet that was published later with Mr Bancroft's memoirs. Listen to his stories of the wisdom of Gunner Terence O'Shaughnessy, and you will see where Terence Mulvaney got his knowledge of women. This old soldier in the same troop discourses to young Bancroft of the families of the troops away up in Kabul in 1840 who have been left behind at the then populous cantonment of Kurnaul, now abandoned, who had been waiting for a couple of years for their men to return, and are restive: "And the natural consequins is that thim that know their

husband is dead wants to git anither, then again thim grass widdy's isn't partiklar, thim anshint ould maids is av the same opinion wid thim, and as for the young crathurs, why, av coorse, they want to sail in the same boat. Begorra Kurnaul's a grate place for a tinder-harted yuth like me." There is Dinah Shad and old Pummeloe and "M'Kenna me man" standing in the life in Bancroft's colour-box for the artist to make his inimitable pictures from. It was in Bancroft's troop of Horse Artillery, too, that the incident of Snarleyow occurred.

That soft Irish accent seems to be gone from the world, banished perhaps by the green pillar-boxes; I ran into it the other day, nevertheless. A tall soldierly figure stopped me. "I beg your pardon, sorr; but Oi'm just out of Lewes Jail!"

"Now what have you been doing to get into Lewes Jail, old soldier ?" I queried.

"The very same thing as Oi'm doing now, sorr: begging in the shtreets."

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