-------------Forwarded Message-----------------
From: Peter Lewis, 106066.2074
To: Steve Steinke, INTERNET:[log in to unmask]
Date: 4/25/00 6:37 PM
RE: Unknown Kipling poem
I don't know a Kipling poem with the line you quote, but there is one with
a very similar refrain. It's called 'The Song of the Banjo' ('You
couldn't pack a Broadwood half a mile'). It's all about how young men
take banjos into the remotest corners of the Empire and sing popular songs
to the sound of them, in order to remember their homes. Each verse ends
with a quatrain of which the first line is something like 'With my
tunka-tunka-tunka-tunka tunk'. One such line reads 'With my
Ta-ra-rara-rara-ra-ra-rrp!' Could your memory have confused this with the
popular music-hall song 'Tarara- boomdeay?' Or I suppose somebody might
have parodied it with the title 'Jungle Drums', but if so, I haven't come
across this.
There is a Kipling poem about drums passing rumours. It comes
with the story 'A Sahib's War' in Traffics and Discoveries, and in the
verse collections it has the title 'The Runners' ('News!'). But its metre
is quite different: 'What is the word that they tell - Now - Now - Now - /
The little drums beating in the bazaars?' Hope this may help you! Lisa
Lewis
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