Dear list members,
On Tuesday 05 April 2011 John Radcliffe said:
JR> In the second verse of "The Last Chantey" in The
JR> Seven Seas, Kipling's celebration of the sea, the
JR> souls of the mariners say:
JR>
JR> "Our bones we'll leave the barracout', and God may sink
JR> the sea!"
JR>
JR> Can anyone advise on the meaning of 'barracout' ?
Ralph Durand's 1914 'A Handbook to the Poetry of Rudyard Kipling' glosses it [page 81] as the Barracuda, "a voracious perch-like fish in the West India seas that attains a length of ten feet".
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Yours sincerely,
Eric J Thompson, Reply to: [log in to unmask]
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