I don’t know a thing about the geography in question, and less about Kipling; my understanding of the song is purely based on hearing a very good local folk singer, Jeff Warner, sing it several times. I always took it that the song was sung in character – the character of a thoroughly ignorant British sailor indulging in a heavily sentimental nostalgia for something he barely understood.
I’m going with the theory that he was experimenting with hallucogenics when he wrote it, in much the same way that Coleridge wrote some of his greatest works while on Laudenaum.
But then again I am completely wasting your time.
That musical setting was written by Oley Speaks in 1907. Wiki claims the sheet music sold over one million copies. Oley Speaks - Wikipedia
Sheet music IN Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana - Item Details
I know this is an old thread but I feel that it is doing the poem an injustice to leave the debate as it stands. My view is that to pick a ballad such as this to pieces looking for a strict factual basis is pedantic. Shouldn’t we instead be asking questions it terms of the sentiment the poem generates?
However, to answer some of the cal’s questions as they stand based on I formation now freely available on the Internet,
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Kipling’s knowledge of Burma was gleaned first hand from a brief visit which took in some of the places he mentions in the poem.
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the “road” to Mandalay, to which he refers consisted in its largest part of a 700km voyage up the Irrawaddy River from Rangoon to “Moulmein”, followed by a 200km road trip to Mandalay. Hence the “flying fishes”.
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Kipling was well aware of the direction of China in relation to Moulmein, he discusses the the contradiction in terms of its use as a narrative device in his books Something of Myself (p. 222.)
I feel that it is important to remember that we are discussing a poem, and poems are not meant to be read in a literal was.
My main source is the page of the Kipling Society at Mandalay – The Kipling Society
Perhaps I should add that I am not a particular fan of Kipling.
I began this thread not realizing it was a zombie, then looked up yet another article at the Kipling Society, on the larger topic of Kipling & Burma. In which an earlier poem complains about the numerous names used for the same places in the country we now call Myanmar.
Yes, Mandalay is a poem–not a travel guide. Kipling spent most of his Indian life in areas quite distant from Burma. Of course it’s easy to criticize his love for the Empire. But, in his day, who was creating art explaining the evils of imperialism? The more educated British artistes mostly ignored anything outside their little world at home. (Kipling’s parents couldn’t afford university, so he’d returned to India at 16 to begin a journalism career.)
When Kipling is good he is very good & I still love Kim.
It’s just romanticism and words that sound good to his ear. I used to fret over Robert Service’s poem “The Cremation of Sam McGee”. The poem has references to Lake LeBarge. It’s actually Lake LaBerge, which Service had to be completely aware of as someone who traveled that route along the Yukon. I guess he liked the sound of “. . .there on the marge of Lake LeBarge. . .” instead of “the verge of Lake LaBerge”. Or maybe he was an idiot.
I know this is a zombie, but somehow a key point about the poem was missed, and THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG ON THE INTERNET…
The British soldier narrating the poem is clearly back in London, and reminiscing about his youth in the Far East. The Road to Mandalay starts in London, but there are no (sorry, ain’t no) buses running.
I don’t have any clue why the dawn comes up out of China across the Bay, however.
The “comes up like thunder” is because of the notorious suddenness of equatorial sunrises and sunsets. We in the horse latitudes are used to lingering twilights, but in the tropics, the sun sets and it’s night…boom. The sun rises and it’s day…boom.
It seems to me that the road to Mandalay, for a British soldier of the time, might well be expected include a sea crossing of the Bay of Bengal, perhaps from somewhere like Madras. The soldier might be imagining waiting in Madras (or somewhere else on the east coast of India) for the ship to arrive to take him to Burma, and looking out over the bay, seeing the sunrise out of Indochina/China to the east. The flying fishes wold most likely be seen during the voyage itself.
Other recordings include the one by Peter Dawson, which is the standard tune in England
and the one with the same tune as the Sinatra recording
this tune is credited on the Harold Williams 78rpm recording I have here as ‘Kipling/Hedgecock’
“I came to Mandalay for the waters…I was misinformed.”
A small girl recites this poem in the Saki short story, “The Storyteller.” At least…
“The smaller girl created a diversion by beginning to recite “On the Road to Mandalay.” She only knew the first line, but she put her limited knowledge to the fullest possible use. She repeated the line over and over again in a dreamy but resolute and very audible voice; it seemed to the bachelor as though some one had had a bet with her that she could not repeat the line aloud two thousand times without stopping. Whoever it was who had made the wager was likely to lose his bet.”
I love Saki!
I alwayd thought it was a song aimed at British soldiers and expats who had either literally left a girl they kinda loved in some colonial port or other, or just loved living that area and have had to leave. The poem references several common places for British expats/soldiers to go, and just conflates them. Kipling was not exactly a stranger to the area, and I doubt he meant the geography literally.
Zombie CalMeacham here.
I appreciate the comments, and I know that you shouldn’t hold a poem to strict geographical accuracy, but the disparity between the geography and the reality is ludicrously broad. You’d appreciate it if you translated it into places you’re familiar with. When it’s that far out of whack – especially considering that Kipling had visited the area, it’s jarring.
And to all those who say “but it’s on the Road to Mandalay – it doesn’t say the flying fish were there. He saw them on the way”, I refer you to my OP. If I sang a song about my trip up from the Gulf of Mexico to a point well inland in the US that contained the line “On the Road to Minneapolis/where the flying fishes play”, you’d think I was a bit loony. And if I defended it by saying that I saw the flying fish on my way to Minneapolis, you’d be sure of it.
How about the interpretation that the narrator is a person of small education who thinks he knows and understands the East a good deal better than he does? He reminisces about events and people long ago.
Possible, but it puts a whole new meaning to the poem and song, doesn’t it? The guy is saying an awful lot of stuff that makes no geographical sense. It’s just not immediately obvious to me because I’m not that familiar with the region. But if the poem/song was rewritten in terms I’m familiar with, I’d hear and understand the geographical howlers right off the bat.
Hmm. 4 years ago I forgot to mention that “Mandalay” is quoted in “The Wizard of Oz” movie. The Cowardly Lion says, “What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage.”
Kipling himself on the subject: -
Had I opened the chorus of the song with Oh' instead of 'On the road,' etc., it might have shown that the song was a sort of general mix-up of the singer's Far-Eastern memories against a background of the Bay of Bengal as seen at dawn from-a troop-ship taking him there. But On ’ in this case was more singable than `Oh.’ That simple explanation may stand as a warning. [Something of Myself.)
So it is a nostalgic soldier’s memories of the whole of the British Far East (or at least the bits that he knows), inspired by seeing the Bay of Bengal at dawn.
I may be giving Kipling too much credit for subtlety here, but it seems to me you can make a good argument that the geographic misinformation is deliberate.
The poem is the reminiscence of (as someone said above) a not-well educated lower-to-lower-middle-class Englishman who probably wasn’t paying much attention to maps when he was in Burma. It’s later in his life and he’s back in England, where things aren’t going well–it rains all the time, and life is rather stiff and formal, and the women lack a certain something–and he is recalling the glory days of how wonderful everything was back in the East.
And not necessarily doing a very good or very accurate job of it. (“I know she thinks of me”–well, maybe. Bet she doesn’t!) He’s got grass-is-always-greener syndrome, lost-youth syndrome, and the geographical muddle is a symptom of all that. It isn’t as though he knew Burma incredibly well, in other words, and is yearning for a life he actually lived there; it’s a nostalgia-tinged recollection that says “That was better than this.” All he really recalls is a few scattered highlights and a woman, and he’s woven it into a semi-coherent story, but it isn’t really.
I have no way of knowing, but I wonder if the geographical inconsistencies would’ve been clear to Kipling’s readers at the time and helped them form a picture of the man he’s writing about.
No, I do not agree. Not if the song were about a journey from, say Rio de Janeiro, sung by to Minneapolis and consisted largely of an ocean voyage followed by voyage up the Mississippi, and were being sung in Rio to someone resident in Rio. The ocean voyage would be a large part of the “road” and you would not be surprised to see flying fish during it. It would not be at all absurd for a resident of Rio to think of the “road” to Minneapolis as evoking eh sight of flying fish. Likewise, the actual song is being sung not by or to someone already in Burma but by and too someone in Britain (or maybe India).