Danny Deever is a poem by Rudyard Kipling, first published on February 22, 1890 in the Scots Observer, in America later in the year, and printed as part of the Barrack-Room Ballads shortly thereafter. The poem is written in vernacular English, now seen as a common feature of Kipling's work. However, at the time it was quite unusual; this was the first of his published works to be written in the voice of the common soldier.
Critical reaction
Danny Deever is often seen as one of Kipling's most powerful early works, and was greeted with acclaim when first published being the subject of a (favourable) article in the Times within a month; David Masson, a professor of literature at the University of Edinburgh, is often reported (perhaps apocryphally) to have waved the magazine in which it appeared at his students, crying "Here's literature! Here's literature at last!". T.S. Eliot later called the poem "technically (as well as in content) remarkable".
About the poem
The form is a dialogue, between a young and inexperienced soldier (or soldiers; he is given as "Files-on-Parade") and a more experienced, older, NCO ("the Colour-Sergeant"). The setting is an execution, somewhere in India; a soldier, Danny Deever, has been tried and sentenced to death for murdering a comrade, and his battalion is paraded to see the hanging. This procedure strengthened discipline in the unit, by a process of deterrence, and helped inure inexperienced soldiers to the sight of death.
- "What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.
- "To turn you out, to turn you out", the Colour-Sergeant said.
- "What makes you look so white, so white?" said Files-on-Parade.
- "I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch", the Colour-Sergeant said.
- For they're hangin' Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play,
- The regiment's in 'ollow square -- they're hangin' him to-day;
- They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,
- An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.
Whilst the speech is not a direct representation of any single dialect, it serves to give a very clear effect of a working class English voice of the period. Note the "taken of his buttons off", a deliberate error, to add to the stylised speech; it refers to the ceremony of military degradation, where the man to be executed is formally stripped of any marks of rank, such as his stripes, or of significant parts of his uniform.
The four verses each consist of two questions asked by "Files" and answered by the Sergeant, and then another four lines of the Sergeant explaining, as above. These verses are strongly rhythmic - the first four lines always ending with the same words, and the latter three with an aaab rhyme scheme - which serves to reinforce the idea of drilling infantry by giving the effect of marching feet. The strong rhythm makes it, as with many of Kipling's ballads, a popular work to read aloud or to sing; at least a dozen published recordings are known, from 1893 to 1985. A musical setting by Walter Damrosch was described as "Teddy Roosevelt's favourite song".
Summary
The young soldier is unaware of what is happening, at first - he asks why the bugles are blowing, and why the Sergeant looks so pale, but is told that Deever is being hanged, and that the regiment is drawn up to see it. He presses the Sergeant further, in the second verse - why are people breathing so hard? why are some men collapsing? These signs of the effect of watching the hanging upon men of the regiment are explained away by the Sergeant as being due to the cold weather or the bright sun. The voice is reassuring, keeping the young soldier calm in the sight of death, just as the Sergeant will calm him with his voice in combat. In the third verse, Files thinks of Deever, saying that he slept alongside him, and drank with him, but the Sergeant reminds him that Deever is now alone, that he sleeps "out an' far to-night", and reminds the soldier of the magnitude of Deever's crime -
- For 'e shot a comrade sleepin' -- you must look 'im in the face;
- Nine 'undred of 'is county an' the regiment's disgrace,
(Nine hundred was roughly the number of men in a single infantry battalion, and as regiments were formed on local lines, most would have been from the same county; it is thus emphasised that his crime is a black mark against both the regiment, as a whole, and against his comrades.) The fourth verse brings us the hanging; Files sees the body against the sun, and then feels his soul as it "whimpers" overhead; the term reflects a shudder in the ranks as they watch Deever die. Finally, the Sergeant moves the men away - whilst it is not directly mentioned in the poem, they would be marched past the corpse on the gallows - reflecting that the recruits are shaking after their ordeal, and that "they'll want their beer to-day".
Some research has suggested that the poem was written with a specific incident in mind, the execution of one Private Flaxman of The Leicestershire Regiment, at Lucknow in 1887; a number of details of this execution are given in the Ayers background article. Kipling later used a version of Flaxman's story as a basis for the story Black Jack.
References
- Rudyard Kipling, Andrew Lycett. Phoenix, 2000. ISBN 0753810859
- Background notes on Danny Deever, by Roger Ayers
- Musical settings of Kipling's verse, ed. Brian Mattinson