Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads

And muttered aloud, “So you kept that jade earring!”

Then nodded, and kindly, as friend nods to friend,
“Old man, you fought well, but you lost in the end.”

The visions departed, and Shame followed Passion: —
“He took what I said in this horrible fashion,

“I’ll write to Harendra!”  With language unsainted
The Captain came back to the Bride…who had fainted.

And this is a fiction?  No.  Go to Simoorie
And look at their baby, a twelve-month old Houri,
A pert little, Irish-eyed Kathleen Mavournin —
She’s always about on the Mall of a mornin’ —

And you’ll see, if her right shoulder-strap is displaced,
This:  Gules upon argent, a Boh’s Head, erased!

THE LAMENT OF THE BORDER CATTLE THIEF

O woe is me for the merry life
I led beyond the Bar,
And a treble woe for my winsome wife
That weeps at Shalimar.

They have taken away my long jezail,
My shield and sabre fine,
And heaved me into the Central jail
For lifting of the kine.

The steer may low within the byre,
The Jat may tend his grain,
But there’ll be neither loot nor fire
Till I come back again.

And God have mercy on the Jat
When once my fetters fall,
And Heaven defend the farmer’s hut
When I am loosed from thrall.

It’s woe to bend the stubborn back
Above the grinching quern,
It’s woe to hear the leg-bar clack
And jingle when I turn!

But for the sorrow and the shame,
The brand on me and mine,
I’ll pay you back in leaping flame
And loss of the butchered kine.

For every cow I spared before
In charity set free,
If I may reach my hold once more
I’ll reive an honest three.

For every time I raised the low
That scared the dusty plain,
By sword and cord, by torch and tow
I’ll light the land with twain!

Ride hard, ride hard to Abazai,
Young Sahib with the yellow hair —
Lie close, lie close as khuttucks lie,
Fat herds below Bonair!

The one I’ll shoot at twilight-tide,
At dawn I’ll drive the other;
The black shall mourn for hoof and hide,
The white man for his brother.

‘Tis war, red war, I’ll give you then,
War till my sinews fail;
For the wrong you have done to a chief of men,
And a thief of the Zukka Kheyl.

And if I fall to your hand afresh
I give you leave for the sin,
That you cram my throat with the foul pig’s flesh,
And swing me in the skin!

THE RHYME OF THE THREE CAPTAINS

This ballad appears to refer to one of the exploits of the notorious Paul
Jones, the American pirate.  It is founded on fact.
… At the close of a winter day,
Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay;
And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye,
And one was Lord of the Wessex coast and all the lands thereby,
And one was Master of the Thames from Limehouse to Blackwall,
And he was Captain of the Fleet – the bravest of them all.

Their good guns guarded their great gray sides that were thirty foot in the sheer,
When there came a certain trading-brig with news of a privateer.

Her rigging was rough with the clotted drift that drives in a Northern breeze,
Her sides were clogged with the lazy weed that spawns in the Eastern seas.

Light she rode in the rude tide-rip, to left and right she rolled,
And the skipper sat on the scuttle-butt and stared at an empty hold.