| In the Neolithic Age | |
|---|---|
| by Rudyard Kipling | |
| First published in |
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| Publication date | 1892 |
| Full text | |
 The Seven Seas/In the Neolithic Age at Wikisource | |
"In the Neolithic Age" is a poem by the English writer Rudyard Kipling. It was published in the December 1892 issue of The Idler and in 1896 in his poetry collection The Seven Seas . The poem is the source of the quotation: "There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, / And every single one of them is right."
The poem was published in the December 1892 issue of the literary magazine The Idler as the introduction to Kipling's article "My First Book", with the title "Primum Tempus". [2] Kipling experimented with a variety of styles in his poetry. He had also been reluctant to criticize other writers after becoming well known. [1]
In 1896, now titled "In the Neolithic Age", the poem was published in Kipling's next volume of poetry, The Seven Seas. He placed it between two other poems about tribal singers, "The Last Rhyme of True Thomas" and "The Story of Ung". [3]
The narrator is a Stone Age tribal singer who reacts badly to criticism of his work. He also deals badly with other artists whose work he dislikes. He kills a younger singer as well as a cave painter. [4]
Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting-dogs fed full,
And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dead,
For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong." [5]— Stanza 4
His actions are noticed by his tribe's totem, who visits him in a dream. [4]
But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole-shrine he came,
And he told me in a vision of the night:—
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right!" [5]— Stanza 5
In the second half of the poem the narrator has been reincarnated as a present-day poet. "And I stepped beneath Time's finger, once again a tribal singer / [And a minor poet certified by Tr—ll]." In January 1892 H. D. Traill had published an article "Our Minor Poets". In March he published a sequel which added Kipling to the list. This stanza was omitted when the poem was published in The Idler. [6]
The poet finds his fellows still neglecting their own work to criticize others.
Here's my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose
And the reindeer roared where Paris roars to-night:—
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And—every—single—one—of—them—is—right!" [5]— Stanza 10
The collection The Seven Seas was praised in the American press by Charles Eliot Norton in the Atlantic Monthly and William Dean Howells in McClure's Magazine . [3] In London the Saturday Review's response was mixed. It begins by considering "In the Neolithic Age" and its two companion tribal singer poems to be "all excessively clever" and an attempt to "instruct the reviewer what to say". The review continues: "No, dear Kipling, there is only one way..." [7]
In 1993 Leslie Fish set the poem to music and recorded it with Joe Bethancourt on their album Our Fathers of Old. [8] This is the third album Fish has done based on Kipling's poems. [1]
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"Mandalay" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling, written and published in 1890, and first collected in Barrack-Room Ballads, and Other Verses in 1892. The poem is set in colonial Burma, then part of British India. The protagonist is a Cockney working-class soldier, back in grey, restrictive London, recalling the time he felt free and had a Burmese girlfriend, now unattainably far away.
"My Boy Jack" is a 1916 poem by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling wrote it for Jack Cornwell, the 16-year-old youngest recipient of the Victoria Cross, who stayed by his post on board the light cruiser HMS Chester at the Battle of Jutland until he died. Kipling's son John was never referred to as "Jack". The poem echoes the grief of all parents who lost sons in the First World War. John Kipling was a 2nd Lt in the Irish Guards and disappeared in September 1915 during the Battle of Loos in the First World War. The poem was published as a prelude to a story in his book Sea Warfare written about the Battle of Jutland in 1916. The imagery and theme is maritime in nature and as such it is about a generic nautical Jack, though emotionally affected by the death of Kipling's son.
In the British Army, a gentleman ranker is an enlisted soldier who is suited through education and social background to be a commissioned officer, or indeed a former commissioned officer. Rudyard Kipling titled one of his poems, which was published in 1892, "Gentlemen-Rankers".
"The King's Pilgrimage" is a poem and book about the journey made by King George V in May 1922 to visit the World War I cemeteries and memorials being constructed at the time in France and Belgium by the Imperial War Graves Commission. This journey was part of the wider pilgrimage movement that saw tens of thousands of bereaved relatives from the United Kingdom and the Empire visit the battlefields of the Great War in the years that followed the Armistice. The poem was written by the British author and poet Rudyard Kipling, while the text in the book is attributed to the Australian journalist and author Frank Fox. Aspects of the pilgrimage were also described by Kipling within the short story "The Debt" (1930).
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The Seven Seas is a book of poetry by Rudyard Kipling published 1896. Poems include "Hymn Before Action", "In the Neolithic Age", "The Lost Legion", "The Mary Gloster", and "McAndrew's Hymn".
"Wireless" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in Scribner's Magazine in 1902, and was later collected in Traffics and Discoveries. The sister-poem accompanying it, Butterflies or Kaspar's Song in Varda, Kipling claimed to have been a translation of an old Swedish poem, although this claim is unsubstantiated.
George Wylie Hutchinson (1852–1942) was a painter and leading illustrator in Britain and was from Great Village, Nova Scotia, Canada. He illustrated the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Hall Caine, Robert Louis Stevenson and Israel Zangwill. His paintings inspired the poem "Large Bad Picture" and "Poem", both by Elizabeth Bishop, his great grand niece. Hutchinson was a contributor to and subject of the novel The Master (1895) by Israel Zangwill, with whom he was a close friend.
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