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"The Taking of Lungtungpen" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling which was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on 11 April 1887. In book form, the story appeared in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection.
The story is about one of Kipling's three private soldiers, Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris, whose adventures are further related in his collection of short stories Soldiers Three : Terence Mulvaney.
This story tells "how Privit Mulvaney tuk the town av Lungtungpen", in his own words (Kipling represents him conventionally as an Irish speaker of English). Mulvaney, who continually blots his copybook (and loses promotions and good conduct badges from his habit of "wan big dhrink a month") is nevertheless a fine soldier. When he is patrolling Burma against dacoits with 24 young recruits under Lieutenant Brazenose, they capture a suspect. Mulvaney, with an interpreter, takes the prisoner aside and "trates him tinderly" [='treats him tenderly'] with a cleaning rod. This example of army brutality extracts the information that there is a town called Lungtungpen, a haunt of dacoits, 9 miles away, 'across the river'.
Mulvaney persuades the Lieutenant not to await reinforcements, but to "visit" Lungtungpen that night. Mulvaney is in the lead when they come to the river, and tells the four men with him to strip and swim across. Two of them can't swim, but they use a tree trunk for flotation and cross the river – despite their discovery that "That shtrame [= stream] was miles woide!" When they reach the other side, in the dark they have landed on the river wall of Lungtungpen, and a fierce fight ensues – but the British are so close under the wall that, in the dark, the Burmese fire passes harmlessly over their heads.
After reinforcements arrive, the British – still naked from their swim – go in with bayonets and the butts of their rifles, as well as their ammunition. They kill 75 Burmese. They then hold "the most ondasint p'rade [= 'indecent parade'] I iver tuk a hand in", with only eight men having even belt and pouches on; the rest are "as naked as Venus". While half of them dress, the other half patrol the town, with the women laughing at them.
The moral of this story, to Mulvaney, is that it shows what three-year enlisted men can do, and why he values them above more experienced men, who would have been much more cautious. These would defeat European armies as well as dacoits. "They tuk Lungtungpen nakid; an' they'd take St. Pethersburg in their dhrawers!" Kipling appears to value the British soldier highly (see Barrack-Room Ballads (1892), Soldiers Three (1888) and many other works throughout his career).
However, the modern western reader – often lacking experience in similar cultures – may wonder at the casual imperial acceptance of brutality and a shocking casualty rate. To such a reader, it stretches credibility that women who have been widowed in this attack – and impoverished by the looting that Mulvaney relates – would laugh at the naked invaders. George Orwell, while serving with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, observed this type of behaviour and found it extremely distasteful. Such experiences provided some of the material for his later literary career.
All quotations in this article have been taken from the Uniform Edition of Plain Tales from the Hills published by Macmillan & Co., Limited in London in 1899. The text is that of the third edition (1890), and the author of the article has used his own copy of the 1923 reprint. Further comment, including page-by-page notes, can be found on the Kipling Society's website, at .
Dacoity is a term used for "banditry" in the Indian subcontinent. The spelling is the anglicised version of the Hindi word डाकू (daaku); "dacoit" is a colloquial Indian English word with this meaning and it appears in the Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases (1903). Banditry is criminal activity involving robbery by groups of armed bandits. The East India Company established the Thuggee and Dacoity Department in 1830, and the Thuggee and Dacoity Suppression Acts, 1836–1848 were enacted in British India under East India Company rule. Areas with ravines or forests, such as Chambal and Chilapata Forests, were once known for dacoits.
This is a bibliography of works by Rudyard Kipling, including books, short stories, poems, and collections of his works.
Kim is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning English author Rudyard Kipling. It was first published serially in McClure's Magazine from December 1900 to October 1901 as well as in Cassell's Magazine from January to November 1901, and first published in book form by Macmillan & Co. Ltd in October 1901. The novel is notable for its detailed portrait of the people, culture, and varied religions of India. "The book presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road." The story unfolds against the backdrop of the Great Game, the political conflict between Russia and Britain in Central Asia. The novel popularized the phrase and idea of the Great Game.
Stalky & Co. is a novel by Rudyard Kipling about adolescent boys at a British boarding school. It is a collection of school stories whose three juvenile protagonists display a know-it-all, cynical outlook on patriotism and authority. It was first published in 1899 after the stories had appeared in magazines during the previous two years. It is set at a school dubbed "the College" or "the Coll.", which is based on the actual United Services College that Kipling attended as a boy.
"Danny Deever" is an 1890 poem by Rudyard Kipling, one of the first of the Barrack-Room Ballads. It received wide critical and popular acclaim, and is often regarded as one of the most significant pieces of Kipling's early verse. The poem, a ballad, describes the execution of a British soldier in India for murder. His execution is viewed by his regiment, paraded to watch it, and the poem is composed of the comments they exchange as they see him hanged.
Plain Tales from the Hills is the first collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Out of its 40 stories, "eight-and-twenty", according to Kipling's Preface, were initially published in the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, Punjab, British India between November 1886 and June 1887. "The remaining tales are, more or less, new."
"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.
Puck of Pook's Hill is a fantasy book by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1906, containing a series of short stories set in different periods of English history. It can count both as historical fantasy – since some of the stories told of the past have clear magical elements, and as contemporary fantasy – since it depicts a magical being active and practising his magic in the England of the early 1900s when the book was written.
"Miss Youghal's Sais" is a short story in Rudyard Kipling's collection Plain Tales from the Hills (1888). It is the first appearance in book form of the fictional character Strickland.
"The Rescue of Pluffles" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. Its first appearance in book form was in Kipling's first collection of short stories, Plain Tales from the Hills (1888); it was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on November 20, 1886. It centres on Mrs Hauksbee, and begins
Mrs. Hauksbee was sometimes nice to her own sex. Here is a story to prove this; and you can believe just as much as ever you please.
"The Three Musketeers" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling which introduces three fictional British soldiers serving in India in the later nineteenth century: the privates Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris. These characters appear in many early Kipling stories. "The Three Musketeers" was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on 11 March 1887. It appeared in book form in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888).
Soldiers Three is a collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. The three soldiers of the title are Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris, who had also appeared previously in the collection Plain Tales from the Hills. The current version, dating from 1899 and more fully titled Soldiers Three and other stories, consists of three sections which each had previously received separate publication in 1888; Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris appear only in the first section, which is also titled Soldiers Three. The books reveal a side of the British Tommy in Afghanistan rarely seen in the Twilight of the British Empire. The soldiers comment on their betters, act the fool, but cut straight to the rawness of war in central Asia as the British began to loosen their Imperial hold.
Rudyard Kipling introduces, in the story The Three Musketeers (1888) three characters who were to reappear in many stories, and to give their name to his next collection Soldiers Three. Their characters are given in the sentence that follows: "Collectively, I think, but am not certain, they are the worst men in the regiment so far as genial blackguardism goes"—that is, they are trouble to authority, and always on the lookout for petty gain; but Kipling is at pains never to suggest that they are evil or immoral. They are representative of the admiration he has for the British Army—which he never sought to idealise as in any way perfect—as in the poems collected in Barrack-Room Ballads (1892), and also show his interest in, and respect for the "uneducated" classes. Kipling had great respect for the independence of mind, initiative and common sense of the three—and their cunning.
In Black and White is a collection of eight short stories by Rudyard Kipling which was first published in a booklet of 108 pages as no. 3 of A H Wheeler & Co.’s Indian Railway Library in 1888. It was subsequently published in a book along with nos 1 and 2, Soldiers Three (1888) and The Story of the Gadsbys, as Soldiers Three (1899). The characters about whom the stories are concerned are native Indians, rather than the British for writing about whom Kipling may be better known; four of the stories are narrated by the Indians, and four by an observant wise English journalist. The stories are:
"Lispeth" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on 29 November 1886; its first appearance in book form was in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and it later appeared in subsequent editions of that collection. The tale is an interesting example of Kipling's attitudes to different races and cultures, which is less simple than many accounts of his beliefs allow.
"Yoked with an Unbeliever" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on December 7, 1886, and in book form in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888. It also appears in subsequent editions of that collection.
"Consequences" is the title of a short story by Rudyard Kipling, first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on December 9, 1886; and first in book form in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), and in subsequent editions of that collection.
"His Wedded Wife" by Rudyard Kipling ...was published in the Civil and Military Gazette on February 25, 1887, and in book form in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection. It is one of the short stories that J. M. S. Tompkins classifies as a tale of 'revenge', but it has elements of those classified as 'farce'.
Soldiers Three is a 1951 American adventure film based upon an element of several short stories by Rudyard Kipling featuring the same trio of British soldiers, portrayed in the film by Stewart Granger, Robert Newton, and Cyril Cusack. The picture was directed by Tay Garnett.
A Choice of Kipling's Verse, made by T. S. Eliot, with an essay on Rudyard Kipling is a book first published in December 1941. It is in two parts. The first part is an essay by American-born British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), in which he discusses the nature and stature of British poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). The second part consists of Eliot's selection from Kipling's poems.