Danny Deever Totally Explained

Everything about Danny Deever totally explained

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.

Context

The poem was 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.
It is generally read as being set in India, though it gives no details of the actual situation. 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 correspond to the occasion described by Kipling in the poem, and he later used a story similar to that of Flaxman's as a basis for the story Black Jack.
Kipling apparently wrote the various Barrack-Room Ballads in early 1890, about a year since he'd last been in India, and three years since Flaxman's execution. Though he wrote large amounts of occasional verse, he usually added a note beneath the title giving the context of the poem. Danny Deever doesn't have any such notes, but "Cleared" (a topical poem on the Parnell Commission), written in the same month as Danny Deever.

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!". William Henley, the editor of the Scots Observer, is even said to have danced on his wooden leg when he first received the text.
It was later commented on by William Butler Yeats, who noted that "[Kipling] interests a critical audience today by the grotesque tragedy of Danny Deever". T. S. Eliot called the poem "technically (as well as in content) remarkable", holding it up as one of the best of Kipling's ballads

Music

The Barrack-Room Ballads, as the name suggests, are songs of soldiers. Written by Kipling, they share a form and a style with traditional Army songs. Kipling was one of the first to pay attention to these works; Carrington noted that in contrast to the songs of sailors, "no-one had thought of collecting genuine soldiers' songs, and when Kipling write in this traditional style it wasn't recognised as traditional".
The tune "They're Hanging Danny Deever in the Morning" was played from the Campanile at UC Berkeley at the end of the last day of classes for the Spring Semester of 1930. That tune was requested on the last day of classes for the following semester. Playing this tune on the last day of classes is one of the oldest UC Berkeley campus traditions. It begins a period of silence for the Campanile lasting until the end of exams for the semester.

Further Information

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