Mandalay

Mandalay is a famous poem by Rudyard Kipling that was first published in the collection Barrack-Room Ballads, and Other Verses, the first series, published in 1892. The Mandalay referred to in this poem was the sometime capital city of Burma, which was a British colony from 1885 to 1948. It mentions the old Moulmein pagoda, Moulmein being the Anglicised version of present-day Mawlamyine. The British troops stationed in Burma were taken up (or down) the Irrawaddy River by paddle steamers. Rangoon to Mandalay was a 700 km trip each way. The poem is quoted in the movie "The Last of His Tribe" 1992. During a campfire, Dr. Saxton Pope, played by David Ogden Stiers, quotes most of the poem in a dramatic fashion. In The Wizard of Oz (1939...