8. Glossary of some tricky parts... Title] Dirge lament. Written for the nurses who died while serving in the Anglo-Boer War. [Stanza 1] iron teacups standard military issue, like iron plates, which would not break and need replacing. [Stanza 2] Let us now remember many honourable women a rephrasing of Ecclesiasticus 44,1 ‘Let us now praise famous men’ , a phrase also familiar from its repetition in the services of the Anglican church. Here a deliberate emphasis is made on doing the praising now, before memory of the women is lost. [Stanza 3] culvert pipe carrying water. [Stanza 4] Powers of Darkness in Christian usage, a phrase taken from the New Testament to denote the devil and his cohorts, see Luke 22,53, Colossians 1,13. Seven Hells in the Jain cosmos there are seven hells. ( Jains also believe that each soul is reborn after death, and that the type of body it inhabits depends on the moral character of its deeds in past lives).

9. [Stanza 7] Blanket-hidden bodies, flagless according to Conan Doyle coffins were out of the question, and the men were lowered in their brown blankets into shallow graves at the average rate of sixty a day. The military convention of the flag-draped coffin had to be abandoned. Ringed and reeking town surrounded and stinking, see note on Background above. Encampments of hospital tents were set up on the veldt at points outside the town. [Stanza 9] Them that died at Uitvlugt There was an epidemic of plague in Cape Town in 1901-2, when the hospital and isolation camps were situated at Uitflugt on the Cape Flats. Her that fell at Simonstown Mary Kingsley (1862-1900) a writer who combined formidable intelligence with charm and common sense, had been a personal friend of Kipling’s since the early 1890’s. He described her as the bravest woman he ever knew. She had travelled alone in West Africa, living there among the cannibal Fans. Her books of travel had already made her famous when she volunteered to go to the Cape as a hospital nurse. There she died of fever contracted while nursing Boer prisoners who were kept at Simonstown, the naval base down the coast from Cape Town. By her own wish she was buried at sea, her body being first transported on a gun-carriage to the torpedo boat which took it out to sea.

15. Why was ‘Dirge of the Dead sisters’ written? What point was Kipling trying to make? Does it have any resonance today? Does it have any resonance today? Does it have any resonance today?