Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

English writer and poet, born in Bombay, India, 30 December 1865, but later educated in England, his home country. He had worked as a journalist from 1882 to 1889 in India, while he composed some poems and novels based on the local life and began to publish them in newspapers at the same time. His collection of short stories, Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), which describes the life of the English living in India and the local people, and his sole long story, Kim (1901), became popular among common people. His poems, which were influenced by hymn tunes and traditional ballads, also gained popularity, so he was a bestselling author, and was called the ‘informal Poet Laureate’. In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. His representative volume of poetry, Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses (1892), was admired as a work that describes accurately the English soldier’s bravery and loyalty and his great hardships on the battlefield.

Kipling’s literary ballad “The Last Ryme of True Thomas” was built on the motif and character of the traditional ballad “Thomas Rhymer”, which was based on the actual prophet and poet Thomas Erceldoune, who lived in the 13th century. Among the various characterizations of Thomas Rhymer written by various poets, Kipling’s Thomas, as a magnificent prophet, is know for remonstrating against man’s arrogance and denying worldly authority. (M. I.)