The Giridih Coalfields

Publication

20th September 1888 in the Pioneer, 26th September, 1888 in the Pioneer Mail and 1st September 1888 in the Week’s News.

Notes on the Text

[Page 319, line 5] Sandheads a location at the mouths of the Hughli river, about 70 miles downstream from Calcutta. See “On the Banks of the Hughli”, Chapter IV of The City of Dreadful Night.

[Page 319, line 5] James and Mary Shoal The James and Mary was a vessel which sank in September, 1694 and gave her name to this bank. See Hobson-Jobson (p. 449), and “An Unqualified Pilot” in Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides.

[Page 320, line 20] P.W.D. Public Works Department.

[Page 322, line 11] Valentine and Orson twin brothers, abandoned in the woods in infancy, in an early French Romance which appeared in English about 1550 as

History of Two Valyannte Brethren

, by Henry Watson. Valentine is brought up as a knight at the court of Pippin, while Orson (‘Ursine’) grows up in a bear’s den to be a wild man of the woods. [ORG] There is a ballad in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), by Thomas Percy, a book in Kipling’s library, about the brothers. [See the Everyman’s Library edition of 1906, volume II page 361.]

[Page 323, line 2] luting a clay, cement or other material used as a protective covering or seal.

[Page 323, line 7] Sirdar commander, or foreman.

[Page 323, line 17] Babu Hindu clerk in this instance.

[Page 324, line 18] rukni Kipling gives the meaning – his kept-woman.

[Page 325, lines 3-4] nine pice a day this equals 2.25 old pennies in sterling, or just under one of today’s new pennies, i.e. about an eighth of a rupee a week. There were:

4 pice in one anna
16 annas in one rupee
15 rupees to the £ sterling

Thus there were 960 pice to the £, so a pice was equal to a farthing (a quarter of an old penny).

[Page 325, line 14] Bus! ‘the end’, ‘it is finished’.

[Page 325, line 15] the tale of the clay agree the tally or quantity of clay supplied.

[Page 327, line 2] carbonic acid gas carbon dioxide.

[Page 327, line 5] leeped plastered over, or plugged, cracks and holes.

[Page 327, line 18] Baragunda A short distance WSW of Giridih.

[Page 327, line 19] Barakar or Barakhar. A very short distance SW of Giridih.