The Giridih Coalfields

Publication

6th September 1888 in the Pioneer, 9th September 1888 in the Pioneer Mail and 1st September 1888 in the Week’s News.

Notes on the Text

[Page 312, line 2] Joseph a punning reference to the fact that in the Old Testament Joseph was cast into a pit by his brothers (see Genesis 37), and that Kipling’s full name was Joseph Rudyard Kipling. He was named after his paternal grandfather, although he never used this first name. [ORG]

[Page 313, line 25] Tommy’s … bluejacket’s soldier’s … sailor’s.

[Page 314, lines 20-21] ‘gross darkness of the inner sepulchre’ a quotation from stanza XVII of “A Dream of Fair Women” by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892):

There was no motion in the dumb dead air,
Not any song of bird or sound of rill;
Gross darkness of the inner sepulchre
Is not so deadly still.

[Page 315, line 26] Eblis the Devil in the Moslem religion, the chief of the apostate angels who refused to worship Adam. [ORG] Kipling frequently refers to this Djinn in his stories.

[Page 316, line 5] Shabash! ‘Well done!’ or ‘Bravo’.

[Page 316, line 31] stooks Kipling gives the meaning of this word. It is possibly derived from the same English word for a group of wheat sheaves set up in a field to dry off after being cut.

[Page 317, lines 10-11] en échelon in a line but with each pillar behind and to one side of the preceding one.

[Page 317, line 18] goaf Kipling gives the meaning of this word, which is still current. Chambers Dictionary defines at as: ‘the space left by the extraction of a coal seam, into which waste is packed.’

[Page 318, lines 8-9] Doms and Bauris, Kols and Beldars are tribes and castes in West Bengal and the Central Provinces.

Doms are a menial caste, scavenger or cleaner. Some do basketwork.

Bauris are cultivators.

[See Nomads of South Asia: Anthology of 400 Nomadic Groups and Gypsies of India by Renato Rosso and Kalyan Kumar Chakravarty.

Kols are people of a forest tribe, labourers.

Beldars are diggers, navvies.

[See The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India by R.V. Russell, 1916. ]

[Page 318, line 11] fire-damp flammable gas found in coal mines. Methane is usually one of its constituents.

[Page 318, line 12] Davy lamp the miner’s safety lamp invented in 1815 by Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829).