Of Pigs and Buffaloes

(notes by Philip Holberton )

Publication


This is one of the poems Kipling wrote for his father Lockwood’s Beast and Man in India (1891).

The poem

Pigs and buffaloes are only half-tame and are not allowed into the
villages. Bulls and boars are very dangerous when angered.

Mowgli used the buffalo bulls to kill Shere Khan in “Tiger! Tiger!” (The Jungle Book p. 87 onward). In Greek myth all the noblest heroes had to come together to hunt and kill the terrible boar that was laying waste the land of Calydon.

[P.H.]

©Philip Holberton 2020 All rights reserved