Quote:
Originally Posted by asad hussain  1. Where do you imagine the story of this poem is set?
2. Who is the speaker talking to? How can you tell whether they are male or female?
3. What is the person being told?
4. Who are ‘the Gentlemen’, and who are the ‘King George’s men’?
5. Why do you think that the brandy-wine will be gone by the next day?
6. Why is mother mending a coat with a wet lining?
7. Whose dogs are Trusty and Pinchers? Why don’t they bark?
8. What is meant by ‘watch the wall’ in this poem? |
This takes me back. It was set to music, and I used to sing it at school in the '50s. :humming:
1 I agree with Tdol; somewhere coastal, obviously. Probably South Coast - maybe SW as Tdol suggests, also there was a lot of smuggler activity in the SE, where the Channel crossing was shorter (and the smugglers could use coastal vessels that might escape the attention of the authorities).
2 Sounds to me like a mother talking to a child at bed-time - either sex.*
3 Not to meddle with anything that might be involved with the smugglers' trade.
4 I agree with Tdol, though I suspect 'King George's men' may refer in particular to the soldiers (?) who enforced the customs and excise law.
5 The smugglers deliver the goods and hide them (maybe burying them). An apparently law-abiding citizen (with an alibi for the night of the delivery) knows where to find them - as Tdol said.
6 One of the men in the child's house is a Gentleman, who tore his coat escaping from King George's men the previous night. It's wet, because smugglers preferred to work in bad weather - which would hide the sounds of their operations.
7 I agree with Tdol; and maybe the training was quite easy, as the dogs recognize their owner among the smugglers.
8 I agree with Tdol again - note Kipling's evocation of the scene (the excited child huddling under the blankets, peeping out at the flickering shadows on the wall).
b
ps * "pretty maid" - so definitely a girl