AN AUDACIOUS PARODIST.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 77, 2 April 1910, Page 10

AN AUDACIOUS PARODIST.

KIPLING'S NAME BORROWED. Kipling's "Song of the English" (originally published in tho English Illustrated Magazine), which takes tho first place in "The Seven fieaa," is so well known that there is nothing remarkable in the fact- that it should have been made use of by parodists, for some of its phrases have already passed into current speech. It was so ueed by some unknown writer in tho Typographical Jowi?nal, a trade union organ published in Indianopolis, Indiana, whose treatment of the original will be sufficiently mdi cated by nis opening and closing quatrains. The lines are headed "To the Capitalist Class"..: — Wo havo fed you all for a thousand years, And you hail us still unfed, Though there's never a dollai of all your wealth But marks tho workers dead. You ha* oaten our lives and our babes and wires, And we're told it's your legal share, But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth, Good God, wo ha* bought it fair. The single noteworthy feature of the piece was that it was signed "Rudyard Kipling." A Wellington resident who saw a copy of the magazine wrote to Mr. Kipling, pointing out the use that had been made of hu name, and suggesting that, impudent as the fraud was, it might be worth while that there should be mi authoritative repudiation. To which, in due course, Mr. Kipling replied :—: — "I had seen the verses beforo, and didn't think it worth while to explain to any one that I did not write them. But if there is any onp (not in an asylum) who can believe that I wrote them, I suppose it might be worth while to tell him that they are not my handiwork. "I had not realised up till now that part of Iho socialistic scheme of the future is to take a man's name and stick it to another man's work. I thought they only stole things that they could eat or use for amusement."