Danegeld

I’ve not had a “Kipling Tuesday” in over six months, mainly because in the months of posting Kipling Tuesday posts I had only had two comments on them and figured I’d just keep on reading and re-reading Kipling myself–fugeddabout folks who stumble on a little verse, eh?

🙂

And this, of course, isn’t a Kipling Tuesday post, either, cos it’s Wednesday, already. So? I referred to this lil ditty in a post earlier today, and on the off chance that no one clicked the link to the poem (*cough*), here it is. It does of course, say MUCH more about another problem quite different to the tax issues I linked it with, and in fact its major thrust deals more with appeasement of barbarian savages…

Dane-geld
(A.D. 980-1016)
Rudyard Kipling

IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:—
“We invaded you last night—we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:—
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:—

“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”

“…For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”

TB-posted at Diane’s Stuff.