Puck of Pooks Hill [with Biographical Introduction]

Parnesius takes up his story where he left off, giving a brisk account of marching his cohort north through England, the landscape becoming bleaker and more rugged, until they reach the Wall. This is described wonderfully. And that is the Wall! Like the one round the kitchen-garden? It is the Wall. Along the top are towers with guard-houses, small towers, between.

Even on the narrowest part of it three men with shields can walk abreast from guard-house to guard-house. The Little People come there to steal iron for their arrow-heads. Long ago there were great ramparts and ditches on the South side, and no one was allowed to build there. Now the ramparts are partly pulled down and built over, from end to end of the Wall; making a thin town eighty miles long. One roaring, rioting, cockfighting, wolf-baiting, horse-racing town, from Ituna on the West to Segedunum on the cold eastern beach!

On one side heather, woods and ruins where Picts hide, and on the other, a vast town — long like a snake, and wicked like a snake. Yes, a snake basking beside a warm wall! As usual with Kipling, there is a lot more local colour and circumstantial detail than plot. Parnesius gets friendly with Pertinax, another officer about his age, and they both go hunting north of The Wall, with a one-eyed Pict named Allo. Allo was painted blue, green, and red from his forehead to his ankles.

The tribesmen decorated their bodies with tattoos. On one hunting trip they come across a fleet of ships drawn into a bay; they are the Winged Hats, the pagans from the Continent. Retreating, they are astonished to run into the General Maximus.

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He explains that he needs to extract a lot of soldiers from The Wall for his campaign to conquer Gaul. He offers Parnesius and Pertinax control of The Wall, in return for troops. Our boys say they want permission to conciliate the Picts, not antagonise them e. Maximus says they can do whatever they like, as long as they give him three years of peace. Parnesius and Pertinax spend two days at the lavish gladiatorial games Maximus throws for his official visit to Segedunum at the East end of The Wall.

Then our boys watch as Maximus strips the Wall of all its best men and equipment and sails away. Parnesius describes his policy of befriending the Picts, even sending them corn. The ships of the Winged Hats are the real worry. Allo is their emissary into the courts of the Picts but the Picts are themselves harried by the Winged Hats.

Puck of Pook’s Hill by Rudyard Kipling (1906)

Then news comes that Maximus is dead, defeated and executed by young Theodosius. No help will come. At the last, as they are expecting to die in the final assault and massacre, they are surprised that two Legions from Theodosius have arrived and saved the day. The cavalry have arrived. In his biography of Kipling, Charles Harrington, who served in the Great War, emphasises what a powerful effect these three Roman stories had on those, especially the boys, who read them. It strengthened the nerve of many a young soldier in the dark days of and … Rudyard Kipling: Dan and Una come across him and Puck in the Little Mill, and he tells them he was born at Little Lindens farm, which you can see from the Mill.

The old farm-house, weather-tiled to the ground, took almost the colour of a blood-ruby in the afternoon light. The pigeons pecked at the mortar in the chimney-stacks; the bees that had lived under the tiles since it was built filled the hot August air with their booming; and the smell of the box-tree by the dairy-window mixed with the smell of earth after rain, bread after baking, and a tickle of wood-smoke.

The old spaniel in his barrel barked once or twice to show he was in charge of the empty house. His master at Oxford tells him to return to his home village and repair the church. He comes down full of pride and boasting and finds all the local families reluctant to help, especially John Collins the forge-master. At Kobo, we try to ensure that published reviews do not contain rude or profane language, spoilers, or any of our reviewer's personal information.

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Puck of Pook's Hill - Introduction

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Ratings and Reviews 0 0 star ratings 0 reviews. Overall rating No ratings yet 0. The stories are all narrated to two children living near Burwash, in the area of Kipling's own house Bateman's, by people magically plucked out of history by the elf Puck, or told by Puck himself.

The genres of particular stories range from authentic historical novella A Centurion of the Thirtieth, On the Great Wall to children's fantasy Dymchurch Flit.

Each story is bracketed by a poem which relates in some manner to the theme or subject of the story. Donald Mackenzie, who wrote the introduction for the Oxford World's Classics edition of Puck of Pook's Hill in , has described this book as an example of archaeological imagination that, in fragments, delivers a look at the history of England, climaxing with the signing of Magna Carta. Puck calmly concludes the series of stories: It's as natural as an oak growing.

Read more Read less. Kindle Cloud Reader Read instantly in your browser. Editorial Reviews About the Author Rudyard Kipling was born in India, and spent the first six years of his life there, acquiring Hindustani as a second language and living in a bungalow like that in The Jungle Book.

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He was then sent to a boarding house in England with his sister Alice, where he had a miserable time until he was sent to The United Services College at Westward Ho! He left school at sixteen to return to India and work on The Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, and his familiarity with all classes of society provided him with material for Barrack Room Ballads and Plain Tales from the Hills. In the family returned to England, where Kipling continued to write prolifically, and was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in His later years were darkened by the death of his son John at the Battle of Loos in Kipling's long association with Macmillan began in , with the publication of Life's Handicap and continued with most of Kipling's prose and children's works, available in multiple editions long after his death in Product details File Size: Rastro Digital July 12, Publication Date: July 12, Sold by: Share your thoughts with other customers.

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There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Puck of Pook's Hill is Rudyard Kipling's paean to England and history and youth, as Puck, "the oldest Old Thing in England," introduces to two children, siblings Dan and Una, various figures and events from throughout three thousand or so years of British history.

The first of the ten tales in the book features Puck's account of the advent, worship, and end of pagan Gods in Britain, focusing on one in particular, Weland, Smith of the Nordic Gods. In the second through fourth stories, the Norman knight Sir Richard Dalyngridge tells of his coming as a boy in with William the Conqueror to take England and instead being taken by the country Norman and Saxon cultures and peoples merging into a new England , going as a middle-aged man on a pilgrimage that morphs into a Danish piratical voyage to Africa men joyfully adventuring , and trying as an old man to help his lord protect England from internal and external foes making the inevitable transition from youth to old age.

The fifth through seventh stories are told by Parnesius, a British-born Roman, about his career as a centurion stationed on Hadrian's Wall during the 4th century when the Spanish general Maximus pulled vital troops from England to help him in his effort to become Emperor of Rome, making it more difficult to protect the Wall from Picts and "Winged Hats" Vikings. Like Sir Richard's stories, Parnesius' are about the rich mix of British culture, the rewards of male friendship, the need to give yourself to something bigger and better than yourself, and the swiftness by which young people grow up.

In the eighth story, "Hal-o-the Draft," a young, talented, cocky Renaissance draftsman-architect is sent to renovate a church in Sussex, where his job is complicated by a Scottish pirate, local smugglers, and the explorer Sebastian Cabot. The ninth story is told by Puck in the guise of a local rustic about the "flitting" of fairies from England during the Reformation, because fairies like bees cannot abide hate and war.