Uploaded September 2017 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here a virtual movie of Rudyard Kipling reading his much loved poem Gunga Din.
The sound recording comes from a very rare 78 rpm recorded recorded in 1913 by the Welsh actor Lyn Harding.
"Gunga Din" is an 1890 poem by Rudyard Kipling, set in British India.
The poem is a rhyming narrative from the point of view of an English soldier in India, about an Indian water-bearer (a bhishti) who saves the soldier's life but is soon shot and killed. In the final three lines, the soldier regrets the abuse he dealt to Din and admits that Din is the better man of the two. The poem was published as one of the set of martial poems called the Barrack-Room Ballads.
David Llewellyn Harding (12 October 1867 – 26 December 1952), known professionally as Lyn Harding, was a Welsh actor who spent 40 years on the stage before entering British made silent films, talkies and radio. He had an imposing and menacing stage presence and came to be cast as the villain in many films, notably Professor Moriarty in dramatisations of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
Here a virtual movie of Rudyard Kipling reading his much loved poem Gunga Din.
The sound recording comes from a very rare 78 rpm recorded recorded in 1913 by the Welsh actor Lyn Harding.
"Gunga Din" is an 1890 poem by Rudyard Kipling, set in British India.
The poem is a rhyming narrative from the point of view of an English soldier in India, about an Indian water-bearer (a bhishti) who saves the soldier's life but is soon shot and killed. In the final three lines, the soldier regrets the abuse he dealt to Din and admits that Din is the better man of the two. The poem was published as one of the set of martial poems called the Barrack-Room Ballads.
David Llewellyn Harding (12 October 1867 – 26 December 1952), known professionally as Lyn Harding, was a Welsh actor who spent 40 years on the stage before entering British made silent films, talkies and radio. He had an imposing and menacing stage presence and came to be cast as the villain in many films, notably Professor Moriarty in dramatisations of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
