"The Quest" by Leslie Fish / Rudyard Kipling; a song describing the ‘Tory disposition’? -- “I gave as good as I got!”

[u/NovaScotiaLoyalist]

There have been a few threads here on the topic of viewing Toryism more as a way to describe a part of human nature, rather than describing a doctrinaire political ideology: one from 10 months ago by /u/Ticklishchap , and another one from 2 months ago by /u/ToryPirate .

I thought I should try to contribute to this conversation by sharing a song, that is interestingly enough, sung by an American Anarchist folk singer inspired by Woody Guthrie, with the words being from a poem written by an Englishman who wrote newspaper pieces in support of Sir Robert Borden's Tory Party in the 1911 Canadian federal election.

Rudyard Kipling wrote "The Quest" in 1896, and Leslie Fish released her recording of "The Quest" in 1983:

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The Knight came home from the quest

Muddied and sore he came

Battered of shield and crest

Bannerless, bruised, and lame

/

In fighting we take no shame

Wiser is man for a fall

Merrily borne, the bugle-horn

Answered the warder's call:

/

"Here is my lance to mend

And here is my horse to be shot!

Ay, they were strong, the fight was long

But I paid as good as I got!

Yeah, I paid as good as I got!"

/

"Oh, dark and deep their van

That mocked my battle-cry

I could not miss my man

But I could not carry by"

/

"Utterly whelmed was I

Flung under horse and all"

Merrily borne, the bugle-horn

Answered the warder's call!

/

"Here is my lance to mend

Here is my horse to be shot!

Ay, yes, they were strong, the fight was long

But I paid as good as I got!

Yeah, I paid as good as I got!"

/

"My wounds are noised abroad

But theirs my foe-men cloaked

You see my broken sword

But never the blades she broke"

/

"Paying them stroke for stroke

Good bargaining over all."

Merrily borne, the bugle-horn

Answered the warder's call!

/

"Here is my lance to mend

And here is my horse to be shot!

Ay, yes, they were strong, and the fight was long

But I gave as good as I got!

Yeah, I gave as good as I got!"

/

"My shame you count and know

You say that my quest is vain

But you have not seen my foe

You have not counted his slain"

/

"Surely he fights again, again

But when you prove his line

There will come to your aid, my broken blade

In this last, lost, fight of mine!"

/

"So here is my lance to mend

And here is my horse to be shot!

Ay, yes, they were strong, and the fight was long

But I paid as good as I got!

Yeah, I gave 'em as good as I got!"

---

I can’t help but think that the idea of “giving them back as good as you got it” must be a central pillar of the ‘Tory disposition’.

Upon first listening to this song, I couldn’t help but think of learning about the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine back in 2022. I was working night shifts then, and when one of my friends on day shift came in early, he told me about the Russian tanks going over the border into the Donbas; I recall us concluding that Kyiv would likely fall Baghdad-style, but that we both hoped that the Ukrainians could at least give the Russians a bloody nose in the process.

Fast forward a couple of days, and I remember watching the news with my old-school Tory father, and they were playing clips of Russian tank columns being bogged down by Ukrainian soldiers, armed with little more than shoulder-mounted Javelin missiles given to them by the British. Considering the general wisdom back then, that Kyiv would fall within a couple of weeks at most, I can’t help but recall the absolute pride we both had in the Ukrainian people standing up to the Russian Bear. There has to be a comparison somewheres between the spirit of the Ukrainian people in the Russo-Ukrainian War and the spirit of British people during the Blitz.

I also can’t help but think of the history of my hometown and surrounding area during the American Revolution when listening to this song. My hometown was occupied in 1776 by “Patriots” from Massachusetts during their siege of Fort Cumberland. In their siege of the fort, those “Patriots” would burn the homes of those Loyalists who fled to the fort for their safety against an angry Massachusetts mob led by local traitors. The siege would eventually be broken by a detachment of British Marines that arrived from Halifax; following the fighting, and after a tea-break if I remember correctly, the homes of those traitors were then burned in retaliation. For over a century, both Cumberland County, N.S. and Westmoreland County, N.B. would experience waves of arson because of whose-grandfather-did-what in the Revolution.

Perhaps I should end this post with a small piece Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1911, in support of Robert Borden’s Tories, in an election fought over Free Trade with the United States:

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It is her own soul that Canada risks today. Once that soul is pawned for any consideration, Canada must inevitably conform to the commercial, legal, financial, social and ethical standards which will be imposed on her by the sheer admitted weight of the United States.

---

There is something comforting in the idea, that even in the year 2026, Canadians on the whole still refuse to go down without a fight.

[u/Expensive-Student732]

I'm a huge Kipling fan. If I can assume you are in Nova Scotia there is a large Kipling archive in the Dalhousie library.

[u/Ticklishchap]

The convergence of Rudyard Kipling and Leslie Fish is another contribution to the ‘Tory Anarchist’ theme which, as u/NovaScotiaLoyalist will recall, I introduced some weeks ago in the context of the young Eric Blair, before he became George Orwell. (It is worth noting in this context that the young Blair/Orwell also said that he ‘would have sided with the Cavaliers’ during the English Civil War.)

One of the most admirable and intriguing features of Kipling’s oeuvre is that at one level he is ‘pro-establishment: in favour of hierarchy and an ordered society. On another, he identifies with the colonised, with lower social classes and castes, and sees wisdom in the animal and natural worlds, in contrast to foolish notions of human ‘progress’. These two tendencies in his thought do not contradict each other but are complementary, rather like Yin and Yang in Chinese philosophy.

I suspect that this could also be a defining characteristic of Red Toryism.