The poem seems to have a certain resonance today as it is really about a ‘clash of civilizations’. Mad Carew desecrates a cult statue and is killed by the guardians of the shrine who no doubt believe that they are dispensing divine retribution, but the killing resolves nothing. At the end the statue is still an ‘idol’ and the green eye has not been returned.

There’s a meaty New York Times article in that. Get busy. My feeling when I heard it as a child was that Mad Carew got his just desserts. As our parish priest used to say, “Don’t fuck with another man’s idol”. Wise words.

In his passion and maverick tempestuousness Mad Carew is a “bad boy” straight out of the lustiest bodice-ripper. Perhaps, then, the poem is less a fable about the potential danger(s) of a cultural faux-pas, and more a satire on (moronic) imperialist male “heroismâ€?.

And how sexist it is!

I’d always thought so. Reading it again, however, I’m not so sure. After all she “jestingly� tells him that she simply must have the yellow eye. When he turns up battered and bloody with the yoke in his pocket her first thoughts may well have been, “What an idiot!� Of course it’s implied that though she chided him for his folly, she couldn’t help but be moved/seduced by his devotion.

The use of the word ‘idol’ is interesting as it implies that veneration of the image is immoral. It is a word that is often used by members of iconoclast religions traditions to assert their moral superiority over iconodule traditions.

The poem seems to have a certain resonance today as it is really about a ‘clash of civilizations’. Mad Carew desecrates a cult statue and is killed by the guardians of the shrine who no doubt believe that they are dispensing divine retribution, but the killing resolves nothing. At the end the statue is still an ‘idol’ and the green eye has not been returned.

And how sexist it is! The Colonel’s daughter is a latter day Eve who first comes up with the idea of stealing the eye and encourages Carew and to add insult to injury she refuses to accept it when he gives it to her – la donna e mobile… etc etc…

Poems like this were once very well known, so well known in fact, that they became objects of parody. The vaudeville comedian, Roy Rene, better known as Mo, used to perform a sketch in which he endeavoured to recite ‘The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God’, only to be constantly interrupted by hecklers dressed as ex-Indian Army officers planted in the audience. In frustration, Mo would explode with ‘Oh this is lovely! This is beautiful! A gentleman and a scholar can’t get up to resuscitate an immoral piece of poultry without being got at!’

I’m trying to remember what Bertie Wooster used to consider the poems and songs of 2nd rate stage hacks… May have to consult the library.

This was the only context I had ever come across the poem and presumed that it was invented for added absurd effect for the sketch.

I now realise that it was presumed that the listeners would know the poem off by heart anyway. It must have been a cliche of the second rate stage declaimer. (Not a category I place your grandmother in, I hasten to add)