"Mandalay" is a poem from Rudyard Kipling's book Barrack-Room Ballads. It was inspired by the reminiscences of participants in the third Burmese War (1885-90) which led to the overthrow of King Thibaw. Kipling himself visited Burma in 1889, falling deeply in love (his words) with a girl sitting on the pagoda steps just as he described.
Peter Bellamy sang "Mandalay" on his third album of songs set to Kipling's poems Peter Bellamy Sings the Barrack-Room Ballads of Rudyard Kipling. He commented in the sleeve notes:
This song endures in its several formal settings (one of which was an adaption entitled Panama for the American audience) and is probably the best remembered of the Barrack-Room Ballads. The soldier's nostalgia for the East when returned to the ‘gritty paving-stones’ of London is beautifully realized. Supi-Yaw-Lat was the widow of King Theebaw of Burma. Hathis are elephants. The tune is from the traditional song "10,000 Miles Away".
"Ten Thousand Miles Away" (Roud 1778) is a shanty printed in Stan Hugill's Shanties from the Seven Seas.
Geographic notes:
  • Moulmein (now spelled Mawlamyine) is the fourth largest city in Myanmar on the western coast facing the Andaman Sea.
  • The "old Moulmein pagoda" is thought to be the Kyaik Than Lan pagoda in Mawlamyine.
  • Mandalay is the second largest city in Myanmar. It sits in the center of the country by the Irrawaddy River. It was the royal capital until 1885 when the British defeated King Thibaw and annexed Burma into the British Empire.
  • Rangoon, now called Yangon, is the colonial name of the largest city in Myanmar. It is near the coast near the Andaman Sea.
Since the Andaman Sea is to the west of Burma, no one in Moulmein or Mandalay can see "the dawn come up like thunder outer China 'crost the bay".
John Roberts and Tony Barrand sang "Mandalay" to Peter Bellamy's setting in 1997 on their CD of songs of Rudyard Kipling, Naulakha Redux.