He feared less
A dose of senna-tea or nightmare Gorgon
Than the Emperor when he play’d on his Man-Tiger-Organ.
John Keats wrote these lines as part of an incomplete fairy tale. His original plot aside, the emperor referred to is the Mysorean king, Tipu Sultan. Tipu Sultan was killed in 1799 at the Battle of Seringapatnam. But one aspect of his legacy lived on, to haunt and entertain Europeans in equal measures for centuries – a robotic tiger, which Keats referenced as a ‘man-tiger-organ’.
When British forces plundered Tipu’s palace after his final battle, one of the most intriguing curios they found was an automaton rendition of a tiger, mauling what is clearly a British soldier in the redcoat uniform. The rest of the plunder was divided amongst the soldiers, but the tiger was shipped to England. As Richard Wellesley wrote, on its discovery:
In a room appropriated for musical instruments was found an article which merits particular notice, as another proof of the deep hate, and extreme loathing of Tippoo Saib towards the English. This piece of mechanism represents a royal Tyger in the act of devouring a prostrate European. There are some barrels in imitation of an Organ, within the body of the Tyger. The sounds produced by the Organ are intended to resemble the cries of a person in distress intermixed with the roar of a Tyger. The machinery is so contrived that while the Organ is playing, the hand of the European is often lifted up, to express his helpless and deplorable condition. The whole of this design was executed by Order of Tippoo Sultaun.
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