It is immediately noticeable that the poem is written in a vernacular English. Though the "Barrack-Room Ballads" have made this appear a common feature of Kipling's work, at the time it was quite unusual; this was the first of his published works to be written in the voice of the common soldier. The speech is not a direct representation of any single dialect, but it serves to give a very clear effect of a working class English voice of the period. Note the "taken of his buttons off", a deliberate error, to add to the stylised speech; it refers to the ceremony of military degradation, where the man to be executed is formally stripped of any marks of rank, such as his stripes, or of significant parts of his uniform – the buttons bore the regimental crest.