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More "Churl" Quotes from Famous Books



... with an angry exclamation, and forthwith set the editor down as a jealous churl. In one or two other newspapers I found more extended and better notices; but they all fell so far short of the real merits of my bantling, that I was sadly vexed and disheartened. To have my advent announced so coldly and ungraciously, hurt me exceedingly. Still, I expected ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur

... fluent, clear but few; Odysseus when he spoke, fixed his eyes on the ground, turning his sceptre neither backwards nor forward, standing still like a man devoid of wit; one would have deemed him a churl and a very fool; yet when he sent forth his mighty voice from his breast in words as many as the snowflakes, no other man could ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... do, and quite right! Had I my will, there shouldn't be a place of Protestant worship left standing, or a Protestant churl allowed to go about with ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... mean that they begem; No nosegay fair that holds them not; They melt the pride and stir the phlegm Of lord and churl, in court and cot, And weave a ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... polite and obsequious prisoner, Lieutenant Preville. "If we could but fall in with two or three more fat prizes we should be able to set up as independent gentlemen when we get back home again, and I should be able to regain the lands of the McAllisters from the southern churl who has dared ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... old churl! It is a pretty thing, a tiger, especially if we could but find somebody for him to eat. We have now a lion and a tiger; only consider that, Medon! and for want of two good criminals perhaps we shall be forced to see them eat each other. ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... it is, Ebony," in similarly changed tones said he who had responded to the whisperer, "yonder churl," pointing toward the wooden leg in the distance, "is, no doubt, a churlish fellow enough, and I would not wish to be like him; but that is no reason why you may not be some sort of ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... "But a churl comes adrip from the rivers, pants me out, fallen spent on the floor, 'O King Raedwald, Northumberland marches, and to-morrow knocks hard at thy door, Hot for melting thy crown on the hearth!' Then commend ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... side-light is thrown upon this portion of David's career, by the incident of his meeting with Abigail, a woman fair and discreet, married to a sordid churl named Nabal. David and his band had protected Nabal's fields from other rovers, and had been, so to speak, a wall of fire between the churl's estate and the hand of depredation. But at the time of the sheep-shearing the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... countenance to make, and scarce might he get a word out of his mouth a long while. At last he said: "Lord, I see that I must needs do thy will if this be no trap which thou hast set for me. But overwonderful it is, that a great lady should be wedded to a gangrel churl." ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris

... marks upon thee, girl? Those prints of brutal osculation? Great grief! that lowlife and that churl! That Telephus abomination! Can him, O votary of Venus, Else everything is ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams

... his horizon enlarged. There was more scope for a man of parts. Things moved more rapidly. The world seemed full of philanthropists, anxious to "dress his front" and do him other little kindnesses. Mr. McEachern was no churl. He let them dress his front. He accepted the little kindnesses. Presently, he found that he had fifteen thousand dollars to spare for any small flutter that might take his fancy. Singularly enough, this was the precise sum necessary to make ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... communities. They were almost constantly at war with one another and with the natives. They had a king elected from the royal family. Freemen were either Earls or Churls, the "gentle" or the "simple." The churl was attached to some one lord whom he followed in war. The thanes were those who devoted themselves to the service of the king or some other great man. The thanes of the king became gentlemen and nobles. There were thralls, or slaves, either prisoners in war, or made slaves for debt or ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... fighting and making love. The latter is a fine art, no doubt, and, when done according to rule, is well enough; but as for fighting, getting oneself grimed with dust and sweat, and very likely some vulgar churl's common blood to boot—pah! it is intolerable to ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris

... to its conclusion,—"unless you particularly aspire to seem—and to be—an absolute barbarian, a bear, a boor, a churl, and a curmudgeon,"—each epithet received an augmented stress,—"you must call at Craford New Manor with the least possible delay. As I find myself in rather good form just now, and feel that I should shine to perhaps exceptional ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... jailer," he called, "let them bring Cedric of Rotherwood before me, and the other churl, his companion—him I mean of Coningsburgh—Athelstane there, or what call they him? Their very names are an encumbrance to a Norman knight's mouth, and have, as it were, a flavor of bacon. Give me a stoop of wine, as jolly Prince John would say, that I may wash away the relish. ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... very kind, but most of them, without being malicious, appeared irritable, capricious, jealous; and if they were offended even unintentionally, they cast evil spells. Sometimes they betrayed their feminine nature by unaccountable likes and dislikes. More than one found a lover in a knight or a churl; but generally such loves came to a bad end. And, when all is said, gentle or terrible, they remained the Fates, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... himself the object of the exclusive attachment of a strong-minded and noble-hearted woman: and when, in addition to this, her society affords the delight of mental accomplishment and personal beauty, such as Hester's, he must be a churl indeed if he does not greatly enjoy the present, and indulge in sweet anticipations for the future. Hope also brought the whole power of his will to bear upon his circumstances. He dwelt upon all the happiest features of ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... the road near Brunswick, the whim took him of asking a waggoner who was driving by, to treat him with a ride in his vehicle. "No, I will not," replied the boor; "my horses will have enough to do to drag their proper load." "You churl," said the doctor, "since you will not let your wheels carry me, you shall carry them yourself as far as from the gates of the city." The wheels then detached themselves, and flew through the air, to the gates of the town from which they came. At the same time the horses fell to the ground, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... the King's Son, "thou art jesting with me; thou and thy might and thy wisdom, and all that thy wisdom may command, to be over- mastered by a gangrel churl!" ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... Brian," replied the Prior, "touching the one of them, it were hard for me to render a reason for a fool speaking according to his folly; and the other churl is of that savage, fierce, intractable race, some of whom, as I have often told you, are still to be found among the descendants of the conquered Saxons, and whose supreme pleasure it is to testify, by all means in their power, their aversion ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... befall me if I listen to thee, thou wicked churl," cried the abbot. "What hast thou ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... fine and large, Instinct of warmth and colour, with a trick Of blunting 'Mariana's' keener edge To 'Mary Ann'—the same but not the same: Whereat she girded, tore her crisped hair, Called him 'Sir Churl,' and ever calling 'Churl!' Drave him to Science, then to Alcohol, To forge a thousand theories of the rocks, Then somewhat else for thousands dewy cool, Wherewith he sought a more Pacific isle And there found love, a duskier ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Rookwood, its manors, its lands, its rent-roll, and its title; nor shall you yield it to a base-born churl like this. Let him prove his rights. Let the law adjudge them to him, and we will yield—but not till then. I tell thee he has not the right, nor can he maintain it. He is a deluded dreamer, who, having heard some idle tale of his birth, believes it, because it chimes with his wishes. I ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Mr. Arnold, are the most valuable prose contributions to English literature of the century; his letters to Mr. Carlyle carried into all our homes the charm of a most delightful personality; the quaint melody of his poems abides in many ears. He would, indeed, be a churl who grudged ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... diagonal, And, driving, crossed the frontiers. Thither came The bold Sir Referee, and shrilled abroad The tremulous, momentary 'touch.' But she, Heaving with unaccustomed exercise, Blinded and baffled, wild with all despair, Stood sweeping, as a churl that sweeps the scythe In earlier pastures. Twice he skipped, and poured The desperate whistle. Once again, and he, Skipping, diffused the whistle. But at last, So shrewd a blow she dealt him on the shin, ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)

... sore, Had gained the home of the Interpreter, He saw a sorry fellow with great stir Ply a vile muck-rake on a filthy floor; And the more mire the churl raked, the more He smiled, although a winged messenger Floating aloft was eager to confer On him the crown that in her hands she bore. So is it with those fools that waste their days In raking stores of dross and minted gear, Oblivious of the crown of deathless rays That God is offering ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... father's talk no doubt. But I think that for once I may have been eloquent. And in the midst of my demand for ideals in politics that were wider and deeper than artful buying and selling, that looked beyond a vulgar aggression and a churl's dread and hatred of foreign things, while I struggled to say how great and noble a thing empire might be, I saw Rachel's face. This, it was manifest, was a new kind of talk to her. Her dark eyes were alight with a beautiful enthusiasm for what I was ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... a premeditated insult. The base-hearted churl has failed to understand the meaning of ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... were there to share the meal with him and his family. "There he goes," was the saying about any one who passed the door at any time without coming in to take a spoon—"there he goes; I'll warrant he's a miser at home to be so much of a churl abroad" The very gipsy claimed the cleanest bed in a Glenman's house whenever he came that way, and his gossip paid handsomely ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... what envy told; * No envious churl shall smile on love ensoul'd. Merciful Allah made no fairer sight * Than coupled lovers single couch doth hold; Breast pressing breast and robed in joys their own, * With pillowed forearms cast in finest mould: And when heart speaks to heart with tongue of love, * Folk who would part them hammer ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Messire Gawain, and Messire Gawain saith that he holdeth himself a churl in that he hath not asked him of his name. But the knight said, "Fair Sir, I pray you of love that you ask not my name until such time as I shall ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown

... gauntlets were too dearly won, That unto death did press the holy nun. 50 The son slew her, that forth to meet him went, And a rich necklace caused that punishment. Yet think no scorn to ask a wealthy churl; He wants no gifts into thy lap to hurl. Take clustered grapes from an o'er-laden vine, May[195] bounteous love[196] Alcinous' fruit resign. Let poor men show their service, faith and care; All for their mistress, what they have, prepare. In verse to praise kind wenches ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... our laws better than you do, churl! Due division of spoil is just and fair; but we cast lots ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... am much obliged to you. You would only think me a churl if you had, for I should decline it, I believe, in spite of all the temptations of such agreeable company,' said Mr. Bell, bowing all round, and secretly congratulating himself on the neat turn he had given to his sentence, which, if put into ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... No churl's our oldworld name is, The lands we leave are fair: But fairer far than these are, But wide as all the seas are, But high as heaven the fame is That ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... as most in nature," is not commonly called a Transcendentalist, but is known colloquially as a "crank." The person who does not thank, by word or look, the friend or stranger who has pulled him out of the fire or water, is fortunate if he gets off with no harder name than that of a churl. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Colin's funeral, the punishment of the hard-hearted Thestylis, condemned to love a 'foul crooked churl' who 'crabbedly refuseth her,' and the scene in which Mercury summons Paris before the Olympian tribunal. Here we find him in the next act. The gods being seated in the bower of Diana, Juno and Pallas, and Venus and Paris appear 'on sides' before the throne ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... Why keep alive for twenty years the furnace of your hate? Perhaps his wedded life was hell; and you, at least, are free . . ." "That's where you've got it wrong," he snarled; "the fool she took was me. My rival sneaked, threw up the sponge, betrayed himself a churl: 'Twas he who got the happiness, I only got—the girl." With that he looked so devil-like he made me creep and shrink, And there was nothing else to do ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... jealous, and burning with inward annoyance, despising himself since all others despised him, scarce able to remain at the table, Felix was almost beside himself, and did not answer nor heed the remarks of the gentlemen sitting by him, who put him down as an ill-bred churl. ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... hurly-burly of the long-tailed chat reached us from a bushy hollow not far away. So far as I could determine, this fellow is as garrulous a churl and bully as his yellow-breasted cousin so well known in the East. (Afterwards I found the chats quite numerous at Boulder.) At length we scaled the cliffs, and presently stood on the edge of the mesa, which we found to be ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... did espy, Soon to the boy I heard him call, "You, Sir, you never buy a book, Therefore in one you shall not look." The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh He wish'd he never had been taught to read, Then of the old churl's books he should ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... strappin, the Miller was ruddy; A heart like a lord and a hue like a lady: The Laird was a widdiefu', bleerit knurl; She's left the guid-fellow and ta'en the churl. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... the drunken churl, Jeered at him the serving-girl, Prompt to please her master; And the begging carlin, late Fed and clothed at Ury's gate, Cursed ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... so sweetly That I had been a churl Had I repulsed the homage Of this gentle, timid girl; With bright illuminations I decked the manuscript, And in my choicest paints and inks My brush and pen ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... find a much frequented ruin gone! it was actually gone! not a trace of it; but the spot where it had stood for ages, turfed, planted with young spruce trees, and fenced off with post and rail! The exasperated people now launched forth an immensity of fulminations against the churl Sir Roger, and a certain number of them resolved to come and seat themselves in the street of the hamlet and there dine; but a terrific thunderstorm, which seemed in league with Sir Roger, soon routed them, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... discovery on Grammar among a number of papers on other subjects, which he had thrown aside and forgotten. Is this an idle boast? Or had he made other discoveries of equal importance, which he did not think it worth his while to communicate to the world, but chose to die the churl of knowledge? The whole of his reasoning turns upon shewing that the Conjunction That is the pronoun That, which is itself the participle of a verb, and in like manner that all the other mystical ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... Little John, "Here are no more but we three; But we bring them to dinn-er, Our master dare we not see. Bend your bows," said Little John, "Make all yon press to stand! The foremost monk, his life and his death Is clos-ed in my hand! Abide, churl monk," said Little John, "No farther that thou gone; If thou dost, by dere-worthy God, Thy death is in my hond. And evil thrift on thy head," said Little John, "Right under thy hat's bond, For thou hast made our master wroth, He is fast-ing ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various

... monumental hats, ta'en at the fight Of 'Eighty-eight; while ev'ry burgess foots The mortal pavement in eternal boots. Hadst thou been bach'lor, I had soon divin'd Thy close retirements, and monastic mind; Perhaps some nymph had been to visit, or The beauteous churl was to be waited for, And like the Greek, ere you the sport would miss, You stay'd, and strok'd the distaff for a kiss. But in this age, when thy cool, settled blood Is ti'd t'one flesh, and thou almost grown good, I know not how to reach ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... would not have mattered to Odysseus if he had been seen travelling in a cart, like Lancelot; though for Lancelot it was a great misfortune and anxiety. The art and pursuits of a gentleman in the heroic age are different from those of the churl, but not so far different as to keep them in different spheres. There is a community of prosaic interests. The great man is a good judge of cattle; he ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... I am Covetousness, begotten of an old churl, in a leather bag: and, might I now obtain my wish, this house, you, and all, should turn to gold, that I might lock you safe into my ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... is even for that inflexibility of mind," replied Agelastes, "that steady contempt of every thing that approaches thee, save in the light of a duty, that I demand, almost like a beggar, that personal acquaintance, which thou refusest like a churl." ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... August; and all shall be without money and without price. Faithfully and merrily then shall all men keep the holidays of the Church in peace of body and joy of heart. And man shall help man, and the saints in heaven shall be glad, because men no more fear each other; and the churl shall be ashamed, and shall hide his churlishness till it be gone, and he be no more a churl; and fellowship shall be established in heaven and ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... he do or say against it all without seeming a churl and an ingrate? But before he could formulate the inwardly grudging yet outwardly appreciative reply he felt forced to make, Jarvis himself had interposed with a flow of lively talk, explaining to Sally various details of arrangement, and sparing Max the necessity of making ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... lad, whom your royal will made the heir to the lands my father had won by his services on the field of battle, never lost his sympathy with the rebel rout around, or all had perhaps been well; he struck me in defence of a churl whom I found stealing game, and I challenged him ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... to avoid the further degradation of acting the churl to her, an inferior. And as I had suspected, she it was, arriving breathless and cloak inwrapped, ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... restless Guadalquivir To my sire's estates he came, Woo'd and won me, how I shiver! Though my temples burn with shame. I, a proud and high-born lady, Daughter of an ancient race, 'Neath the vine and olive shade I Yielded to a churl's embrace. To a churl my vows were plighted, Well my madness he requited, Since, by priestly ties, united To the muleteer's child; And my prayers are wafted o'er him, That the bull may crush and gore him, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... his selections from Baeda. In one place he stops to explain his theory of government, his wish for a thicker population, his conception of national welfare as consisting in a due balance of the priest, the thegn, and the churl. The mention of Nero spurs him to an outbreak on the abuses of power. The cold Providence of Boethius gives way to an enthusiastic acknowledgement of the goodness of God. As he writes, his large-hearted nature flings off its royal mantle, and he talks as a man to men. "Do ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... same seed of which churls spring, of the same seed spring lords; as well may the churl be saved as the lord. Wherefore I counsel thee, do just so with thy churl as though wouldest thy lord did with thee, if thou wert in his plight. A very sinful man is a churl as towards sin. I counsel thee certainly, thou lord, that, thou work in such wise ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... with oak-trees. But I should be shy of explaining a given village called Oakley in the same way, because the student of place-names might be able to show from early records that the place was originally an ey, or island, and that the first syllable is the disguised name of a medieval churl. These four simple etymons themselves may also become perverted. Thus -ham is sometimes confused with -holm (Chapter XII), -ley, as I have just suggested, may in some cases contain -ey, -ton occasionally interchanges with -don ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... Chaucer.[A] It is obviously easier to be dithyrambic than critical in chronicling this event; to which indeed dithyrambs are more appropriate than criticism. For when a man writes Opus vitae meae at the conclusion of such a task as this, and so lays down his pen, he must be a churl (even if he be also a competent critic) who will allow no pause for admiration. And where, churl or no churl, is the competent critic to be found? The Professor has here compiled an entirely new text of Chaucer, founded ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... beggar was, I should sure choose to be as I am, tortured still with cares and fears; but out of peevishness, and not out of truth." That which St. Austin said of himself here in this place, I may truly say to thee, thou discontented wretch, thou covetous niggard, thou churl, thou ambitious and swelling toad, 'tis not want but peevishness which is the cause of thy woes; settle thine ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... point on which I am not informed. Wherever the churl took this fair one, she always saw me like a shadow behind her; my looks daily tried to explain to her the violence of my love. My eyes have spoken much; but who can tell whether, after all, their language ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere

... sword! give me a sword! My good castle of Stramehl for a sword, that I may slay this base-born churl of a burgomaster!" ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... churl, "for we will go to thee to the place wherein thou wilt be tonight, O fair little ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... have led a solitary intellectual life, alone with his great ambition, and probably pitied by his acquaintance. "The world," says Emerson to the Poet, "is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine; thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long season. This is the screen and sheath in which Pan has protected his well-beloved flower." The special nature of Milton's studies cannot now be exactly ascertained. Of his manner of ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... with the welcome due to a kinsman of the Imperial house, and to a representative of the good cause of absolutism. He was received by Metternich with great interest, and his fortunes were taken under the protection of the Austrian Court. In due time, it was hoped this savage and ignorant churl would do yeoman's service to Austrian principles in the Peninsula. But the Regency and the new Constitution of Portugal had not to wait for the tardy operation of Metternich's covert hostility. The soldiery who had risen at Miguel's bidding in 1823 now proclaimed ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... under the semblance of them. It is the misshapen, hairy, Scandinavian Troll again who lifts the cart out of the mire, or threshes the corn which ten day-labourers could not end: but it is done in the dark, and with muttered maledictions. He is a churl with a soft place in his heart, whose speech is a brash of bitter waters, but who loves to help you at a pinch. He says, No; and serves you, and his thanks disgust you." Such, was Tardrew,—a true British bulldog, who lived pretty faithfully up ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... he improves every hour, as I see in his fine speeches to you. But it could not be Mr. B. if he did not: your merit extorts it from him: and what an ungrateful, as well as absurd churl, would he be, who should seek to obscure a meridian lustre, that dazzles the ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... gown, and brought wild geese in his hand, and it was on the morn after Candlemas day; but King Arthur knew him not. Sir, said Merlin unto the king, will ye give me a gift? Wherefore, said King Arthur, should I give thee a gift, churl? Sir, said Merlin, ye were better to give me a gift that is not in your hand than to lose great riches, for here in the same place where the great battle was, is great treasure hid in the earth. Who told ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... for tongue-tied churl To shorten all palaver; "Have Patience!" cried he, "dearest girl! And may I really ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... unforgotten for some sure hour of revenge; the fierce Angevin temper turned in him to restlessness and petulance in the long series of revolts which filled his reign with wearisome monotony from the moment when he first rode out to claim his duchy of Normandy, and along its southern frontier peasant and churl turned out at the sound of the tocsin, and with fork and flail drove the hated "Guirribecs" back over the border. Five years after his marriage, in 1133, his first child was born at Le Mans. Englishmen saw in the grandson of "good Queen Maud" the direct descendant ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green

... battle of Crecy is memorable for several reasons, but chiefly because Feudalism and Chivalry there received their death-blow. The yeomanry of England there showed themselves superior to the chivalry of France. "The churl had struck down the noble; the bondsman proved more than a match, in sheer hard fighting, for the knight. From the day of Crecy, Feudalism tottered slowly but surely to its grave." The battles of the world were hereafter, with few exceptions, to be fought and won, not by mail-clad knights with ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... hackney, whiskey,[87] one-horse chair, And humblest gig through sundry suburbs whirl,[da] To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow make repair; Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl, Provoking envious gibe from each pedestrian churl.[db] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... Princess Yang some other day. And now goodbye! Rougher but friendlier shelter than you have given me no man could ask for. I am downright sorry to part with you in this lonely land. If ever we meet again—" but we never did! The honest old churl clasped me into his hairy bosom three times, stuffed my wallet with dry fruit and bread, and once more repeating his directions, sent me on my ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... Christy Minstrels, would, if thrown together for a sufficient period of time, and utterly dependent on one another for daily intercourse, fall into the places allotted to each by temperament and heredity. Each little community would own a wit and a butt; the sentimentalist and the cynic. The churl by nature would appear through some veneer of manner, if only to bring into relief the finer qualities of his fellows; lastly, and most surely, one other would jingle a merciful cap and bells, and ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... not cause to distrust that baron, and to believe that means neither fair nor honourable might be employed by his enemy to wipe out the feud? What if this self-styled harper should turn out to be no minstrel after all, but a hired assassin, a follower of that base churl, his hated foe! To suspect was to believe. In his excited, drink-clouded brain wrath sprang up, fully armed. He would speedily put an end to that treacherous scheme; his enemies should learn that if one can plot, another may have cunning to bring to naught such ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... and choose another tale; For he shall find enough, both great and smale, Of storial* thing that toucheth gentiless, *historical, true And eke morality and holiness. Blame not me, if that ye choose amiss. The Miller is a churl, ye know well this, So was the Reeve, with many other mo', And harlotry* they tolde bothe two. *ribald tales *Avise you* now, and put me out of blame; *be warned* And eke men should not make ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... all the men and goods were saved. After that she went to find Helgi, her brother, followed by twenty men; and when she came there he went out to meet her, and bade her come stay with him with ten of her folk. She answered in anger, and said she had not known that he was such a churl; and she went away, being minded to find Bjorn, her brother in Broadfirth, and when he heard she was coming, he went to meet her with many followers, and greeted her warmly, and invited her and all her followers to stay with him, for he knew his ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... Pike, branded on the forehead, without hands, without feet, without tongues, lived as an example of the danger which attended the commission of petty crimes, and as a warning to all men who had the misfortune of holding no higher position than that of a churl.[29] Wealthy people might do wrong with impunity. It has been clearly shown that there was one law for the rich, and another for the poor, in England during the four centuries which preceded the ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... the windows," added Eugene. "For all this destruction we have to thank yonder churl," continued he, pointing to a man of almost gigantic stature, who was struggling to free himself from the hands of Latour and Darmont. "Not content with the laurels he has won as the ringleader of a mob, he has aspired to achieve renown ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... they narrate in Nouveau Rochelle, saying: In the old days there came one night a traveling man to an inn, and the night was late, and he was sore beset, what with rag-tag-and-bob-tail. Eftsoons he made known his wants to the churl behind the desk, who was named Gogyrvan. And thus ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... the tent of Hoseyn, he cried, "A churl's!" Or haply, "God help the man who has neither salt nor bread!" —"Nay," would a friend exclaim, "he needs nor pity nor scorn More than who spends small thought on the shore-sand, picking pearls, —Holds but in light esteem the seed-sort, bears instead 5 On his breast ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... same refuge And happy hiding place they give the birds And foxes. Then we made our forest-laws, And he that dared to hunt, even for food, Even on the ground where we had burned his hut, The ground we had drenched with his own kindred's blood, Poor foolish churl, why, we put out his eyes With red-hot irons, cut off both his hands, Torture him with such horrors that ... Christ God, How can I help but ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... having seduced the affections of a young woman named Una O'Brien, daughter of a man called Michael O'Brien, otherwise Bodagh Buie, or the Yellow Churl, demanded her in marriage from her father and family, who unanimously rejected his pretensions. Upon which, instigated by the example and practice of the dark combination of which he was so distinguished a leader, he persuaded memorialist, partly by entreaties, but ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... ancient writings say that having naught To pay the ferryman, the churl refused To ferry him across the swollen stream, When he was raised and wafted through the air. What matter whether that all-powerful Love Which moves the worlds, and bears with all our sins, Sent him a chariot and steeds of fire, Or moved the heart of some ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... eagerness to serve and please. And there is the new type, which we know to our disgust, and unhappily it multiplies like vermin,—the peasant who has lent his ear to the social democrat, and, his heart envenomed by class hatred, meets your civility with black glances and the behaviour of a churl in the sulks. ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... Clesinger invariably with rudeness. One day as Clesinger and his wife went downstairs the person in question passed without taking off his hat. The sculptor stopped him, and said, "Bid madam a good day"; and when the gentleman or churl, as the case may be, refused, he gave him a box on the ear. George Sand, who stood at the top of the stairs, saw it, came down, and gave in her turn Clesinger a box on the ear. After this she turned her son-in-law together with ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... person would be no more called bountiful, or the churl called liberal: flattery and cringing to the evil great would be at an end. The people would have sense to see the truth about right and wrong, and courage to speak it. Men would then be held for what they really were, and honoured and despised according to their true merits. Yes, said Isaiah, we ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... Sydney town! I long to see the flowers in Martin Place, To meet the girl I write to face to face, To hold her close and teach What in this Hell I'm learning—that a man Is only half a man without his girl, That sure as grass is green and God's above A chap's real happiness, If he's no churl, Is home and folks and girl, And all the comforts that come ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... with old Ill-pause, the devil's orator, and another with Captain Anything, and another with Lord Willbewill, and another with that notorious villain Clip-promise, by whose doings so much of the king's coin had been abused, and another with that so angry and so ill-conditioned churl old Mr. Prejudice, with his sixty deaf men under him. Dear Mr. Wet-eyes, with his rope upon his head, will have a fit congregation one winter night, and Captain Self-denial another. We shall have another painful but profitable evening before a communion season with Mr. Prywell, and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... his name some Ron...Ronte... Or...Oronte... No. Ge...Geronte. Yes, Geronte, that's my miser's name. I have it now; it is the old churl I mean. Well, to come back to our story. Our people wished to leave this town to-day, and my lover would have lost me through his lack of money if, in order to wrench some out of his father, he had not made use of a clever servant he has. As for that servant's name, I remember it very ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere

... Parsimony.— N. parsimony, parcity|; parsimoniousness[obs3], stinginess &c. adj.; stint; illiberality, tenacity. avarice, greed &c. 817a. miser, niggard, churl, screw, skinflint, crib, codger, muckworm[obs3], scrimp, lickpenny[obs3], hunks, curmudgeon, Harpagon, harpy, extortioner, Jew, usurer; Hessian [U.S.]; pinch fist, pinch penny. V. be parsimonious &c. adj.; grudge, begrudge, stint, pinch, gripe, screw, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... thankful—that the servants were killed, or the gentlefolks were saved? Nor could young Esmond agree in the Doctor's vehement protestations to my lady, when he visited her during her convalescence, that the malady had not in the least impaired her charms, and had not been churl enough to injure the fair features of the Viscountess of Castlewood; whereas, in spite of these fine speeches, Harry thought that her ladyship's beauty was very much injured by the small-pox. When the ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... thy breeding, churl, to use such thewis [manners] with a lady?" demanded little Roger ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... to study the tablet attentively: she kept her eyes for some moments fixed upon the sky, and then said, "Hateful churl, thou liest! Thy name is Hirvan the Kurd, and by profession thou art a thief. Confess ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... know we stayed their hands From war among themselves, but left them kings; Of whom were any bounteous, merciful, Truth-speaking, brave, good livers, them we enrolled Among us, and they sit within our hall. But as Mark hath tarnished the great name of king, As Mark would sully the low state of churl: And, seeing he hath sent us cloth of gold, Return, and meet, and hold him from our eyes, Lest we should lap him up in cloth of lead, Silenced for ever—craven—a man of plots, Craft, poisonous counsels, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... said his uncle, coolly. "Let me think this over again. After all, we are of the same stock, although your father always flouted me for a mean-spirited churl. Poor Gavan, ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... grant it. Far away though he stands to the left of the good host, he has yet something in common with that third person discernible on the right—that speck yonder, which I believe to be Lucullus. Nothing that we know of Lucullus suggests that he was less inhuman than the churl of Arden. It does not appear that he had a single friend, nor that he wished for one. His lavishness was indiscriminate except in that he entertained only the rich. One would have liked to dine with ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... exclaimed, "I'm going to fight you with your own weapon—and wallop you. Look to yourself, churl Caucusite!" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various

... as at the throat Of the false groom he flies; Back at the sounds Sir Konrad bounds: 'Off hands, base churl,' he cries. ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... my well-contented day When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... which his fever by its law begins from the moment of returning consciousness to drive his poor brain, till, reaching a violence his strength cannot support, it plunges him back exhausted into unconsciousness, "What, Kurwenal, you do not see her? Away, to the watch-tower, dull-witted churl, that the sight may not escape you which is so plain to me! Do you not hear me?... To the tower! Quick, to the tower!... Are you there?... The ship! The ship! Isolde's ship! You must—must see it! The ship!... Is it possible," he cries despairingly, "that you do not see it yet?" He has ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... apparition Thrills with fire from heaven the wheels of hours that whirl, Rose and passed her radiance in serene transition From his eyes who sought a grain and found a pearl. But the food by cunning hope for vain fruition Lightly stolen away from keeping of a churl Left the bitterness of death and hope's perdition On the lip that scorn was ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... with flushed faces and uneven steps, the former laden with bottles, the latter with two tin mugs. Herrick silently passed them by. They hailed him in thick voices, he made no answer; they cursed him for a churl, he paid no heed although his belly quivered with disgust and rage. He closed-to the door of the house behind him, and cast himself on a locker in the cabin—not to sleep, he thought—rather to think and to despair. Yet he had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... look and christian walking, in habit dun beseeming her megrims and wrinkled visage, nor did her hortative want of it effect for incontinently Punch Costello was of them all embraided and they reclaimed the churl with civil rudeness some and shaked him with menace of blandishments others whiles they all chode with him, a murrain seize the dolt, what a devil he would be at, thou chuff, thou puny, thou got in peasestraw, thou losel, thou chitterling, thou spawn of a rebel, thou dykedropt, thou abortion ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... shelter, drove me not away In his great grief, but hid his evil day Like a brave man, because he loved me well. Is one in all this land more hospitable, One in all Greece? I swear no man shall say He hath cast his love upon a churl away! ...
— Alcestis • Euripides

... Rommany churl And the Rommany girl, To-morrow shall hie To poison the sty, And bewitch on the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... had hearkened this a great while, he said to the knight: "Hast thou heard it of yonder churl how he prayeth that his wife may be delivered of her child, and another while prayeth that she may not be delivered? Certes, he is worser than a thief. For every man ought to have pity of women, more especially of them that be sick of childing. ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris

... "mistake me not. I know ye were but an instrument in the hands of others; a churl must obey his lord; I would not bear heavily on such an one. But I begin to learn upon many sides that this great duty lieth on my youth and ignorance, to avenge my father. Prithee, then, good Carter, set aside the memory of my threatenings, and in pure good-will and honest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... yielding skin. The shouts that arose from the group around were all in favour of Nero, who was a general favourite—as he was one of those large, peaceable, benevolent fellows, belieing his name, whom all liked, while there was something of the churl and savage about Rover, that caused him to ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur

... away a whole year, and then came back one day, dragging one foot after the other, and a poor, wizened face on him, and he was as cross as two sticks. When he was rested and had got something to eat, he told them how he had taken service with the Gray Churl of the Townland of Mischance, and that the agreement was whoever would first say he was sorry for his bargain should get an inch wide of the skin of his back, from shoulder to hips, taken off. If it was the master, he should also pay double wages; if it was the servant, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... [too] much; thou hast brought enough for half a score men and I am alone; but belike thou wilt eat with me.' 'Eat by thyself,' replied Ali; 'I am full.' 'O my lord,' rejoined the Christian, 'the wise say, "He who eats not with his guest is a base-born churl."' ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... as though he were taking leave of an old and tried friend. By homely methods, this unerring diagnostician of the human soul had been reading him, liking him, and making him feel a heart-warming sympathy. The man who shrunk from lion-hunters, and who could return the churl's answer to the advances of sycophant and flatterer, enthusiastically poured out for the ungainly mountain boy all the rare quality and bouquet of his seasoned personal charm. It was a vintage distilled from ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... jealous churl, and Cis a little fool, there's no help for it," said Antony, disdainfully turning his back on his ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... blue-stockings like Lady Eastlake and Madame Mohl; Mademoiselle de Montijo, who captivated an Emperor, and Lola Montez, who ruled a kingdom. No advantages of social education will convert a fool or a bore or a prig or a churl into an agreeable member of society; but, where Nature has bestowed a bright intelligence and a genial disposition, her gifts are cultivated to perfection by such surroundings as Frederick Leveson enjoyed in early life. And so it came about ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... maple-sugar-boilings, and the like were scenes of boisterous and light-hearted merriment, to which the whole neighborhood came, for it was accounted an insult if a man was not asked in to help on such occasions, and none but a base churl would refuse his assistance. The backwoods people had to front peril and hardship without stint, and they loved for the moment to leap out of the bounds of their narrow lives and taste the coarse pleasures that are always dear to a strong, simple, and primitive race. Yet underneath ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... the threshold of a modest 'career,' of a sort, after all," he thought, "and she will never give it up for me. Would she be willing to combine me with the career, and how would it work? I shouldn't be churl enough to mind her singing now and then, but it seems to me I couldn't stand 'tours.' Besides, hers is such a childlike, winsome, fragrant little gift it ought not to be exploited ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... good deal about how much you have to pay for a churl, and how much for an earl, and so on, leaving out only the slaves; for all the free people of England in Saxon times were divided into earls and churls; that is, noblemen and agricultural laborers or yeomanry; these were the two estates besides the church, always a class by itself. Later there grew ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... "Churl!" said an officer of dragoons, "how know you that our payments are light? The emperor takes nothing without payment; surely not from such as you. But a propos of ransoms, what now might be Holkerstein's ransom for a farmer's barns stuffed with ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... flash—their teeth would grind— Their lips would tightly curl— They'd say, "Thy way thyself must find, Thou misdirecting churl!" And, similarly, also, when He tried a foreign friend; Italians answered, "Il ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... slow; and now, with many a frisk Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout; Then shakes his powder'd coat, and barks for joy. Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught But now and then with pressure of his thumb To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube, That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud Streams far behind him, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... makes not a Land, nor soil a State. Loving your land, how sullenly you hate— The People—who've to till it! Of the earth, earthy is that love of soil Which for wide-acred wealth will sap and spoil The souls and sinews of the thralls of Toil. Churl! Bear a human heart, a liberal hand! Then thou may'st say that thou dost "love ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various

... Jonathan thinks and talks of cotton, and flour, and dollars, and the ups and downs of stocks. Poetry doesn't pay: he can not appreciate, and does not care for it. "Let me get something for myself," he says, like the churl in Theocritus. "Let the gods whom he invokes reward the poet. What do we want with more verse? We have Milton and Shakspeare (whether we read them or not). He is the poet for me who asks me for nothing;" and so the poor Muses wither (or as Jonathan himself might say, wilt) away, and perish ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... judge be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place; as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. Then the vile person shall no more be called liberal; nor the churl bountiful; and the work of justice shall be peace; and the effect of justice, quiet and security; and wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of the times. Walk ye righteously and speak uprightly; despise the gains of oppression, shake from your hands the contamination ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... may sit with clown or churl Nor feel himself disgraced thereby; But he who has but small esteem Husbands ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel: Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament, And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content, And tender churl mak'st waste in niggarding: Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world's due, by the grave ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare

... man is at home and happy with a book, sitting by his fireside, he must be a churl if he does not communicate that happiness. Let him read now and then to his ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others

... reign over any of the kingdoms of the earth, to be flouted by you, a mere churl? Out of my chamber this instant, and betake yourself to working in the fields, for they are fitter setting for one of your birth ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various

... should sure choose to be as I am, tortured still with cares and fears; but out of peevishness, and not out of truth." That which St. Austin said of himself here in this place, I may truly say to thee, thou discontented wretch, thou covetous niggard, thou churl, thou ambitious and swelling toad, 'tis not want but peevishness which is the cause of thy woes; settle ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... another thing! But this headstrong girl seemed to think she had as good a right to be happy in her own way as a peasant! True, the man of her choice was not a reprobate: he was not even a low-born, unmannerly churl: Don Fernando de Velasquez stood foremost among the young cavaliers of Spain, in gallantry and in that nobility of mind which, should ever accompany gentle birth. But yet it was in that very gentle birth that all the offence lay, for Fernando's ancestors had long ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... told her then with the truest words I could tell her, it was not right for her to be joined with a common clumsy churl; and the man that was three times fairer than the whole race of the Scots, waiting till she would come to him to be his ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... the son of Sualtam and Dectera of Dun Dalgan! and comest hither without chariots and horsemen and a prince's retinue and guard. Nay, thou art a churl and a liar to boot, and hie thee hence now with wings at thy heels or verily with sore blows I shall beat thee ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... their strength and speed? A proper man I dash away, As their two dozen legs were mine indeed. Up then, from idle pondering free, And forth into the world with me! I tell you what;—your speculative churl Is like a beast which some ill spirit leads, On barren wilderness, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... because I prefer your drawings to every thing in the world, that I am such a churl as to refuse Mrs. Bentley's partridges: I shall thank her very much for them. You must excuse me If I am vain enough to be so convinced of my own taste, that all the neglect that has been thrown upon your designs cannot make me ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... in sweetheart or friend, he must have led a solitary intellectual life, alone with his great ambition, and probably pitied by his acquaintance. "The world," says Emerson to the Poet, "is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine; thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long season. This is the screen and sheath in which Pan has protected his well-beloved flower." The special nature of Milton's studies cannot now be exactly ascertained. Of his manner of studying he informs Diodati, "No delay, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... were eager for their reward. Norman, Breton, Angevin, clamored for possession: families of peasants crossed the sea, expecting, in right of their French tongue, to be gentry at once, and lords of the churl Saxons; while the Saxons, fully conscious of their own nobility, and possessors of the soil for five hundred years, derided them ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... several of my fair Reasoners urge, in defence of this Practice, that it is but a necessary Provision they make for themselves, in case their Husband proves a Churl or a Miser; so that they consider this Allowance as a kind of Alimony, which they may lay their Claim to, without actually separating from their Husbands. But with Submission, I think a Woman who will give up her self to a Man in Marriage, where there is the least Room for such an Apprehension, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... heaven, Jack Ireton, 'tis you who are the true lover and the gentleman; and I am naught but a selfish churl with my face in my own trencher!" he burst out, wringing my hand yet again. "'Tis as you say; yet I will not be driven from this; for aught you have told me to prove it otherwise, Madge has yet to choose between us, and she shall have that choice, fairly and squarely, and knowing that ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... could earn a day. As Mr. Brisk looks at Mercy's lap so full of hats and hosen and says it, I can see his natty cane beginning to lengthen itself out in his soft-skinned hand and to send out teeth like a muck-rake. Give Mr. Brisk another thirty years or so and he will be an ancient churl, raking to himself the sticks and the straws and the dust of the earth, neither looking up to nor regarding the celestial crown that is still offered to him in exchange ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... a hurry," said his uncle, coolly. "Let me think this over again. After all, we are of the same stock, although your father always flouted me for a mean-spirited churl. Poor Gavan, we ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... conquered, that in the children of our Prince of Wales, after 800 years, the blood of William of Normandy is mingled with the blood of the very Harold who fell at Hastings. And so, by the bitter woes which followed the Norman conquest was the whole population, Dane, Angle, and Saxon, earl and churl, freeman and slave, crushed and welded together into one homogeneous mass, made just and merciful towards each other by the most wholesome of all teachings, a community of suffering; and if they had been, as I fear they were, a lazy and a sensual ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... for it was enough for the divine Julius to pension with a township the writer and glorifier of those conquests which he had achieved over the whole world. But now the spendthrift kindness of the populace squandered a kingdom on a churl. Nay, not even Africanus, when he rewarded the records of his deed, rose to the munificence of the Danes. For there the wage of that laborious volume was in mere gold, while here a few callow verses won a sceptre ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... something jar the nicer feminine sense With usage, being all too fine and large, Instinct of warmth and colour, with a trick Of blunting 'Mariana's' keener edge To 'Mary Ann'—the same but not the same: Whereat she girded, tore her crisped hair, Called him 'Sir Churl,' and ever calling 'Churl!' Drave him to Science, then to Alcohol, To forge a thousand theories of the rocks, Then somewhat else for thousands dewy cool, Wherewith he sought a more Pacific isle And there found love, a ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... rouse the exhausted nags with a switch, he showed him that they did not move. The castellan, after he had watched him for a while with an expression of defiance, broke out, "Look at the ruffian! Ought not the churl to thank God that the jades are still alive?" He asked who would have been expected to take care of them when the groom had run away, and whether it were not just that the horses should have worked in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... known colloquially as a "crank." The person who does not thank, by word or look, the friend or stranger who has pulled him out of the fire or water, is fortunate if he gets off with no harder name than that of a churl. ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... and beat in his helmet, though without doing much injury. He was very near falling, however; but, bearing on his stirrups, he recovered himself immediately; and when he thought to have revenged himself upon the churl by killing him, he had escaped, dreading the Duke's blow. He ran back in among the English, but he was not safe even there; for the Normans, seeing him, pursued and caught him, and having pierced him through and through with their lances, left him ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... have said farewell, and now, madam, to you. Yet do not think that I am a man without eyes for your beauty, or a heart to know your worth. I seemed to you a fool and a churl. I grieved most bitterly, and I wronged you bitterly; my excuse for all is now known. For though you are more beautiful than she, yet true love is no wanderer; it gives a beauty that it does not find, and weaves a chain no other ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell

... ungracious driver; he only swung his two canes a little more briskly, and kept breast of the horses all the way, entering the town side by side with the inhospitable vehicles—a running reproach to the churl on the box. ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... was as severe as the compulsion of butties. Every approach to recreation, every act of mutual providence against accident or disease, began and ended in beer. The day a man entered the pit's company, he paid 1s. for footing-ale, and the doggy saw that no churl escaped. When a lad was old enough to have a sweetheart he was toasted with the 'nasty' shilling. The sins of the married men were washed away in half-a-crown's worth of ale. The beer-shop was the head-quarters of the Burial ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... law, but the finite can never overbalance the infinite. We may, if we so please, honour a king as king,—but with God there are no kings. There are only Souls, "made in His image." And whosoever defaces that Divine Image, whether he be base-born churl or crowned potentate, must answer for the wicked deed. How many of us view our social acquaintances from any higher standard than the extent of their cash accounts, or the "usefulness" of their influence? Yet ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... garment; if a man of gentle birth put it on, it suited him well; but if a churl, it would not ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... am Covetousness, begotten of an old churl, in a leather bag: and, might I now obtain my wish, this house, you, and all, should turn to gold, that I might lock you safe into my chest: O my ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... stately. But when they spake, Menelaus' words were fluent, clear but few; Odysseus when he spoke, fixed his eyes on the ground, turning his sceptre neither backwards nor forward, standing still like a man devoid of wit; one would have deemed him a churl and a very fool; yet when he sent forth his mighty voice from his breast in words as many as the snowflakes, no other man ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... miser, though he pays every body their own, cannot be an honest man, when he does not discharge the good offices that are incumbent on a friendly, kind, and generous person: for, faith the prophet Isaiah, chap. XXXII. ver. 7, 8. The instruments of a churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right. But the liberal soul deviseth liberal things, and by liberal things shall he stand. It is certainly honest to do every thing the law requires; but should we throw every ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... I fell thee," The noisy Atle cries: "No one comes here, I tell thee, But either fights or flies. If peace thou ask'st, believe me,— I fight, but am no churl,— In friendship I'll receive thee, And ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner

... sternly, turning to one who rode behind him, "you have failed in your trust. I told you to watch the boy, and from time to time you brought me news that he was growing up but a village churl. He is no churl, and unless I mistake me, he will some day be dangerous. Let me know when he next returns to the village; we must then take speedy steps for preventing ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... heart of the churl, which can never be made bountiful," said the indignant young priest. It was not a fit sentiment, perhaps, for a preacher who had just written that text about the wicked man turning from the evil of his ways. Mr Wentworth went away in a glow of indignation and excitement, and left his guest ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... given me back the sword of my ancestors, I, thinking to requite his kindness at his death, rendered important services to Matagoro. It would be easy to finish the matter by sending a present of money; but I had rather take the sword and return it than be under an obligation to this mean churl, who knows not the laws which regulate the intercourse and dealings of men of ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... my lord! I am shamed to think my sovereign's son should wait, Through a churl's ignorance, without ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... good sir; I'll trouble you. [Exit GRIPE.] Now 'twere a good jest, if I could cosen the old churl of his daughter, and get the wench for myself. Zounds, I am as proper a man as Peter Plod-all: and though his father be as good a man as mine, yet far-fetched and dear-bought is good for ladies; and, I am sure, I have been as far as Cales[141] to fetch that I have. I have been at ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... cursing myself for a churl, I wrote and wished her good luck. The next morning I received a letter from Uncle Bob asking me to go to Wimberley; and early in the following week I travelled up to Cumberland. I received a warm welcome from the old General. As a boy I used ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... nor the other, you crooked churl," replied one of the crippled beggars. "The Sheriff is returned from London with his daughter, and the folk are giving him a welcome, such as you will never have from the city! Stand back, for there is no room for you there. Four of us as it is are too many, and we have come here ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... vile person would be no more called bountiful, or the churl called liberal: flattery and cringing to the evil great would be at an end. The people would have sense to see the truth about right and wrong, and courage to speak it. Men would then be held for what ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... artisan. Oh, how much better it would be that those folk of whom I speak were neighbors, and to have your confine at Galluzzo and at Trespiano,[3] than to have them within, and to endure the stench of the churl of Aguglione,[4] and of him of Signa, who already has his eye ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... Thrills with fire from heaven the wheels of hours that whirl, Rose and passed her radiance in serene transition From his eyes who sought a grain and found a pearl. But the food by cunning hope for vain fruition Lightly stolen away from keeping of a churl Left the bitterness of death and hope's perdition On the lip that scorn was ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... this a great while, he said to the knight: "Hast thou heard it of yonder churl how he prayeth that his wife may be delivered of her child, and another while prayeth that she may not be delivered? Certes, he is worser than a thief. For every man ought to have pity of women, more especially of them that be sick of childing. ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris

... course, a more extended "radius;" But, Cabby, it is clear, Thinks quite otherwise. I fear The controversy's growing rather "taydious." Whether by night or day, A fair fare the fare should pay, And Cabby should not overcharge unduly; But this is what riles me, When churl Cabby will not see A would-be fare, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various

... unto the Sumner; "see, I told thee how 'twould fall. Thou seest, dear brother, The churl spoke one thing, but he thought another. Let us prick on, for we take ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... cheeks faded On shores invaded, When shorewards waded The lords of fight; When churl and craven Saw hard on haven The wide-winged raven At mainmast height; When monks affrighted To windward sighted The birds full-flighted Of swift sea-kings; So earth turns paler When Storm the sailor Steers in with a roar in the race of ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... promised likeness, and shake the pillared rottenness of the world! Leave not thy sounding words in air, write them in marble, and teach the coming age heroic truths! Up, and wake the echoes of Time! Rich in deepest lore, die not the bed-rid churl of knowledge, leaving the survivors unblest! Set, set as thou didst rise in pomp and gladness! Dart like the sunflower one broad, golden flash of light; and ere thou ascendest thy native sky, show us the steps by which thou didst ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... watch was relieved at midnight, Huish and the captain appeared upon the quarter-deck with flushed faces and uneven steps, the former laden with bottles, the latter with two tin mugs. Herrick silently passed them by. They hailed him in thick voices, he made no answer; they cursed him for a churl, he paid no heed although his belly quivered with disgust and rage. He closed-to the door of the house behind him, and cast himself on a locker in the cabin—not to sleep, he thought—rather to think and to despair. Yet he had scarce turned twice on his uneasy bed, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... let me rather thus console it; let me snatch from those lips one breath of that fragrance which never should be wasted on the low churl thy husband. ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... understood their happiness well. Mrs. Edson was not quite so buoyant with spirits as usual; but she conversed with Rufus in her charming style. I was quite indignant to hear so much eloquence and refinement wasted on a churl like him, and just malicious enough to think the fair speaker would have preferred to say her pretty things in the ear of one who could have better appreciated their worth and beauty, namely, Col. Malcome. He is really a splendid man, though I hardly relish the power he seems to exercise ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... attachment of a strong-minded and noble-hearted woman: and when, in addition to this, her society affords the delight of mental accomplishment and personal beauty, such as Hester's, he must be a churl indeed if he does not greatly enjoy the present, and indulge in sweet anticipations for the future. Hope also brought the whole power of his will to bear upon his circumstances. He dwelt upon all the happiest features of his lot; and, in his admiration ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... cheerfulness, to please him with certain charming tricks of attire; and sometimes, with only a white rose-bud gleaming through the braided shadows of her hair, lighted herself up as with a star; then, not a carping churl, not an envious coquette in Hendrik, but confessed to the prettiness of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... brain before she had landed. She had heard the grand ring of passionate love this once at least—and how? In the voice of a common sailor—out of the heart of an ignorant fellow who could neither read nor write, nor speak his own language, a churl, a peasant's son, a labourer—but a man, at least. That was it—a strong, honest, fearless man. That was why it all moved her so—that was why it was not an insult that this low-born fellow should ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... towers of beryl, Tourmaline, hyacinth, topaz and pearl, Free to the King if he have but the pass-word, Free to the veriest low-born churl. ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... feet, without tongues, lived as an example of the danger which attended the commission of petty crimes, and as a warning to all men who had the misfortune of holding no higher position than that of a churl.[29] Wealthy people might do wrong with impunity. It has been clearly shown that there was one law for the rich, and another for the poor, in England during the four centuries which preceded ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... work together, and I bade Hugh tell his folk that so would I deal with any man, knight or churl, Norman or Saxon, who stole as much as one egg from our valley. Said he to me, riding home: "Thou hast gone far to conquer England this evening." I answered: "England must be thine and mine, then. Help me, Hugh, ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... suffocate, and scoff, Declare they are "smoked off," Is there no room inside? If smoke means Hades, We, "to oblige the ladies," Have taken outside seats this many a year, Cold, but with weeds to cheer Our macintosh-enswathed umbrella'd bodies; Now we are called churl-noddies Because we puff the humble briar-root. Is man indeed a "brute" Because he may upon the knife-board's rack owe Some solace to Tobacco? If so it be, then man's last, only chance, Is in the full ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various

... span, Is it not mine, their every power? I fly along as an undoubted man, On four and twenty legs the road I scour. Cheer up, then! let all thinking be, And out into the world with me! I tell thee, friend, a speculating churl Is like a beast, some evil spirit chases Along a barren heath in one perpetual whirl, While round about lie fair, ...
— Faust • Goethe

... if thrown together for a sufficient period of time, and utterly dependent on one another for daily intercourse, fall into the places allotted to each by temperament and heredity. Each little community would own a wit and a butt; the sentimentalist and the cynic. The churl by nature would appear through some veneer of manner, if only to bring into relief the finer qualities of his fellows; lastly, and most surely, one other would jingle a merciful cap and bells, and mingle motley with ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... whistle of the youth who scour'd His master's armor; and of such a one He ask'd, "What means the tumult in the town?" Who told him, scouring still, "The sparrow-hawk!" Then riding close behind an ancient churl, Who, smitten by the dusty sloping beam, Went sweating underneath a sack of corn, Ask'd yet once more what meant the hubbub here? Who answer'd gruffly, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... we ought to be thankful—that the servants were killed, or the gentlefolks were saved? Nor could young Esmond agree in the Doctor's vehement protestations to my lady, when he visited her during her convalescence, that the malady had not in the least impaired her charms, and had not been churl enough to injure the fair features of the Viscountess of Castlewood; whereas, in spite of these fine speeches, Harry thought that her ladyship's beauty was very much injured by the small-pox. When the marks of the disease cleared away, they did not, it is true, leave furrows or ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... to look along the high road to see if wayfarers were there to share the meal with him and his family. "There he goes," was the saying about any one who passed the door at any time without coming in to take a spoon—"there he goes; I'll warrant he's a miser at home to be so much of a churl abroad" The very gipsy claimed the cleanest bed in a Glenman's house whenever he came that way, and his gossip paid handsomely for ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... its consequences, it had a very material influence upon the general constitution of the realm. * *The main-spring of the machinery of remedial justice existed in the franchise of the lower and lowest orders of the political hierarchy. Without the suffrage of the yeoman, the burgess, and the churl, the sovereign could not exercise the most important and most essential function of royalty; from them he received the power of life and death; he could not wield the sword of justice until the humblest of his subjects placed the weapon in his hand." 1 Palgrave's ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... Anything, and another with Lord Willbewill, and another with that notorious villain Clip-promise, by whose doings so much of the king's coin had been abused, and another with that so angry and so ill-conditioned churl old Mr. Prejudice, with his sixty deaf men under him. Dear Mr. Wet-eyes, with his rope upon his head, will have a fit congregation one winter night, and Captain Self-denial another. We shall have another painful but profitable evening before ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... money and without price. Faithfully and merrily then shall all men keep the holidays of the Church in peace of body and joy of heart. And man shall help man, and the saints in heaven shall be glad, because men no more fear each other; and the churl shall be ashamed, and shall hide his churlishness till it be gone, and he be no more a churl; and fellowship shall be established in heaven and ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... knows the lofty spirit fills thy soul, And therefore feels indignantly the wrong A bold-faced villain dares to offer thee. Learn, then, in Poland, an audacious churl, A renegade, who broke his monkish vows, Laid down his habit, and renounced his God, Doth use the name and title of thy son, Whom death snatched from thee in his infancy. The shameless varlet boasts him of thy blood, And doth affect to be Czar Ivan's son; A Waywode breaks the peace; from ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller

... misshapen, hairy, Scandinavian Troll again who lifts the cart out of the mire, or threshes the corn which ten day-labourers could not end: but it is done in the dark, and with muttered maledictions. He is a churl with a soft place in his heart, whose speech is a brash of bitter waters, but who loves to help you at a pinch. He says, No; and serves you, and his thanks disgust you." Such, was Tardrew,—a true British bulldog, who lived pretty faithfully up to his Old ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... his theorem to its conclusion,—"unless you particularly aspire to seem—and to be—an absolute barbarian, a bear, a boor, a churl, and a curmudgeon,"—each epithet received an augmented stress,—"you must call at Craford New Manor with the least possible delay. As I find myself in rather good form just now, and feel that I should shine to perhaps exceptional advantage, I suggest that ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... new type, which we know to our disgust, and unhappily it multiplies like vermin,—the peasant who has lent his ear to the social democrat, and, his heart envenomed by class hatred, meets your civility with black glances and the behaviour of a churl in the sulks. ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... things, does thoroughly provoke me. It must be a lady—a man could not be so unpolite towards this angelic being. But—or—now she takes the cup; and now, oh, woe! a great man's hand grasps into the rusk-basket—the savage! and how he helps himself—the churl! I should like to know whether it is her brother,—he was perhaps hungry, poor fellow! Now come in, one after the other, two lovely children, who are like the sister. I wonder now, whether the good man with one ear has left anything remaining. That most charming of ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various

... dinner, dressed by our most polite and obsequious prisoner, Lieutenant Preville. "If we could but fall in with two or three more fat prizes we should be able to set up as independent gentlemen when we get back home again, and I should be able to regain the lands of the McAllisters from the southern churl who has dared to ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... icebergs resounded as the churl approached; the thicket on his cheeks was frozen. In shivers flew the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... grasses before them, yet— Like bold Antaeus—would each time bring New life from the earth, barely touched by his wing; And the swallow and martlet that always knew The straightest way home. Here a Saxon churl drew His breath—tapped his ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... the old wild road whereon we stray, Meseems, might bring us face to face with one Whom seeing we could not but give thanks, and pray For England's love our father and her son To speak with us as once in days long done With all men, sage and churl and monk and mime, Who knew not as we know the soul sublime That sang for song's love more than lust of fame. Yet, though this be not, yet, in happy time, Our father Chaucer, here ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... seriously damaged the windows," added Eugene. "For all this destruction we have to thank yonder churl," continued he, pointing to a man of almost gigantic stature, who was struggling to free himself from the hands of Latour and Darmont. "Not content with the laurels he has won as the ringleader of a mob, he has aspired to achieve renown by defaming women. He has incited the populace to ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... this birth, You can but damn for one poor spot of earth; And when your children find your judgment such, They'll scorn their sires, and wish themselves born Dutch; Each haughty poet will infer with ease, How much his wit must under-write to please. As some strong churl would, brandishing, advance The monumental sword that conquered France; So you, by judging this, your judgment teach, Thus far you like, that is, thus far you reach. Since then the vote of full two thousand years Has ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... Lajeunesse, the singer of all the world—ah, why did she not say so then!" said the churl. "What would I not do for her! Money—no, it is nothing, but the Lajeunesse, I myself would give my horse to hear ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Rachel; blue-stockings like Lady Eastlake and Madame Mohl; Mademoiselle de Montijo, who captivated an Emperor, and Lola Montez, who ruled a kingdom. No advantages of social education will convert a fool or a bore or a prig or a churl into an agreeable member of society; but, where Nature has bestowed a bright intelligence and a genial disposition, her gifts are cultivated to perfection by such surroundings as Frederick Leveson enjoyed in early life. And so it came about that ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... turning from his daughter to her lover,—"you sir, have well repaid the liberal confidence which I placed in you with so little reserve. You I have to thank also for some lessons, which may teach me to rest satisfied with the churl's blood which nature has poured into my veins, and with the rude nurture which my father ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... from a yawn-mouthed cave, Like a red-hot eye from a grave. 170 No man stood there of whom to crave Rest for wayfarer plodding by: Though the tenant were churl or knave ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... in a russet gown, and brought wild geese in his hand, and it was on the morn after Candlemas day; but King Arthur knew him not. Sir, said Merlin unto the king, will ye give me a gift? Wherefore, said King Arthur, should I give thee a gift, churl? Sir, said Merlin, ye were better to give me a gift that is not in your hand than to lose great riches, for here in the same place where the great battle was, is great treasure hid in the earth. Who told thee so, churl? said Arthur. ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... Governor of Cadiz, who has been contracted to Julia, now married to a rich old churl, Francisco, in order to gain her, mans a galley, which has been captured from the Turks, with some forty or fifty attendants disguised as ferocious Ottomans; and whilst she, her husband and a party of friends are taking a pleasure trip in a yacht, they are suddenly boarded and all made prisoners ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... Finis.—Inquire of that arch-churl Diabelli when the French copy of the Sonata in C minor [Op. 111] is to be published. I stipulated to have five copies for myself, one of which is to be on fine paper, for the Cardinal [the Archduke Rudolph]. If he attempts any of his usual impertinence ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace

... defence. But it also frequently happens that the Snail occupies a raised position, clinging to the tip of a grass-stalk or perhaps to the smooth surface of a stone. This support serves him as a temporary lid; it wards off the aggression of any churl who might try to molest the inhabitant of the cabin, always on the express condition that no slit show itself anywhere on the protecting circumference. If, on the other hand, in the frequent case when the shell ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... craved the boon so sweetly That I had been a churl Had I repulsed the homage Of this gentle, timid girl; With bright illuminations I decked the manuscript, And in my choicest paints and inks My brush ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... soon, shook her dry, withered fist at the porter, and cried, "Ha! thou insolent churl, I will pray thee ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... Harold dared his daughter's hand to seek! No word the fierce knight spake But ope'd the door, And, scowling, said—"No Saxon churl shall make Rowena wife; and dare he woo her more, Upon him, would Sir Guy a ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer

... religion, to all that know him; it can hardly have a good word in all that end of the town where he dwells, through him. [Rom. 2:24,25] Thus say the common people that know him, A saint abroad, and a devil at home. His poor family finds it so; he is such a churl, such a railer at and so unreasonable with his servants, that they neither know how to do for or speak to him. Men that have any dealings with him say it is better to deal with a Turk than with him; for fairer dealing they shall have at their hands. This Talkative (if it be possible) will go ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan

... threshold of a modest 'career,' of a sort, after all," he thought, "and she will never give it up for me. Would she be willing to combine me with the career, and how would it work? I shouldn't be churl enough to mind her singing now and then, but it seems to me I couldn't stand 'tours.' Besides, hers is such a childlike, winsome, fragrant little gift it ought not to be exploited like a ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Italian, "and this is an evil house; it is a harbouring place for thieves, and murders have been committed here, if all tales be true." I looked at these two people attentively; they were both young, the man apparently about twenty-five years of age. He was a short thick- made churl, evidently of prodigious strength; his features were rather handsome, but with a gloomy expression, and his eyes were full of sullen fire. His wife somewhat resembled him, but had a countenance more open and better tempered; but what struck me as most singular in connexion with ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... once. The trusted soldier has left selfishness and cowardice on the first tenting-ground, and works hard, though he stands statue-like. It is his business to be of use, and he is never useless. So with a great artist. He is brother to gentleman or churl. Hawthorne had not an atom of the poison of contempt. As I have said before, if he did not love stupidity, he ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... and did not rank as gentlemen. All thanes disposed of the lands which they held (and which were called Blockland) to their heirs, but with the obligations due to those of whom they were held. Ceorle (whence our word churl) was a countryman or artisan who was a freeman. Those ceorles who held lands in leases were called sockmen, and their land sockland, of which they could not dispose, being barely tenants. Those ceorles who acquired possession of five hides of land with a large house, court, and bell to ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... farmer-maiden. She was all this, it is true, but she was, besides, grace and color and charm itself. And if she chose to bake in such attire—or, even, if she chose to pretend to do so, where was the churl to say her nay, even though the flour was part of a deliberate "make up"? Certainly he was not at the store ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... no," exclaimed Sybil, generously. "You shall deny yourself no pleasure, for my sake, dear, dear Lyon! I am not such a churl as to require such a sacrifice. Only let me feel sure of your love, and then you may read with her all the morning, and play and sing with her all the evening, and I shall not care. I shall even be pleased, ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... Robin Gray reversed. Gustave perceived that his refusal to avail himself of this splendid destiny would be a bitter and lasting grief to these people who loved him so fondly—whom he loved as fondly in return. Must he not be a churl to disappoint hopes so unselfish, to balk an ambition so innocent? And only because Madelon was not the most attractive or the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... fell it that his doom, For all his bright life's kindling bloom And light that took no thought for gloom, Fell as a breath from the opening tomb Full on him ere he wist or thought. For once a churl of royal seed, King Arthur's kinsman, faint in deed And loud in word that knew not heed, Spake ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... and said he'd go look for service. He stayed away a whole year, and then came back one day, dragging one foot after the other, and a poor, wizened face on him, and he was as cross as two sticks. When he was rested and had got something to eat, he told them how he had taken service with the Gray Churl of the Townland of Mischance, and that the agreement was whoever would first say he was sorry for his bargain should get an inch wide of the skin of his back, from shoulder to hips, taken off. If it ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... honorary title, to which he was qualified that had five hides of land held immediately of the King by service of personal attendance; insomuch that if a churl or countryman had thriven to this proportion, having a church, a kitchen, a bell-house (that is, a hall with a bell in it to call his family to dinner), a borough-gate with a seat (that is, a porch) ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... left the world, That to this young man proved a churl. Now he who followed drunkenness, Lives sober, and doth ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... subjects, which he had thrown aside and forgotten. Is this an idle boast? Or had he made other discoveries of equal importance, which he did not think it worth his while to communicate to the world, but chose to die the churl of knowledge? The whole of his reasoning turns upon shewing that the Conjunction That is the pronoun That, which is itself the participle of a verb, and in like manner that all the other mystical ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... bright eyes, Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel: Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament, And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content, And tender churl mak'st waste in niggarding: Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world's due, ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare

... speak first of the dedication. I thank you for it from the heart. It is beautifully said, beautifully and kindly felt; and I should be a churl indeed if I were not grateful, and an ass if I were not proud. I remember when Symonds dedicated a book to me; I wrote and told him of "the pang of gratified vanity" with which I had read it. The ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and brutal husband, who besides was an excellent man and warm-hearted. The modesty of his wife, after a while, made her attractive in his eyes. He loved her, so to speak, on the strength of his respect and admiration for her. He would indeed have been a churl to find fault with a wife who interfered with him so little and who was a perfect housekeeper, as we shall see later on when we come to her life at Cassicium. In one point, where even she did not intend it, she forwarded the interests of her husband by gaining him the good-will ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... know, a knightly custom. They consider the one who has no lady, a churl. He also made a vow to capture some peacocks' tufts, and those be must get because he swore by his knightly honor; he must also challenge Lichtenstein; but from the other vows, the abbot ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... communicating,) and carrieth in it two evils, First, It spoileth the work done. And, secondly, It, if entertained, spoileth the heart for doing any more so. 'The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful,' for 'the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand' (Isa 32:5, 8). Now then, to dissuade all from this poisonous sin, observe, that above all sins in the New Testament, this is called idolatry (Eph 5:5; Col ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... his love. She liked him, but at the same time her attitude was so frank and straightforward that his intended words of endearment and confessions of love always froze upon his lips before he had half uttered them. He felt that she belonged to a higher breed of women, inaccessible to such a "churl" as he often frankly called himself; but precisely because of his lowly origin he loved her ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... viands a flavour that rendered the entertainment almost sumptuous—in my imagination. A cup of water cheerfully given to the weary and thirsty traveller, by him who has no more to part with, is worth a cask of wine grudgingly bestowed by the stingy or the ostentatious churl. Notwithstanding we preferred sleeping on our own blankets, these poor people would not suffer us to do it, but spread their own pallets on the earth floor of their miserable hut, and insisted so strongly upon our occupying them, that ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant

... his lords, till night fall, when he returned to the palace, preceded by all the folk. He rode forth thus every day to the tilting ground, returning to sit and judge the people and do justice between earl and churl; and thus he continued doing a whole year, at the end of which he began to ride out a-hunting and a-chasing and to go round about in the cities and countries under his rule, proclaiming security and satisfaction and doing after the fashion of Kings; and he was unique among the people of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... invitation. The expression mai, or komo mai, this way, or come in, was the most common of salutations. The Hawaiian sat down to meat before an open door; he ate his food in the sight of all men, and it was only one who dared being denounced as a churl who would fail to invite with word and gesture the passer-by to come in and share with him. This gesture might be a sweeping, downward, or sidewise motion of the hand in which the palm faced and drew toward the speaker. This seems to ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... to the left of the good host, he has yet something in common with that third person discernible on the right—that speck yonder, which I believe to be Lucullus. Nothing that we know of Lucullus suggests that he was less inhuman than the churl of Arden. It does not appear that he had a single friend, nor that he wished for one. His lavishness was indiscriminate except in that he entertained only the rich. One would have liked to dine with him, but not even in the act of digestion could one have felt that he had a heart. One would ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... sense of humour and proportion. It would be ignoble to dignify that ugly enterprise of to-day, the cracking of suburban cribs, with the same punishment which was meted out to Claude Duval and the immortal Switcher. Better for the churl the disgrace of Portland than the chance of heroism and respect ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... by her to go to concerts and theatres to pay for these pleasures. Many a poor fellow who has become a defaulter has to thank for it the lady who first asked him to take her to Delmonico's to supper. He was ashamed to tell her that he was poor, and he stole that he might not seem a churl. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... thing that may better his fortunes is an art he has to make a gentlewoman, wherewith he baits now and then some rich widow that is hungry after his blood. He is commonly discontented and desperate, and the form of his exclamation is, that churl my brother. He loves not his country for this unnatural custom, and would have long since revolted to the Spaniard, but for Kent[19] only, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... woman's wish to be desired, (By praise increased), till both shall soar, With blissful emulations fired. And, as geranium, pink, or rose Is thrice itself through power of art, So may my happy skill disclose New fairness even in her fair heart; Until that churl shall nowhere be Who bends not, awed, before the throne Of her affecting majesty, So meek, so far unlike our own; Until (for who may hope too much From her who wields the powers of love?) Our lifted lives at last shall touch That happy goal to which ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore

... a picture for the soldier who so loved his queen! Him the kiss maddened! Measuring Pascal with his een, He thundered, "Peasant, you have filled my place most sly; Not so fast, churl!"—and brutally let fly With aim unerring one fierce blow, Straight in the other's ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... a knave, With his sins in the sod! And death for the brave, With his glory up to God! And joy for the girl, And ease for the churl! But the great game of war ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... Burglary in the king's house was punished by a fine of one hundred and twenty shillings; in an archbishop's, at ninety; in a bishop's or ealdorman's, at sixty; in the house of a man of twelve hydes, at thirty shillings; in a six-hyde man's, at fifteen; in a churl's, at five shillings,—the fine being graded according to the rank of him whose house had been entered. There was a rigorous punishment for working on Sunday: if a theow, by order of his lord, the lord had to pay a penalty of thirty shillings; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... is not to be said that the prince was wrecked like a fisher churl. There has been no wreck—if there has been, there was no treasure. Mind ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler

... upon a stall, And read, as he'd devour it all; Which when the stall-man did espy, Soon to the boy I heard him call, "You, Sir, you never buy a book, Therefore in one you shall not look." The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh He wish'd he never had been taught to read, Then of the old churl's books he ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... of the great multitude of geese came a churl, tall and young, and comely enough for all his embrowning in the sun and wind, and his unkempt hair and rude dress. It was he who made the music, playing on pan's-pipes to lighten the way, and quickening with his staff the loiterers of ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... rising from his evening fall To her, for her, he mourns, he calls, he cries; The nightingale so when her children small Some churl takes before their parents' eyes, Alone, dismayed, quite bare of comforts all, Tires with complaints the seas, the shores, the skies, Till in sweet sleep against the morning bright She fall at last; so mourned, so ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... the compass which will enable the observer to determine the rest. If he is only familiar with the aspect of those seven bright stars of the Great Bear which have been called the Dipper, Charles' Wain, (really "The Churl's Wain,") the Butcher's Cleaver, and by other names, he can always determine the north point by means of the two stars called the Pointers, since these seven stars never set. In the explanation of each ...
— Half-Hours with the Stars - A Plain and Easy Guide to the Knowledge of the Constellations • Richard A. Proctor

... Then when these two traitors understood that they had driven all the lords of his blood from him, they were not pleased with that rule, but then they thought to have more, as ever it is an old saw: Give a churl rule and thereby he will not be sufficed; for whatsomever he be that is ruled by a villain born, and the lord of the soil to be a gentleman born, the same villain shall destroy all the gentlemen about him: therefore all estates and lords, beware whom ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... slowly, bit by bit, he set forth the story that he had never expected to unfold to Northern ears. "The Danes set fire to my father's castle, and he was burned with many of my kinsmen. The robbers came in the night, and a Danish churl opened the gates to them,—though he had been my father's man for four seasons. It was from him that I learned to speak the Northern tongue. They took me while I slept, bound me, and carried me out to their boats. They ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... dared his daughter's hand to seek! No word the fierce knight spake But ope'd the door, And, scowling, said—"No Saxon churl shall make Rowena wife; and dare he woo her more, Upon him, would Sir ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer

... the Grand Master, charged with various crimes. "We have," said the Master, "summoned to our presence a Jewish woman, by name Rebecca, daughter of York—a woman infamous for sortileges and for witcheries; whereby she hath maddened the blood, and besotted the brain, not of a churl, but of a knight—not of a secular knight, but of one devoted to the service of the holy temple—not of a knight champion, but of a preceptor.... By means of charms and of spells, Satan had obtained dominion over the knight, perchance because he cast his eyes ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... Ireton, 'tis you who are the true lover and the gentleman; and I am naught but a selfish churl with my face in my own trencher!" he burst out, wringing my hand yet again. "'Tis as you say; yet I will not be driven from this; for aught you have told me to prove it otherwise, Madge has yet to choose between ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... than he. He is the very stain, reproach, and shame of religion to all that know him: it can hardly have a good word in all that end of the town where he dwells, through him. Thus say the common people, that know him, "A saint abroad and a devil at home." His poor family find it so: he is such a churl, such a railer at, and so unreasonable with his servants, that they neither know how to do for or ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... the King of England speak of his "subjects"? That word irritates a German, because he is conscious that he is not a subject, but a citizen of the empire. Yet he will not infer from the English King's use of the term in formal utterances that an Englishman is a churl, a "servant of his King." That would be a superficial ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... colloquially as a "crank." The person who does not thank, by word or look, the friend or stranger who has pulled him out of the fire or water, is fortunate if he gets off with no harder name than that of a churl. ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... land So royally, I understond. Brethren," said Little John, "Here are no more but we three; But we bring them to dinn-er, Our master dare we not see. Bend your bows," said Little John, "Make all yon press to stand! The foremost monk, his life and his death Is clos-ed in my hand! Abide, churl monk," said Little John, "No farther that thou gone; If thou dost, by dere-worthy God, Thy death is in my hond. And evil thrift on thy head," said Little John, "Right under thy hat's bond, For thou hast made our master wroth, ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various

... the heart of the churl, which can never be made bountiful," said the indignant young priest. It was not a fit sentiment, perhaps, for a preacher who had just written that text about the wicked man turning from the evil of his ways. Mr Wentworth went away in a glow of indignation ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... breakfast was preparing, the churl renewed his hostilities, by telling us, with a malignant pleasure in his face, that he and his neighbors were making ready to go to South ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... to speak of the broad lands and castles which we once possessed. These have long since passed away from us. A Birmingham artisan, whose churl ancestor would have deemed it an honour to run beside the stirrup of my forefathers, now dwells in the hall of the Mandeville. The spear is broken, and the banner mouldered. Nothing remains, save in the chancel of the roofless church a recumbent marble ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... Covetousness, begotten of an old churl, in a leather bag: and, might I now obtain my wish, this house, you, and all, should turn to gold, that I might lock you safe into my chest: ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... wasted no words of excuse for Nabal, but spoke of him with marked contempt. Her conduct would have shocked the Apostle who laid such stress on the motto, "Wives, obey your husbands." "What little reason we have to value the wealth of this world," says the historian, "when such a churl as Nabal abounds in plenty, while such a saint as David ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... torn. Yea, Lycus and Helenor came alone of all their peers Alive to earth: Helenor, now in spring-tide of his years: Bond-maid Licymnia privily to that Maeonian king Had borne the lad, and sent him forth to Troy's beleaguering With arms forbidden, sheathless sword and churl's unpainted shield. But when he saw himself amidst the thousand-sworded field Of Turnus, Latins on each side, behind, and full in face, E'en as a wild beast hedged about by girdle of the chase 550 Rages against the point and edge, and, knowing death anear, Leaps forth, and far ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... new geographical discoveries in the North. He gave a West-Saxon form to his selections from Baeda. In one place he stops to explain his theory of government, his wish for a thicker population, his conception of national welfare as consisting in a due balance of the priest, the thegn, and the churl. The mention of Nero spurs him to an outbreak on the abuses of power. The cold Providence of Boethius gives way to an enthusiastic acknowledgement of the goodness of God. As he writes, his large-hearted nature flings ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... but we three; But we bring them to dinner, Our Master, dare we not see!" "Bend your bows!" said Little JOHN, "Make all yon press to stand! The foremost monk, his life and his death, Are closed in my hand. Abide, churl Monk!" said Little JOHN, "No further that thou go, If thou dost, by dear-worthy God! Thy death is in my hand! And evil thrift on thy head!" said Little JOHN, "Right under thy hat's band: For thou hast made our Master wroth, He is fasting so long!" "Who is your Master?" said ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... a rude churl. I did not exactly tell the abbess that, but I said enough for a clever woman as she was to grasp ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... after joy on Grace Joanna: On Fornham's Glebe and Pasture land A blessing pray. Long, long may stand, Not touched by Time, the Rectory blithe; No grudging churl dispute his Tithe; At Easter be ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... thee," The noisy Atle cries: "No one comes here, I tell thee, But either fights or flies. If peace thou ask'st, believe me,— I fight, but am no churl,— In friendship I'll receive thee, And ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner

... for a base-born, profit-mongering churl! Do you think that I, an officer, would demean myself ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... to be dithyrambic than critical in chronicling this event; to which indeed dithyrambs are more appropriate than criticism. For when a man writes Opus vitae meae at the conclusion of such a task as this, and so lays down his pen, he must be a churl (even if he be also a competent critic) who will allow no pause for admiration. And where, churl or no churl, is the competent critic to be found? The Professor has here compiled an entirely new text of Chaucer, founded solely on the manuscripts and the earliest printed ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... 14th centuries "child" was used, in a sense almost amounting to a title of dignity, of a young man of noble birth, probably preparing for knighthood. In the York Mysteries of about 1440 (quoted in the New English Dictionary) occurs "be he churl or child," obviously referring to gentle birth, cf. William Bellenden's translation (1553) of Livy (ii. 124) "than was in Rome ane nobill childe ... namit Caius Mucius." The spelling "childe" is frequent in modern usage to indicate its archaic meaning. Familiar ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... Crecy is memorable for several reasons, but chiefly because Feudalism and Chivalry there received their death-blow. The yeomanry of England there showed themselves superior to the chivalry of France. "The churl had struck down the noble; the bondsman proved more than a match, in sheer hard fighting, for the knight. From the day of Crecy, Feudalism tottered slowly but surely to its grave." The battles of the world were hereafter, with few exceptions, to be fought and won, not by mail-clad knights ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... might reign over any of the kingdoms of the earth, to be flouted by you, a mere churl? Out of my chamber this instant, and betake yourself to working in the fields, for they are fitter setting for one of your birth ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various

... that in reading Spenser he was thrown into a paroxysm of delight over the expression "sea-shouldering whales." The churl would not give a second thought to the phrase, or, indeed, a first one; but the man of appreciation finds in it a source of pleasure. Arlo Bates speaks with enthusiasm of the word "highly" as used in the Gettysburg Speech, and the teacher's work reaches a high point ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... old wild road whereon we stray, Meseems, might bring us face to face with one Whom seeing we could not but give thanks, and pray For England's love our father and her son To speak with us as once in days long done With all men, sage and churl and monk and mime, Who knew not as we know the soul sublime That sang for song's love more than lust of fame. Yet, though this be not, yet, in happy time, Our father Chaucer, here ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... I prefer your drawings to every thing in the world, that I am such a churl as to refuse Mrs. Bentley's partridges: I shall thank her very much for them. You must excuse me If I am vain enough to be so convinced of my own taste, that all the neglect that has been thrown upon ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... seethed with slaughter. Steadfast they stood, stirred up by Byrhtnoth; He bade his thanes to think on battle, And fight for fame with the foemen Danes. 130 The fierce warrior went, his weapon he raised, His shield for a shelter; to the soldier he came; The chief to the churl a challenge addressed; Each to the other had evil intent. The seamen then sent from the south a spear, 135 So that wounded lay the lord of the warriors; He shoved with his shield till the shaft was broken, And burst the spear till back it sprang. Enraged was the daring one; he rushed ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... thanes of the lowest class, and did not rank as gentlemen. All thanes disposed of the lands which they held (and which were called Blockland) to their heirs, but with the obligations due to those of whom they were held. Ceorle (whence our word churl) was a countryman or artisan who was a freeman. Those ceorles who held lands in leases were called sockmen, and their land sockland, of which they could not dispose, being barely tenants. Those ceorles who acquired possession of five ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... native country, and to stand as its citizens on their own dignity? Men and women may be conscious of faults and weaknesses in their parents, but they are not expected to expose these weaknesses on that account: instinctive delicacy in any one but a churl would keep him from acknowledging any such failings to his own heart. And a similar feeling should teach us, even if our sympathies were not with our own country, to treat it in word and deed with respect. Until we do learn to show this respect ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... exclaimed Sybil, generously. "You shall deny yourself no pleasure, for my sake, dear, dear Lyon! I am not such a churl as to require such a sacrifice. Only let me feel sure of your love, and then you may read with her all the morning, and play and sing with her all the evening, and I shall not care. I shall even ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... much: this is to be weary of well-doing; (I speak now of communicating,) and carrieth in it two evils, First, It spoileth the work done. And, secondly, It, if entertained, spoileth the heart for doing any more so. 'The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful,' for 'the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand' (Isa 32:5, 8). Now then, to dissuade all from this poisonous sin, observe, that above all sins in the New Testament, this is called ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... thought of all this, dear wife, but I fear the reproaches Both of the Trojan youths and the long-robed maidens of Troja, If like a cowardly churl I should keep me aloof from the combat: Nor would my spirit permit; for well I have learnt to be valiant, Fighting aye 'mong the first of the Trojans marshalled in battle, Striving to keep the renown of my sire and my own unattainted. Well, too well, do I ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... part, my Neighbor Nelly, For the summers quickly flee; And the middle-aged admirer Must, too soon, supplanted be. Yet, as jealous as a mother, A suspicious, cankered churl, I look vainly for the setting, To ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow

... meet the girl I write to face to face, To hold her close and teach What in this Hell I'm learning—that a man Is only half a man without his girl, That sure as grass is green and God's above A chap's real happiness, If he's no churl, Is home and folks and girl, And all the comforts that come in ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... poor. Men, says Pike, branded on the forehead, without hands, without feet, without tongues, lived as an example of the danger which attended the commission of petty crimes, and as a warning to all men who had the misfortune of holding no higher position than that of a churl.[29] Wealthy people might do wrong with impunity. It has been clearly shown that there was one law for the rich, and another for the poor, in England during the four centuries which ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... apprentice gulp their weekly air: Thy coach of hackney, whiskey,[87] one-horse chair, And humblest gig through sundry suburbs whirl,[da] To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow make repair; Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl, Provoking envious gibe from each pedestrian churl.[db] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... minutes that van had stolen out of my hard-earned hoard. I had risked our lives a score of times to win each one of them. And now an ill-natured churl had flung ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... noble, And with a forg'd Tale would not wrong his Friend, Nor am I so much fir'd with lust as Envie, That such a churl as Bartolus should reap So sweet a harvest, half my State to any To ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... is in his name some Ron...Ronte... Or...Oronte... No. Ge...Geronte. Yes, Geronte, that's my miser's name. I have it now; it is the old churl I mean. Well, to come back to our story. Our people wished to leave this town to-day, and my lover would have lost me through his lack of money if, in order to wrench some out of his father, he had not made use of a clever servant he has. As for that servant's name, ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere

... find the road to happiness, why should I be such a niggard as to omit so good an opportunity of pointing out the way to others. The very basis of true peace of mind is a benevolent wish to see all the world as happy as one's Self; and from my soul do I pity the selfish churl, who, remembering the little bickerings of anger, envy, and fifty other disagreeables to which frail mortality is subject, would wish to revenge the affront which pride whispers him he has received. For my own part, I can safely declare, ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson

... very stain, reproach, and shame of religion, to all that know him; it can hardly have a good word in all that end of the town where he dwells, through him (Rom. 2:24, 25). Thus say the common people that know him, A saint abroad, and a devil at home. His poor family finds it so, he is such a churl, such a railer at, and so unreasonable with his servants, that they neither know how to do for, or speak to him. Men that have any dealings with him, say, it is better to deal with a Turk than with him; for fairer ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... is thy luck that thou wert bare-headed, else had I been forced to smite thee on the face. Thou churl, since when hath it been our wont to thrust knives into a guest, who is come of great kin, a man of gentle heart and fair face? Come hither and handsel him ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... As Mr. Brisk looks at Mercy's lap so full of hats and hosen and says it, I can see his natty cane beginning to lengthen itself out in his soft-skinned hand and to send out teeth like a muck-rake. Give Mr. Brisk another thirty years or so and he will be an ancient churl, raking to himself the sticks and the straws and the dust of the earth, neither looking up to nor regarding the celestial crown that is still offered to him in ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... Socman of Minstead is a by-word through the forest, from Bramshaw Hill to Holmesley Walk. He is a drunken, brawling, perilous churl, as you may find ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... should have another whisky and soda before going down to luncheon. He is a genial soul. No churl would want to drink two glasses of whisky in the early part of one day. When I refused ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... with two or three more fat prizes we should be able to set up as independent gentlemen when we get back home again, and I should be able to regain the lands of the McAllisters from the southern churl who has dared to take ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... Certaldo and with Figghine,[2] was to be seen pure in the lowest artisan. Oh, how much better it would be that those folk of whom I speak were neighbors, and to have your confine at Galluzzo and at Trespiano,[3] than to have them within, and to endure the stench of the churl of Aguglione,[4] and of him of Signa, who already has ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... guard. It was an ancient and a sad matron of a sedate look and christian walking, in habit dun beseeming her megrims and wrinkled visage, nor did her hortative want of it effect for incontinently Punch Costello was of them all embraided and they reclaimed the churl with civil rudeness some and shaked him with menace of blandishments others whiles they all chode with him, a murrain seize the dolt, what a devil he would be at, thou chuff, thou puny, thou got in peasestraw, thou losel, thou chitterling, thou ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... not take me five minutes to help her," I said. "I must be careful, but I need not be a churl." And I rode ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton

... give me a sword! My good castle of Stramehl for a sword, that I may slay this base-born churl of a burgomaster!" ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... of Soham Mere, then an immense body of water, saying that if any one would go before and show him the way he would be the first to follow. The soldiers and courtiers hesitated at this suggestion, and looked at one another with doubt and dread. But standing among the crowd was one Brithmar, a churl or serf, who was nicknamed Budde, or Pudding, from his stoutness. He was a native of the island of Ely and doubtless familiar with its waters, and when the courtiers held back he stepped forward and said he would go ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... it is a harbouring place for thieves, and murders have been committed here, if all tales be true." I looked at these two people attentively; they were both young, the man apparently about twenty-five years of age. He was a short thick- made churl, evidently of prodigious strength; his features were rather handsome, but with a gloomy expression, and his eyes were full of sullen fire. His wife somewhat resembled him, but had a countenance more open and better ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... Where Nature played the churl, it would be fit That fortune played it too. You would have had My lord absolve me of my agency! Fair lord, the flaw did cost me fifty times— A hundred times my agency:—but all's Recovered. Look, ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles

... this sculpture, you are to learn what a "Master" is. Here was one man at least, who knew his business, once upon a time! Unaccusably;—none of your fool's heads or clown's hearts can find a fault here! "Dog-fancier,[49] cobbler, tailor, or churl, look here"—says Master Jacopo—"look! I know what a brute is, better than you, I know what a silken tassel is—what a leathern belt is—Also, what a woman is; and also—what a Law of God is, if you care to know." This it is, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... took me to the Wagon. Many a time he had walked by the side of my little pony, trotting up the Oxford Road. He was a gross unlettered churl, but not unkind; and I think remembered with something like compunction the many pieces of silver he had had from his ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... was walking along the road near Brunswick, the whim took him of asking a waggoner who was driving by, to treat him with a ride in his vehicle. "No, I will not," replied the boor; "my horses will have enough to do to drag their proper load." "You churl," said the doctor, "since you will not let your wheels carry me, you shall carry them yourself as far as from the gates of the city." The wheels then detached themselves, and flew through the air, to the gates of the town ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... Nabal, and his wife had told him these things, that his heart died within him, and he became as a stone. And it came to pass, about ten days after, that the Lord smote Nabal, that he died." One can imagine the picture for oneself. The rich churl sitting there in the midst of all his slaves and his wealth as one thunderstruck, helpless and speechless, till one of those mysterious attacks, which we still rightly call a stroke, and a visitation of ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... hiss And bustling whistle of the youth who scour'd His master's armor; and of such a one He ask'd, "What means the tumult in the town?" Who told him, scouring still, "The sparrow-hawk!" Then riding close behind an ancient churl, Who, smitten by the dusty sloping beam, Went sweating underneath a sack of corn, Ask'd yet once more what meant the hubbub here? Who ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... what—the worser part to view— Of wanton waste and reckless gambling, What darker paths shall he pursue With sacrilegious step and shambling? What coarse defiance, haply, hurl At lights beyond his comprehension— An attitudinising churl Who struts with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various

... band Came o'er the stormy wave To dwell within this lonely land, Their hearts were blithe as brave; And Winter, by their mirth beguiled, Forgot his sterner mood, As by the prattling of a child A churl ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir

... delightful to a man of strong domestic tendencies, to know himself the object of the exclusive attachment of a strong-minded and noble-hearted woman: and when, in addition to this, her society affords the delight of mental accomplishment and personal beauty, such as Hester's, he must be a churl indeed if he does not greatly enjoy the present, and indulge in sweet anticipations for the future. Hope also brought the whole power of his will to bear upon his circumstances. He dwelt upon all the happiest features of his lot; and, in his admiration of Hester, thought as little ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... hurry," said his uncle, coolly. "Let me think this over again. After all, we are of the same stock, although your father always flouted me for a mean-spirited churl. Poor Gavan, we ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... not tell to thee my brother's mournful fate; He lies within his bloody grave—a churl usurps his state— Moeandrius lords it o'er the land, my brother's base born slave; Restore me to that throne, oh king! this, this, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... for a churl, I wrote and wished her good luck. The next morning I received a letter from Uncle Bob asking me to go to Wimberley; and early in the following week I travelled up to Cumberland. I received a warm welcome from the old General. As a boy ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... I should be shy of explaining a given village called Oakley in the same way, because the student of place-names might be able to show from early records that the place was originally an ey, or island, and that the first syllable is the disguised name of a medieval churl. These four simple etymons themselves may also become perverted. Thus -ham is sometimes confused with -holm (Chapter XII), -ley, as I have just suggested, may in some cases contain -ey, -ton occasionally interchanges with -don and -stone, and -lord ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... has happened. Mr. Carlyle is as one who does not hear the question. He draws its general moral lesson from the French Revolution, and with clangorous note warns all whom it concerns, from king to churl, that imposture must come to an end. But for the precise amount and kind of dissolution which the West owes to it, for the political meaning of it, as distinguished from its moral or its dramatic significance, we seek ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley

... horses that I left behind with him?" He added, "Do you call that humane?" and trying to rouse the exhausted nags with a switch, he showed him that they did not move. The castellan, after he had watched him for a while with an expression of defiance, broke out, "Look at the ruffian! Ought not the churl to thank God that the jades are still alive?" He asked who would have been expected to take care of them when the groom had run away, and whether it were not just that the horses should have worked in the fields for their feed. He concluded by saying that Kohlhaas had better ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... in the still night! He was glad and exultant that it was his again. Was he too a curmudgeon then? Harry did not perceive how any reasonable person could say such a thing. A man may value what is his own without being a miser or a churl. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... bright sisters, gay and free, Shrinks, as maiden should, from strife: But I'm for madness. What has dull'd the fire Of the Berecyntian fife? Why hangs the flute in silence with the lyre? Out on niggard-handed boys! Rain showers of roses; let old Lycus hear, Envious churl, our senseless noise, And she, our neighbour, his ill-sorted fere. You with your bright clustering hair, Your beauty, Telephus, like evening's sky, Rhoda loves, as young, as fair; I for my Glycera slowly, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... midnight, Huish and the captain appeared upon the quarter-deck with flushed faces and uneven steps, the former laden with bottles, the latter with two tin mugs. Herrick silently passed them by. They hailed him in thick voices, he made no answer, they cursed him for a churl, he paid no heed although his belly quivered with disgust and rage. He closed-to the door of the house behind him, and cast himself on a locker in the cabin—not to sleep he thought—rather to think and to despair. Yet he ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... to her. Thus much would I have manifest to you: if only that my conscience chide me not, for Fortune, as she will, I am ready. Such earnest is not strange unto my ears; therefore let Fortune turn her wheel as pleases her, and the churl his mattock."[2] ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... moment had Clement Austin suspected that this mystery involved anything discreditable to Margaret herself. The girl's sad face seemed softly luminous with the tender light of pure and holy thoughts. The veriest churl could scarcely have associated vice or falsehood with such a lovely and ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... get thee hence, for I will not away; What's here? a cup close in my true love's hand; Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end; O churl! drink all; and leave me no friendly drop To help me after? I will kiss thy lips; Haply, some poison yet doth hang on them, To make me die with a restorative. Thy lips are warm! Yea, noise? Then I'll he brief. O ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... thrown upon this portion of David's career, by the incident of his meeting with Abigail, a woman fair and discreet, married to a sordid churl named Nabal. David and his band had protected Nabal's fields from other rovers, and had been, so to speak, a wall of fire between the churl's estate and the hand of depredation. But at the time of the sheep-shearing the surly ingrate refuses food and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... thy own ears, but start up in thy promised likeness, and shake the pillared rottenness of the world! Leave not thy sounding words in air, write them in marble, and teach the coming age heroic truths! Up, and wake the echoes of Time! Rich in deepest lore, die not the bed-rid churl of knowledge, leaving the survivors unblest! Set, set as thou didst rise in pomp and gladness! Dart like the sunflower one broad, golden flash of light; and ere thou ascendest thy native sky, show us the steps by which thou didst scale the Heaven of philosophy, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... morning, that before night you will meet with some meddlesome, ungrateful and abusive fellow, with some envious or unsociable churl. Remember that their perversity proceeds from ignorance of good and evil; and that since it has fallen to my share to understand the natural beauty of a good action and the deformity of an ill one; since I am satisfied that the disobliging person is of kin to me, our ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... followed by twenty men; and when she came there he went out to meet her, and bade her come stay with him with ten of her folk. She answered in anger, and said she had not known that he was such a churl; and she went away, being minded to find Bjorn, her brother in Broadfirth, and when he heard she was coming, he went to meet her with many followers, and greeted her warmly, and invited her and all her followers to stay with him, for he knew ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... aside the paper with an angry exclamation, and forthwith set the editor down as a jealous churl. In one or two other newspapers I found more extended and better notices; but they all fell so far short of the real merits of my bantling, that I was sadly vexed and disheartened. To have my advent ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur

... a difference of twenty years between the brothers, yet, to look at them, it might have been more. Patrick, the younger, was florid and hearty; the elder, James, was unpopular—a gray, withered old churl, who carried written on his face the record of his life's failure. His conversation, when he made any, was cynical. When he came into a room where young people were enjoying themselves, playing cards or dancing, his shadow came before ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... deal about how much you have to pay for a churl, and how much for an earl, and so on, leaving out only the slaves; for all the free people of England in Saxon times were divided into earls and churls; that is, noblemen and agricultural laborers or yeomanry; these were the ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... who finally refused to return it again, as the engraver's work in each case was thrown away. This called out a sarcastic letter from Beethoven to Schindler, in which he refers to Diabelli as an arch-churl (Erzflegel), and threatens him (Diabelli), if he ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... quoth the fiend unto the Sumner; "see, I told thee how 'twould fall. Thou seest, dear brother, The churl spoke one thing, but he thought another. Let us prick on, for we ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... timber was rolled off the clearings), house-raisings, maple-sugar-boilings, and the like were scenes of boisterous and light-hearted merriment, to which the whole neighborhood came, for it was accounted an insult if a man was not asked in to help on such occasions, and none but a base churl would refuse his assistance. The backwoods people had to front peril and hardship without stint, and they loved for the moment to leap out of the bounds of their narrow lives and taste the coarse pleasures that are always dear to a strong, simple, and primitive ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... before said, "By Hymen, the bride should kiss something. If the lord's not good enough, let her kiss the churl!" At this the revelers, wild with delight, beat on their trenchers and shouted, "Ay, ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... his death. Some hunter, stalking on the other side, had taken the start, of me! White or red? Which fired the shot? If an Indian, my head would be in as much danger of losing its skin as the sheep. If a white man, I might still hope for a breakfast of broiled mutton. Even a churl might be expected to share with a starving man; but it was not the quarter in which to encounter a Christian of that kidney. It was the crack of a rifle. The red man rarely hunts with the rifle. The arrow is his favourite weapon for game. Notwithstanding the remoteness from civilisation, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... where God doth reign, There is no chance," she gently said, "For, whether large or small his gain, Here every man alike is paid. No niggard churl our High Chieftain, But lavishly His gifts are made, Like streams from a moat that flow amain, Or rushing waves that rise unstayed. Free were his pardon whoever prayed Him who to save man's soul did vow, Unstinted his bliss, and undelayed, For the ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett

... the West Highlands, who, at the pleasure of a Saxon, would have bid the Knight of Ardenvohr leave his castle, when the sun was declining from the meridian, and ere the second cup had been filled. But farewell, sir, the food of a churl does not satisfy the appetite; when I next revisit Darnlinvarach, it shall be with a naked sword in one hand, and a firebrand ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... we will laugh at winter when we hear The grim old churl about our dwellings rave: Thou, from that "ruler of the inverted year," Shalt pluck the knotty sceptre Cowper gave, And pull him from his sledge, and drag him in, And melt the ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... I were not in haste I would stay a while to teach you manners, you foul-mouthed churl," muttered Grey ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard

... Prince met with the welcome due to a kinsman of the Imperial house, and to a representative of the good cause of absolutism. He was received by Metternich with great interest, and his fortunes were taken under the protection of the Austrian Court. In due time, it was hoped this savage and ignorant churl would do yeoman's service to Austrian principles in the Peninsula. But the Regency and the new Constitution of Portugal had not to wait for the tardy operation of Metternich's covert hostility. The soldiery ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe









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