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More "Jig" Quotes from Famous Books



... people early took possession of the dancing-hall, where, surrounded by the elders, a quick succession of Money Musk, Opera Reel, Chorus Jig, etc., interspersed sparingly with cotillons, evidenced the relish with which young spirits and light hearts enjoy the exercises of ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... position. Might have got the right figgers out o' the log, him havin' the run of the cabin. A cable would do the rest. He'd git his whack out of it, with the order of the Golden Chrysanthemum or some jig-arig to boot, an' git even with the way he feels to'ard our outfit for'ard, that ain't bin none too ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... floor was pretty well cleared. One could see the negro now; he sat on a barrel at the end of the room. He grinned with his white teeth and, without stopping in his fiddling, scraped his bow harshly across the strings, and then instantly changed the tune to a lively jig. Blackbeard jumped up into the air and clapped his heels together, giving, as he did so, a sharp, short yell. Then he began instantly dancing grotesquely and violently. The woman danced opposite to him, this way and that, with her knuckles on her hips. Everybody burst out laughing at Blackbeard's ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... business; we know he can have nothing to do with such 5 horrors; we know that he is a saint and all that a bishop should be, who is a great man beside. Oh, were but every worm a maggot, Every fly a grig, Every bough a Christmas faggot, Every tune a jig! In fact, I have abjured all religions; but the last I inclined to was the Armenian: for 10 I have traveled, do you see, and at Koenigsberg, Prussia Improper (so styled because there's a sort of bleak hungry sun there), you might remark over ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... considered the best of the sport, Took place in front of the old County Court; The Mayor and Ex-Mayor were dancing a jig, With the County Court Judge in his gown ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... Visit to England, p. 33, writing of Johnson on March 16, 1775, says:—'He has the aspect of an idiot, without the faintest ray of sense gleaming from any one feature—with the most awkward garb, and unpowdered grey wig, on one side only of his head—he is for ever dancing the devil's jig, and sometimes he makes the most driveling effort to whistle some thought in his absent paroxysms.' Miss Burney thus describes him when she first saw him in 1778:—'Soon after we were seated this great man entered. I have so true a veneration for him that the very sight of him inspires me with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... Stokes had become; he took the cobbler by the shoulder and sat him down in the warmest nook, saying, "I'll be assistant cook until you are better. As Zeke says, I'm a wolf sure enough; but as soon's the beast's hunger is satisfied, I'll rub that leg of yours till you'll want to dance a jig;" and with the ladle wrung from Stokes's reluctant hand, he began stirring the seething contents of ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... it and make their bow to imaginary audiences over three thousand feet below. One of the guides with our party, wearing heavy "chaps" (bear-skin overalls) walked out upon this rock, took off his hat, waved it over his head, posed for his photograph, even took a jig step or two, stood on one foot and peered into the abyss below with apparent unconcern. Earlier in life I might have taken a similar chance, but it would be a physical impossibility for me to do it now. We feasted our eyes on the ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves

... had a voice so sweet and mellow that any minstrel might have been proud of it, though he seldom sang, and it is possible that no one but Corbie's grandmother heard it at its best. He was, moreover, a merry soul, fond of a joke, and always ready to dance a jig, with a chuckle, when anything very ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... the theatres offered had little concern with the drama. Their advantages included the privileges of eating and drinking while the play was in progress. After the play there was invariably a dance on the stage, often a brisk and boisterous Irish jig. ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... this systematic attempt to regulate the occupation habits of employees. A typical example which he reports is the following: It regularly took a man one minute and forty seconds to set a piece in a jig. "After a study of the exact motions required to pick the piece up and set it accurately, we showed the same man how to do it in twenty seconds.'' This workman soon reduced the correct movement to habit, attained the ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... thou want ought here? [Touching his sword-hilt.] I care not for thee or Noll. Would he were here, and a matter of four thousand to back him. [Draws.] Sa! sa! canst fight as well as talk? Wilt take up the bilbo? Come, adopt the weapon of him I have sliced. Come, be nimble, sir, jig. I would fain go visit the ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... number had tuned up his fiddle. William Isham was his name, a great bearded fellow who hailed originally from Rochester, New York; he would sit by the hour on the tongue of his wagon playing "Oh Susannah" and other lively airs, or strike up a jig tune while Negro Joe, who had fled from slavery in Mississippi, did a double shuffle in the firelight. The children slipped away from their mothers to set peeps at the fun from the edges of the crowd or play hide and seek in the shadows of the sage-brush; ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... then knock a man down, jerk him to his feet, thrust a line into his hands, and kick him until he bent his weight upon it. It was bitter driving. But I'll admit it brought order out of chaos. We cleared the decks of the first-day-out hurrah's nest in jig time. Mercifully, it was fair weather, with ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... laugh and crow with his fiddle, and could make you jump up, aetat. 60, and snap your fingers at old age and propriety, and propose a jig to two bishops and one master of the rolls, and, they declining, pity them without a shade of anger, and substitute three chairs; then sit unabashed and smiling at the past; and the next minute he could make you cry, or near it. In a word he ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... more or less active all winter, but October and November are their festal months. Invade some butternut or hickory-nut grove on a frosty October morning and hear the red squirrel beat the "juba" on a horizontal branch. It is a most lively jig, what the boys call a "regular break-down," interspersed with squeals and snickers and derisive laughter. The most noticeable peculiarity about the vocal part of it is the fact that it is a kind of duet. In other words, by some ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... sacrificed. wide of the mark &c (error) 495; out of one's reckoning &c (inexpectation) 508 [Obs.]; left in the lurch; thrown away &c (wasted) 638; unattained; uncompleted &c 730. Adv. unsuccessfully &c adj.; to little or no purpose, in vain, re infecta [Lat.]. Phr. the bubble has burst, the jig is up, the game is up [Cymbeline]; all is lost; the devil to pay; parturiunt montes &c (disappointment) 509 [Lat.]; dies infaustus [Lat.]; tout ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... another, but they ain't held to apply to us of rights. For sech alien hookups, so to speak, we reefooses all reespons'bility. Which we regyards them escapades as fortooitous, an' declines 'em utter. Tutt's goin' against Texas is the only war-jig we feels ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... an old blind piper, the very beau ideal of energy, drollery, and shrewdness, who, seated on a low chair, with a well-replenished jug within his reach, screwed his pipes to the liveliest tunes, and the endless jig began. ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... well, he was allowing himself the luxury of a jig-saw puzzle, but as he considered the amusement frivolous for a man of his position, at the sound of his son's voice he hustled the board containing the half-finished picture into a drawer of his roll-top desk. In order to be doing something, ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... here and there, every move counting something done. While she stood there a wagon rattled out from the shadow of a haystack, with empty water-barrels dancing a mad jig behind the high seat, where the driver perched with feet braced and a whip in his hand. After him dashed four or five riders, silent and businesslike. In a moment they were mere fantastic shadows galloping up the hill ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower

... And he's patiently carried me many a mile, And that now I guard him I am sure is but just. Curl your tail up still tighter, and don't let it fall Lest a noise it should make—it's remarkably big— And, if you are good, by-and-by we may all Have a right merry tune and a right merry jig. ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... gifts, And order they be kept with proper care, Till we do build a place most fit to hold These precious toys: tell your society We ever did esteem them of great worth, And our firm friends: and tell 'em 'tis our pleasure They do prepare to dance a jig before us. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... and apprehended no danger. If one asked them how Mrs. Bull did? Better and better, said they; the parts heal, and her constitution mends: if she submits to our government she will be abroad in a little time. Nay, it is reported that they wrote to her friends in the country that she should dance a jig next October in Westminster Hall, and that her illness had been chiefly owing to bad physicians. At last, one of them was sent for in great haste, his patient grew worse and worse: when he came, he affirmed ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... good work and an earnest wish to do better tomorrow than he had done today. That Nature occasionally produces such a man should be a cause for gratitude in the hearts of all the rest of us little folk who jig, mince, mouth, amble, run, peek ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... without the aid of green tea," she rejoined. "There was really some one upon the porch, but why the apparition should scare Clara out of her wits, I cannot divine. The negro is an incurable Paul Pry, and, next to dancing a Christmas jig himself, is the pleasure of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... would like to join in; but a glance at Scott and Ferguson showed that there was a struggle with his dignity, fearing to lessen himself in their eyes. At length one at his messmates came up, and seizing him by the arm, challenged him to a jig. The boatswain, continued Scott, after a little hesitation complied, made an awkward gambol or two, like our friend Maida, but soon gave it up. "It's of no use," said he, jerking up his waistband and giving a side glance at us, "one can't dance ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... new to keep up the interest of the people. I have played for them several tunes, but as far as I can judge they do not feel modern music, though they listen eagerly from curiosity. Irish airs like 'Eileen Aroon' please them better, but it is only when I play some jig like the 'Black Rogue'—which is known on the island—that they seem to respond to the full meaning of the notes. Last night I played for a large crowd, which had come together for another purpose from all parts ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... murder done inside it a hundred and twenty years ago, they say, until there it was, over his head a'most, with the gaps in it staring like ribs at him. 'Bout ship was the word, pretty sharp, you may be sure, when he come to his wits consarning it, and the purse of his lips, as was whistling a jig, went as dry as a bag with the bottom out. Through the grey of the night there was sounds coming to him, such as had no right to be in the air, and a sort of a shiver laid hold of his heart, like a cold hand flung over ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... shift, boys, shift, for there isn't the slightest doubt That we've got to make a shift to the stations further out, With the pack-horse runnin' after, for he follows like a dog, We must strike across the country at the old jig-jog. ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... own he's not fam'd for a reel or a jig, Tom Sheridan there surpasses Tom Bigg.— For lam'd in one thigh, he is obliged to go zig- Zag, like a crab—for no dancer is Bigg. Those who think him a coxcomb, or call him a prig, How little they know ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... possession of all that will be issued in the future? His answer will be to issue more. He has been told so by his political mentor. When the man with the ballot loses confidence in this mentor, he will start a game of his own, and then the jig will be up with that idiot. We use the word idiot advisedly here. When a tax was assessed against the incomes of the rich, this driveler would score a point gained in favor of the people. This claim of itself shows the institution to which ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood

... in Kansas. Three "opposition" cars discovered in the same yard with Phil Forrest. A race for the country. Paste cans dance a jig. Rivals turned over into a ditch. A case ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... The hag, who had been bent double, reared herself up with a "Ho!" after the fashion of a Scottish sword-dancer, and began to make a wretched shuffle with her feet. Then she moved with a hobble and a jig to the far end of the room; and she called out, beginning to come straight down to the door whereby I stood. I know not what presentiment forewarned me to beware as the creature drew near; but yet I felt the danger, and the throbbing ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... Ah, God bless your jig! And how would I know is it a notice of my own death has come into my hand in the pocket of this coat I put ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... When the Great Settling Day conies, this new higher spirit of France will, it is to be devoutly hoped, make for restraint in the universal craving for vengeance, and prove a weighty factor in the righteous re-adjustment of things and the proper fitting together of the jig-saw map ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... enough, handled his subject, and the judicious clerk has with utmost diligence called out two staves proper to the discourse, and I have found in myself and in the rest of the pew good thoughts and dispositions, they have been all in a moment dissipated by a merry jig ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... if Hamlet can possibly be speaking ironically. I am sure he will answer No. And then let him observe what follows. The speech is declaimed. Polonius interrupting it with an objection to its length, Hamlet snubs him, bids the player proceed, and adds, 'He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry: or he sleeps.' 'He,' that is, 'shares the taste of the million for sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, and is wearied by an honest method.'[261] Polonius later interrupts ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... hurried descent before the strange silence above was shattered suddenly by the simultaneous banging of seven doors. Seven full-lunged voices burst forth into a howling song, while twice as many feet thumped and tapped and pranced and pounded in the mazes of an extemporaneous jig. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... wearily, "I've done all I can. Hull and I have kept the market fairly stable so far. You saw what happened between ten and eleven this morning. The jig's up. We've borrowed our last dollar and hypothecated our last share. My personal fortune has gone into the balance, and so has Hull's. Some one of the outside stockholders, or all of them, are cutting the ground ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... synonymously? Or is it meant that this airy gentry shall come in a Minuet step, and go off in a Jig? The phenomenon of a tripping crank is indeed novel, and would ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... pony had a fashion of dancing a slow jig on his hind-legs, with his fore-feet in the air; but the boys were used to that, and stuck on until the dance was finished; then the pony ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown

... decided that Richard's extremity was their opportunity, and so concluded to divide up his kingdom between them. At this dramatic moment Richard, having paid his sixty thousand pounds ransom and tipped his custodian, entered the English arena, and the jig was up. John was obliged to ask pardon, and Richard generously gave it, with the exclamation, "Oh, that I could forget his injuries as soon ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye

... bell you hear, That summons you to all the pride of prayer: Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven. On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,[51] On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, And bring all Paradise before your eye. To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite, Who never mentions ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... to play, And another tune straightway Sang the kettle, louder, louder, till its voice grew very big; And the feet of laughing girls (Girls with shamrock in their curls) You could almost hear a-keeping time to that old Irish jig. ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... be in the music, cousin, if you be not wooed in good time: if the prince be too important, tell him there is measure in everything, and so dance out the answer. For, hear me, Hero: Wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]

... "He can't play nothin' but two jig tunes and he plays them like the very Old Scratch," she ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... wrapped themselves up so completely in their shaggy woollen mantles, or gubas, and drawn their hoods so low down over their heads, that they had no resemblance to anything human. Moreover, they were sleeping soundly. Both their heads were jig-jogging right and left, and only now and then one or the other, and sometimes both at the same time, would be thrown backwards by the jolting of the waggon, or they would bump their heads together, and at such times would sit bolt upright ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... laughter. "Alice, be sad!"—and, at the instant, down would come her tears, quenching all the mirth of those around her like sudden rain upon a bonfire. "Alice, dance."—and dance she would, not in such court-like measures as she had learned abroad, but some high-paced jig, or hop-skip rigadoon, befitting the brisk lasses at a rustic merry-making. It seemed to be Maule's impulse, not to ruin Alice, nor to visit her with any black or gigantic mischief, which would have crowned her sorrows with the grace of tragedy, but to wreak a low, ungenerous scorn upon her. ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... here Harvey first met the squid, who is one of the best cod-baits, but uncertain in his moods. They were waked out of their bunks one black night by yells of "Squid O!" from Salters, and for an hour and a half every soul aboard hung over his squid-jig—a piece of lead painted red and armed at the lower end with a circle of pins bent backward like half-opened umbrella ribs. The squid—for some unknown reason—likes, and wraps himself round, this thing, and is hauled up ere he can escape from the pins. But as he leaves his home ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... an analysis of every event which entered into the total of the mystery, seeking for some key which would aid me in assorting the tangled bits that only needed to be arranged properly to bet the solution, much as a jig-saw puzzle is worked out. If I had a proper beginning it ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... carriage, a closed carriage, call that night to take him to see the President, for he was told the President sent the carriage for him. When he got out he was at the insane asylum, an' I can tell you he was bundled into a padded cell in jig time, where he stayed for three days. 'He thinks he's a member of Congress,' I told the two huskies that handled him, an' gave 'em each a twenty-case note. The doctor that signed the ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise

... familiar conversation was a series of brilliant, egotistic, shrewd, and genial sallies, and she could be either caressing or impudent. In the matter of self-approbation she had no Statute of Limitation, but boasted of having taught Taglioni to dance an Irish jig, and declared that she had created the Irish novel, though in the next breath she would say that she was a child when Miss Edgeworth was a grown woman.' Her blunders were proverbial, as when she asked in all simplicity, 'Who was Jeremy Taylor?' ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... Norah pressing the arm of a tall peasant, and curtseying him a challenge to join her "on the floor." He paused for a moment, then gaily taking her hand, advanced with her to the centre. All eyes were bent upon them, but there was no restraint in the young parson's manner. The most popular jig-tune was called for—to it they went; his early-taught and well-practised feet beat living echoes to the most rapid bars. A foot of ground seemed ample space for all the intricate compilation of the raal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... a weak solution of the acid," declared Ham. "Otherwise it would have eaten the rope through in jig time. So that's the game, is it? Well, they may have been trying it on a larger scale. Did you find out ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum

... tent, where the flag were flyin, never bothered about no sentries nor nothin. Just as I trot up, a little bit of a butterfly lady like bob out o the tent, and when she see me—'Beau, boy!' she squeals. 'Beau, boy! ere's a niked man! Do come and see!' And she jig up and down and tiddle her fingers at me, please as Punch.... Out come ole Whiskers, sword and all. 'You something something!' says he, and knocks her back into the tent. Then he run ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... is like a jig-saw puzzle, a mystery even to the man who devised it. A straight-forward recognition of the Omsk Government would have been an honest hand for honest work, but where would Allied diplomacy have come in? Diplomacy is only necessary ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... the jig's all up with me, boys," said the man, with a look of sheer disgust on his face. "I've had a little run for my money, but the stone jug seems to be yawning for me. I was a fool to bother with the kid, it seems; but when the scheme came to me at first I thought ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas

... the clarionet; and Mr. Nicks, with the oboe—all sound and powerful musicians, and strong-winded men—they that blowed. For that reason they were very much in demand Christmas week for little reels and dancing parties; for they could turn a jig or a hornpipe out of hand as well as ever they could turn out a psalm, and perhaps better, not to speak irreverent. In short, one half-hour they could be playing a Christmas carol in the squire's hall to the ladies and gentlemen, and drinking tay and coffee ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... in studying my passport. It had been viseed by the representatives of all the civilized powers, and except the Germans and their fellow gunmen, most of the uncivilized. The officer was fascinated with it. Like a jig-saw puzzle, it appealed to him. He turned it wrong side up and sideways, and took so long about it that the others, hoping there was something wrong, in anticipation scowled at me. But ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... whose feet drag along the floor, or beat it with slow, faltering accents. On a bare floor a girl walks with a rapid, elastic rhythm which is quite distinct from the graver step of the elderly woman. I have laughed over the creak of new shoes and the clatter of a stout maid performing a jig in the kitchen. One day, in the dining-room of an hotel, a tactual dissonance arrested my attention. I sat still and listened with my feet. I found that two waiters were walking back and forth, but not with the same gait. A band was ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... whispered Despeaux, recovering his confidence. "Every man has his price—but it's a mistake to think that the price must always be counted down in cash. Daunt didn't act as if he had captured our friend. He's dancing to a girl's tune now. Corson will whistle a jig when he gets ready and Morrison will dance to that ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... but Daniel Boone, that young rebel, didn't even hear of it until the following August. Whereupon the fearless hunter with the abandon of a happy lad danced a jig around the bonfire inside the stockade. It could have been an Elizabethan jig, ironically enough, for the Boones were English. Daniel tossed his coonskin cap into the air again and again and let out a war whoop that brought the terrified Rebecca hurrying to ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... the good fairy on board that steamer,—that two or three of the human puppets thereon would dance in accordance with his fingering of the wires; and mischievously as he would interfere at times in such matters, felt upon this occasion that the puppets would jig as much to their ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart

... which are apt to be frightened at a learned method, and may induce them to take more heed of the judgments which they are hourly passing on a great variety of subjects. If we still persist in saying when some one jingles some jig upon the piano that it is "charming," if we say of every daub in the Academy that it is "lovely," if every new building or statue is pronounced "awfully jolly," if the fastidious rubbish of the last volume of ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... and musical instruments and to handle tools, etc., we should not be discouraged if, after a whole day of hard exertion in work and play, there is still some energy left for drumming on the table or teasing sister or the cat, or for dancing a jig upstairs and ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... lug, dug from the wet sands. The squid or cuttle, herrings, caplin, any meat, or even a false fish of bright tin or pewter. (See JIG.) ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... drinks for the labourer and cigars for himself, several men came in and stood by the bar drinking together. As they drank they became more and more friendly, slapping each other on the back, singing songs and boasting. One of them got out upon the floor and danced a jig. The proprietor, a round-faced man with one dead eye, who had himself been drinking freely, put a bottle upon the bar and coming up to Sam, began complaining that he had no bartender and had to work ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... flinches from a sea. He just tends to his lines and hauls or "saws." Nay, have I not seen my old friend Deacon W. D—-, a good man of the island, while listening to a sermon in the little church on the hill, reach out his hand over the door of his pew and "jig" imaginary squid in the aisle, to the intense delight of the young people, who did not realize that to catch good fish one must have good bait, the thing most on the ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... top of a gay wooden stand, He stands on his head or he shakes your hand, He dances a jig or he trumps a chant— This jolly ...
— Animal Children - The Friends of the Forest and the Plain • Edith Brown Kirkwood

... of ordinary carpenters and handy men. And when the old house is on the ground they will display exasperating unconcern regarding what goes where and how to put the structure back together. The most complicated jig-saw puzzle is simplicity itself compared with an Early American house taken apart without ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... "The jig is up!" cried Captain Walker, sadly. "Gentlemen, we do not strike to one ship only. Haul down ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... Jepson to Randerson, when a few minutes later he followed the range boss out on the porch. He grinned at Randerson suspiciously. "Throwed twice, eh?" he repeated. "Masten's face looks like some one had danced a jig on it. Huh! I cal'late that if you was throwed twice, Masten's horse ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... other, dug their fists into each other, and cheered: "Oh, you Barnesy!" "Kill it, Kid!" "Whatcha know about dat!" "Sand it down, Barnesy!" The old-timer was doing the famous lock-step jig he had done with Pat Rooney in "Patrice" fifteen or twenty years before. It was so old that it was new. Encore followed encore. The perspiration cascaded through his pores; he grinned and winked and frisked and capered. They would ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... many a maple-tree in New Hampshire, and later on, many a walnut in Kentucky. He had not forgotten the art, and standing up on Ceph's back he leaped into the branches of the tree above him, and climbed to the top in what Artie would have called "jig time." ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic

... Dick, glorious news," returned Tom Rover, and he began to dance a jig on the tent ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield

... through the body and tingled along the nerves like successive electric shocks. The old Trapper fairly bounded into the air; and when he struck the floor his feet were flying. Nor was he alone; the jig had started a dozen on the instant; and the floor rattled and rang with the ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... It has not been easy, at the rate of about a millennium to a minute, to present a coherent account of the prehistoric record, which at best is like a jig-saw puzzle that has lost most of the pieces needed to reconstitute the design. But, even on this hasty showing, it looks as if the progressive nature of man were beyond question. There is manifest gain in complexity of organization, both ...
— Progress and History • Various

... to go to dances. I was great for cutting pigeon wings and balancing on the corner with a jig step. We used to dance the whirl waltz, too. Some called it the German waltz. We spun round and round as fast as we could, taking three ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... who read it be scholars who would argue about the origin and date of the poem, ingenious theorists who would fain use all the fragmentary tales and rhymes of the nursery as parts of a vast jig-saw puzzle of nature myths, or merely simple folk who read a tale for a tale's sake, every reader of the poem of Beowulf must own that it is one of the finest ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... she used to do a little jig step when she was a girl, and if they would play slower she would like to see if she had forgotten it. Tish did not hear this—she was talking to Tufik, and a moment later she got up ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... a mighty beautiful young crather; but the mirinit I laid my eyes upon her I knew her at once for a neighbour's daughter, one Anty Dooley, who had died a few months before, and who, when she was alive, could beat the whole county round at any sort of reel, jig, or hornpipe. The music struck up 'Tatter Jack Walsh,' and maybe it's she that didn't set, and turn, and thrush the boords, until the young prince hadn't as much breath left in his body as would blow out a rushlight, and he was forced to sit down ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various

... refused to go, for she also was a grand dancer, and she was afraid that when she heard the fiddles starting a merry jig, she might start dancing. So she excused herself by saying she was too tired with scraping pots and washing saucepans; and when the others went off, she crept up ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel

... bulges out a little round, ugly, vulgar Dutch monstrosity (for which the architects have, no doubt, a name) which offends the eye cruelly. Take the Apollo, and set upon him a bob-wig and a little cocked hat; imagine "God Save the King" ending with a jig; fancy a polonaise, or procession of slim, stately, elegant court beauties, headed by a buffoon dancing a hornpipe. Marshal Gerard should have discharged a bombshell at that abomination, and have given the noble steeple a chance to be finished in the grand style of the early fifteenth ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Jerry, and found all assembled around Ned, who was repeating over and over again, the story told by Tom. Even Patsey, whom I had scarcely noticed since he joined the train, was tossing his well-worn cap in the air, catching it upon the toe of a toeless boot, while executing a lively Irish jig, and exclaiming every time he ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens

... market, to buy a fat pig, Home again, home again, jiggety-jig; To market, to market, to buy a fat hog, Home again, home again, jiggety-jog; To market, to market, to buy a plum bun, Home again, home again, market ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... JIG, merry ballad or tune; a fanciful dialogue or light comic act introduced at the end or during an ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... back to me, when I dispelled his fright by explaining the way in which I had tricked him. Relieved and reassured, he clapped his hands and executed an impromtu jig, exclaiming, 'Ha! ha! when I get back to New Orleans won't I come de Barnum ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... hobble out was Ketch. In his own fashion, almost ignoring the presence of the bishop, he made known the tale. It was received with ridicule. The college boys especially cast mockery upon it, and began dancing a jig when the bishop's back was turned. "Let a couple of keys drop down, and, when picked up, you found them transmogrified into old rusty machines, made in the year one!" cried Bywater. "That's very like ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... of his learned talk about books, pictures, and politics, as if a young society girl were expected to know about these things; and as for his small talk, it reminded me of an elephant trying to dance a jig;" and she sprang up with a snatch of song from the "opera bouffe," and began ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... dear—it's no mistake—it's the water cure I'm after. Sure it's the blissid wather that saves us. There was Pat Murphy that brak his leg when he fell with a hod of bricks aff the ladder in Say Strate, and they put a bit of wet rag round it, and the next wake he was dancing a jig to the chune of Paddy Rafferty, at the ball given by the Social Burial Society. And there was my sister Molly's old man, Phelim, that was took bad wid the fever—and he drank walth of whiskey, but it never did him a bit of good—but when he lift off the whiskey, and drank nothin' but wather, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... a query. He can't mean Quince, and Bottom, and Starveling, Christopher Sly, Jack Cade, Caliban, and poor old Hodge? No, no, Nevil. Our clowns are the stupidest in Europe. They can't cook their meals. They can't spell; they can scarcely speak. They haven't a jig in their legs. And I believe they're losing their grin! They're nasty when their blood's up. Shakespeare's Cade tells you what he thought of Radicalizing the people. "And as for your mother, I 'll make her a duke"; that 's one of their songs. The word ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... upon the American by dazzling him with her grace and beauty. Her eye's swift invitation brought Don Fernando, scowling, to her side. He led her to the middle of the room, and the musicians played the stately jig. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... can dance a jig, you know. I'll go to New York, and let myself as the 'Eminent and Graceful Queen of Terpsichore, imported from Paris at a cost of Forty Thousand Dollars in Gold.' And then I'll make a tour of the New England States. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various

... gentlemen of the court should be pleased to give by B.mol express command to the pox not to run about any longer in gleaning up of coppersmiths and tinkers; for the jobbernolls had already a pretty good beginning in their dance of the British jig called the estrindore, to a perfect diapason, with one foot in the fire, and their head in the middle, as goodman ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... over the landscape, enabled to behold a horizon of triple range and to outstride the fleetest of his vagrant flock. When so inclined, he is quite able, it is said, to skillfully execute a pas seul or even a jig,—with every appropriate flourish of his timber limbs and with surprising grace and abandon. His stilts are strapped to the thigh, not the knee, for greater freedom, and he mounts from his cabin-roof in the early morning and lives in the air throughout the day. A third stilt ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... aspired! Red guineas packed his purse, too tight to ring. The fire-light gleamed upon his silken hose, His silver buckles and his powdered wig. What ho! more wine! He drank, he slowly rose. What made the shadows dance that madcap jig? He clutched the candle, steered his way to bed, And in a trice was sleeping ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... cordial at all; Contention and strife, in the but and the hall, Are ready to greet my return. Oh, did he come to us, our bondage to sever, I would cry, Be on Death benedictions for ever, I would jump it so high, and I 'd jig it so clever— Short while ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... steer, Not a single roguery, from the clipping of a purse To the cutting of a throat, but paid us toll. Od's curse! When Gipsy Smouch made bold to cheat us of our due, —Eh, Tab? the Squire's strong-box we helped the rascal to— I think he pulled a face, next Sessions' swinging-time! He danced the jig that needs no floor,—and, here's the prime, 'T was Scroggs that houghed the mare! ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... in bed when Shoop swaggered in. The foreman did a few steps of a jig, flung his hat in the corner, and proceeded ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... is no prettier word for it. "That naughty, naughty, Miss Thing-a-me-jig was making me sign a blank cheque! My autograph! My sacred aunt! Autograph ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... build hotels that go round and round like catherine wheels? They'll take away my shield and break me. I can think and talk con-con-consec-sec-secutively, but I s-s-stammer with my feet. I've got to go on duty in three hours. The jig is up, Remsen. The jig ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... Anxious to do honor to her patron and friend she threw her whole heart into the work; in the scene where she comes like a good angel to the home of the poor play-wright, she brought tears to the eyes of her audience; and when at her command Triplet strikes up a jig to amuse the children she "covered the buckle" in gallant style, dancing with all the frolicsome abandon of the Irish orange-girl who for a moment forgot her grandeur and ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... I was such a heeler, did you?" he said. "Well, I tell you. If you're fishin' for eels there ain't no use usin' a mack'rel jig. Sol, he's a little mite eely, and you've got to use the kind of bait that 'll fetch that ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... the ring. One stocking came down, letting out a quart of sawdust. One tight split up to the knee as he made a jig step that brought the tears to the eyes of Billy Blow, who, with his boy, had come to witness ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... is over. It has not been easy, at the rate of about a millennium to a minute, to present a coherent account of the prehistoric record, which at best is like a jig-saw puzzle that has lost most of the pieces needed to reconstitute the design. But, even on this hasty showing, it looks as if the progressive nature of man were beyond question. There is manifest gain in complexity of organization, both ...
— Progress and History • Various

... know, the more the English fellow will have to teach me, and Uncle Bob will have more worth for his money;" and then Ratty would whistle a jig, fling a fowling-piece over his shoulder, and shout "Ponto! Ponto! Ponto!" as he traversed the stable-yard; the delighted pointer would come bounding at the call, and, after circling round his young master with agile grace and yelps of glee at ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... Francisco? He was along the last trip. He'd know the approximate position. Might have got the right figgers out o' the log, him havin' the run of the cabin. A cable would do the rest. He'd git his whack out of it, with the order of the Golden Chrysanthemum or some jig-arig to boot, an' git even with the way he feels to'ard our outfit for'ard, that ain't bin none ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... the landing, suddenly slid the length of the hall in an airy jig. "Oh," she said, "we're going to be rich. I'll have a ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... the Renown's tonnage he had to go into Conception Bay, one of the many great sacks of inlets that make the island something that resembles nothing so much as a section of a jig-saw puzzle. The harbour of St. John's could float Renown, but its narrow waters would not permit her to turn, and the Prince had to transfer his Staff and baggage to Dragon in order to complete the next stage ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... market, to market, to buy a fat pig; Home again, home again, jiggetty-jig. To market, to market, to buy a fat hog; ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown

... took possession of the dancing-hall, where, surrounded by the elders, a quick succession of Money Musk, Opera Reel, Chorus Jig, etc., interspersed sparingly with cotillons, evidenced the relish with which young spirits and light hearts enjoy the exercises ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... see you bear ever so little of that same weight, worthy Master Proudfute," replied Henry Gow, "were it but to keep you firm in the saddle; for you bounce aloft as if you were dancing a jig on your seat, without any ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... it, of course; and while the ball increased in size there was plenty of time and opportunity for talk, which was interrupted by Robin's fiddle striking up a merry jig time. Wool and ball were laid aside, while Ann placed six lighted candles on the floor—four in the centre and one at each end, with space enough between them for the figures of ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... minuet gravely and gracefully, and thus laid the foundation of my future success in life. The common dances I learned (as, perhaps, I ought not to confess) in the servants' hall, which, you may be sure, was never without a piper, and where I was considered unrivalled both at a hornpipe and a jig. ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... sad!"—and, at the instant, down would come her tears, quenching all the mirth of those around her like sudden rain upon a bonfire. "Alice, dance."—and dance she would, not in such court-like measures as she had learned abroad, but some high-paced jig, or hop-skip rigadoon, befitting the brisk lasses at a rustic merry-making. It seemed to be Maule's impulse, not to ruin Alice, nor to visit her with any black or gigantic mischief, which would have crowned her sorrows with the grace of tragedy, but to wreak a low, ungenerous ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... King and Court—ay, and the court-ladies too—looking on. I stood by when that poor mad wretch Damiens was pulled to pieces by horses in the Greve. I have seen what the plague could do in the galleys at Marseilles. Death and I have been boon companions and bedfellows. He has danced a jig with me on a plank, and ridden bodkin, and gone snacks with me for a lump of horse-flesh in a beleaguered town; but no man can say that John Dangerous had aught but a bold face to show that Phantom who frights nursemaids ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... his head a'most, with the gaps in it staring like ribs at him. 'Bout ship was the word, pretty sharp, you may be sure, when he come to his wits consarning it, and the purse of his lips, as was whistling a jig, went as dry as a bag with the bottom out. Through the grey of the night there was sounds coming to him, such as had no right to be in the air, and a sort of a shiver laid hold of his heart, like a cold hand flung over his shoulder. As hard as he could lay foot to the ground, away ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... physician talked together for some minutes, the attorney's excitement increasing. Greg, in the meantime, was executing a silent jig over near the ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock

... paper.) Ah, God bless your jig! And how would I know is it a notice of my own death has come into my hand in the pocket of this coat I put on me through ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... replied. "I can dance a jig, you know. I'll go to New York, and let myself as the 'Eminent and Graceful Queen of Terpsichore, imported from Paris at a cost of Forty Thousand Dollars in Gold.' And then I'll make a tour of the New England States. Or I'll learn to play the banjo and get ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various

... bring for her nonsense no cordial at all; Contention and strife, in the but and the hall, Are ready to greet my return. Oh, did he come to us, our bondage to sever, I would cry, Be on Death benedictions for ever, I would jump it so high, and I 'd jig it so clever— Short while would ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... amongst them, but stepped on one little fellow's tail, who had been leading the Irish jig. He hollered till I got off it, 'Owch! but it's on ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... noise. And the big frying pan proved that the supreme confidence which Lub had placed in its ability to jangle had not been in the least overdone; for it certainly played a fandango as it pitched over on the hard floor of the cabin, and danced some sort of jig, with other things adding their little mite to swell ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone

... down, jerk him to his feet, thrust a line into his hands, and kick him until he bent his weight upon it. It was bitter driving. But I'll admit it brought order out of chaos. We cleared the decks of the first-day-out hurrah's nest in jig time. Mercifully, it was fair weather, with a light, steady, ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... speak, I feel a great sympathy with that woman in Ireland who had had something of a field-day on hand. She began by knocking down two somewhat unpopular agents of her absentee landlord, and was seen, later in the day, dancing a jig on the stomach of the prostrate form of the Presbyterian minister. One of her friends admired her prowess in this direction and invited her in, and gave her a good stiff glass of whiskey. Her friend said, "Shall I pour some water ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... greater part of the mental strain his spirits began to lighten. Merely by way of being sociable with himself he hummed some old ditties. There was that about the old coaster, the Eliza Jane. I liked to hear him sing that, as, dancing a one-footed jig-step by the wheel-box, he ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... and squibs against the Pretender, from the London newspapers. And here, occasionally, are specimens of New England honor, laboriously light and lamentably mirthful, as if some very sober person, in his zeal to be merry, were dancing a jig to the tune of a funeral-psalm. All this is wearisome, and we must turn ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... less active all winter, but October and November are their festal months. Invade some butternut or hickory-nut grove on a frosty October morning, and hear the red squirrel beat the "juba" on a horizontal branch. It is a most lively jig, what the boys call a "regular break-down," interspersed with squeals and snickers and derisive laughter. The most noticeable peculiarity about the vocal part of it is the fact that it is a kind of duet. In ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... his hands up and joined the tips of his fingers against his chest. "But it's another piece in the jig-saw. In time it will fit into place." He paused. "It means no more to you than the first, ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet

... the Clown stretched his great arms above his head, whistled a lively jig tune, reached for a fry pan, and soon had a mess of pork hissing over the fire. Later on, from a bent sapling a smoke-begrimed coffee pail bubbled, boiled over, and was lifted ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... from the clipping of a purse To the cutting of a throat, but paid us toll. Od's curse! When Gipsy Smouch made bold to cheat us of our due, —Eh, Tab? the Squire's strong-box we helped the rascal to— I think he pulled a face, next Sessions' swinging-time! He danced the jig that needs no floor,—and, here's the prime, 'T was Scroggs that houghed the mare! Ay, those ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... tune of a hornpipe. Still singing, she felt herself twisted about with a low growl and a lifting of the red lip from the glittering teeth; she broke the hornpipe's thread, and commenced unravelling a lighter, livelier thing, an Irish jig. Up and down and round about her voice flew, the beast threw back his head so that the diabolical face fronted hers, and the torrent of his breath prepared her for his feast as the anaconda slimes his prey. Franticly she darted from tune to tune; his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... Milton 'tis in vain to look; These shelves admit not any modern book. And now the chapel's silver bell you hear, That summons you to all the pride of prayer; Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven. On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre, On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, And bring all Paradise before your eye. To rest, the cushion and soft Dean invite, Who never mentions hell to ears polite. But hark! ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... "Item number two is Mr. Milburgh, an oleaginous gentleman who has been robbing the firm for years and has been living in style in the country on his ill-earned gains. From what he hears, or knows, he gathers, that the jig is up. He is in despair when he realises that Thornton Lyne is desperately in love with his step-daughter. What is more likely than that he should use his step-daughter in order to influence Thornton Lyne to take the favourable view ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... to his tent, where the flag were flyin, never bothered about no sentries nor nothin. Just as I trot up, a little bit of a butterfly lady like bob out o the tent, and when she see me—'Beau, boy!' she squeals. 'Beau, boy! ere's a niked man! Do come and see!' And she jig up and down and tiddle her fingers at me, please as Punch.... Out come ole Whiskers, sword and all. 'You something something!' says he, and knocks her back into the tent. Then ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... there and face me, Robert Hacket, and say thou hast ne'er given me reason to believe that thou didst love me?" quoth he. "No more cause than I've given to twenty better than thee!" quoth she. "Shame on thee to say 't, thou bold-faced jig!" saith he; "shame on thee, I say! and so will say all honest folk when I tell 'em o' 't." "An thou tell it, the more fool thou," saith she; and a draws up her red lips into a circle as though a'd had a drawstring in 'em, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives

... "Kittie's dancing a jig, and Kat's sliding down the bannisters," exclaimed a horrified voice from somewhere else. "Mercy! Bea, call mama; I ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... more into the excited obscurity of the wings, where his manager was trembling like an aspen, in the midst of a perspiring company. The lights were turned down. The orchestra burst into a tuneful jig, and the lingering audience at length began ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... the king, and that's no small word, of all the pipers in Munster. He could play jig and reel without end, and Ollistrum's March, and the Eagle's Whistle, and the Hen's Concert, and odd tunes of every sort and kind. But he knew one far more surprising than the rest, which had in it the power to set everything dead ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... might have been called; it was a veritable floating colony of French and Swede, Irish and Scotch, jabbering and smoking by day and lying quietly at night under the stars, save for the occasional jig and scrape of the fiddle of some active Milesian. Here, had I fully known it, was my chance for observation, but I was ignorant at that time of the ways of these people and did not venture among them. But the man in the velvet coat interested me. He gesticulated the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... Don! frolicsome Don! Chasing your tail at a game of tag, Dancing a jig with a kitchen rag, Rearing and tearing, and all for ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... Sir Samuel were out of the way, as safely disposed of as Monsieur Charretier himself, I felt so extravagantly happy in reaction, after all my worries, that I danced a jig in her ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... the breakdown. Bob begins a jig on his guitar, the whistler claps and the sable dancer edges his way to the center of the floor in little spasmodic shuffles. He begins with his heel tap, then the toe, then in leaps and whirls. The guitar swelled to a steady roar. The ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... being nobody to see, the good woman executed a sort of jig, and having thus relieved her feelings departed ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... armour; and thyself, Bedaub'd with gold, rode laughing at the rest, Nodding and shaking of thy spangled crest, Where women's favours hung like labels down. Lan. And thereof came it that the fleering Scots, To England's high disgrace, have made this jig; Maids of England, sore may you mourn, For your lemans you have lost at Bannocksbourn,— With a heave and a ho! What weeneth the king of England So soon to have won Scotland!— With a rombelow! Y. ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... could cry no more. However, I was determined I would not be done out of my sport after being at the expense of coming, so I went round and borrowed some pins, and pinned up my shirt tail as well as I could. I then went into the dance, and told the fiddler to play me a jig. Che, che, che, went the fiddle, when the banjo responded with a thrum, thrum, thrum, with the loud cracking of the bone player. I seized a little Sambo gal, and round and round the room we went, my money and my buttons going jingle, jingle, jingle, seemed to take a lively part ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green

... discoveries, while hundreds were prating in their pulpits of things believed in by a negligible fraction of the population, and thousands writing down today what nobody would want to read in two days' time; while men shut animals in cages, and made bears jig to please their children, and all were striving one against the other; while, in a word, like gnats above a stagnant pool on a summer's evening, man danced up and down without the faintest notion why—in this condition of affairs the quality ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... impostor," he said, laughing, as he replied to the welcome of his comrades. "I believe I could safely throw away these sticks and dance a jig; but the doctor has laid his commands on me, and my man, who has been ruling me with a rod of iron, will not permit the slightest infringement of them. He seems to consider that he is responsible for me in all respects, and if he had been master and I man he could not have behaved ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... of a good thing. This coming up to Clawbonny has put me in mind of running them straits, though we have had rather better weather this passage, and a clearer horizon. What d'ye call that affair up against the hill-side, yonder, with the jig-a-merree, that is turning ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... a sound," she whispered to him, "and then she won't hear you. But, faith she's sleeping so well, it's my belief if you danced a jig she would not stir a limb. Go in, child, go in. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... silhouettes of waltzers, already smoothly at it to the castanets of "La Paloma." Old John Minafer, evidently surfeited, was in the act of leaving these delights. "D'want 'ny more o' that!" he barked. "Just slidin' around! Call that dancin'? Rather see a jig any day in the world! They ain't very modest, some of 'em. I don't ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... dead in his tracks and stared as if he weren't willing to believe his own eyesight. He went red and white, and his heavy heart turned a cart-wheel, and danced a jig, and began to sing as a young heart should. On the farthest thistle, as if waiting for him to come, as if they knew he must come, with their sails hoisted over their ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... in a deluge of darkness. We were greeted with a noisy welcome, at the door. Many of the boys and girls came, from all sides of the big hall, and shook hands with us. Enos Brown, whose long forelocks had been oiled for the occasion and combed down so they touched his right eyebrow, was panting in a jig that jarred the house. His trouser legs were caught on the tops of his fine boots. He nodded to me as I came in, snapped his fingers and doubled his energy. It was an exhibition both of power and endurance. He was damp and apologetic when, at length, he stopped with ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... Presently the discordant music began again. The hag, who had been bent double, reared herself up with a "Ho!" after the fashion of a Scottish sword-dancer, and began to make a wretched shuffle with her feet. Then she moved with a hobble and a jig to the far end of the room; and she called out, beginning to come straight down to the door whereby I stood. I know not what presentiment forewarned me to beware as the creature drew near; but yet I felt the danger, and the throbbing of my heart. That ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... are the short cuts of ignorance to be expected of ordinary carpenters and handy men. And when the old house is on the ground they will display exasperating unconcern regarding what goes where and how to put the structure back together. The most complicated jig-saw puzzle is simplicity itself compared with an Early American house taken apart ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... on and shoot me! I am John Armitage, and I live in Montana, where real people are. Go on and shoot! Winkelried's in jail and the jig's up and the Empire and the silly King are safe. Go on and shoot, ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... looks cranky, but there isn't much the matter with him. Coxswain Dance couldn't jig to save his life. T'others are blue mouldy, and old Whitney talks about 'em as if he was using bricks and mortar. He says ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... captured and brought back to me, when I dispelled his fright by explaining the way in which I had tricked him. Relieved and reassured, he clapped his hands and executed an impromtu jig, exclaiming, 'Ha! ha! when I get back to New Orleans won't I come de Barnum ober dem ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... they ain't held to apply to us of rights. For sech alien hookups, so to speak, we reefooses all reespons'bility. Which we regyards them escapades as fortooitous, an' declines 'em utter. Tutt's goin' against Texas is the only war-jig we feels to ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... want me to give you an explanation? But when I've got an appointment to talk the matter over with the head of the firm, what for would I waste my time talking it over with the junior partner?" And she began to type as if she was playing a jig. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... great Sir Stephen at my feet, to make or to break as I pleased. I would never rest until I could be able to say: 'You're a great man in the world's eyes, but I am your master; you are my puppet, and you have to dance to my music, whether the tune be a dead march or a jig.' That is what I should do if I were a man; but I am only a girl, and it seems to me nowadays that men have more of the woman ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... lay as I had left it, but the three of us quickly freed the trap. The humor of the thing took strong hold of my new allies, and while I was getting a lantern to light us through the passage Larry sat on the edge of the trap and howled a few bars of a wild Irish jig. We set forth at once and found the passage unchanged. When the cold air blew in upon ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... was almost furiously alive, and as the Padrone talked, waving his hands and striking postures like those of a military dictator, she saw the dead Empress, with her fan before her face, nodding her head to the jig of "Funiculi, funicula," while she watched the red cloud from Vesuvius rising into the starry sky; she saw Sarah Bernhardt taking the Greek cat upon her knee; the newly made Czar reading the telegram with ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... the reasoning at once. "Besides," he added, "if the Frostola man doesn't see us come out, he'll know the jig is up right now. ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... moments with good-cheer, good work and an earnest wish to do better tomorrow than he had done today. That Nature occasionally produces such a man should be a cause for gratitude in the hearts of all the rest of us little folk who jig, mince, mouth, amble, run, peek about and criticize ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... escape Varney. Then the meal was finished, the cloth removed, and they were left to their private discourse—"Thou art gay as a goldfinch, Anthony," said Varney, looking at his host; "methinks, thou wilt whistle a jig anon. But I crave your pardon, that would secure your ejection from the congregation of the zealous botchers, the pure-hearted weavers, and the sanctified bakers of Abingdon, who let their ovens cool while their ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... with a gentle breeze. Above the mastheads the resplendent curve of the Milky Way spanned the sky like a triumphal arch of eternal light, thrown over the dark pathway of the earth. On the forecastle head a man whistled with loud precision a lively jig, while another could be heard faintly, shuffling and stamping in time. There came from forward a confused murmur of voices, laughter—snatches of song. The cook shook his head, glanced obliquely at Jimmy, and began to mutter. "Aye. Dance and sing. That's all they think of. I am ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... upon him. Nothing could impress him; nobody could repress him. He said just what he thought to anybody and everybody, and acted just as he felt wherever he happened to be. Just now he felt like dancing a jig—and did so. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... though, I suppose, down in the Philistine flats of B. parish it is nothing to speak of, has produced the same effects on the contents of my knowledge-box that a quaigh of usquebaugh does upon those of most other bipeds. I see everything couleur de rose, and am strongly inclined to dance a jig, if I knew how. I think I must partake of the nature of a pig or an ass—both which animals are strongly affected by a high wind. From what quarter the wind blows I cannot tell, for I never could in ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... results from the introduction of this systematic attempt to regulate the occupation habits of employees. A typical example which he reports is the following: It regularly took a man one minute and forty seconds to set a piece in a jig. "After a study of the exact motions required to pick the piece up and set it accurately, we showed the same man how to do it in twenty seconds.'' This workman soon reduced the correct movement to habit, attained the specified speed, and without in any way working harder ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... is generally a settler—the stage is also a safe road to a safe settlement, and between a race-horse and a danseuse, we would not give a sixpence for choice. Now, as far as horse-flesh went, my grandfather was innocent; a pirouette or pas seul, barring an Irish jig, he never witnessed in his life—but he had discovered as good a method for settling a private gentleman. He had an inveterate fancy for electioneering. The man who would reform state abuses, deserves well of his country; there is a great deal of patriotism in Ireland; in fact, it is, like ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... them with the evolutions of a logic too rapid for their senses to follow, and makes their bewilderment a sport. How small their world appears in the mirror of his ironical mind! The state-craft, the love-making, the "absurd pomp," the "heavy-headed revels," the women that "jig and amble and lisp," the nobles that are "spacious in the possession of dirt," the sovereign that is a "king of shreds and patches;" as for their opinions, "do but blow; them to their trials, and the bubbles ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... mill and entered the door. Everything about it, from the dumping of the cars sixty feet above, the wrench of the crushers breaking the ore into smaller fragments, the clash of the screens as it came on down to the stamps, and their terrific "jiggety-jig-jig," roared, throbbed, and trembled. Every timber in the structure seemed to keep pace with that resistless shaking as the tables slid to and fro, dripping from the water percolating at their heads, to distribute ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... be a progressive one, consisting of putting together at tables wooden puzzles of all sorts, including jig-saw puzzles. ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt

... John Jig Jag, Rode on a penny nag, And went to Wigan to woo; When he came to a beck He fell and broke his neck, Johnny, how dost ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright

... have here English, Scotch, and Irish dancers, we can have the English country-dance, the Scotch reel, and the Irish jig. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... Sulphitism was upon the increase, while from that year till 1870 there was a sickening drop to the veriest depths of bromidic thought. Then the Bromide infested the earth. With his black-walnut furniture, his jig-saw and turning-lathe methods of decoration, his lincrusta-walton and pressed terracotta, his chromos, wax flowers, hoop skirts, chokers, side whiskers and pantalettes, went a horrific revival of mock modesty inspired by the dying efforts of the old formulated religious ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess

... malicious mischief against you, for breaking the propeller of the Butterfly and slashing her wings. I've mended her up, however, so she goes better than ever, and I can take you to the police station in jig ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton

... his confidence. "Every man has his price—but it's a mistake to think that the price must always be counted down in cash. Daunt didn't act as if he had captured our friend. He's dancing to a girl's tune now. Corson will whistle a jig when he gets ready and Morrison will ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... the morning I observed that Uncle Peabody's bed had not been slept in. I hurried down and heard that our off-horse had died in the night of colic. Aunt Deel was crying. As he saw me Uncle Peabody began to dance a jig in the ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... must be, He would set to the Baptist willingly,[3] At the Independent deign to smirk, And rigadoon with old Mother Kirk; Nay even, for once, if needs must be, He'd take hands round with all the three; But as to a jig with Popery, no,— To the Harlot ne'er would ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... an' the Chester brass-band come along. Now, a average hoss,' Jim said, 'will either git scared or break an' run at a sound like that, but three o' them things you got this mornin' struck up a regular jig an' capered about the lot kickin' up the'r heels as if they was in a ring jumpin' over red ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... Roosevelt cautioned its officers against too frequent use of the word "supervision" on the ground that supervision and direction were apt to defeat the very purpose of games and to stultify the play spirit. Is the little girl on the street who springs into a hornpipe or a jig to the tune of a hurdy-gurdy, or even the boy who runs before automobiles or trolley cars or under horses' noses, getting less physical education than those who play a round game in silence under the supervision of a teacher in the school basement, or who stretch their arms up and down to the ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... a lie, and it cost the man his life. "The jig is up then," he said, and told the story that ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... now. When he had gone the members of Dick & Co. exchanged glances. Then Holmes began to dance his best idea of a jig. ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock

... in the parade. Blarney Castle had several lads and lasses present, led by the pipes and a jig-dancer as agile as an antelope and as tireless as an electric fan, for he jigged all the way the procession marched. Then the Samoans came along. Stalwart men are they, yellow-skinned and muscular, and in their airy ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... series of brilliant, egotistic, shrewd, and genial sallies, and she could be either caressing or impudent. In the matter of self-approbation she had no Statute of Limitation, but boasted of having taught Taglioni to dance an Irish jig, and declared that she had created the Irish novel, though in the next breath she would say that she was a child when Miss Edgeworth was a grown woman.' Her blunders were proverbial, as when she asked in all simplicity, 'Who was Jeremy Taylor?' and on being presented to Mrs. Sarah ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... Harry Squires had sense enough not to say in the Banner that as soon as Jake Miller found out that the jig was up, he took the law in his own hands, ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... I know what it isn't. I checked out the refrigs three times, see, and came up with nothing. The refrigs are in jig order, and if I know it then you know it. So, if the refrigs are in jig order, there's only one thing it can be: we're getting too near the sun!" Boone clamped his mouth shut and stood with thick, muscular arms ...
— A Place in the Sun • C.H. Thames

... of each strathspey, or jig, a particular note from the fiddle summons the Rustic to the agreeable duty of saluting ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... have risen there and then and danced for joy before her. Will you believe me, I felt so glad I could hardly restrain my feet till the hour was up, and whenever liberty was proclaimed, didn't they go well at the Irish jig! Oh dear!" and Winnie's face was all aglow as she waited her brother's commendatory remarks ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... a sophomore dance a jig to the music of a dogwood sprout for throwing paper wads. I saw a junior compelled to stand on the dunce block, on one foot—(a la gander) for winking at his sweetheart in time of books, for failing to know his lessons, and ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... perdition. And Agnes is just as bad as you are, if not worse. What they need is a good hickory switch and plenty of muscle behind it. If they were my boys, I'd let them know what's what. I'd put things in order in jig time. I'd show them whether they could run things as they liked. They'd learn mighty quick who ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... by the fire, The mistress snored loud as a pig, Jack took up his fiddle by Jenny's desire, And struck up a bit of a jig. ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various

... sense it is not organised at all. There is an elaborate differentiation of functions—the "division of labour," to give it its time-honoured name, under which innumerable men and women perform each small specialised tasks, which fit into one another with the complexity of a jig-saw puzzle, to form an integral whole. Some men dig coal from the depths of the earth, others move that coal over land by rail and over the seas in ships, others are working in factories, at home and abroad, which consume that coal, or in shipyards which ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... spoiling them, his two last jokes. It said whom her mother had called on and who had called on her mother and how something must be done to stop her smoking too many cigarettes. It said that their young brother, having sprained his ankle at hockey, had become a wolf for jig-saw puzzles. It said where their parents had dined recently and where they were going to dine and who was coming next week. It said what she had seen at the theatre last Saturday and what book she was reading. It said which of the other V.A.D.'s ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various

... faster with all his fingers than you do, playing a sort of crazy jig with your two first fingers, Mr. Brooke," laughed Dick, uproariously. "I have seen other fellows play the machine like that and thought it was the only way, but now I see that ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh

... masters? do you not laugh at him for a coxcomb? Why, he hath made a prologue longer than his play: nay, 'tis no play neither, but a show. I'll be sworn the jig of Rowland's godson is a giant in comparison of it. What can be made of Summer's last will and testament! Such another thing as Gyllian of Brentford's[20] will, where she bequeathed a score of farts amongst her friends. Forsooth, because the plague reigns in most places in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... faltering accents. On a bare floor a girl walks with a rapid, elastic rhythm which is quite distinct from the graver step of the elderly woman. I have laughed over the creak of new shoes and the clatter of a stout maid performing a jig in the kitchen. One day, in the dining-room of an hotel, a tactual dissonance arrested my attention. I sat still and listened with my feet. I found that two waiters were walking back and forth, but not with the same gait. A band was playing, and I could feel the music-waves along the floor. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... secret of eloquence is to know your facts—or, as the all-powerful Chuff would amend it, to know your tracts. One fact, I think I may say, is plain. The jig is up, or (more literally), the jag is up. I can see now that alcohol will never be more than a memory. Principalities and powers are in league against us. If the malt has lost its favor, wherewith shall ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... the Wedding,' then." But the jig ran riot to such an extent that Kitty lost her place, stumbled, and finally came to ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... should have worried round after her ladyship when she might have sneaked back with the key to the place she took it from. And then there's all the rest—the putting the key back and fitting in times and all that.... Seems to me a bit too much of the Box and Cox trick—a sort of jig-saw ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... would. Show me how it can be done and I'll go at it in jig time." And now Koswell ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer

... or three centuries. But because you cannot be Handel and Mozart—is it any reason why you should not learn to sing "God save the Queen" properly, when you have a mind to? Because a girl cannot be prima donna in the Italian Opera, is it any reason that she should not learn to play a jig for her brothers and sisters in good time, or a soft little tune for her tired mother, or that she should not sing to please herself, among the dew, on a May morning? Believe me, joy, humility, and usefulness, always go together: as insolence with misery, and ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... a few minutes," he answered, "and I will play you a jig. A jig is a beautiful dance, such life, such ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... knee, Terry heigho, &c. Next come in was a creeping snail, Heigho, &c. With his bagpipes under his tail, Terry heigho, &c. Next came in was a neighbour's pig, Heigho, &c. 'Pray, good people, will ye play us a jig?' Terry heigho, &c. Next come in was a neighbour's hen, Heigho, &c. Took the fiddler by the wing, Terry heigho, &c. Next come in was a neighbour's duck, Heigho, &c. Swallow'd the piper, head and pluck, Terry heigho, &c. Next come in was a neighbour's cat, Heigho, &c. Took the young bride ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various

... that—or I'll have you all in the lock-up in jig time," said the roadmaster, so sternly that Jasniff allowed the club to drop to his side. He turned again to Dave and his friends. "Did you see these ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... private. The first doesn't blame the new married pair, because 'a wedding at home means five and six handed reels by the hour, and they do a man's legs no good when he's over forty.' A second corroborates the remark and says: 'True. Once at the woman's house you can hardly say nay to being one in a jig, knowing all the time that you be expected to ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... "jig" seems to have been a comic after-piece consisting of music and dancing. In Mr. Collier's Hist. of Dram. Lit., iii. 180-85 (new ed.), the reader will find much curious information on the point. The following passage ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... opportunity, and so concluded to divide up his kingdom between them. At this dramatic moment Richard, having paid his sixty thousand pounds ransom and tipped his custodian, entered the English arena, and the jig was up. John was obliged to ask pardon, and Richard generously gave it, with the exclamation, "Oh, that I could forget his injuries as soon as he will ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye

... to imaginary audiences over three thousand feet below. One of the guides with our party, wearing heavy "chaps" (bear-skin overalls) walked out upon this rock, took off his hat, waved it over his head, posed for his photograph, even took a jig step or two, stood on one foot and peered into the abyss below with apparent unconcern. Earlier in life I might have taken a similar chance, but it would be a physical impossibility for me to do it now. We feasted our eyes on the ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves

... the first speaker, bursting out with a very good imitation of Punch in one of his vocal efforts, and supplementing it with a touch of the terpsichorean, tripping along in step with a suggestion of a nigger minstrel's jig. ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... to get him soon, or we'll be plump into Golden Crossing, and then the jig will be up, I fear," Ryan said fiercely. "They'll say I bungled the job, and they'll try another hold-up, I suppose. For those letters are in that mail, and we ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster

... all this being called upon to speak, I feel a great sympathy with that woman in Ireland who had had something of a field-day on hand. She began by knocking down two somewhat unpopular agents of her absentee landlord, and was seen, later in the day, dancing a jig on the stomach of the prostrate form of the Presbyterian minister. One of her friends admired her prowess in this direction and invited her in, and gave her a good stiff glass of whiskey. Her friend said, "Shall I pour some water in your whiskey?" and the woman replied, "For God's ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... got amongst them, but stepped on one little fellow's tail, who had been leading the Irish jig. He hollered till I got off it, 'Owch! but it's on ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... the Mole, with perfect truthfulness. "Well, now," he went on, "you seem to have found another piece of domestic litter, done for and thrown away, and I suppose you're perfectly happy. Better go ahead and dance your jig round that if you've got to, and get it over, and then perhaps we can go on and not waste any more time over rubbish-heaps. Can we eat a door-mat? Or sleep under a door-mat? Or sit on a door-mat and sledge home over the snow on it, you ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... could have risen there and then and danced for joy before her. Will you believe me, I felt so glad I could hardly restrain my feet till the hour was up, and whenever liberty was proclaimed, didn't they go well at the Irish jig! Oh dear!" and Winnie's face was all aglow as she waited her brother's commendatory remarks on ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... And goes before him for the better grace: But when they chance to change, 'tis as a dance, They foot A Galliard, a la mode de France. An Eighteenscore's a figure dance, but Grandsire Hath the Jig-steps! & Tendrings Peal doth answer The manner of Corants: A plain Six-score, Is like a Saraband, the motion slower. When Bells Ring round, and in their Order be, They do denote how Neighbours should agree; But if they Clam, the harsh sound ...
— Tintinnalogia, or, the Art of Ringing - Wherein is laid down plain and easie Rules for Ringing all - sorts of Plain Changes • Richard Duckworth and Fabian Stedman

... her delight is as infectious as dance music. "Dr. Johnson's approbation!" she writes in her diary, "—it almost crazed me with agreeable surprise—it gave me such a flight of spirits that I danced a jig to Mr. Crisp, without any preparation, music, or explanation—to his no small amazement and diversion." She danced round the mulberry tree on the Chessington lawn, so she told Sir ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... to do honor to her patron and friend she threw her whole heart into the work; in the scene where she comes like a good angel to the home of the poor play-wright, she brought tears to the eyes of her audience; and when at her command Triplet strikes up a jig to amuse the children she "covered the buckle" in gallant style, dancing with all the frolicsome abandon of the Irish orange-girl who for a moment forgot ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... encouraged. "The end of it is that I shall endeavour to do my duty—which is, apparently, to do everything that I most entirely disapprove of—and that on the day Larry is twenty-one, I shall march out of Coppinger's Court, and dance a jig, and then he may have the Pope to stay with him ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... we went inside with him. The Flour had a few drinks, and then he went into the back-room where the new chums were. One of them was dancing a jig, and so the Flour stood up in front of him and commenced to dance too. And presently the new chum made a step that didn't please the Flour, so he hit him between the eyes, and knocked him down—fair an' flat on ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... grinned. "Didn't know I was such a heeler, did you?" he said. "Well, I tell you. If you're fishin' for eels there ain't no use usin' a mack'rel jig. Sol, he's a little mite eely, and you've got to use the kind of bait that 'll fetch that sort ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... for them several tunes, but as far as I can judge they do not feel modern music, though they listen eagerly from curiosity. Irish airs like 'Eileen Aroon' please them better, but it is only when I play some jig like the 'Black Rogue'—which is known on the island—that they seem to respond to the full meaning of the notes. Last night I played for a large crowd, which had come together for another purpose from all parts of ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... aspect of an idiot, without the faintest ray of sense gleaming from any one feature—with the most awkward garb, and unpowdered grey wig, on one side only of his head—he is for ever dancing the devil's jig, and sometimes he makes the most driveling effort to whistle some thought in his absent paroxysms.' Miss Burney thus describes him when she first saw him in 1778:—'Soon after we were seated this great man entered. I have so true a veneration for him ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... the five balls," continues the correspondent, "was given by M. le Grand, in his apartments in the new wing of Versailles. The ball commenced with a masquerade. They danced a minuet and a jig; but only Mlle. de Nantes danced in the latter. Mlle. de Nantes was especially admired when she danced, and made so great an impression that people stood on chairs to see her better, Mgr. le Dauphin came to the masquerade with M. le Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon and many other notables. ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... back An astonishing pack. Like a blacksmith's bellows, marvellous big; And while she dances a horrible jig, Out of this bellows a doleful tune She skre—eels away, in the dark ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates

... struggles he was arrested by the sound of whistling. Somebody in the distance outside was whistling, clearly and musically, a quaint, jingling sort of jig that struck familiarly on Desmond's ear. Somehow it reminded him of the front. It brought with it dim memory of the awakening to the early morning chill of a Nissen hut, the smell of damp earth, the whirr of aircraft soaring through the morning ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... I've a date to keep with a suspicious character—on a trawler. Can you beat it? These vermin creep in everywhere. Yes, by Godfrey! They crawl aboard ship in sight of Strathlone Head! Here's hoping it may be a yard-arm jig he'll dance!" ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... simple invention, the little Jig or Fret-Saw can be made to execute more satisfactory work with less labor and time, and less breakage of saw-blades. It renders sawing very easy and simple. It will also produce, easily, the new work Marquetry, or inlaid work, of the finest description, which, without ...
— The Nursery, No. 109, January, 1876, Vol. XIX. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Unknown

... choked Alister's voice as well as his veins, and I don't think many of the company heard this too accurate summary of the situation. The boatswain did, but before he could speak, Dennis O'Moore had sprung to the ground between them, and laying the fiddle over his shoulder played a wild sort of jig that most effectually and unceremoniously drowned the rest of the song, and diverted ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Chasing your tail at a game of tag, Dancing a jig with a kitchen rag, Rearing and tearing, and all ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... height above the ground, he stalks gravely over the landscape, enabled to behold a horizon of triple range and to outstride the fleetest of his vagrant flock. When so inclined, he is quite able, it is said, to skillfully execute a pas seul or even a jig,—with every appropriate flourish of his timber limbs and with surprising grace and abandon. His stilts are strapped to the thigh, not the knee, for greater freedom, and he mounts from his cabin-roof in the early ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... morning, being Sunday, and, as Mr. Marble expressed it, "the better day, the better deed," the pilot came off, and all hands were called to "up anchor." The cook, cabin-boy, Rupert and I, were entrusted with the duty of "fleeting jig" and breaking down the coils of the cable, the handspikes requiring heavier hands than ours. The anchor was got in without any difficulty, however, when Rupert and I were sent aloft to loose the fore-top-sail. Rupert ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... horse and gig With promises to pay; And he pawned his horns for a spruce new wig, To redeem as he came away: And he whistled some tune, a waltz or a jig, And drove off at the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... course." The success of his bluff had operated on Gibney like a tonic. "Hop into your shoes, Bart, an' we'll snake them two scabs out o' their berths in jig time." ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... him a dinner of fish. This was the least we could do, and we were so fortunate in our sport that we were able to give him an abundant meal. He enjoyed it much, and quickly revived. To show his gratitude he soon began to play off his usual extraordinary antics for our amusement, such as dancing a jig, standing on his head, or rolling himself up into a ball. Suddenly it struck me that he had brought the log of timber to enable us to escape from our perilous situation. I consulted with my companions, and they agreed with me that if we harnessed Bruin to ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... prating in their pulpits of things believed in by a negligible fraction of the population, and thousands writing down today what nobody would want to read in two days' time; while men shut animals in cages, and made bears jig to please their children, and all were striving one against the other; while, in a word, like gnats above a stagnant pool on a summer's evening, man danced up and down without the faintest notion why—in this condition of affairs the quality of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... your invitation I danced a jig of delight," went on Songbird. "I just couldn't help it. Then ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer

... first met the squid, who is one of the best cod-baits, but uncertain in his moods. They were waked out of their bunks one black night by yells of "Squid O!" from Salters, and for an hour and a half every soul aboard hung over his squid-jig—a piece of lead painted red and armed at the lower end with a circle of pins bent backward like half-opened umbrella ribs. The squid—for some unknown reason—likes, and wraps himself round, this ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... presented a most comical spectacle, dancing there before us, first on one leg and then on the other, his bulky frame swaying to and fro, like that of an elephant performing a jig, with the crackers exploding every instant, and his bald head surrounded apparently with a halo of smoke like a "nimbus." The boys fairly shrieked with laughter, and even Smiley and the Cobbler had to ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... have a jig or two before we ride to anchor in Blanket Bay. What say ye? There comes the other watch. Stand by all legs! Pip! little Pip! hurrah with ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... soldier accordingly nailed the posters, followed by an inquisitive group, who read the following announcement: "Tuesday, 'The Honeymoon'; Wednesday, 'The School for Scandal'; Thursday, 'The Stranger,' with diverting specialties; Friday, 'Romeo and Juliet'; Saturday, 'Hamlet,' with a Jig by Kate Duran. At the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... said. He brought his hands up and joined the tips of his fingers against his chest. "But it's another piece in the jig-saw. In time it will fit into place." He paused. "It means no more to you than the first, ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet

... not, Sorenson. I've taken a hand in your game. This girl says you're going to marry her, is that right?" The other rolled his eyes upward and began to whistle a jig tune softly. "Well, this is the plan she and I've made. She'll remain at the hotel to-night—as will you and I—and to-morrow we'll drive to another county seat in my car and you'll secure a licence there. Then you'll go to a minister's, where I'll act ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... half-yearly. You ought to give it him out and out; but of course you won't even lend it," pursued this judicious negotiator; "you keep all your money for that precious chap, Mr. 'Dolphus, to make ducks and drakes with after you are dead; a fine jig he'll dance over your grave. You know, I suppose, that we've got the fellow in a cleft stick about that petition the other day? He persuaded old Jacob, who's as deaf as a post, to put his mark to it, and when he was gone, Jacob came ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford

... Especially as Volodia was always ready at a moment's notice to tell them a story, carve them a peasant or a dog from a chip of pine-wood, dance a jig, or entertain them in a hundred other ways dear to the heart of ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... to their disgust, were kept steadily at work. Other regiments, profiting by example, followed suit; but in others still, a small proportion of their membership, believing as they said, that the "jig was up," took to lawless and unhallowed expression of their disgust and became thereby a nuisance to the neighborhood. San Franciscans, who had wept copiously when others sailed away, would have seen these patriots sent into exile ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... his sword-hilt.] I care not for thee or Noll. Would he were here, and a matter of four thousand to back him. [Draws.] Sa! sa! canst fight as well as talk? Wilt take up the bilbo? Come, adopt the weapon of him I have sliced. Come, be nimble, sir, jig. I would fain go visit the haulage of ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... somethin' a cat finds an' lugs home for you to brush up,—an' goodness knows Mrs. Fisher don't look happy an' she ain't happy neither, for she told me herself yesterday as since Mr. Fisher had got this new idea of developin' his chest with Japanese Jimmy Jig-songs, an' takin' a cold plunge in the slop jar every mornin', that life hadn't been worth livin' for the wall paper in her room. She ain't got no sympathy with chest developin' an' Japanese jiggin' an' she says only to think how proud she was to marry the prize boy at ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner

... never dared risk him at the wheel when we were running in a big sea, while full-and-by and close-and-by were insoluble mysteries. Couldn't ever tell the difference between a sheet and a tackle, simply couldn't. The fore-throat-jig and the jib-jig were all one to him. Tell him to slack off the mainsheet, and before you know it, he'd drop the peak. He fell overboard three times, and he couldn't swim. But he was always cheerful, never seasick, and he was the most willing man I ever knew. He was ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... in a hig, An shoo didn't care a fig, But nah aw'll donce a jig, For mi love's come back, An aw know though far away, 'At her heart ne'er went astray, An awst ivver bless the day, For mi love's ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... they had dined, to take up the best room; There sit on benches not adorned with mats, And graciously did vail their high-crowned hats To every half-dressed player, as he still Through the hangings peeped to see how the house did fill. Good easy judging souls! with what delight They would expect a jig or target fight; A furious tale of Troy, which they ne'er thought Was weakly written so 'twere ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... tide over this pinch I'll have all those jewels back again by hook or by crook. Your mother shan't suffer in the long run, and I'll do a lot to the old place—the old house wants papering and painting. We'll dance a merry jig at O'Shanaghgan at your wedding, my little girl; and now don't keep me, for I have got to go out to meet Murphy. He said he would look ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... at them hosses t'other day in the court-house yard, an' the Chester brass-band come along. Now, a average hoss,' Jim said, 'will either git scared or break an' run at a sound like that, but three o' them things you got this mornin' struck up a regular jig an' capered about the lot kickin' up the'r heels as if they was in a ring jumpin' over red ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... was all but out of the bag: this fatal hint at "some secret mission" made that plain. A little carelessness, some more shrewd probing into his affairs, and the jig would be up, indeed. This was the one way that their enemies in Hunston could interfere with him—insisting on knowing why he had come there; and Coligny Smith had had the bull luck, as Peter put it, ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... thousand other such objects, however. There was a dancing lamp-post, a dancing apple tree, a dancing ship. One would have thought that the untamable tune of some mad musician had set all the common objects of field and street dancing an eternal jig. And long afterwards, when Syme was middle-aged and at rest, he could never see one of those particular objects—a lamppost, or an apple tree, or a windmill—without thinking that it was a strayed reveller from ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... cackle!" scolded the disturbed cockerel. "To market, to market! jiggetty jig!" clucked a broody white hen roosting next to him. Pigling Bland, much alarmed, determined to leave at daybreak. In the meantime, he and ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter

... hook, never flinches from a sea. He just tends to his lines and hauls or "saws." Nay, have I not seen my old friend Deacon W. D—-, a good man of the island, while listening to a sermon in the little church on the hill, reach out his hand over the door of his pew and "jig" imaginary squid in the aisle, to the intense delight of the young people, who did not realize that to catch good fish one must have good bait, the thing most on the ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... species of dancing, in which the whole number of them engage, going round and round their vast hall or temple of prayer, shaking their hands like the paws of a dog sitting up to beg, and singing a deplorable psalm-tune in brisk jig time. The men without their coats, in their shirt-sleeves, with their lank hair hanging on their shoulders, and a sort of loose knee-breeches—knickerbockers—have a grotesque air of stage Swiss peasantry. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... was no shallow fluting that merely set the rustic feet a-jig, it was a strange and stirring strain that made the simplest one among them stand with his soul a-tiptoe, as he listened, as if a kingly train with banners went a-marching by. So royally he played his ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... doctor had gone on deck to have a look at things, and almost the minute he got there had been knocked over by a falling spar. "For th' old ship's shook a-most to pieces," the man went on; "with th' foremast clean overboard, an' th' mizzen so wobbly that it's dancin' a jig every time she pitches, and everything at rags an' tatters of ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... off the corners a "cradle" (Fig. 191) is made and kept for the purpose. The advantage of this cradle is obvious, preventing as it does any tendency of the partly-formed dowel to slip or wobble. A jig, or cradle, is easily made by bevelling the edges of two separate pieces of wood and then glueing and screwing them together as at Fig. 191. A small block of wood is inserted to act as a stop whilst the planing ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham

... course; and while the ball increased in size there was plenty of time and opportunity for talk, which was interrupted by Robin's fiddle striking up a merry jig time. Wool and ball were laid aside, while Ann placed six lighted candles on the floor—four in the centre and one at each end, with space enough between them for the figures ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... coming back from school, jig, jog, jig. See them at the corner where the gums grow big; Dobbin flicking off the flies and blinking at the sun— Having three upon his back he thinks is splendid fun: Robin at the bridle-rein, in the middle Kate, Little Billy up behind, his legs ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis

... struck up an abandoned jig, but he danced with great dignity till his feet ran away with him. Then he made off with her again in one of his frenzies, and a laughter filled ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... a good deal better than the cop wot come here to this house a while ago. He's bein' stuck together at the hospital in a dozen places, they tell me. He's like a jig-saw puzzle." ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... I passed to my room to dress for dinner, I heard the sound of music in a small court, and, looking through a window that commanded it, I perceived a band of wandering musicians with pandean pipes and tambourine; a pretty coquettish housemaid was dancing a jig with a smart country lad, while several of the other servants were looking on. In the midst of her sport the girl caught a glimpse of my face at the window, and, coloring up, ran off with an air of ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... Russia is like a jig-saw puzzle, a mystery even to the man who devised it. A straight-forward recognition of the Omsk Government would have been an honest hand for honest work, but where would Allied diplomacy have come in? Diplomacy is only necessary when there are ulterior objects than mere plain, ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... clear enough now," sighed Willie, when the story had been put together, "but when you have only one piece of a jig-saw puzzle you can't make much out of it. And one piece was about all we had for a long time. I see it all now, but there's one thing I don't yet understand. Why didn't they use ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... down from deck, did he?" mused Joe, as he took note of the Frenchman's false statement. "Well, he must have run up and run down again in jig fashion to be able to do that. I wonder what he wants ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton

... conviction that he had been nursing an untenable theory, a last ray of sunshine shot through the open window, causing the dust he had raised by his entrance to quiver and gyrate like a host of mad bacilli dancing a jig. The shaft of light, falling athwart the dismantled toilet-table, brought something else into view—a tiny fragment of gold chain dangling from the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... whispered to him, "and then she won't hear you. But, faith she's sleeping so well, it's my belief if you danced a jig she would not stir a limb. Go in, child, go in. It's beautiful to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... peroosin the bill a grave young man who sot near me axed me if I'd ever seen Forrest dance the Essence of Old Virginny? "He's immense in that," sed the young man. "He also does a fair champion jig," the young man continnerd, "but his Big Thing is the Essence of Old Virginny." Sez I, "Fair youth, do you know what I'd do with you if ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... now; he sat on a barrel at the end of the room. He grinned with his white teeth and, without stopping in his fiddling, scraped his bow harshly across the strings, and then instantly changed the tune to a lively jig. Blackbeard jumped up into the air and clapped his heels together, giving, as he did so, a sharp, short yell. Then he began instantly dancing grotesquely and violently. The woman danced opposite to him, this way and that, with her knuckles on her hips. Everybody burst out laughing at Blackbeard's ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... settler—the stage is also a safe road to a safe settlement, and between a race-horse and a danseuse, we would not give a sixpence for choice. Now, as far as horse-flesh went, my grandfather was innocent; a pirouette or pas seul, barring an Irish jig, he never witnessed in his life—but he had discovered as good a method for settling a private gentleman. He had an inveterate fancy for electioneering. The man who would reform state abuses, deserves well of his country; there is a great deal of patriotism in Ireland; in fact, it is, like ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... good-by for keeps, old man. I don't believe I'll be here when you come again." All the excitement was gone and the boy spoke in the quiet voice of conviction. "You're quittin' me, Dan. You don't believe me and the jig's up. You'd risk your life to save me if I was drowning or up against it in a fight, but you're walkin' away and leavin' me here to die. You don't believe me now, but I know you're goin' to find out some time for ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... it be scholars who would argue about the origin and date of the poem, ingenious theorists who would fain use all the fragmentary tales and rhymes of the nursery as parts of a vast jig-saw puzzle of nature myths, or merely simple folk who read a tale for a tale's sake, every reader of the poem of Beowulf must own that it is one of the finest ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... himself, several men came in and stood by the bar drinking together. As they drank they became more and more friendly, slapping each other on the back, singing songs and boasting. One of them got out upon the floor and danced a jig. The proprietor, a round-faced man with one dead eye, who had himself been drinking freely, put a bottle upon the bar and coming up to Sam, began complaining that he had no bartender and had to work ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... sanctuary—an' Aleck hadn't seen much them days—an' what did he do but gawk around an' plump hisself down into that gilt-backed rocker with a tune-playin' seat in it, an', of co'se, quick ez his weight struck it, it started up a jig tune, an' they say Aleck shot out o' that door like ez ef he'd been fired out of a cannon. An' he never did go back to say what he come after. I doubt ef he ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... ring. One stocking came down, letting out a quart of sawdust. One tight split up to the knee as he made a jig step that brought the tears to the eyes of Billy Blow, who, with his boy, had come ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... band played the spring and I danced it round, while my cousin eyed me with extorted approval. The quadrille includes an absurd figure—called, I think, La Pastourelle. You take a lady with either hand, and jig them to and fro, for all the world like an Englishman of legend parading a couple of wives for sale at Smithfield; while the other male, like a timid purchaser, backs and advances with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... taught me a jig when I was a wee thing in pinafores. He will never play for me unless I dance for him. You know he thinks I am still a child of eight or ten. If you think it's not—real nice, I won't ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey

... to tea. There are too many of us. But I'll tell you what we will do. We will come over later in the evening and have a visit and another concert. Larry plays the banjo. He'll give you an Irish jig if you wish." ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge

... jumping, and being clear, and white, from holystoning, made a good dancing-hall. Some of the Pilgrim's crew were in the forecastle, and they all turned-to and had a regular sailor's shuffle till eight bells. The Cape Cod boy could dance the true fisherman's jig, barefooted, knocking with his heels, and slapping the decks with his bare feet, in time with the music. This was a favorite amusement of the mate's, who used to stand at the steerage door, looking on, and if the boys ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... now renew his wonted custom of making the other gods laugh by his hopping so limpingly, and coming off with so many dry jokes, and biting repartees. Silenus, the old doting lover, to shew his activity, may now dance a frisking jig, and the nymphs be at the same sport naked. The goatish satyrs may make up a merry ball, and Pan, the blind harper may put up his bagpipes, and sing bawdy catches, to which the gods, especially when they are almost drunk, shall give a most profound ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... merry; and I staggered under him by design. When he saw this, he signed to me to give him the gourd that he might drink, and I feared him and gave it him. So he took it and, draining it to the dregs, cast it on the ground, whereupon he grew frolicsome and began to clap hands and jig to and fro on my shoulders and he made water upon me so copiously that all my dress was drenched. But presently the fumes of the wine rising to his head, he became helplessly drunk and his side- muscles and limbs relaxed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... was apparent, had no stomach for Bryce's style of combat. He wanted a rough-and-tumble fight and kept rushing, hoping to clinch; if he could but get his great hands on Bryce, he would wrestle him down, climb him, and finish the fight in jig-time. But a rough-and-tumble was exactly what Bryce was striving to avoid; hence when Rondeau rushed, Bryce side-stepped and peppered the woodsman's ribs. But the woods-crew, which by now was ringed around them, began to voice disapproval of this ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... I with the very first of them; I never got beyond William the Conqueror; my carpet will stick on very well without nails, if no one takes to dancing a jig upon it! You are just wearing your spirits out, Nelly, and I'm sure that I wouldn't do that for any man, least of all for that sour Mr. Learning, who ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker

... it rattle in the gibbet?" said Villon. "They are all dancing the devil's jig on nothing, up there. You may dance, my gallants, you'll be none the warmer! Whew, what a gust! Down went somebody just now! A medlar the fewer on the three-legged medlar-tree!—I say, Dom Nicolas, it'll be cold to-night on the ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... like dancing a jig on the way back to his bunk, and not even the scowling face of Damase, who had been listening to the conversation in the foreman's room with keen Indian ears, and had caught enough of it to learn of the arrangement made, could cast any ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley

... different dress each time, and a clog-dance. The best clog-dance on the Pacific Slope," he added in a stage aside. "The minstrels are crazy to get her in 'Frisco. But money can't buy her—prefers the legitimate drama to this sort of thing." Here he took a few steps of a jig, to which the "Marysville Pet" beat time with her feet, and concluded with a laugh and a wink—the combined expression of an artist's admiration for her ability, and a man of the world's ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... "Lady's Pleasure," a Morris-jig for two men, lays hold of you at the first bar, and again with a fresh grip and a tighter as the music slows up for the dancers to do their "capers"—all to the music of Mr. Cecil Sharp at the piano and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various

... her eyes turned mine in the direction of General Popgun, who sat at her right hand. My sensations "can better be imagined than described" when I saw General Popgun's fork, untouched by any human hand, dancing a jig on his plate. He grasped it and laid it firmly down. As soon as he released his hold it leaped from ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... his bodily pains, sprang to his feet with a roar of joy, seized Ailie in his arms and kissed her, embraced Glynn Proctor with a squeeze like that of a loving bear, and then began to dance an Irish jig, quite regardless of the fact that the greater part of it was performed in the fire, the embers of which he sent flying in all directions like a display of fireworks. He cheered, too, now and then like a maniac—"Oh, happy day! I've found ye, have I? after all me ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... her, and went back to the Orpheum, where a score of workmen were busy remodelling the interior, and patching up the facade. He stood for a moment to watch the loading of a truck with broken-seats, jig-saw decorations, and the remains of a battered old projector; he looked up, presently to the huge sign over the entrance: "Closed During Alterations, Grand Opening Sunday Afternoon, August 20th. Souvenirs." There was no disputing the fact that all his eggs were in one basket, and ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... sure I saw Jack having a lively circus with several Boches about an hour back," this man informed Tom. "Don't know how the jig ended, because I found myself in a mix-up soon afterwards, and it kept my hands full. But let's hope the boy came through O K. I saw you drop your man, Tom; and it must have been a close shave ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach

... its officers against too frequent use of the word "supervision" on the ground that supervision and direction were apt to defeat the very purpose of games and to stultify the play spirit. Is the little girl on the street who springs into a hornpipe or a jig to the tune of a hurdy-gurdy, or even the boy who runs before automobiles or trolley cars or under horses' noses, getting less physical education than those who play a round game in silence under the supervision of a teacher in the school basement, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... was not to be prevailed upon. He waved the doeskin gloves in token of adieu, and retreated once more into the excited obscurity of the wings, where his manager was trembling like an aspen, in the midst of a perspiring company. The lights were turned down. The orchestra burst into a tuneful jig, and the lingering audience at ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... the lovely Iberian Zarzuela.[EN28] The boy Husayn Geninah, a small cyclops in a brown felt calotte and a huge military overcoat cut short, caused roars of laughter by his ultra-Gaditanian style of dancing. I have also reason to suspect that a jig and a breakdown tested the solidity of the plank table, while a Jew's harp represented Europe. In fact, throughout the journey, reminiscences of Mabille and the Music Halls contrasted strongly with the memories of majestic and mysterious ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... about it. The behavior of the stars in swimming and rolling struck him as especially curious, and he conceived the notion that they wanted to dance. Putting his fiddle to his chin, he began a wild jig, and though he made it up as he went along, he was conscious of doing finely, when the boom of a bell sent a shiver down his spine. It was twelve o'clock, and here he was playing a dance tune on Sunday. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... I know, the more the English fellow will have to teach me, and Uncle Bob will have more worth for his money;" and then Ratty would whistle a jig, fling a fowling-piece over his shoulder, and shout "Ponto! Ponto! Ponto!" as he traversed the stable-yard; the delighted pointer would come bounding at the call, and, after circling round his young master with agile grace and yelps of glee ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... talkative. Bella had followed the men up and had been put out, and sat sniffling by herself in the den. Aunt Selina was working over a jig-saw puzzle in the library, and declaring that some of it must be lost. Anne and Leila Mercer were embroidering, and Betty and I sat idle, our hands in our laps. The whole atmosphere of the house was mysterious. Anne told over again of the strange noises the night her necklace was ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the court should be pleased to give by B.mol express command to the pox not to run about any longer in gleaning up of coppersmiths and tinkers; for the jobbernolls had already a pretty good beginning in their dance of the British jig called the estrindore, to a perfect diapason, with one foot in the fire, and their head in the middle, as goodman Ragot was ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... piloting Greg through the tunnel. In a few moments all were outside. Tom and Harry danced a jig ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock

... if rid him sin jig it lid rim tin rig is sip fix dig bib bit tip six fig jib hit nip din big rib sit lip pin ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... amount of expression which he put into his simple instrument was truly marvellous. Then, passing suddenly from grave to gay, he played a series of light, merry airs, and some of the younger onlookers got up and performed a dance as boisterous and ungraceful as an Irish jig. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... than yours, isn't she? 'cause she can walk and talk and sing and dance, and yours can't do anything, can she?" asked Jamie with pride, as he regarded his Pokey, who just then had been moved to execute a funny little jig and warble ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... disappeared somewhere for a moment, and presently emerged with an old violin, which he began to scrape vigorously. Even his tuning was irresistibly comical; and he had not been playing a lively jig for ten minutes, before two or three couples were on their feet performing the figure. Soon an admiring circle, four deep, collected about the dancers. The sorrows of the exiles were effectually diverted, for ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... him down in the warmest nook, saying, "I'll be assistant cook until you are better. As Zeke says, I'm a wolf sure enough; but as soon's the beast's hunger is satisfied, I'll rub that leg of yours till you'll want to dance a jig;" and with the ladle wrung from Stokes's reluctant hand, he began stirring the ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... complaints were made, an investigation followed, and one fine day when matters were becoming pretty warm, the recalcitrant chief disappeared. His confederate confessed to the whole scheme and the jig was up. The chief was afterwards apprehended and sent up for seven years, but he held ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... other hand, if we don't get this ivory out of here in jig time Muley-Hassan will be here with a big force and we shall assuredly ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... extremely interesting. For one thing, they have all achieved what is, from whatever angle one looks at it, a very remarkable success. Very few people, initiate or profane, can have opened Mr Lindsay's 'Congo' or Mr Masters's 'Spoon River Anthology' or Mr Aiken's 'Jig of Forslin' without being impelled to read on to the end. That does not very often happen with readers of a book which professes to be poetry save in the case of the thronging admirers of Miss Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and their similars. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... hurrah! It was a little black pig, And a big bull-frog, and a bobtailed dog— All of them dancing a jig. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... said Uncle Jepson to Randerson, when a few minutes later he followed the range boss out on the porch. He grinned at Randerson suspiciously. "Throwed twice, eh?" he repeated. "Masten's face looks like some one had danced a jig on it. Huh! I cal'late that if you was throwed twice, Masten's horse must have ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... child I was very fond of dancing, especially the jig and buck. I made money as I stated before, I played children's plays of that time, top, marbles and another game we called skinny. Skinny was a game played on trees ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... five thousand feet below its companions, the gunners very naturally concentrated on it. A spasmodic chorus of barking coughs drowned the almost equally spasmodic roar of the engine. V. dodged steeply and then raced, full out, for the lines. A sight of the dirty brown jig-saw of trenches heartened us greatly. A few minutes later we were within gliding distance of the British front. When we realised that even if the engine lost all life we could reach safety, nothing else seemed to matter, not even ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott

... danger. If one asked them how Mrs. Bull did? Better and better, said they; the parts heal, and her constitution mends: if she submits to our government she will be abroad in a little time. Nay, it is reported that they wrote to her friends in the country that she should dance a jig next October in Westminster Hall, and that her illness had been chiefly owing to bad physicians. At last, one of them was sent for in great haste, his patient grew worse and worse: when he came, he affirmed that it was a gross mistake, and that she was never in a fairer ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... was not as large as it is now, but it was large enough to cook my gruel. My waist had increased so gradually that I had never noticed it. I got a tape and took its measure. Forty-two inches, sir! The jig was up. With a heart as young as ever, with a face as good and a purse able to supply all reasonable demands, I was knocked out of the race on the first round by this adipose tissue that no ingenuity could hope ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... through the incurrent necessities of every circumstance, each of them spoke in whispers, even now. It was curious to note the candid mirth on either side. Mercury was making his adieux to Alcmena's waiting-woman in the middle of a jig. ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... uniting in a reeling dance. In vain does Balder try to shut his eyes and escape the giddy spectacle; they stare widely open and see things supernatural. Nor can he ward off these with his hands, which are rigid before him, and defy his will. The devilish jig becomes wilder, and careers through the air, Balder sweeping with it. In mid-whirl, he sees the crocodile,—cold, motionless, waiting with long, dry ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... a rattle, another who whirled the groaning stick, and there were three principal dancers, wearing fancy masks and representing characters from the rites of the klèdji qaçà l or dance of the "Yà ybichy." These three danced a lively and graceful jig, in perfect time to the music, with many bows, waving of wands, simultaneous evolutions, and other pretty motions which might have graced the spectacular drama of a metropolitan theater. Three times they left the ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews

... expressions of his genius), made a great impression. In the same season the Haymarket produced 'Hamlet' as an opera by Gasparini, called 'Ambleto', with an overture that had four movements ending in a jig. But as was Gasparini so was Handel in the ears of Addison and Steele. They recognized in music only the sensual pleasure that it gave, and the words set to music for the opera, whatever the composer, were then, as they ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... sea-worm or lug, dug from the wet sands. The squid or cuttle, herrings, caplin, any meat, or even a false fish of bright tin or pewter. (See JIG.) ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... was up, and we were paid off, about a dozen of us went to lodge with old Peter Hardheart, at the sign of the Foul Anchor; and as we had plenty of money, we thought we would have a regular blow-out. So Peter got a fiddler and some other unmentionable requisites for a jig, and we had a set-to in firstrate style. Why, our great frolic at Santa Martha, when Paddy Chips, the Irish carpenter, danced away his watch, and jacket, and tarpaulin, and nearly all his toggery, you know, and next morning ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... feasters ate till their eyes were rolling lugubriously; and still the kettles came round. The Indians ate till they were torpid as swollen corpses, and still came the white men with more kettles, while the mischievous French lad, Radisson, danced a mad jig, shouting, yelling, "Eat! eat! Beat the drum! Awake! awake! ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... and muttered, 'Them mischievous young blackguards!' and began rubbing it with the cuff of his coat, his cheek still wet with tears. For even our grief is volatile; or, rather, it is two tunes that are in our ears together, the requiem of the organ, and, with it, the faint hurdy-gurdy jig of our vulgar daily life; and now ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Waltz!—to thy more melting tune Bow Irish Jig, and ancient Rigadoon. [12] 110 Scotch reels, avaunt! and Country-dance forego Your future claims to each fantastic toe! Waltz—Waltz alone—both legs and arms demands, Liberal of feet, and lavish of her hands; Hands which may freely range in public sight Where ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... bog-wood is thrown on; after a short pause, the ground was cleared in front of an old blind piper, the very beau ideal of energy, drollery, and shrewdness, who, seated on a low chair, with a well-replenished jug within his reach, screwed his pipes to the liveliest tunes, and the endless jig began. ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... JIG, merry ballad or tune; a fanciful dialogue or light comic act introduced at the end or during an interlude ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... three centuries. But because you cannot be Handel and Mozart—is it any reason why you should not learn to sing "God save the Queen" properly, when you have a mind to? Because a girl cannot be prima donna in the Italian Opera, is it any reason that she should not learn to play a jig for her brothers and sisters in good time, or a soft little tune for her tired mother, or that she should not sing to please herself, among the dew, on a May morning? Believe me, joy, humility, and usefulness, always go together: as insolence with misery, and ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... intelligence, was commencing to dance an Irish jig to his own music, and would have done so were it not that the delicate state ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... swilling the decks, she had seen him dancing a jig, she had seen him going round the main deck on all fours with Dick on his back, but she had never seen him going on like ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... that Israel should be supplied with whatever liquor he wanted that night. So, calling for the can again and again, Israel invites the two soldiers to drink and be merry. At length, a wag of the company proposes that Israel should entertain the public with a jig, he (the wag) having heard that the Yankees were extraordinary dancers. A fiddle is brought in, and poor Israel takes the floor. Not a little cut to think that these people should so unfeelingly seek to be diverted at the expense of an unfortunate prisoner, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... bench was placed, about four feet below the keys, and I was put upon the bench. I ran sideling upon it, that way and this, as fast as I could, banging the proper keys with my two sticks, and made a shift to play a jig, to the great satisfaction of both their majesties; but it was the most violent exercise I ever underwent; and yet I could not strike above sixteen keys, nor consequently play the bass and treble together, as other artists do; which was a great disadvantage ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... in something of a pet, "Par Dex, lord Duke—plague take it, how I sweat, By Cock, messire, ye know I have small lust Like hind or serf to tramp it i' the dust! Per De, my lord, a parch-ed pea am I— I'm all athirst! Athirst? I am so dry My very bones do rattle to and fro And jig about within me as I go! Why tramp we thus, bereft of state and rank? Why go ye, lord, like foolish mountebank? And whither doth our madcap journey trend? And wherefore? Why? And, prithee, to what end?" Then quoth the Duke, "See yonder in the green ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... hundred and twenty years ago, they say, until there it was, over his head a'most, with the gaps in it staring like ribs at him. 'Bout ship was the word, pretty sharp, you may be sure, when he come to his wits consarning it, and the purse of his lips, as was whistling a jig, went as dry as a bag with the bottom out. Through the grey of the night there was sounds coming to him, such as had no right to be in the air, and a sort of a shiver laid hold of his heart, like a cold hand flung over his shoulder. As hard as he could lay foot to the ground, away he went down ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... her scholars for the festival of the Sun, the King, either from surprise or to gratify the old Queen, ordered Miuccio to be called, and commanded him forthwith to build the three castles in the air as he had promised, or else he would make him dance a jig in ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... to the castanets of "La Paloma." Old John Minafer, evidently surfeited, was in the act of leaving these delights. "D'want 'ny more o' that!" he barked. "Just slidin' around! Call that dancin'? Rather see a jig any day in the world! They ain't very modest, some of 'em. I don't mind that, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... obviously descended, seems to have been originally both a solo and square dance, the latter being performed by sides (that is, sets) of six. The solo Morris existed all along, and still exists. When we saw our friend Kimber (mentioned elsewhere) dance his Morris jig to the tune of "Rodney," had our other old friend Tabourot been present in the spirit—maybe he was—he need have altered nothing in the description we have quoted but to substitute for the boy with his face blackened a sturdy ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp

... he went by. Upon inquiring, he found that they took him for a priest, with his dark garb, smooth-shaven face, and serious expression. Edison says: "I get a suit that fits me; then I compel the tailors to use that as a jig or pattern or blue-print to make others by. For many years a suit was used as a measurement; once or twice they took fresh measurements, but these didn't fit and they had to go back. I eat to keep my weight ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... exception of Benjamin Wright, all Old Chester lent itself to William King's project with very good grace. Mr. Wright said, gruffly, that a man with one foot in the grave couldn't dance a jig, so he preferred to stay at home. But the rest of Old Chester said that although she was so quiet and kept herself to herself so much, Mrs. Richie was a ladylike person; a little shy, perhaps—or perhaps only properly hesitant to push her way into society; ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... the flame, or to follow the great sparks which rose with it and sailed away into darkness. The beaming sight, and the penetrating warmth, seemed to breed in him a cumulative cheerfulness, which soon amounted to delight. With his stick in his hand he began to jig a private minuet, a bunch of copper seals shining and swinging like a pendulum from under his waistcoat: he also began to sing, in the voice of a bee ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... when one so seldom does. Yes, I'm a wet blanket, I am; a first-rate man at a funeral! You've never seen me laugh, Florence, have you? But this time it's really too amusing. Lupin in his hole and Florence in her grotto; one dancing a jig above the abyss and the other at her last gasp under her ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... she let old Belsham rest, and when I ran back after my gloves this afternoon, there she was, so hard at the Vicar that she didn't hear me laugh as I danced a jig in the hall because of the good time coming. What a pleasant life she might have if only she chose! I don't envy her much, in spite of her money, for after all rich people have about as many worries as poor ones, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... o' last Whit Monday night exceeded all before; No pretty girl for miles about was missing from the floor; But Mary kept the belt of love, and oh, but she was gay! She danced a jig, she sung a song, that took my ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... of it! Our fathers may be back in ten days!" exclaimed Andy. "Isn't it the best ever!" And he commenced to dance a jig just to ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer

... Fuller's Jig-Saw Attachment by the aid of which the use of the Saw is greatly facilitated. (See advertisement on ...
— The Nursery, No. 109, January, 1876, Vol. XIX. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Unknown

... and the rustler stared. "I'm in his confidence. He's got to see Bill at once. Sampson sends word he's quit—he's done—he's through. The jig is up, and he means to hit the ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey

... to market, to buy a fat pig; Home again, home again, jiggety-jig. To market, to market, to buy a fat hog; ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... something new to keep up the interest of the people. I have played for them several tunes, but as far as I can judge they do not feel modern music, though they listen eagerly from curiosity. Irish airs like 'Eileen Aroon' please them better, but it is only when I play some jig like the 'Black Rogue'—which is known on the island—that they seem to respond to the full meaning of the notes. Last night I played for a large crowd, which had come together for another purpose from all parts of ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... produced the same effects on the contents of my knowledge-box that a quaigh of usquebaugh does upon those of most other bipeds. I see everything couleur de rose, and am strongly inclined to dance a jig, if I knew how. I think I must partake of the nature of a pig or an ass—both which animals are strongly affected by a high wind. From what quarter the wind blows I cannot tell, for I never could in my life; but I ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... t'other day in the court-house yard, an' the Chester brass-band come along. Now, a average hoss,' Jim said, 'will either git scared or break an' run at a sound like that, but three o' them things you got this mornin' struck up a regular jig an' capered about the lot kickin' up the'r heels as if they was in a ring jumpin' over ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... Sunday services; he is in the children's service or the school, while in the majority of churches a weak-minded endeavor for amusement has substituted meaningless rag-time trivialities for rich and dignified hymns. Perhaps the custom of encouraging congregations to jig, dance, cavort, or drone through the frivolities of "popular" gospel songs is only a passing craze, but it is a most unfortunate one; it tends to divorce worship and thought, to make worship a matter of purely superficial emotions, and to form the ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... children want more? Especially as Volodia was always ready at a moment's notice to tell them a story, carve them a peasant or a dog from a chip of pine-wood, dance a jig, or entertain them in a hundred other ways dear to the ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... left me in a hig, An' shoo didn't care a fig, But nah aw'll donce a jig, For mi love's come back. An' aw know though far away, 'At her heart neer went astray, An' awst iver bless the day, For ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... a continual clash on psychological grounds. The Greeks make mistakes and the British are not ready to make allowances. The Englishman demands that his friend shall be a "sportsman"—the Turk is, the Greek is not. Therefore we cannot fit Greece into the jig-saw puzzle which we call the comity of nations. The question is, can Greece cut ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... its beginning till 1815, Sulphitism was upon the increase, while from that year till 1870 there was a sickening drop to the veriest depths of bromidic thought. Then the Bromide infested the earth. With his black-walnut furniture, his jig-saw and turning-lathe methods of decoration, his lincrusta-walton and pressed terracotta, his chromos, wax flowers, hoop skirts, chokers, side whiskers and pantalettes, went a horrific revival of mock modesty inspired by the dying efforts of the old formulated ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess

... from school, jig, jog, jig. See them at the corner where the gums grow big; Dobbin flicking off the flies and blinking at the sun— Having three upon his back he thinks is splendid fun: Robin at the bridle-rein, in the middle Kate, Little Billy up behind, ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis

... heard or saw such things? The elephant's learning to fly with wings; The hen laid a door-knob instead of an egg; And piggy is dancing a jig ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky

... where the flag were flyin, never bothered about no sentries nor nothin. Just as I trot up, a little bit of a butterfly lady like bob out o the tent, and when she see me—'Beau, boy!' she squeals. 'Beau, boy! ere's a niked man! Do come and see!' And she jig up and down and tiddle her fingers at me, please as Punch.... Out come ole Whiskers, sword and all. 'You something something!' says he, and knocks her back into the tent. Then he ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... England, p. 33, writing of Johnson on March 16, 1775, says:—'He has the aspect of an idiot, without the faintest ray of sense gleaming from any one feature—with the most awkward garb, and unpowdered grey wig, on one side only of his head—he is for ever dancing the devil's jig, and sometimes he makes the most driveling effort to whistle some thought in his absent paroxysms.' Miss Burney thus describes him when she first saw him in 1778:—'Soon after we were seated this great ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... the three of us quickly freed the trap. The humor of the thing took strong hold of my new allies, and while I was getting a lantern to light us through the passage Larry sat on the edge of the trap and howled a few bars of a wild Irish jig. We set forth at once and found the passage unchanged. When the cold air blew in ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... before the destruction was begun, had time to note that the coffin was a remarkably fine specimen of cabinet-maker's work. There were various sorts of wood inlaid with care, and the fretwork along its sides had been jig-sawed with much pains spent in detail, and the pilasters were turned with art. But the old man battered at all this excellence with savageness. It was evident that he was not merely providing ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... dance, and awfully well, too, to his own singing. Mamma, who was attired in a flowing pink dressing-gown and a black hat trimmed with lilac, became suddenly emulous, and with her spade under her arm joined in the jig. This lasted for about a minute, and was a never-to-be-forgotten sight. They skipped round the hall, they changed sides, they swept up to each other and back again and ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... the one before. How I enjoyed galloping over the plains on Billy!" she exclaims, adding, "At night we young folks would sit around the camp-fire, chatting merrily, and often a song would be heard, or some clever dancer would give us a barn-door jig on the hind ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... Wearing of the Green.' It's a melancholy, soothing sort of tune which would probably only make her sleep sounder. Whistle a good lively jig." ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... intolerance was not to be encouraged. "The end of it is that I shall endeavour to do my duty—which is, apparently, to do everything that I most entirely disapprove of—and that on the day Larry is twenty-one, I shall march out of Coppinger's Court, and dance a jig, and then he may have the Pope to stay with him if ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... sacrifice of Isaac was represented on the stage at Paris. Samson was the subject of the ballet; the unshorn son of Manoah delighted the spectators by dancing a solo with the gates of Gaza on his back; Delilah clipt him during the intervals of a jig, and the Philistines surrounded and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... the door. Everything about it, from the dumping of the cars sixty feet above, the wrench of the crushers breaking the ore into smaller fragments, the clash of the screens as it came on down to the stamps, and their terrific "jiggety-jig-jig," roared, throbbed, and trembled. Every timber in the structure seemed to keep pace with that resistless shaking as the tables slid to and fro, dripping from the water percolating at their heads, to distribute the fine silt of crushed, muddy ore evenly over the plates ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... I kin howld me own wid the best of 'em, no matter where they're from, in the line of a bit of dancin'," and O'Hara stepped out on the floor and illustrated his story with a few fancy steps of an Irish jig which made an instantaneous hit with ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville

... be scholars who would argue about the origin and date of the poem, ingenious theorists who would fain use all the fragmentary tales and rhymes of the nursery as parts of a vast jig-saw puzzle of nature myths, or merely simple folk who read a tale for a tale's sake, every reader of the poem of Beowulf must own that it is one of the ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... like a jig-saw puzzle, a mystery even to the man who devised it. A straight-forward recognition of the Omsk Government would have been an honest hand for honest work, but where would Allied diplomacy have come in? Diplomacy is only necessary when there are ulterior objects than mere plain, unambiguous ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... amongst the spheres, (Which most of all, as he averred it, He dearly loved, 'cause no one heard it,) Yet aptly he, at sight, could read Each tuneful diagram in Bede, And find, by Euclid's corollaria, The ratios of a jig or aria. But, as for all your warbling Delias, Orpheuses and Saint Cecilias, He owned he thought them much surpast By that redoubted Hyaloclast[7] Who still contrived by dint of throttle, Where'er he ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... I guess," he comforted her; "anyhow, the jig is up, dear. Even if I had a bad moment now and then in the first year, nothing came of it. Oh, mother, what a beast I am!" He was pressing his handkerchief against her tragic eyes. "Your fault? Your only fault ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... The pipers in the balcony had burst forth in a ribald jig of a tune, and the girl was whirling in a wild, weird, and wondrous dance before her lover-cousin. Sir George ordered the pipers to cease playing; but again Elizabeth, who was filled with mirth, interrupted, and the music pealed forth in wanton volumes which ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... the Great Settling Day conies, this new higher spirit of France will, it is to be devoutly hoped, make for restraint in the universal craving for vengeance, and prove a weighty factor in the righteous re-adjustment of things and the proper fitting together of the jig-saw map ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... music made it, many a foot keeping stroke, and quicker time we had to make it. You know the romp of a Highland reel at the double, how it causes the blood to sing in the veins and the feet to jig. Marget's mother had been a fine dancer, but, as she whispered to me, she was no longer young. Marget herself had inherited all her mother's ease and grace of carriage, and she had her own spirit and go. The music and the motion caught her ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne

... Muse! on thee I call, Pro more, (as do poets all,) To string thy fiddle, wax thy bow, And scrape a ditty, jig, or so. Now don't wax wrathy, but excuse My calling you old Goody Muse; Because "Old Goody" is a name Applied to every college dame. Aloft in pendent dignity, Astride her magic broom, And wrapt in dazzling majesty, See! see! ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... ticking the item off on his fingers. "Item number two is Mr. Milburgh, an oleaginous gentleman who has been robbing the firm for years and has been living in style in the country on his ill-earned gains. From what he hears, or knows, he gathers, that the jig is up. He is in despair when he realises that Thornton Lyne is desperately in love with his step-daughter. What is more likely than that he should use his step-daughter in order to influence Thornton Lyne to take the favourable view ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... what had been a farmyard, to take the hops to market. A thick, broad, fair-haired wench, of the sort that Millet drew, flung all her weight on a spoke and brought the cart forward into the street. Then she shook herself, and, hands on hips, danced a little defiant jig in her sabots as she went back to get the horse. Another girl came across a bridge. She was precisely of the opposite type, slender, creamy-skinned, and delicate-featured. She carried a brand-new broom over her shoulder through that desolation, and bore ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling

... fires or gathered where one of their number had tuned up his fiddle. William Isham was his name, a great bearded fellow who hailed originally from Rochester, New York; he would sit by the hour on the tongue of his wagon playing "Oh Susannah" and other lively airs, or strike up a jig tune while Negro Joe, who had fled from slavery in Mississippi, did a double shuffle in the firelight. The children slipped away from their mothers to set peeps at the fun from the edges of the crowd or play hide and seek in the shadows of the sage-brush; ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... effective, for it sent a torrent of notes into the air, which thrilled through the body and tingled along the nerves like successive electric shocks. The old Trapper fairly bounded into the air; and when he struck the floor his feet were flying. Nor was he alone; the jig had started a dozen on the instant; and the floor rattled and rang with the tap of ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... lords and gentlemen of the court should be pleased to give by B.mol express command to the pox not to run about any longer in gleaning up of coppersmiths and tinkers; for the jobbernolls had already a pretty good beginning in their dance of the British jig called the estrindore, to a perfect diapason, with one foot in the fire, and their head in the middle, as goodman ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... to, Julius Benjamin. The bridge is gone. So's everything else. It's only a matter of time when Goggles will be gone, too. This last will fix him with the company." Zephyr glanced slyly at Bennie with the last words. "The jig is up. The fiddle's broke its last string, and ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... stop at a third. She would keep the gate ajar and open a parley; she would certainly not allow number three to come in. He expressed this view, somewhat after this fashion, to his mother, who looked at him as if he had been dancing a jig. He had such a fanciful, pictorial way of saying things that he might as well address her in ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... then. I'll whistle a gay Irish jig, such as the men used in Howe's time at the King of Prussia Inn, while their betters were footing it to good British music. Think of the solemn drumbeat there will be at Yorktown! No gay Mischianza there! What a march it will be to ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... Kisco, the regular dinner was, as usual, converted into a banquet, and a band was improvised for the occasion. At the close of dinner the martial hymns of all nations were played, ending with "Yankee Doodle." It was impossible to resist the impulse to laugh as this national jig brought up the rear, and Sam was much displeased that the foreigners on board, and there were many, should have laughed at his country. When he went up on deck he found Cleary conversing with Chung Tu, and he placed his steamer-chair beside theirs ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... said, 'Marry, let us arise a little and go see if the fire is anydele spent, wherein this my new lover wrote me that he burnt all day long.' Accordingly, they arose and getting them to the accustomed lattice, looked out into the courtyard, where they saw the scholar dancing a right merry jig on the snow, so fast and brisk that never had they seen the like, to the sound of the chattering of the teeth that he made for excess of cold; whereupon quoth the lady, 'How sayst thou, sweet my hope? Seemeth to thee that I know how to make folk jig it without sound of trump or bagpipe?' Whereto ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... to dress for dinner, I heard the sound of music in a small court, and, looking through a window that commanded it, I perceived a band of wandering musicians with pandean pipes and tambourine; a pretty coquettish housemaid was dancing a jig with a smart country lad, while several of the other servants were looking on. In the midst of her sport the girl caught a glimpse of my face at the window, and, coloring up, ran off with an air of roguish ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... [85] The "jig" seems to have been a comic after-piece consisting of music and dancing. In Mr. Collier's Hist. of Dram. Lit., iii. 180-85 (new ed.), the reader will find much curious information on the point. The following ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... hear it rattle in the gibbet?" said Villon. "They are all dancing the devil's jig on nothing, up there. You may dance, my gallants, you'll be none the warmer! Whew! what a gust! Down went somebody just now! A medlar the fewer on the three-legged medlar-tree! - I say, Dom Nicolas, it'll be cold to-night on the St. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to hobble out was Ketch. In his own fashion, almost ignoring the presence of the bishop, he made known the tale. It was received with ridicule. The college boys especially cast mockery upon it, and began dancing a jig when the bishop's back was turned. "Let a couple of keys drop down, and, when picked up, you found them transmogrified into old rusty machines, made in the year one!" cried Bywater. "That's very ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... vulgar Dutch monstrosity (for which the architects have, no doubt, a name) which offends the eye cruelly. Take the Apollo, and set upon him a bob-wig and a little cocked hat; imagine "God Save the King" ending with a jig; fancy a polonaise, or procession of slim, stately, elegant court beauties, headed by a buffoon dancing a hornpipe. Marshal Gerard should have discharged a bombshell at that abomination, and have given the noble steeple a chance to be finished in the ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray

... dance is somewhat on the style of an Irish jig or a Scotch hornpipe. It is indulged in on nearly all occasions of social and ceremonial celebrations. Though it may be performed at any time of the day if there is a call for it, yet it usually takes ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... up to it and found that the gold bottle that contained the precious powder had dropped upon the stand and scattered its life-giving grains over the machine. The phonograph was very much alive, and began dancing a jig with the legs of the table to which it was attached, and this dance so annoyed Dr. Pipt that he kicked the thing into a corner and pushed a bench against ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... laughingly reply. He must be relating one just now, for there is a very perceptible curl on her upper lip, and she is looking at him as though she thought she was the tallest. Lydia dashes off into a lively jig. "Ladies to the right!" I cried. She laughed too, well knowing that that part of the dance was invariably repeated a dozen times at least. She looked slyly up: "I am thinking of how many hands I saw squeezed," ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... old fop with "3000 ducats a year," very fond of the table, but with a shrewd understanding that "beef had done harm to his wit." Sir Andrew thinks himself "old in nothing but in understanding," and boasts that he can cut a caper, dance the coranto, walk a jig, and take delight in masques, like a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... the water tank when the engine of the freight train stopped there to take a drink, and he gave a regular Indian war-whoop when he saw the boys alight. He hugged both of them as they climbed down from the engine, and fairly danced a jig in his delight at ...
— Fred Fearnot's New Ranch - and How He and Terry Managed It • Hal Standish

... will be in the music, cousin, if you be not wooed in good time: if the prince be too important, tell him there is measure in everything, and so dance out the answer. For, hear me, Hero: Wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]

... to the top of the stage, you will begin gaily a Pas-de-deux, or Duet dance. The first part will be lively, the second grave; the third a jig. You will have taken care to procure six or seven of the best airs for a dance, put together, that can be imagined. You will execute all the steps that you are mistress of; and let your character in the ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... contribution to the Suite was the final Gigue, which is our jolly and familiar friend the jig, and in all probability is Keltic in origin. It is, as everybody knows, a rollicking measure in 6-8, 12-8, or 4-4 time, with twelve triplet quavers in a measure, and needs no description. It remained a favorite with composers until far into the eighteenth ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... fellow, patience,' said Cornelys Jensen. 'All in good time. Trust Cornelys Jensen to know the time to act. The fiddle is tuned, friend. I shall know when to play the jig.' ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... o' Shanter Dog And a plaintive piping Frog, With a Cat whose one extravagance was clothes, Went to see a Bounding Bug Dance a jig upon a rug, While a Beetle balanced bottles on ...
— A Book of Cheerful Cats and Other Animated Animals • J. G. Francis

... and there, every move counting something done. While she stood there a wagon rattled out from the shadow of a haystack, with empty water-barrels dancing a mad jig behind the high seat, where the driver perched with feet braced and a whip in his hand. After him dashed four or five riders, silent and businesslike. In a moment they were mere fantastic shadows galloping up the ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower

... wonderful morning her delight is as infectious as dance music. "Dr. Johnson's approbation!" she writes in her diary, "—it almost crazed me with agreeable surprise—it gave me such a flight of spirits that I danced a jig to Mr. Crisp, without any preparation, music, or explanation—to his no small amazement and diversion." She danced round the mulberry tree on the Chessington lawn, so she told ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... tea. There are too many of us. But I'll tell you what we will do. We will come over later in the evening and have a visit and another concert. Larry plays the banjo. He'll give you an Irish jig if you wish." ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge

... I'm a wet blanket, I am; a first-rate man at a funeral! You've never seen me laugh, Florence, have you? But this time it's really too amusing. Lupin in his hole and Florence in her grotto; one dancing a jig above the abyss and the other at her last gasp under her mountain. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... tonnage he had to go into Conception Bay, one of the many great sacks of inlets that make the island something that resembles nothing so much as a section of a jig-saw puzzle. The harbour of St. John's could float Renown, but its narrow waters would not permit her to turn, and the Prince had to transfer his Staff and baggage to Dragon in order to complete the next stage of ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... Poussatin." "How!" said the queen, bursting out laughing, "a chaplain in your livery! he surely was not a priest?" "Pardon me, madam," said he, "and the first priest in the world for dancing the Biscayan jig." "Chevalier," said the king, "pray tell us the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... a very good imitation of one interested. For some occult reason people never seem to expect me to own evening clothes, or to know how to dance, or to be able to talk about anything civilized; in fact, most of them appear disappointed that I do not pull off a war-jig in the middle of ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... and while the ball increased in size there was plenty of time and opportunity for talk, which was interrupted by Robin's fiddle striking up a merry jig time. Wool and ball were laid aside, while Ann placed six lighted candles on the floor—four in the centre and one at each end, with space enough between them for ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... I've crossed the big watther as bould as a shtork. 'Tis a dochther I am and well versed in the thrade; I can mix yez a powdher as good as is made. Have yez pains in yer bones or a throublesome ache In yer jints afther dancin' a jig at a wake? Have yez caught a black eye from some blundhering whack? Have yez vertebral twists in the sphine av yer back? Whin ye're walkin' the shtrates are yez likely to fall? Don't whiskey sit well ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... the corners a "cradle" (Fig. 191) is made and kept for the purpose. The advantage of this cradle is obvious, preventing as it does any tendency of the partly-formed dowel to slip or wobble. A jig, or cradle, is easily made by bevelling the edges of two separate pieces of wood and then glueing and screwing them together as at Fig. 191. A small block of wood is inserted to act as a stop whilst the planing operation is in progress. ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham

... hornpipe. Still singing, she felt herself twisted about with a low growl and a lifting of the red lip from the glittering teeth; she broke the hornpipe's thread, and commenced unravelling a lighter, livelier thing, an Irish jig. Up and down and round about her voice flew, the beast threw back his head so that the diabolical face fronted hers, and the torrent of his breath prepared her for his feast as the anaconda slimes his prey. Franticly she darted from tune to tune; his restless movements followed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... the Wizard did some new tricks, and the Scarecrow told stories, and the Tin Woodman sang a love song in a sonorous, metallic voice, and everybody laughed and had a good time. Then Dorothy wound up Tik-tok and he danced a jig to amuse the company, after which the Yellow Hen related some of her adventures with the Nome King ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... him. Their minds and imaginations were arrested by the gigantic proportions of the act. The unfathomable presumption of the act. As throwing murder in their faces to the tune of a jig in a barber-shop. It is a fact that none of them so much as thought of touching him. No less than all of them, together with all other men, shorn of their imaginations—that is to say, the expressionless and imperturbable creature ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... ringing double peals, the guns roaring and banging most prodigiously. Bulbo was embracing everybody; the Lord Chancellor was flinging up his wig and shouting like a madman; Hedzoff had got the Archbishop round the waist, and they were dancing a jig for joy; and as for Giglio, I leave you to imagine what HE was doing, and if he kissed Rosalba once, twice—twenty thousand times, I'm sure I ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... mentions among the admirable qualities of the great Epaminondas that he had an extraordinary talent for music and dancing. Epaminondas accomplishing his jig must be accepted as a pleasing and instructive figure in the history of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... rows, gazing with mute admiration at Belinda. She, unable to repress the joy and pride which swelled her sawdust bosom till the seams gaped, gave an occasional bounce as the wind waved her yellow skirts, or made the blue boots dance a sort of jig upon the door. Hanging was evidently not a painful operation, for she smiled contentedly, and looked as if the red ribbon around her neck was not uncomfortably tight; therefore, if slow suffocation suited her, who else had any right ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... arranged. I danced a jig of joy when I went back to my room, and caught sight of my elderly reflection doing it in the glass, and laughed till I cried. My work had begun. The thin end of the wedge had wormed its way in. Now to ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... time to collect himself. But it was too late then; he had betrayed himself and he knew it. Oh, he was sore! He'd have flung me out if I'd been a man. I got mad, too, and I told him it made no real difference whether I was bluffing or not; the jig was up, so far as he was concerned. I reminded him of what Henry had just said—that the oil business is a game of wits, and that when you know what the other fellow is doing you have him licked. I admitted that he could probably keep me ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... deceive me? Has it actually stopped raining?" cried Christabel elegantly; and Jim executed a jig of triumph on ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... [Touching his sword-hilt.] I care not for thee or Noll. Would he were here, and a matter of four thousand to back him. [Draws.] Sa! sa! canst fight as well as talk? Wilt take up the bilbo? Come, adopt the weapon of him I have sliced. Come, be nimble, sir, jig. I would fain go visit ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... been awake now for five hours and the doctor says he's out of danger. I sort of let go then when the tension was over, but I've slept a bit since and have got a grip on myself again. I'm so happy that I feel like dancing a jig up and down the wards, and it is only with great difficulty that I ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey

... of making my dear father satisfied with his scribbler's 'attempt! I do, indeed, feel the most grateful love for her. But Dr. Johnson's approbation!—It almost crazed me with agreeable surprise—it gave me such a flight of spirits that I danced a jig to Mr. Crisp, Without any preparation, music, or explanation;—to his no small amazement and diversion. I left him, however, to make his own comments upon my friskiness without affording him the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... a crawin' hen, I seaner wad t' awd divil meet, Hickity O, pickity O, pompolorum jig! Or breed a whistlin' lass, I seaner wad t' awd divil treat, Hickity ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman

... appeared here and there, hurriedly making their exit with cash boxes and bundles of documents. There was an exodus to jig-time going on in the ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin

... later years I have not suffered from the fearsome malady, but even now, after fifty years of stage-life, I never play a new part without being overcome by a terrible nervousness and a torturing dread of forgetting my lines. Every nerve in my body seems to be dancing an independent jig ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... off, about a dozen of us went to lodge with old Peter Hardheart, at the sign of the Foul Anchor; and as we had plenty of money, we thought we would have a regular blow-out. So Peter got a fiddler and some other unmentionable requisites for a jig, and we had a set-to in firstrate style. Why, our great frolic at Santa Martha, when Paddy Chips, the Irish carpenter, danced away his watch, and jacket, and tarpaulin, and nearly all his toggery, you know, and next morning came scudding ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... was filled with dancers, whooping and cracking their fingers in the wildest manner. Then Baptiste did the "Red River Jig," a most intricate and difficult series of steps, the men keeping time to the music ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... country justice that still looks big, From swallowing up the Italian fig, Or learning of the Scottish jig, Libera, etc. ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... "Jig's up pretty definitely, don't you think?" said Adams, with a glance around at the idle track force huddling for shelter under the lee of ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde

... the more the English fellow will have to teach me, and Uncle Bob will have more worth for his money;" and then Ratty would whistle a jig, fling a fowling-piece over his shoulder, and shout "Ponto! Ponto! Ponto!" as he traversed the stable-yard; the delighted pointer would come bounding at the call, and, after circling round his young master with agile grace and yelps ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... was all the same, fiercely stabbing, jerking, as if some virulent little demon were holding ends of the facial nerves in a pair of pincers, and waiting till the sufferer was a little calm for a few moments before giving the nerve a savage jig. ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... and brought back to me, when I dispelled his fright by explaining the way in which I had tricked him. Relieved and reassured, he clapped his hands and executed an impromtu jig, exclaiming, 'Ha! ha! when I get back to New Orleans won't I come de ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... you won't know the place, Sim," said the doctor. "They'll run this house up in jig time. With two bunk rooms and a dining room and a kitchen, there'll be plenty of room. I'll see that it's furnished. Gardner can stay here until he gets time to build on his own place. That girl that came out with me is a good sort, as big-hearted as they make them. ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... too much on that," he replied. "It's my story you want. Well, I've been busy putting things together, and I guess it's only the two ends of the jig-saw that are missing now. I warn you, Peggy, I don't know how Eagle March got into church, or where from, or what became of him ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... Robert Hacket, and say thou hast ne'er given me reason to believe that thou didst love me?" quoth he. "No more cause than I've given to twenty better than thee!" quoth she. "Shame on thee to say 't, thou bold-faced jig!" saith he; "shame on thee, I say! and so will say all honest folk when I tell 'em o' 't." "An thou tell it, the more fool thou," saith she; and a draws up her red lips into a circle as though a'd had a drawstring in 'em, and a stands and looks at him as a used to stand and look at her dam ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives

... on her back An astonishing pack. Like a blacksmith's bellows, marvellous big; And while she dances a horrible jig, Out of this bellows a doleful tune She skre—eels away, in ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates

... without spoiling them, his two last jokes. It said whom her mother had called on and who had called on her mother and how something must be done to stop her smoking too many cigarettes. It said that their young brother, having sprained his ankle at hockey, had become a wolf for jig-saw puzzles. It said where their parents had dined recently and where they were going to dine and who was coming next week. It said what she had seen at the theatre last Saturday and what book she was reading. It said which of the other V.A.D.'s had become engaged. It said what an awful time ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various

... maple-tree in New Hampshire, and later on, many a walnut in Kentucky. He had not forgotten the art, and standing up on Ceph's back he leaped into the branches of the tree above him, and climbed to the top in what Artie would have called "jig time." ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic

... with Rostopchin that I should come in with himself, and be allowed to sit in the wings at the side of the stage. On the stage were Rostopchin, Radek, Larin and various members of the Communist Party Committee in the district. Everything was ready, but the orchestra went on with its jig music on the other side of the curtain. A message was sent to them. The music stopped with a jerk. The curtain rose, disclosing a crowded auditorium. Everybody stood up, both on the stage and in the theater, and sang, accompanied by the orchestra, ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... when they entered, but it, somehow or other, had disappeared beneath the piano scarf—partially disappeared, that is, for one end still protruded. The lady's cotton dusting-gloves no longer protected her hands but now peeped coyly from behind a jig-sawed photograph frame on the marble mantelpiece. The apron she had worn lay on the floor in the shadow of the table cloth. These habiliments of menial domesticity slid, one by one, out of sight—or partially so—as she bustled ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... is red," said Phronsie, at last, stopping in the wild jig, and going up to see if it was all safe, "cause then Santy'll know ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney

... knew he must be quick, and felt that he was fainting, so he pulled the trigger of the gun where it lay. This time it kicked off and overboard. But just before darkness rushed over him, he saw the kitchen door open, and a woman look out of the big log house that was dancing a monstrous jig among the trees. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... two or three of the human puppets thereon would dance in accordance with his fingering of the wires; and mischievously as he would interfere at times in such matters, felt upon this occasion that the puppets would jig as much to their own ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart

... was inclined to think so at first; your fine acting and man's conceit, I reckon. But my conceit has been punctured, and you've slipped a bit in your acting; therefore, to descend to the extremely common-place, the jig is up." ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott

... hyperbole of metaphor, and tell what centuries of time and profounds of unthinkable agony and horror can obtain in each interval of all the intervals between the notes of a quick jig played quickly on the piano. I talk for an hour, elaborating that one phase of Hasheesh Land, and at the end I have told them nothing. And when I cannot tell them this one thing of all the vastness of terrible and wonderful things, I know I have failed ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... dance an Irish jig to his own whistling, although, being much agitated, he found it no easy matter to whistle in tune or time, but that was unimportant. As he danced he took care to back in a homeward direction. The child naturally followed. Thus, by slow degrees, he got beyond what ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne

... the cabin. My ideas is, gentlemen, that, by casting to starboard on this ebb tide, we shall all have our heads off-shore, and we shall fetch into the offing as easily as a country wench turns in a jig. What we shall do with the fleet, when we gets out, will be ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the plan proposed for this; he had still the impression—not the slighter for the simulated kick—of an irrelevant hornpipe or jig. "You're restless." ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... of a good deal of perturbation on the part of both dancers and orchestra, the entertainment went off well enough to be applauded heartily. Certain numbers, notably the South Carolina breakdown, the Irish jig, and the minuet of Washington's time, "brought down the house," presumably because the music fitted best and ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond

... garish robes, not armour; and thyself, Bedaub'd with gold, rode laughing at the rest, Nodding and shaking of thy spangled crest, Where women's favours hung like labels down. Lan. And thereof came it that the fleering Scots, To England's high disgrace, have made this jig; Maids of England, sore may you mourn, For your lemans you have lost at Bannocksbourn,— With a heave and a ho! What weeneth the king of England So soon to have won Scotland!— With a rombelow! Y. Mor. Wigmore shall fly, to set my uncle free. Lan. ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... moment von Herzmann's mouth dropped open. He knew the jig was up! Almost immediately, however, he regained the debonair, easy grace of a splendidly poised loser. He bowed to Larkin, who stood with mouth agape and eyes ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... imported choryphee. The turf is generally a settler—the stage is also a safe road to a safe settlement, and between a race-horse and a danseuse, we would not give a sixpence for choice. Now, as far as horse-flesh went, my grandfather was innocent; a pirouette or pas seul, barring an Irish jig, he never witnessed in his life—but he had discovered as good a method for settling a private gentleman. He had an inveterate fancy for electioneering. The man who would reform state abuses, deserves well ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... spell; and her voice spun leaping along the projecting points of tune of a hornpipe. Still singing, she felt herself twisted about with a low growl and a lifting of the red lip from the glittering teeth; she broke the hornpipe's thread, and commenced unravelling a lighter, livelier thing, an Irish jig. Up and down and round about her voice flew, the beast threw back his head so that the diabolical face fronted hers, and the torrent of his breath prepared her for his feast as the anaconda slimes his prey. Franticly she darted from tune to tune; his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... head, and roll the man down hill a hundred feet or more. They could run down a lean and hungry wild pig, catch it, heat a ten-plate stove furnace hot, and putting in the pig, could cook it, they dancing the while a merry jig." Wild oats of this kind seem hardly compatible with a harvest of civilization, but it is contended that such of these roysterers as survived their stormy beginnings became decent and serious citizens. Indeed, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... jig, and Kat's sliding down the bannisters," exclaimed a horrified voice from somewhere else. "Mercy! Bea, call mama; I ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... overwhelmed by self-consciousness that they could think of nothing to say. One day when Mr. Watson called from his end of the line, 'How do you do?' a dignified lawyer who was trying the instrument answered with a foolish giggle, 'Rig-a-jig-jig and away we go!' The psychological reaction was too much for many a well-poised individual and I do not ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett

... is thrown over his body, and his clothes and flesh gradually fade away till nothing but his skeleton remains, which immediately begins to dance a horrible rattling jig. The skeleton then fades away and the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... whole. If we ignore the facts contained in one part of the world, surely we are hampering scientific advance. It is obvious to every one that, given only a fraction of the pieces, it is a much more difficult task to put together a jig-saw puzzle and obtain an idea of the finished pattern than were all the pieces at hand. The pieces of the jig-saw puzzle are the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... we all observed one another, the eyes looking sideways. You see, the tray bore a jig-saw. When I had left on the previous Saturday for a week-end visit, we had done the top right-hand corner and half what looked as if it must be the left side. Most of this we had done on Friday evening; but artificial ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... this pinch I'll have all those jewels back again by hook or by crook. Your mother shan't suffer in the long run, and I'll do a lot to the old place—the old house wants papering and painting. We'll dance a merry jig at O'Shanaghgan at your wedding, my little girl; and now don't keep me, for I have got to go out to meet Murphy. He said he would look around ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... having thus displayed his good manners, he half-opened his wings and danced a solemn jig up and down the floor, finally throwing back his head and laughing so heartily that we ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... straight to perdition. And Agnes is just as bad as you are, if not worse. What they need is a good hickory switch and plenty of muscle behind it. If they were my boys, I'd let them know what's what. I'd put things in order in jig time. I'd show them whether they could run things as they liked. They'd learn mighty quick ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... very profound obeisance, which the lady-mother scarcely recognised, he addressed himself to his vocation. A mighty indifferent prelude succeeded the arrangement of the strings, then a sort of jig, accented by the toe and head of the performer. Afterwards he broke into a wild and singular extempore, which gradually shaped itself into measure and rhythm, at times beautifully varied, and accompanied by the voice. We shall attempt a more modern and intelligible version ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... good song; a bully good song," murmured the boy, turning over to sleep. "But it ought to be sung to something with more of a rig-a-jig-jig to it." So saying, he was off to the ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks

... Squires had sense enough not to say in the Banner that as soon as Jake Miller found out that the jig was up, he took the law in his own hands, ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... (inexpectation) 508 [Obs.]; left in the lurch; thrown away &c (wasted) 638; unattained; uncompleted &c 730. Adv. unsuccessfully &c adj.; to little or no purpose, in vain, re infecta [Lat.]. Phr. the bubble has burst, the jig is up, the game is up [Cymbeline]; all is lost; the devil to pay; parturiunt montes &c (disappointment) 509 [Lat.]; dies infaustus [Lat.]; tout est perdu ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... climbed many a maple-tree in New Hampshire, and later on, many a walnut in Kentucky. He had not forgotten the art, and standing up on Ceph's back he leaped into the branches of the tree above him, and climbed to the top in what Artie would have called "jig time." ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic

... shrewd, and genial sallies, and she could be either caressing or impudent. In the matter of self-approbation she had no Statute of Limitation, but boasted of having taught Taglioni to dance an Irish jig, and declared that she had created the Irish novel, though in the next breath she would say that she was a child when Miss Edgeworth was a grown woman.' Her blunders were proverbial, as when she asked in all simplicity, 'Who was Jeremy Taylor?' and on being presented to Mrs. Sarah ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... to Russia is like a jig-saw puzzle, a mystery even to the man who devised it. A straight-forward recognition of the Omsk Government would have been an honest hand for honest work, but where would Allied diplomacy have come in? Diplomacy is only necessary when there are ulterior objects than mere ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... piped—it was no shallow fluting that merely set the rustic feet a-jig, it was a strange and stirring strain that made the simplest one among them stand with his soul a-tiptoe, as he listened, as if a kingly train with banners went a-marching by. So royally he played ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... life. The common dances I learned (as, perhaps, I ought not to confess) in the servants' hall, which, you may be sure, was never without a piper, and where I was considered unrivalled both at a hornpipe and a jig. ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... say—for, of such a charge, self-defence claims to explain a little—although I am charmed with all manner of music, still for choice I prefer a German chorus to an Italian solo, and an English glee to a French jig. Accordingly the operatic world have every reason to despise my taste: especially if I add that Welsh songs, and Scotch and Irish national melodies—[where are our English gone?]—rejoice my heart beyond Mozart and Rossini. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... side of the house, the young men who couldn't get in stood restlessly, now dancing a jig, now kicking their huge boots against the underpinning to warm their toes. They talked spasmodically as they swung their arms about their chests, speaking from behind ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... this wicked brute, some way, or I may as well conclude that the jig is danced through, as far as I ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock

... and makes their bewilderment a sport. How small their world appears in the mirror of his ironical mind! The state-craft, the love-making, the "absurd pomp," the "heavy-headed revels," the women that "jig and amble and lisp," the nobles that are "spacious in the possession of dirt," the sovereign that is a "king of shreds and patches;" as for their opinions, "do but blow; them to their trials, and ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... Balder try to shut his eyes and escape the giddy spectacle; they stare widely open and see things supernatural. Nor can he ward off these with his hands, which are rigid before him, and defy his will. The devilish jig becomes wilder, and careers through the air, Balder sweeping with it. In mid-whirl, he sees the crocodile,—cold, motionless, waiting with ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... buy a fat pig, Home again, home again, jiggety jig. To market, to market, to buy a fat hog, Home again, home ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various

... some o' them cold biscuit and butter and cheese, and a pitcher of milk sot a good enough meal for anybody; but she didn't take but a crumb, and she turned up her nose at that. Come, go! you've slicked up enough; you're handsome enough to show yourself to her any time o' day, for all her jig-em bobs." ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... time. She had him ast into the cushioned sanctuary—an' Aleck hadn't seen much them days—an' what did he do but gawk around an' plump hisself down into that gilt-backed rocker with a tune-playin' seat in it, an', of co'se, quick ez his weight struck it, it started up a jig tune, an' they say Aleck shot out o' that door like ez ef he'd been fired out of a cannon. An' he never did go back to say what he come after. I doubt ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... and looking so crestfallen, I could have risen there and then and danced for joy before her. Will you believe me, I felt so glad I could hardly restrain my feet till the hour was up, and whenever liberty was proclaimed, didn't they go well at the Irish jig! Oh dear!" and Winnie's face was all aglow as she waited her brother's commendatory remarks on ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... this dinner at Lady Morgan's is of her kind and comical zeal to show me an Irish jig, performed secundum artem, when she found that I had never seen her national dance. She jumped up, declaring nobody danced it as well as herself, and that I should see it immediately; and began running ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... a watchman," answered Loring. "We have got to get out of this neighborhood in railroad time or the jig's ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield

... hired a horse and gig With promises to pay; And he pawned his horns for a spruce new wig, To redeem as he came away: And he whistled some tune, a waltz or a jig, And drove off at ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... head. "Whew!" he whistled, sitting down gingerly in the armchair. "Well, that's a mercy. I ain't so young as I used to be and I couldn't stand many such shocks. Whew! Don't talk to ME! When that devilish jig tune started up underneath me I'll bet I hopped up three foot straight. I may be kind of slow sittin' down, but you'll bear me out that I can GET UP sudden when it's necessary. And I thought the dum thing never ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... soon as he'd had time to collect himself. But it was too late then; he had betrayed himself and he knew it. Oh, he was sore! He'd have flung me out if I'd been a man. I got mad, too, and I told him it made no real difference whether I was bluffing or not; the jig was up, so far as he was concerned. I reminded him of what Henry had just said—that the oil business is a game of wits, and that when you know what the other fellow is doing you have him licked. I admitted ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... seen among the famous illustrations to the "Comic Almanack": La Belle Assemblee, or Sketches of Characteristic Dancing, miscellaneous groups, comprising in all thirty figures (exclusive of the orchestra), engaged in a country dance, a Scotch reel, an Irish jig, a minuet, the German waltz, a French quadrille, the Spanish bolero, and a ballet "Italienne." The walls are hung with pictures of dancing dogs, a dancing bear, a dancing horse, rope dancing, the dance of St. Vitus, and "Dancing ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... of Summer-time and Spring," said he, "wherein both claim to be best-loved, and have their say of wit and humor, and each her part of songs and dances suited to her time, the sprightly galliard and the nimble jig for Spring, the slow pavone, the stately peacock dance, for Summer-time. And win who may, fair Summer-time or merry Spring, the winner is but that beside our Queen!"—with which he snapped his fingers in the faces of ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... thereof (Jer 50:41,42). Yea, when they begin, they will also make an end, and will leave thee so harbourless and comfortless, that now there will be found for thee no gladness at all, no, not so much as one piper to play thee one jig. The delicates that thy soul lusted after, thou shalt find them no more at all (Rev 18:12-22). 'Babylon the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... had seen small bands of Caribou. A score now appeared on a sandhill half a mile away; another and another lone specimen trotted past our camp. One of these stopped and gave us an extraordinary exhibition of agility in a sort of St. Vitus's jig, jumping, kicking, and shaking its head; I suspect the nose-worms were annoying it. While we lunched, a fawn came and gazed curiously from a distance of 100 yards. In the after-noon Preble returned from a walk to say that the Caribou were ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... safely landed in Boston or 'York, Oh how I will tipple and jig it; And toss off my glass while my rhino holds out, In ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... of a Visit to England, p. 33, writing of Johnson on March 16, 1775, says:—'He has the aspect of an idiot, without the faintest ray of sense gleaming from any one feature—with the most awkward garb, and unpowdered grey wig, on one side only of his head—he is for ever dancing the devil's jig, and sometimes he makes the most driveling effort to whistle some thought in his absent paroxysms.' Miss Burney thus describes him when she first saw him in 1778:—'Soon after we were seated this great man entered. I have so true a veneration for him that the very sight of him inspires me with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... a band was improvised for the occasion. At the close of dinner the martial hymns of all nations were played, ending with "Yankee Doodle." It was impossible to resist the impulse to laugh as this national jig brought up the rear, and Sam was much displeased that the foreigners on board, and there were many, should have laughed at his country. When he went up on deck he found Cleary conversing with Chung Tu, and he placed his steamer-chair beside ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... bagpipe ceased to play, And another tune straightway Sang the kettle, louder, louder, till its voice grew very big; And the feet of laughing girls (Girls with shamrock in their curls) You could almost hear a-keeping time to that old Irish jig. ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... the castanets of "La Paloma." Old John Minafer, evidently surfeited, was in the act of leaving these delights. "D'want 'ny more o' that!" he barked. "Just slidin' around! Call that dancin'? Rather see a jig any day in the world! They ain't very modest, some of 'em. I don't ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... well mixed. Then you put it down, half a pint at a time, four times a day. It's a sure cure, and inside of a week after taking seventeen quarts and rubbing the empty bottles on your left shoulder blade you'll feel like dancing a jig of joy; ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield

... to it and found that the gold bottle that contained the precious powder had dropped upon the stand and scattered its life-giving grains over the machine. The phonograph was very much alive, and began dancing a jig with the legs of the table to which it was attached, and this dance so annoyed Dr. Pipt that he kicked the thing into a corner and pushed a bench against it, ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... God bless your jig! And how would I know is it a notice of my own death has come into my hand in the pocket of this coat I put on me through ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... means five and six handed reels by the hour, and they do a man's legs no good when he's over forty.' A second corroborates the remark and says: 'True. Once at the woman's house you can hardly say nay to being one in a jig, knowing all the time that you be expected to make ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... in the jig-saw puzzle we call life. Attach no special importance to what I have just said, or the possibilities I have just thrown out. I may be altogether wrong. I have only at present your word that Signor Doria is ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... punished at school to-day! What did he do? Why, he drew on his slate, in a comical way, Pictures of horses and oxen, and they Seemed to be dancing a real Irish jig! Yes, and he, too, had a little wee pig Down in the corner, as cute as could be; All of us laughed such a ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various

... unparalleled. Of this the long rag is their instrument. They draw it once or twice across the shoe to set the key and then they go into a swift and pattering melody. If there is an unusual genius in the bootblack—some remnant of ancient Greece—he plays such a lively tune that one's shoulders jig to it. If there were a dryad or other such nimble creature on the street, she would come leaping as though Orpheus strummed a tune, but the dance is too fast for our ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... through the camp to his tent, where the flag were flyin, never bothered about no sentries nor nothin. Just as I trot up, a little bit of a butterfly lady like bob out o the tent, and when she see me—'Beau, boy!' she squeals. 'Beau, boy! ere's a niked man! Do come and see!' And she jig up and down and tiddle her fingers at me, please as Punch.... Out come ole Whiskers, sword and all. 'You something something!' says he, and knocks her back into the tent. Then he ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... did I say to ee about missee? What did I say? Didn't I as good as tellee witch way she cast a sheepz i? That indeed would a be summut! An you will jig your heels amunk the jerry cum poopz, you might a then dance to some tune. I a warruntee I a got all a my i teeth imme head. What doesn't I know witch way the wind sets when I sees the chimblee smoke? To be sure I duz; as well with a wench as a weather-cock! Didn't I tellee y'ad a more then ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... soul's health, sir, and would have you know the danger: (but you may do your pleasure for all them, I persuade not, sir.) If, after you are married, your wife do run away with a vaulter, or the Frenchman that walks upon ropes, or him that dances the jig, or a fencer for his skill at his weapon; why it is not their fault, they have discharged their consciences; when you know what may happen. Nay, suffer valiantly, sir, for I must tell you all the perils that you are obnoxious to. If she be fair, young and vegetous, ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... venture to call it) begins with a breath of new harmony, or is it a blended magic of rhythm, tune and chord? Far more than merely bizarre, it calls up a vision of Celtic warriors, the wild, free spirit of Northern races. The rushing jig ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... did dance, and awfully well, too, to his own singing. Mamma, who was attired in a flowing pink dressing-gown and a black hat trimmed with lilac, became suddenly emulous, and with her spade under her arm joined in the jig. This lasted for about a minute, and was a never-to-be-forgotten sight. They skipped round the hall, they changed sides, they swept up to each other and back again and finished with the ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... you have it!" whispered Despeaux, recovering his confidence. "Every man has his price—but it's a mistake to think that the price must always be counted down in cash. Daunt didn't act as if he had captured our friend. He's dancing to a girl's tune now. Corson will whistle a jig when he gets ready and Morrison will dance to ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... I whispered, and the rustler stared. "I'm in his confidence. He's got to see Bill at once. Sampson sends word he's quit—he's done—he's through. The jig is up, and he means to hit the road ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey

... can lay hand on a weapon; if he attacked us behind, while we were repelling boarders—as I am sure he would—the jig would be up. So I have ordered him to keep the present distance between us and their boat. After awhile, we shall ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... was a blaze of gas and glowing from the heat of a great fire; and in the middle, with her arms a-kimbo, her head thrown back, and her bare feet twinkling merrily, stood Mother Bunch on a door, dancing, to the cheers of the audience, an Irish jig. As she danced, she sang; and it was to the tune of her merry voice and the movements of her rapidly-revolving feet that the crowd of spectators laughed ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... the hatch down tight, and locked it securely into place with an iron bar. Even through this cover the sound of smothered yells reached our ears, mingled with blows of gun-butts, as the fellows vainly endeavored to break out from their prison. The negro Sam grinned from ear to ear, executing a jig, as he flashed ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... desertion of the most of the members of the company Perez had organized, to join Hubbard up at the iron-works. About the same time, Israel Goodrich withdrew from the committee of safety. He told Perez he was sorry to leave him, but the jig was plainly up, and he had his family to consider. If his farm was confiscated, they'd have to go on the town. "Arter all, Perez, we've made somethin by't. I hain't sorry I gone intew it. Them new laws ull be somethin of a lift; an harf a loaf be considabul better nor no bread." He advised Perez ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... and phials lie shattered. All his trials oozing across the floor. The life that was his choosing, lonely, urgent, goaded by a hope, all gone. A weary man in a ruined laboratory, that was his story. Boom! Gloom and ignorance, and the jig of drunken brutes. Diseases like snakes crawling over the earth, leaving trails of slime. Wails from people burying their dead. Through the window he can see the rocking steeple. A ball of fire falls on the lead of the roof, and the sky tears apart on a spike of flame. Up ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington

... Corey. And let him say so twice as 'tis, and meet my fist, an he dares. I be an old man, but I could hold my own in my day, and there be some of me left yet. Who says so twice to old Giles Corey? Martha a witch! Verily she could not stop praying long enough to dance a jig through with the devil. Martha! Out upon ye, ye lying devil's tool of a parson, that seasons murder with prayer! Out upon ye, ye magistrates! your hands be redder than your fine trappings! Martha a witch! Ye yourselves be witches, and serving Satan, and he a-tickling in his ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... into the ring. One stocking came down, letting out a quart of sawdust. One tight split up to the knee as he made a jig step that brought the tears to the eyes of Billy Blow, who, with his boy, had come to ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... had frisker notions left in her. "This is slow," cried she, and bade the fiddler play, "The wind that shakes the barley," an ancient jig tune; this she danced to in a style ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade

... a noisy welcome, at the door. Many of the boys and girls came, from all sides of the big hall, and shook hands with us. Enos Brown, whose long forelocks had been oiled for the occasion and combed down so they touched his right eyebrow, was panting in a jig that jarred the house. His trouser legs were caught on the tops of his fine boots. He nodded to me as I came in, snapped his fingers and doubled his energy. It was an exhibition both of power and endurance. He was damp and apologetic when, at length, he stopped ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... no attention to the accusations of the girl, gave a war-whoop which had formerly been so effective in the second act of "Pocahontas," in which Jimmy had enacted the noble savage, and then he danced a jig that had done service in Colleen Bawn. While the amazed girl watched these antics, Jimmy suddenly swooped down upon her, caught her around the waist, and whirled her wildly around the room. Setting her down in a corner, Jimmy became himself again, and dabbed his heated brow with his handkerchief ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... the time with a metrical fluency, he scraped a little jig on the violin, while Dummer led off a procession which solemnly capered round the room in sundry stages of conscious awkwardness. Mr. Bultitude shuffled along somehow after the rest, with rebellion at his heart and a deep sense of degradation. "If my ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... five balls," continues the correspondent, "was given by M. le Grand, in his apartments in the new wing of Versailles. The ball commenced with a masquerade. They danced a minuet and a jig; but only Mlle. de Nantes danced in the latter. Mlle. de Nantes was especially admired when she danced, and made so great an impression that people stood on chairs to see her better, Mgr. le Dauphin came to the masquerade ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... Gardens. There were a thousand other such objects, however. There was a dancing lamp-post, a dancing apple tree, a dancing ship. One would have thought that the untamable tune of some mad musician had set all the common objects of field and street dancing an eternal jig. And long afterwards, when Syme was middle-aged and at rest, he could never see one of those particular objects—a lamppost, or an apple tree, or a windmill—without thinking that it was a strayed reveller from ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... Fuller's Jig-Saw Attachment, by the aid of which the use of the saw is greatly facilitated. (See cut on ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... in their pulpits of things believed in by a negligible fraction of the population, and thousands writing down today what nobody would want to read in two days' time; while men shut animals in cages, and made bears jig to please their children, and all were striving one against the other; while, in a word, like gnats above a stagnant pool on a summer's evening, man danced up and down without the faintest notion why—in this condition of affairs the quality of courage was alive. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... once more into the excited obscurity of the wings, where his manager was trembling like an aspen, in the midst of a perspiring company. The lights were turned down. The orchestra burst into a tuneful jig, and the lingering audience ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... voted that the dancing turkey and infant anaconda grafts were no longer feasible. Once on a time the crowds would watch a turkey hopping about on a hot tin to the rig-a-jig of a fiddle and would come out satisfied that they had received their money's worth. A man could even exhibit an angleworm in a bottle and call it the infant anaconda, and escape being lynched. Brick Avery sadly testified to the passing of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... hazy recollection of them. I know Henry VIII. got rid of his wives expeditiously and conveniently,—and I distinctly remember that Queen Elizabeth wore the first pair of silk stockings, and danced a kind of jig in them with the Earl of Leicester; these things interested me at the time,—and they now seen firmly impressed on my memory to the exclusion of everything else that might ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... each other, dug their fists into each other, and cheered: "Oh, you Barnesy!" "Kill it, Kid!" "Whatcha know about dat!" "Sand it down, Barnesy!" The old-timer was doing the famous lock-step jig he had done with Pat Rooney in "Patrice" fifteen or twenty years before. It was so old that it was new. Encore followed encore. The perspiration cascaded through his pores; he grinned and winked and frisked and capered. They would not let him stop. At the end of twenty-five ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... as we have here English, Scotch, and Irish dancers, we can have the English country-dance, the Scotch reel, and the Irish jig. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... us. The truth is some of us have not sought for knives with any zest, being paltry and early Victorian in our murders. Yet in this symphony in verse, The Jig of Forslin, by Mr. Conrad Aiken, there ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... bee, Heigho, &c. With his fiddle upon his knee, Terry heigho, &c. Next come in was a creeping snail, Heigho, &c. With his bagpipes under his tail, Terry heigho, &c. Next came in was a neighbour's pig, Heigho, &c. 'Pray, good people, will ye play us a jig?' Terry heigho, &c. Next come in was a neighbour's hen, Heigho, &c. Took the fiddler by the wing, Terry heigho, &c. Next come in was a neighbour's duck, Heigho, &c. Swallow'd the piper, head and pluck, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various

... disintegrator, where it is crushed to the size found most suitable, and is then delivered by the raw-coal elevator to another storage bin. The arrangement of the plant is such that the coal may be first washed on a Stewart jig, and the refuse then delivered to and re-washed on a special jig, or the refuse may be re-crushed and ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson

... it to do over again you shouldn't," I answered; and then I seized her and held her tight in my arms. Nor did I release her until Whistling Jim, coming up and realizing the situation, celebrated it by whistling a jig. "If you'll say the word," I declared, ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris

... in the gibbet?" said Villon. "They are all dancing the devil's jig on nothing, up there. You may dance, my gallants, you'll be none the warmer! Whew! what a gust! Down went somebody just now! A medlar the fewer on the three-legged medlar-tree!—I say, Dom Nicolas, it'll be cold to-night on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to buy a fat pig, Home again, home again, dancing a jig; To market, to market, to buy a fat hog, Home again, home again, jiggety-jog; To market, to market, to buy a plum bun. Home again, home ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... are more or less active all winter, but October and November are their festal months. Invade some butternut or hickory-nut grove on a frosty October morning and hear the red squirrel beat the "juba" on a horizontal branch. It is a most lively jig, what the boys call a "regular break-down," interspersed with squeals and snickers and derisive laughter. The most noticeable peculiarity about the vocal part of it is the fact that it is a kind of duet. In other words, by some ventriloquial tricks, he appears to accompany himself, as if his voice ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... VOILET obliges on that instrument; everyone in the neighbourhood begins to jig mechanically; ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various

... Deerfoot looking over the shoulder of Fred at the Irish lad behind him. Fred heard a curious noise, and turned to learn what it meant. His friend had leaned his gun against the nearest tree, so as to give his limbs free play, and was flinging his arms aloft, and dancing a jig with a vigor that made it look as if his legs were shot out, and back and forth, by some high pressure engine. Now and then he flung his cap aloft, and, as it came down, ducked his head under and dexterously caught it. His mouth was puckered ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... the Suite was the final Gigue, which is our jolly and familiar friend the jig, and in all probability is Keltic in origin. It is, as everybody knows, a rollicking measure in 6-8, 12-8, or 4-4 time, with twelve triplet quavers in a measure, and needs no description. It remained a favorite with ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... reel; the second lieutenant of the "Artemise" had once seen one when his ship was riding out a gale in the Clyde;—the little lady had frequently studied a picture of the Highland fling on the outside of a copy of Scotch music;—I could dance a jig—the set was complete, all we wanted was the music. Luckily the lady of the house knew the song of "Annie Laurie,"—played fast it made an excellent reel tune. As you may suppose, all succeeded admirably; we nearly died of laughing, and I only wish Lord Breadalbane ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... the cutting of a throat, but paid us toll. Od's curse! When Gipsy Smouch made bold to cheat us of our due, —Eh, Tab? the Squire's strong-box we helped the rascal to— I think he pulled a face, next Sessions' swinging-time! He danced the jig that needs no floor,—and, here's the prime, 'T was Scroggs that houghed the mare! Ay, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... a hornpipe, miss, to the tune of the Swaggerin' Jig, upon the kitchen table," she proceeded; "and, sorra be off me, but it would do your heart good to see the springs he would give—every one o' them a yard high—and to hear how he'd crack his fingers as loud as the ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... single servant in livery, except my chaplain Poussatin." "How!" said the queen, bursting out laughing, "a chaplain in your livery! he surely was not a priest?" "Pardon me, madam," said he, "and the first priest in the world for dancing the Biscayan jig." "Chevalier," said the king, "pray tell us the history of your ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... foe, who never glanced at her. He jerked open the door, but he was not quick enough for the originator of the Jabberwock Jig. Her small foot was slid into the space between the door and the threshold. It was at the risk of losing a valuable member, but she was so angry at being ignored that she never thought of it. When the gentleman found that the door would not close, he stuck his head out, and nearly kissed Bambi, ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke

... the shadows are in the winter picture of it, it has no such darkness as that. The newsboys and the sandwich-men warming themselves upon the cellar gratings in Twenty-third Street and elsewhere have oftener than not a ready joke to crack with the passer-by, or a little jig step to relieve their feelings and restore the circulation. The very tramp who hangs by his arms on the window-bars of the power-house at Houston Street and Broadway indulges in safe repartee with the engineer down in the depths, and chuckles at ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... early took possession of the dancing-hall, where, surrounded by the elders, a quick succession of Money Musk, Opera Reel, Chorus Jig, etc., interspersed sparingly with cotillons, evidenced the relish with which young spirits and light hearts enjoy ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle









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