"Bagpipe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... menagerie, if a camel, a bear, and two monkeys can be dignified by so large a title. He was accustomed to make the rounds of the hotels and cottages on alternate days, one day mounted on the dromedary and strumming an Oriental lute, on the others playing a Basque bagpipe while his bear danced, or proceeding with hand-organ and monkeys. He had been a soldier in the Italian colony of Massowah on the Red Sea, where he had acquired the dromedary—which was the most gigantic one I have ever seen—and a smattering of Arabic. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... lullaby word for decay. - There will come an immediate decree In thy mind for the opposite party's decease, If he bends not an instant knee. Expunge it: extinguishing counts poor gain. And accept a mild word of police:- Be mannerly, measured; refrain From the puffings of him of the bagpipe cheeks. Our political, even as the merchant main, A temperate gale requires For the ship that haven seeks; Neither God of the winds ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a ceremony used at funerals: the evening after the death of any person, the relations and friends of the deceased meet at the house, attended by bagpipe or fiddle; the nearest of kin, be it wife, son, or daughter, opens a melancholy ball, dancing and greeting; i.e. crying violently at the same time; and this continues till daylight; but with such gambols and frolicks, among the younger part of the company, ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... the honey out of 'Cherry Ripe'; he did not fear—he even ostentatiously displayed and seemed to revel in he shrillness of the instrument; but in fire, speed, precision, evenness, and fluency; in linked agility of jimmy—a technical expression, by your leave, answering to warblers on the bagpipe; and perhaps, above all, in that inspiring side-glance of the eye, with which he followed the effect and (as by a human appeal) eked out the insufficiency of his performance: in these, the fellow stood without a rival. Harker listened: 'The girl I left behind me' filled him with despair; 'The ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... other psalm-tune. On the introduction, however, of a second tune into the parish church that repeated the line at the end of the stanza, even this poor fragment of ability deserted me; and to this day—though I rather like the strains of the bagpipe in general, and have no objection to drums in particular—doubts do occasionally come across me whether there be in reality any such thing as tune. My friend William Ross was, on the contrary, a born musician. When a little boy, he had constructed for himself a fife and clarionet ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... musical soul supplied the deficiency in the sounds that entered his unwearied ears. And then he sang so loud himself, that he certainly could hear no one else, his voice being as monopolizing as the drone of a bagpipe—or as a violent advocate for free trade! Happy urchins when this was the case! for they were sure to be dismissed with the most flattering encomiums on their vocal powers, when, if truth must be told, the good old man had not heard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... which would create horror in him if he could see it as soon as it has entered his stomach, and which even displeases him, when he sees it being already satisfied. The stomach is made in the figure of a bagpipe. There the aliments being dissolved by a quick coction, or digestion, are all confounded, and make up a soft liquor, which afterwards becomes a kind of milk, called chyle; and which being at last brought into the heart, receives there, through the plenty of spirits, the form, vivacity, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... amuse me, and I have received many little presents of date-cakes and bazeen from them. Begin to relish this sort of food, and The Desert air sharpens the appetite. Yesterday, a slave of the ghafalah amused us with playing his rude bagpipe through these weary wastes. We are not very merry. There is very little conversation; we move on for hours in the most unbroken silence, nothing being said or whispered, no sound but the dull slow tread of the camel. Sometimes an Arab strikes up one of his plaintive ditties, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... received as welcome guests, particularly in the Highlands of Scotland; and so late as the latter end of the sixteenth century, as appears by the above quotations, the harp was in common use among the natives of the Western Isles. How it happened that the noisy and inharmonious bagpipe banished the soft and expressive harp, we cannot say; but certain it is, that the bagpipe is now the only instrument that obtains universally in the Highland districts' (Campbell's Journey through North Britain. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... every foreign army in Europe was represented among the regiments forming or in transit. The 79th Highlanders, it is true, discarded kilt and bagpipe on the eve of departure, marching in blouse and cap and breeks of army blue; but the 14th. Brooklyn departed in red cap and red breeches, the 1st and 2d Fire Zouaves discarded the Turkish fez only; the 5th, 9th, 10th Zouaves marched wearing fez and turban; and bizarre voltigeurs, ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... two hours, when he was disturbed by such a variety of noises, as might have discomposed a brain of the firmest texture. The rumbling of carriages, and the rattling of horses' feet on the pavement, was intermingled with loud shouts, and the noise of fiddle, French horn, and bagpipe. A loud peal was heard ringing in the church tower, at some distance, while the inn resounded with clamour, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... a partiality for the bagpipe on the ground that your true Briton "loves a grumbling noise," and he favours organs and the popular oratorios. But his "top talent is a bill ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... told her; but on her way back with the instruments she opened the box, and lo and behold! they all flew out and about—here a flute, there a flageolet, here a pipe, there a bagpipe, making a thousand different sounds in the air, whilst Parmetella stood looking on and tearing ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... in despondency; and Malcolm, who hated crowds, and knew himself a mark for the rude observations of a free-spoken populace, shrank up to him, when Sir James, nodding in time to the tones of a bagpipe that was playing at the hostel door, flung his bridle to Brewster the groom, laughed at his glum and contemptuous looks, merrily hailed the gudewife with her brown face and big silver ear-rings, seated himself on the bench at the long wooden table under ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... play a kind of bagpipe, which reminds one of the Scotch ones; but the songs of the Slovak have got very much mixed with the Hungarian. The Rumanian music is of a distinct type, but the dances all resemble the Csardas, with the difference that the quick figures in the Slav and Rumanian dances are much ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... performs very well on the violin, has an invincible antipathy to the sound of the Highland bagpipe, which sings in the nose with a most alarming twang, and, indeed, is quite intolerable to ears of common sensibility, when aggravated by the echo of a vaulted hall — He therefore begged the piper ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... of my sleepiness I was held spellbound and the musician had concluded with certain barbaric grunts before I had the curiosity to rise. It came from somewhere in the gallery of the inn, and as I stuck my head out of my door I had a glimpse of Oliphant, nightcap on head and a great bagpipe below his arm, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... 'During this song, methinks, it was as if nightingale, owl, and echo had combined in song, and if ever I had been able to hear the morning star, or to try to imitate the melody on my bagpipe, I should have slipt away out of the hut to join in the melody, so beautiful it seemed; ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... strains of his lyre, in the Amsterdam Museum. Here we see that the master had also studied wild animals. He is most successful in the bear. In the same gallery is another chef-d'oeuvre of the same year—a hilly landscape with a shepherdess singing to her child, a shepherd playing on the bagpipe, and oxen, sheep, ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... Dominic Mongan, Denis Hempson, Charles Byrne, James Duncan, Arthur Victory, and Arthur O'Neill were celebrated as harpers. The Belfast meeting of 1792 revived the vogue of the national instrument. Nor was the bagpipe neglected. Even in America, in 1778, Lord Rawdon had a band of pipers, with Barney Thomson as Pipe Major. At home, Sterling, Jackson, MacDonnell, Moorehead, Kennedy, and Macklin sustained the ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... lodgings. He was only too glad, as might be supposed. She found he had a lovely voice, but little physical culture. He read correctly, but did not even know the nature of the vocal instrument and its construction, which is that of a bagpipe. She taught him how to keep his lungs full in singing, yet not to gasp, and by this simple means enabled him to sing with more than twice the power he had ever exercised yet. She also taught him the swell, a figure of music he knew ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... a cry, not of wrath, as Kant said, nor a shout of joy, as Schwartz thought, but a snuffling, and then a long, thin, tearless a-a, with the timbre of a Scotch bagpipe, purely automatic, but of discomfort. With this monotonous and dismal cry, with its red, shriveled, parboiled skin (for the child commonly loses weight the first few days), squinting, cross-eyed, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... spangles, and fluttering plumes, scabbards gleaming with jewels, and girdles adorned with rich settings. Furiously galloping behind came an attenuated snow-white charger, bearing the hunchback. A bladder dangling over his shoulder, his bagpipe hanging from his waist, Triboulet bobbed frantically up and down, clinging desperately to the saddle or winding his legs about the charger's neck to preserve ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... moon shall light her bright lamp in the star-spangled heavens, and shed her silvery rays across the plain, the hunter may lead forth the village belle, and foot it merrily on the mossy greensward, to the sound of the bagpipe and the rustic flute, by fountains which never cease their monotonous but soothing plaint, and under the long shadows of the ancient oaks ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... picturesque costumes, brightly colored and so varied. These shepherdesses, forming afterward into separate groups, each group the graceful rival of the next, wore the costumes of the different provinces and danced to music the respective dances there in usage: those of Poitiers to the music of the bagpipe, those of Provence to the kettle-drums, the Champenoises to the small hautboys, the violins and the tambourines, and ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... to the King after our fashion, and had a like fancy for oak boughs and white roses. The weather was pleasant, the company of the best, the roads very noble after our Highland sheep tracks. Together with our English friends, and enlivened by much good claret and by music of bagpipe and drum, we strolled on through a fine, populous country until we came to a town called Preston, where we thought we would tarry for a day or two. However, circumstances arose which detained us somewhat longer. (I dare say you have heard the story?) When finally we ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... individual skill and dexterity, united in two bodies, and exhibited a sort of mock encounter, in which the charge, the rally, the flight, the pursuit, and all the current of a heady fight, were exhibited to the sound of the great war bagpipe. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... called "de gaita gallega" (Men. Pel., Ant., V, p. cxcv; X, 141. Cf. also Mila, op. cit.), the assumption being that this verse is intimately related to that type of popular Galician poetry known as the muineira, which was sung to the music of the bagpipe. These lines are typical of the ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... three insurgent Cantons, the desertions caused by this air became so frequent that the government prohibited it. The reader will remember the comic effect produced upon the French troops in the Crimea by the Highlanders marching to battle to the sound of the bagpipe, whose harsh, piercing notes inspired these brave mountaineers with valor, by recalling to them their country and its heroic legends. Napoleon III. finds himself compelled to allow the Arab troops incorporated into his army their barbarous tam-tam music, lest they revolt. The measured ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... the novice again. The last proofs were now tried upon him, called the "five senses." For that of hearing he was made to listen to a jewsharp, which he calmly proclaimed to be the bagpipe; for that of touch, he was made to feel by turns a live fish, a hot iron and a little stuffed hedgehog. The last he took for a pack of toothpicks, and announced gravely, "It sticks me." The laughs broke out from all sides, even ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... the sound of the sweetly piercing music of a bagpipe smote upon their ears. "Ah," exclaimed Mr. Lilburn, "that sound is sweetly homelike to my ear. Let us see, my friends, to what sight ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... musical instrument reminded one of the zither of Tyrol, while the strange airs bore some similarity to the bagpipe music of Scotland, at least in time, which, like the piper, the old man beat with his foot. His blue eyes were fixed on the wall opposite, with a strange, weird, far-off look, and never for one moment did he relax his gaze. He ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... told the Bass to take, that one of us would be gettin' it. And she was pleased as anything, me lad, and now it's up to us to rig up some sort of a dacint sate, and tag a woman along half the time. You thick-tongued descindint of a bagpipe baboon, what did you sind ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... constituted of artificial tones, which by habit suggest certain agreeable passions. For the same combination of notes and tones do not excite devotion, love, or poetic melancholy in a native of Indostan and of Europe. And "the Highlander has the same warlike ideas annexed to the sound of a bagpipe (an instrument which an Englishman derides), as the Englishman has to that of a trumpet or fife," (Dr. Brown's Union of Poetry and Music, p. 58.) So "the music of the Turks is very different from the Italian, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... everything is just lovely for me. I have a very, very comfortable situation and Mr. Stewart is absolutely no trouble, for as soon as he has his meals he retires to his room and plays on his bagpipe, only he calls it his "bugpeep." It is "The Campbells are Coming," without variations, at intervals all day long and from seven till eleven at night. Sometimes I wish they would make haste and ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... middle ages the name chorus was given to a primitive bagpipe without a drone. The instrument is best known by the Latin description contained in the apocryphal letter of St Jerome, ad Dardanum: "Chorus quoque simplex, pellis cum duabus cicutis aereis, et per primam inspiratur per secundam vocem emittit." Several illuminated MSS.[1] from the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Servian is compared by Mr Paton to that of the Scotch Highlander; and it is not without strong points of resemblance. "He is brave in battle, highly hospitable; delights in simple and plaintive music and poetry, his favourite instruments being the bagpipe and fiddle; unlike the Greek, he shows little aptitude for trade; and, unlike the Bulgarian, he is very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... occasions, the consciences which were at first only scrupulous, became confirmed in their opinions, instead of giving way to the terrors of authority; and the youth of both sexes, to whom the pipe and tabor in England, or the bagpipe in Scotland, would have been in themselves an irresistible temptation, were enabled to set them at defiance, from the proud consciousness that they were, at the same time, resisting an act of council. To compel men to dance and be ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... unpleasant to him; and I really am persuaded he has a conscience that would gild the inside of a dungeon. The feats of our bare-legged warriors in the late War [BERG-SCHOTTEN, among whom I was a Colonel], accompanied by a PIBRACH [elegiac bagpipe droning MORE SUO] in his outer room, have an effect on the old Don, which would delight you." [Keith, i. 129; "Dresden, 25th February, 1770:" to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... which they swing violently as they sidle round in a kind of hop-skip-and-a-jump step, accompanied by singing in a most monotonous tone. This went on until midnight. This kind of dance dates, they say, from Celtic times. The music consists of the biniou or bagpipe, and the flageolet or hautboy, sometimes with the addition of a drum. The biniou, cornemuse, or bagpipe, is the national instrument of western and southern France. How it came to be introduced into Scotland and expel the harp—which was as much the original music of Scotland as of Wales ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... it began with a contagious cackle, it deepened into a flabby guffaw, and after all the others roundabout had finished their cachinnatory tribute it wound up with what was between a roar and the lazy drone of a bagpipe. ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... short, he must (as the books on Success say) give "his best"; and what a small part of a man "his best" is! His second and third best are often much better. If he is the first violin he must fiddle for life; he must not remember that he is a fine fourth bagpipe, a fair fifteenth billiard-cue, a foil, a fountain pen, a hand at whist, a gun, ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... the bagpipe come! Its sack an airy bubble. Schnick, schnick, schnack, with nasal hum, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Hunters' Tryst were in bed and asleep long ago. Whether by natural gift or acquired habit they could suffer pandemonium to reign all over the house, and yet lie ranked in the kitchen like Egyptian mummies, only that the sound of their snoring rose and fell ceaselessly like the drone of a bagpipe. Here the Six-Footers invaded them—in their citadel, so to speak; counted the bunks and the sleepers; proposed to put me in bed to one of the lasses, proposed to have one of the lasses out to make room for me, fell over chairs, and made noise enough to waken the dead: the whole illuminated ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... use of the minor seventh instead of the major seventh (as in "Wha'll be King but Charlie?"), and the sudden modulation from the minor key to the major key, a whole tone below, are in exact accord with the bagpipe, and are more certain in the strathspeys, reels and dances which are universally played on that instrument; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... if you did but hear the pedlar at the door, you would never dance again after a tabor and pipe; no, the bagpipe could not move you: he sings several tunes faster than you'll tell money: he utters them as he had eaten ballads, and all men's ears ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... much delight, as thou dost, in beating a dead-march with thy goose-quills. Whereas, didst thou but know thine own talents, thou art formed to give mirth by thy very appearance; and wouldst make a better figure by half, leading up thy brother-bears at Hockley in the Hole, to the music of a Scot's bagpipe. Methinks I see thy clumsy sides shaking, (and shaking the sides of all beholders,) in these attitudes; thy fat head archly beating time on thy porterly shoulders, right and left by turns, as I once beheld thee practising to the horn-pipe at Preston. ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... Indian snake charmer who was asleep in one corner of the tent on a pile of rugs. The man took in the situation at a glance, and came to Billy's rescue, making the snake uncoil itself by playing on a kind of bagpipe, a queer, weird, monotonous piece of music. This charmed the snake and it uncoiled itself from Billy and, swaying its body, crawled toward the ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... incompetent elocutionists or the barbarisms of custom give you tones or enunciations at war with those that God implanted. Study the vocal instrument and then play the best tune on it possible, but do not try to make a flute sound like a trumpet, or a bagpipe do the ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... such bright gold as to vie with the sunbeams, and over them they wore garlands of jessamine, roses, amaranth, and honeysuckle. At their head were a venerable old man and an ancient dame, more brisk and active, however, than might have been expected from their years. The notes of a Zamora bagpipe accompanied them, and with modesty in their countenances and in their eyes, and lightness in their feet, they looked the best ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... maypole new, with glee and merriment, While as the bagpipe tooted it, Thyrsis and Chloris fine together footed it: And to the joyous instrument Still they went to and fro, and finely flaunted it, And then both met again and thus they chaunted it. ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... tunes!" said Bartle Massey, contemptuously; "I've heard enough o' the Scotch tunes to last me while I live. They're fit for nothing but to frighten the birds with—that's to say, the English birds, for the Scotch birds may sing Scotch for what I know. Give the lads a bagpipe instead of a rattle, and I'll answer for it ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... did some fancy quick-step singing on stage: "God Bless America"; "Over there"; and "The Soldiers Are Coming", to the tune of "The Campbells Are Coming", complete with bagpipe brigade. ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... like a huge broken-legged grasshopper upon his elbows and the ends of his toes! This extraordinary feat brought down the house in the wildest enthusiasm, and the uproar of shouting and singing drowned all the instruments except the comb, which still droned away like a Scottish bagpipe in its last agonies! Such singing, such dancing, and such excitement, I had never before witnessed. It swept away my self-possession like the blast of a trumpet sounding a charge. At last, the man, after dancing successively with all the ladies in the room, stopped ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... seldom time, and the farm-work will not allow of a three days' holiday, to say nothing of the slackened diligence which is the unavoidable consequence of a village festival. I was seated under the large kitchen chimney, when the firing of pistols, the barking of dogs, and the squeaking sounds of the bagpipe, announced the approach of the betrothed couple. Presently after, old Maurice and his wife, with Germain and Marie, followed by Jacques and his wife, the chief respective kinsfolk, and the godfathers and godmothers of the betrothed, made their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... the green water sliding up and falling from the polished black rock surface. The sight seemed to bring the hostile coast leagues nearer and the bagpipe crying of the guillemots as it died away behind them seemed a barrier ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... cover to assailants, whose attitude was already so threatening as to hinder the beginning of repairing operations. Their fire swept the defences, and their braves capered derisively to the strains of a bagpipe on the adjacent rocky elevation, which thenceforth went by the name of 'Piper's Hill.' A sortie on the 15th cleared the environs of the troublesome Afghans, supplies began to come in, and Broad-foot was free to set his sappers to the ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... hurdy-gurdy girls, who tiptoed to the concertina, the fiddle, and the hand-organ, were German; and if we may believe the poet of Cariboo, they were something like the Glasgow girls described by Wolfe as 'cold to everything but a bagpipe—I wrong them—there is not one that does not melt away {90} at the sound of money.' Sings ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... unseen. In modern Scotland the bagpipe has altogether taken the place of the harp. A writer of the sixteenth century says: "They (the Highlanders) take great delight to deck their harps with silver and precious stones; the poor ones that cannot attain thereunto deck them with crystal. They sing verses prettily compounded ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... ROBBERY.—According to Mr. Punch's sharp contemporary, the Lancet, the effect of bagpipe-playing upon the teeth is to blunt them; in fact, in course of time, to wear them away. To the auditor the music has a contrary effect. Mr. Punch is able to say, from experience, that he has never listened to the National instrument of Grand ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... pressed against that of his neighbor, there is a great deal of dancing going on. Here and there a ring is formed, carved out, as it were, from the solid mass of human beings, in which some half dozen couples are revolving more or less in time to the braying of a bagpipe or scraping of a fiddle, executing something which has more or less semblance to a waltz. The mode in which these rings are formed is at once simple and efficacious. Any couple who feel disposed to dance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... music: there is a man who plays so nimbly on the kettle-drum, that he has reduced that noisy instrument to an object of sight; for, if you don't see the tricks with his hands, it is no better than ordinary: another plays on a violin and trumpet together: another mimics a bagpipe with a German flute, and makes it full as disagreeable. There is an admired dulcimer, a favourite salt-box, and a really curious jew's-harp. Two or three men intend to persuade you that they play on a broomstick, which is drolly brought in, carefully shrouded in a case, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe. ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... himself, "the last and youngest of a noble line." There is a good deal also about his maternal ancestors, in a poem on Lachin-y-gair, a mountain where he spent part of his youth, and might have learnt that a pibroch is not a bagpipe, any more than a duet ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of May-games, and there will be prizes for archery, and there will be the knight's ale, and the foresters' venison, and there will be Kit Scrapesqueak with his fiddle, and little Tom Whistlerap with his fife and tabor, and Sam Trumtwang with his harp, and Peter Muggledrone with his bagpipe, and how I shall dance with Will Whitethorn!" added the girl, clapping her hands as she spoke, and bounding from the ground with the pleasure ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... gold! When the mighty heart of Scotland, all too big to slumber more, Burst in wrath and exultation, like a huge volcano's roar! There they stand, the batter'd columns, underneath the murky sky, In the hush of desperation, not to conquer but to die. Hark! the bagpipe's fitful wailing—not the pibroch loud and shrill, That, with hope of bloody banquet, lured the ravens from the hill— But a dirge both low and solemn, fit for ears of dying men, Marshall'd for their latest battle, never more to fight ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... leafless trees, on whose summits swayed the cawing rooks, until servitude seemed intolerable, and he prayed for the voice of the bearward that summoned him to Southwark. And when the chained bear, the familiar monkey on his back, followed the shrill bagpipe along the curious street, Briscoe felt that blood, not ink, coursed in his veins, forgot the tiresome impediment of the law, and joined the throng, hungry for this sport of kings. Nor was he the patron of an enterprise wherein he dared ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... her maidens a sweet Cymric cadence She leads, just to lighten their sewing; Now at the farm, her food basket on arm, She has set all the cock'rels a-crowing. The turkey-cock strutting and strumming, His bagpipe puts by at her humming, And even the old gander, The fowl-yard's commander, He winks his sly ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... bagpipe, and who, together with the Graces and their sovereign lady, vanish at the knight's approach, it is surely not fanciful to see the gracious shadows of the idyllic poet's vision trooping reluctantly away at the call of a more lofty theme. With this sense of regret at the vanishing of an ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... the Guard alone, off to the right, seems untouched, and on it comes. Suddenly the sound of a bagpipe is heard. The Scots are awake. From the trenches an avalanche rushes forward toward the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... herald cried aloud, "To you it is commanded, O peoples, nations: 'The moment you hear the sound of the trumpet, flute, lute, harp, bagpipe, and all kinds of musical instruments, you shall fall down and worship the golden image. Whoever does not fall down and worship shall be thrown into a burning, fiery furnace.'" So when all the people heard the sound of the trumpet, flute, lute, harp, bagpipe, and all kinds of musical ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... that are t' appear As daughters to the instant year: Sit crown'd with rosebuds, and carouse Till Liber Pater twirls the house About your ears; and lay upon The year your cares that's fled and gone. And let the russet swains the plough And harrow hang up, resting now; And to the bagpipe all address, Till sleep takes place of weariness. And thus, throughout, with Christmas plays Frolic the ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... comes a succession of organ-grinders, playing interminably under your window; and a man with a bassoon and a monkey, who takes your pennies and pulls off his cap in acknowledgment; and wandering minstrels, with guitar and voice; and a Highland bagpipe, squealing out a tangled skein of discord, together with a Highland maid, who dances a hornpipe; and Punch and Judy,—in a word, we have specimens of all manner of vagrancy that infests England. In these ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... left. At the end of Bishopgate-Street-Without a considerable crowd was collected round a party of comely young milkmaids, who were executing a lively and characteristic dance to the accompaniment of a bagpipe and fiddle. Instead of carrying pails as was their wont, these milkmaids, who were all very neatly attired, bore on their heads a pile of silver plate, borrowed for the occasion, arranged like a pyramid, and adorned with ribands and flowers. In this way they visited all their customers and ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... feet had wearily padded for days; now a sleepy negro on a load of hay, an organ grinder with a chattering monkey or a clumsy bear, another sleepy negro with another load of hay, and a picturesque minstrel with an elaborate musical contrivance drawn by a horse. Now a capering Italian with a bagpipe, who danced grotesquely to his own piping, and piped the pennies out of rural pockets as if they had been so many ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... album, she knew, was in their boudoir, which was situated at the end of the long and rather gloomy corridor of the upper storey. Highly incensed at her sister's slowness, she was hastening along the corridor, when, to her supreme astonishment, she suddenly saw the figure of a man in kilts, with a bagpipe under his arm, emerge through the half-open door of the boudoir, and with a peculiar gliding motion advance towards her. A curious feeling, with which she was totally unfamiliar, compelled her to remain mute and motionless; ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... on the extreme right, the most exposed of all, being in the air, was almost annihilated at the very first shock. lt was formed of the 75th regiment of Highlanders. The bagpipe-player in the centre dropped his melancholy eyes, filled with the reflections of the forests and the lakes, in profound inattention, while men were being exterminated around him, and seated on a drum, with his pibroch under his arm, played the Highland ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... vestry is a lancet-shaped doorway, and, west of it, an arcade of two lancet apertures, supported by four columns of serpentine. Within the vestry is a two-light lancet window; and let into the eastern wall is a small slab, having four grotesque figures, one blowing a kind of bagpipe, the others dancing. This is said to have been a portion of a "minstrel pillar," it is apparently Saxon, and is probably a relic from the original fabric. The chancel arch is of red and black bricks, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... in a charade is to try and puzzle your audience as much as you can. You must choose a word of two or more syllables, such as "Bagpipe." First you must act the word "Bag," and be sure that the word is mentioned, though you must be careful to bring it in in such a way that the audience shall not guess it is ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... the fields and orchards armed with torches, setting fire to bundles of straw, and thus it is believed driving out such vermin as are likely to damage the crops. III Italy among other Advent celebrations is the entry into Rome in the last days of Advent of the Calabrian pifferari or bagpipe players, who play before the shrines of the Holy Mother. The Italian tradition is that the shepherds played on these pipes when they came to the manger at Bethlehem to do homage to the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... watch; some of the guard were asleep on wooden benches, and on the platform amongst the branches, where a little baboon—looking old man, in the dress of a drummer, had perched himself, and sat playing a Biscayan air on a sort of bagpipe; others were gathered round the fire, cooking their food, or cleaning their arms. It shone brightly on the long line of Spanish transports that were moored below, stem on to the beach, and on the white sails of the armed craft that were still hovering under weigh in the offing, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... parts where a good shower of rain has fallen, the stridulous piercing notes of the cicadae are perfectly deafening; a drab-colored cricket joins the chorus with a sharp sound, which has as little modulation as the drone of a Scottish bagpipe. I could not conceive how so small a thing could raise such a sound; it seemed to make the ground over it thrill. When cicadae, crickets, and frogs unite, their music may be heard at the distance of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... fathers' land, Valley and fountain! Farewell, old Scotland's strand, Forest and mountain! Then hush the drum and hush the flute, And be the stirring bagpipe mute— Such sounds may not with sorrow suit— And fare ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... side was originally playing a drum and a species of clarionet. The next one evidently has the remnants of a harp in his raised hands. The third or central figure is supposed merely to have held a hawk upon his wrist; whilst the fourth seeks to extract harmony from a dilapidated bagpipe; and the fifth, with crossed legs, strums complacently away upon the fiddle. The ground floor of the quaint old tenement is to-day an oil and colour shop, the front of which is covered with chequers in all ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... barred windows and the steaming radiator. The family resemblance that Mr. Lin Darton bore to Old Con threw into relief the former's honesty, and made more bearable his heavy sentimentalism, upon which Con had played as surely as on a bagpipe, sounding its narrow range with insistent evenness ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the murmur of a stream which falls pellucid down from rock to rock, showing the abundance of its mountain source. And as the sound takes its form at the cithern's neck, and in like manner at the vent of the bagpipe the air which enters it, thus, without pause of waiting, that murmur of the Eagle rose up through its neck, as if it were hollow. There it became voice, and thence it issued through its beak in form of words, such as the heart whereon I ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... two inflated skins, like a double "bagpipe." Each foot of the "bellows-blower" is strapped to one skin, the pipes of the bellows being fixed in the air-hole of the blast. He then works the skins alternately by moving his feet up and down, being assisted in this treadmill ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... acquainted with the present peer or not, there were to be seen quite a number of dignified personages in divers shades of tartan, and parasols of all the hues in the rainbow. The Baron was in his element. He judged the bagpipe competition himself, and held one end of the tape that measured the jumps, besides delighting the whole assembled company by ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... was carried to the gallows, Jack played a fine tune of his own composing on the bagpipe, which retains the name of Macpherson's tune to this day.—History of ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... intentions, kept going towards it. The lantern which first stopped now turned red and began ascending. It was a coyote lantern. It was going up to the top of its pole. A sheep baaed with the suddenness of a bagpipe. ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... thy bagpipe broke, or are thy lambs miswent; Thy wallet or thy tar-box lost; or thy ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... gentleman promptly proposes accompanying me some distance into the country. On our way through Dieppe I notice blue-bloused peasants guiding small flocks of goats through the streets, calling them along with a peculiar, tuneful instrument that sounds somewhat similar to a bagpipe. I learn that they are Normandy peasants, who keep their flocks around town all summer, goat's milk being considered beneficial for infants and invalids. They lead the goats from house to house, and milk whatever quantity their customers want at their own door ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... patriot-like, thou'lt strut and frown. What though by enemies 'tis said, The laurel, which adorns thy head, Must one day come in competition, By virtue of some sly petition: Yet mum for that; hope still the best, Nor let such cares disturb thy rest. Methinks I hear thee loud as trumpet, As bagpipe shrill or oyster-strumpet; Methinks I see thee, spruce and fine, With coat embroider'd richly shine, And dazzle all the idol faces, As through the hall thy worship paces; (Though this I speak but at a venture, Supposing thou hast tick ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... pretext that the length of the Office of incensing was too long to be filled up entirely by singing, M. Widor, seated at his desk, rolled forth stale fragments of music splashed about above, imitating the human voice and the flute, the bagpipe and the bassoon, or indeed, tired of affectations, he blew furiously on the keys, ending by imitating the roll of locomotives over iron bridges, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... son, for example, writes from Prague that 'in the mines at Brunswick is reported to be a spirit; and another at the tin mine at Stackenwald, in the shape of a monke, which strikes the miners, playeth on the bagpipe, and many such tricks.' They correspond, however, on more legitimate inquiries, and especially on the points to be noticed in the son's medical lectures. Sir Thomas takes a keen interest in the fate of an unlucky 'oestridge' which found its way to London in 1681, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Dean's Yard, Westminster, a small King's Scholar, waving his gown and yelling, collided with an old gentleman hobbling round the corner, and sat down suddenly in the gutter with a squeal, as a bagpipe collapses. The old gentleman rotated on one leg like a dervish, made an ineffectual stoop to clutch his gouty toe and wound up by bringing his rattan cane smartly ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wonder! Ten thousand paroquets shrieking passionately, like a hundred knife-grinders at work, is no joke; especially when their melodies are mingled with the discordant cries of herons, and bitterns, and cranes, and the ceaseless buzz and hum of insects, like the bagpipe's drone, and the dismal croaking of boat-bills and frogs,—one kind of which latter, by the way, doesn't croak at all, but whistles, ay, better than many a bird! The universal hubbub is tremendous! ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... terra-terra. He carries his elbows backward, as if he were pinioned like a trussed-up fowl, and moves as stiff as if he was upon the spit. His legs are stuck in his great voluminous breeches like the whistles in a bagpipe, those abundant breeches in which his nether parts are not clothed but packed up. His hat has been long in a consumption of the fashion, and is now almost worn to nothing; if it do not recover quickly it will grow too ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... slave," cried the Scot, dropping to the pavement a true Highland knee. Whereon forth shrieked a bagpipe, and Dolfin's minstrel ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... A bagpipe stilled in the hall, a lute breathed a melody from a neighbouring room, the servants in claret and yellow livery ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... or in camp, I had planned the style of my home-coming. Master Webster, in the Humanities, droning away like a Boreraig bagpipe, would be sending my mind back to Shira Glen, its braes and corries and singing waters, and Ben Bhuidhe over all, and with my chin on a hand I would ponder on how I should go home again when this weary scholarship was over. I had ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... some momentary strain, it swelled upwards in full chorus, but gradually these passing flights grew rarer, and finally all ceased, save a long, low, droning sound, like the expiring sigh of a wearied bagpipe. His fingers still continued mechanically to beat time upon the table, and still his head nodded sympathetically to the music; his eyelids closed in sleep; and as the last verse concluded, a full-drawn snore announced that ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Wallace, the great Scottish hero; this last being lent him by the blacksmith. These books excited little Robert so much that if ever a recruiting sergeant came to his village, he would strut up and down in raptures after the drum and bagpipe, and long to be tall enough to be a soldier. The story of Wallace, too, awoke in his heart a love of Scotland and all things Scottish, which remained with him his whole life through. At times he would steal away by himself to read the brave, sad story, and weep over the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... large sheet of iron laid upon the ice, while their horses were feeding close by upon hay, which they shook out before them. And having taken a merry carouse together, they all set to dancing upon the ice with the women to the bagpipe, so that the encampment looked right jovial as ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... the Highlands during last century was a very common affair. Captain Burt, in his letters from Scotland, 1723, says that when a person dies the neighbours gather in the evening in the house where the dead lies, with bagpipe, and spend the evening in dancing—the nearest relative to the corpse leading off the dance. Whisky and other refreshments are provided, and this is continued every night until ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... was so overlaid with brawn and dignity that, though it heaved, panted, and struggled, it could never once get vent. Speaking through his apoplectic organs, I could not understand myself: it was a mumbling hubbub, the drone of a bagpipe, and the tantalizing strum strum of a hurdy-gurdy! Never was hearer more impatient to have it begin; never was hearer better pleased to have it over! Every sentence did but increase the fever of my mind. Enoch himself perceived ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... sculpture and tracery angels are sometimes portrayed practising on the bagpipe. It was occasionally used in churches before the introduction of the organ, which occurred early in the fifteenth century. Written music came into use about the same time, and both were loudly denounced by many ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... ill-advised, but brave attempt, I could not refrain from tears. There is a certain association of ideas in my mind upon that subject, by which I am strongly affected. The very Highland names, or the sound of a bagpipe; will stir my blood, and fill me with a mixture of melancholy and respect for courage; with pity for an unfortunate and superstitious regard for antiquity, and thoughtless inclination for war; in short, with ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... social enjoyment and occupation with the Irish of those days were music and chess. The harp was the favourite instrument, but the horn or trumpet, and the pibroch or bagpipe, were also in common use. Not only professional performers, but men and women of all ranks, from the humblest to the highest, prided themselves on some knowledge of instrumental music. It seems to have formed part of the education ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... munch it very deliberately. "There's a saying," he went on between mouthfuls, "about somebody or other axin' more questions in one breath than a wise man can answer in a week; and likewise, there's another saying that even a bagpipe won't speak till his belly be full. Well, now, as for coming alone, in the first place and in round numbers I didn't; and as for coming to tell you this, partly it was and partly it wasn't; and as for your going back with me, that's ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... geese shall cackle on the poop, No more the bagpipe through the orlop sound, No more the midshipmen, a jovial group, Shall toast the girls, and push the bottle round. In death's dark road at anchor fast they stay, Till Heaven's loud signal shall in thunder roar; Then starting ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... power. Doylt, stupid, stupefied. Doytin, doddering., Dozen'd, torpid. Dozin, torpid. Draigl't, draggled. Drant, prosing. Drap, drop. Draunting, tedious. Dree, endure, suffer. Dreigh, v. dreight. Dribble, drizzle. Driddle, to toddle. Dreigh, tedious, dull. Droddum, the breech. Drone, part of the bagpipe. Droop-rumpl't, short-rumped. Drouk, to wet, to drench. Droukit, wetted. Drouth, thirst. Drouthy, thirsty. Druken, drucken, drunken. Drumlie, muddy, turbid. Drummock, raw meal and cold water. Drunt, the huff. Dry, thirsty. Dub, puddle, slush. Duddie, ragged. Duddies, dim. of duds, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... seem to have been too barbarous for even those lawless times, while by a strange contumacy in latter times, a representative of that ancient family pertinaciously continued to proclaim its infamy and downfall by the adherence to the wild strain of bagpipe music (their family pibroch called Cillechriost), at once indicative of its shame and submission. Kenneth's character and policies were of a higher order, and in the result he was everywhere the gainer by them." He was supported by Murdoch Mackenzie, II. of Redcastle; and by his own brothers ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... of their patients; Jacobins, but not the less anti-Jacobins; every Calvinist, which seems reasonable; but then also, which is intolerable, every Arminian. Is philosophy able to account for this morbid affection, and particularly when it takes the restricted form (as sometimes it does, in the bagpipe case) of seeking furiously to kick the piper, instead of paying him? In this case, my brother was urgent with me to mount en croupe behind himself. But weak as I usually was, this proposal I resisted as an immediate suggestion of the fiend; for I had heard, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... man named Dermot Conelly who had formerly been in England, and had learned there to play on the Bag-pipes, which he carried to Sea with him; yet so un-Englished he was, that he had quite forgotten your Language, but still retained his Art of Bagpipe-playing, in which he took extraordinary delight; being one day on Land in the Isle of Pines, he played on them, but to see the admiration of those naked people concerning them, would have striken you into admiration; long time it was before ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... hurt, but that my skill can heale; And when my carefull eye, I cast vpon my sheepe I sort them in my Pens, and sorted soe I keepe: Those that are bigst of Boane, I still reserue for breed, My Cullings I put off, or for the Chapman feed. 210 When the Euening doth approach I to my Bagpipe take, And to my Grazing flocks such Musick then I make, That they forbeare to feed; then me a King you see, I playing goe before, my Subiects followe me, My Bell-weather most braue, before the rest doth stalke, The Father of the flocke, and after him doth ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... says Newte, who travelled through the district in 1791, "venerating the memory of the bard, rose with one consent, and with bagpipe music carried the sacred dust away by force, and buried it on the top of Dunmore, in the centre of his father's fort." Burns visited Ossian's grave. Writing to his brother, on his return to Edinburgh from the North, he says—"Being warm from Ossian's country, where I have seen his very ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... day. Another one calls a man so when he lies on the floor and holds himself on by the carpet. So,—as to soundness, some persons can not see that a horse is unsound, unless he works his flanks like the drone of a bagpipe, or blows and roars like a blacksmith's bellows; while some are so fastidious as to consider a horse as next to valueless because he may have a corn that he never feels, or a thrush for which he is not, nor likely to be, ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... the shore who, with the aid of ropes, are pulling the boat, those two-legged horses, groan from exertion. The bagpipe player is making his gayest music, but in vain—he cannot allure the young people to dance; there is no place for dancing, the large deck of the boat is covered with human beings. Old men, and even women, are obliged ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... on both sides, in order to avoid the expense of a regular wedding. The principal amusement on Sundays and holidays is the choro ([Greek: choros]), which is danced on the village green to the strains of the gaida or bagpipe, and the gusla, a rudimentary fiddle. The Bulgarians are religious in a simple way, but not fanatical, and the influence of the priesthood is limited. Many ancient superstitions linger among the peasantry, such as the belief in the vampire ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... "A bagpipe with bronchitis nothing to it," says FARQUHARSON, curling himself up with delight as he hears sounds that remind him of his mountain home. HUNTER has relentlessly pursued the unhappy LORD-ADVOCATE, and CALDWELL has thoroughly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various |
