"Celtic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have something to do with the Celtic genius. One can always understand a Scottish Celt better by comparing him with an Irish one or a Welsh; and it will certainly prove illuminative in the present case to remember Mr. W.B. Yeats while one is thinking of Fiona Macleod. To the ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... The Celtic races have a certain sympathy with deception. They have a certain appreciation of the value of lying as a fine art, which has never been more skilfully shown than in the passage from De Balzac we have quoted. ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... gazed upon his clustering locks, With ivy berries wreathed, and his blithe youth, Had by him, ere he parted thence, a son Much like his father, but his mother more, Whom therefore she brought up, and Comus named: Who, ripe and frolic of his full-grown age, Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields, 60 At last betakes him to this ominous wood, And, in thick shelter of black shades imbowered, Excels his mother at her mighty art; Offering to every weary traveller His orient liquor in a crystal glass, To quench the drouth of Phoebus; ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... dialects frequently helps to ascertain its real history, and may become a final test where those of form and meaning leave us in doubt. In the study of Norse or Scandinavian influence on Lowland Scotch the question of Gaelic influence cannot be overlooked. The extent of Norse influence on Celtic in Caithness, Sutherland and the Western Highlands, has never been ascertained, nor the influence of Celtic on Lowland Scotch. A large number of Scandinavian loanwords are common to Gaelic, Irish, and Lowland Scotch. ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom
... smiled thoughtfully and envied us not, rather pitied us, perhaps. Barefooted women in yellow shawls gave kind smiles, and flashed looks from eyes like stars, as often blue as black, but always singularly Celtic. Scarcely a face but was furnished with grave Celtic features; for Celts these people were long before they were Spaniards; and there is no type so ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... had, in the space of a few months, been transferred from the Saxon to the Celtic population. The transfer of the military power had been not less complete. The army, which, under the command of Ormond, had been the chief safeguard of the English ascendency, had ceased to exist. Whole regiments had been dissolved ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... only, but also a pretty and festive air thrown about these things. And much more would this be true among the beauty-loving, and luxurious-natured children of the tropics, than with the comparatively barbarous Celtic blood. But between entertaining thirty and seven hundred there was a difference. And between the season of roses and fruits, and the time of mid-winter, even though in a southern clime, there was another wide difference. I had need of a great deal ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... heavily-shaded lip, and which with pure outlines and outspoken reliefs gives us some of our handsomest women,—the women whom ornaments of pure gold adorn more than any other parures; and again, but only here and there, one with dark hair and gray or blue eyes, a Celtic type, perhaps, but found in our native stock occasionally; rarest of all, a light-haired girl with dark eyes, hazel, brown, or of the color of that mountain-brook spoken of in this chapter, where it ran through shadowy woodlands. With these were to be seen at intervals ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... Kilkenny many interesting excursions may be made. To Kells, twelve statute miles, where there are the ruins of an important twelfth century priory. Two miles from Kells is Kilree, where are situate a ruined church, Round Tower, and Celtic cross, and a remarkable tomb slab in the church, on which is an ancient symbolic sculpture of a cock-in-a-pot crowing. Three miles from Kilree is Aghavillar, with ruined church, attached castellated house, and ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... of a certain Celtic type, above the medium height, with the freedom of carriage and gait which is the peculiar possession of her country-women. Her face was a true oval, and her complexion of that kind which tans readily but ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... abbey the vale of Esechasan, to which, on the evening before his execution, the Earl wrote such touching verses; the quaint old kitchen-garden; the ruins of the ancient Castle, where worthy Major Dalgetty is said to have passed such uncom- fortable moments;—the Celtic cross from lone Iona:—all and everything I showed off with as much pride and pleasure, I think, as if they had been my own possessions; and the more so as the Icelander himself evidently sympathised with such ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... Norwegian and Celtic (Scottish and Irish) immigrants during the late 9th and 10th centuries A.D., Iceland boasts the world's oldest functioning legislative assembly, the Althing, established in 930. Independent for over 300 years, Iceland was subsequently ruled by Norway and Denmark. ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... now in what the geological professors call a state of transition, in the period of Silurian stones, so called because this specimen of early formation is very common in England in the counties formerly inhabited by the Celtic nation known ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Fechars!" said Swipey for a twelvemonth after, stunned by the mere recollection of that home of the glories of the earth. And then he would begin to expatiate for the benefit of young Gourlay—for Swipey, though his name was the base Teutonic Brown, had a Celtic contempt for brute facts that cripple the imperial mind. So well did he expatiate that young Gourlay would slink home to his mother and say, "Yah, even Swipey Broon has been to Fechars, though my faither 'ull no allow ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... forcibly by their resemblance to the Highlanders of Scotland, in dress, figure, and manner of living. Their very mountains seem Caledonian, with a kinder climate. The kilt, though white; the spare, active form; their dialect Celtic, in the sound, and their hardy habits, all carried me back to Morven."—Notes to the Second Chapter ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the names of English kingdoms and shires: in the south the Saxons founded the kingdoms of Sussex, Essex, Middlesex, and Wessex; in the east the Anglians founded East Anglia, though in the north they retained the Celtic names, Bernicia and Deira. The districts in which they met and mingled have less distinctive names; Surrey was perhaps disputed between all the Saxon kingdoms, Hampshire between West Saxons, South Saxons, and Jutes; while in the centre Mercia was a mixed march or ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... no longer necessary to demonstrate the nullity of the notion of race. It used to be applied to vague groups, formed by a nation or a language; for race as understood by historians (Greek, Roman, Germanic, Celtic, Slavonic races) has nothing but the name in common with race in the anthropological sense—that is, a group of men possessing the same hereditary characteristics. It has been reduced to an absurdity by the abuse Taine made of it. A very good criticism of it will be found ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... the Celtic imagination that will glory in such romantic material; but I am sure the men and women of the poorhouse are much more interested than we are apt to think in stories outside the small circle ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... that Brown had something of the Celtic spirit—the melancholy, the mystery of that sensitive and delicate temperament; but it is vitiated by what I can only call a schoolmaster's humour—cheap and silly, such as imposes on immature minds. When he was quite serious ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... thus gained access to the most authentic documents from which to study the ancient religion of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, and the Buddhists, but by discovering the real origin of Greek, Roman, and likewise of Teutonic, Slavonic, and Celtic mythology, it has become possible to separate the truly religious elements in the sacred traditions of these nations from the mythological crust by which they are surrounded, and thus to gain a clearer insight into the real faith of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... epithet Caracuyl, by which he was distinguished by the antient inhabitants of North-Britain. In the language of the Highlanders caracuyl signifies cruel eye, as we are given to understand by the ingenious editor of Fingal, who seems to think that Caracalla is no other than the Celtic word, adapted to the pronunciation of the Romans: but the truth is, Caracalla was the name of a Gaulish vestment, which this prince affected to wear; and hence he derived that surname. The Caracuyl of the Britons, is the same as the upodra idon of the Greeks, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... work of the summer. While the Romans were in winter quarters on friendly ground the Tencteri and Usipetes, Celtic tribes, partly because forced out by the Suebi and partly because called upon by the Gauls, crossed the Rhine and invaded the country of the Treveri. Finding Caesar there they became afraid and sent to him to make a truce, asking for land or ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... Graeco-Italic or Pelasgic, which comprises the Greek family and its various dialects, and the Italic family, the chief-subdivisions of which are the Etruscan, the Latin, and the modern languages derived from the Latin. The other Indo-European families are the Lettic, Slavic, Gothic, and Celtic, with their ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... this subject, and am rather puzzled. Are the English people, as existing now, Teutons, or Danes, or Celts, or what? Can we be Teutons when the aborigines of these islands were not Teutonic? I feel that my own genius—and I have a lot—is Celtic; at the same time I have always prided myself on my Norman blood; yet from my liking for the sea, which never makes me sick, at least at Herne Bay, I fancy I must be descended from a Scandinavian Viking. What is the ethnological ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... F. Campbell, "The Celtic Dragon Myth," with the "Geste of Fraoch and the Dragon," translated with Introduction by George Henderson, ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... to Mr. Jones the Historian of Brecknockshire, and came latterly into the possession of the late Rev. T. Price, with whose Executrix, Mrs. E. Powell of Abergavenny, it now remains. The author of the Celtic Researches took a transcript of it, which he communicated to the Rev. W. J. Rees, of Cascob, who had previously copied the said transcript by the permission of the Rev. E. Davies. Mr. Rees's copy was afterwards collated by Dr. Meyer with Mr. Davies's transcript, and the only inaccuracy ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... mysteries were carried on in oak groves and forests; but as the latter fact is doubtful, consequently the etymology founded upon it is shaken. It has been already stated that the Druids were magistrates and philosophers, and very few etymologists will cavil with me if we fix it at once upon the Celtic word ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... dark and bloody, between Saxon England and Celtic Wales. For centuries the red foot-marks of savage conflict scarred and covered its wild waste. Never before did so small a people make so stout, and desperate and protracted struggle for local independence and isolation. Never did one produce a more ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... protected by walls, and had a huge number of defenders. Consequently he was unable to accomplish aught with engines or by assaults, yet he took it as a result of the following coincidence. Pusio, a Celtic horseman, discharged a stone against the wall which so shook the superstructure that it immediately fell and dragged down the man who was leaning upon it. At this the rest were terrified, and in fear left the wall to ascend the acropolis. Subsequently ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... ALLOB'ROGES, a Celtic race troublesome to the Romans, who occupied the country between the Rhone and the Lake of Geneva, corresponding to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... give offence to such of our readers as wear the Celtic appearance, if we assume, as undisputed, the general superiority of the Teutonic to the Celtic or Slavonic races in mental acquirements. We believe that the German race are pre-eminent for their sense of order, of law, and of social institutions; and whether they derive these advantages from the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... guessed her when the deep-blue eyes rested on his for an instant as she passed, and fortified his conjecture by the coloring of the clear-skinned face and the marks of the Celtic ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... yards to north of the Round Tower stands "The Cathedral" illustrating almost every phase of ecclesiastical architecture which flourished in Ireland from St. Patrick to the Reformation—Cyclopean, Celtic-Romanesque, Transitional and Pointed. The chancel arch is possibly the most remarkable and beautiful illustration of the Transitional that we have. An extraordinary feature of the church is the wonderful series of Celtic arcades and panels filled with archaic sculptures in relief which ...
— The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore • Anonymous
... the countries of Europe to Christianity united them in their ways of thinking and believing, and they all honoured the saints. The names of the early saints, whether they were from the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Teutonic, or Slavonic, were soon spread throughout all the countries of Europe, so that now French, German, English, Italian, Spanish names, and those of the other European countries, are for the most part the same, only spelt and ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... in the name of a part of reality which it ignored or denied, an immaterial world which they mystically apprehended, which eluded direct description, frustrated rhetoric, and was only to be come at by the magical suggestion of colour, music, and symbol. It is most familiar to us in the 'Celtic' verse of Mr. Yeats ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... Ireland there are traces of Spanish as well as Celtic blood in many of its women; and Nora's quantities of thick, soft, intensely black hair must have come to her from a Spanish ancestor. So also did the delicately marked black brows and the black lashes ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... all the salt seas that had flowed between him and Connaught these forty years and more had not washed the Celtic element from his blood, nor the belief in fairies from his soul. The Celtic nature is a fast dye, and Mr Button's nature was such that though he had been shanghaied by Larry Marr in 'Frisco, though he had got drunk in most ports of the world, though he had ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... was held as great As German Emperor; and each knew how His evil part to play, nor mercy show. The German had one aim, it was to take All land he could, and it his own to make. The Pole already having Baltic shore, Seized Celtic ports, still needing more and more. On all the Northern Sea his crafts roused fear: Iceland beheld his demon navy near. Antwerp the German burnt; and Prussias twain Bowed to the yoke. The Polish King was fain To help the Russian ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... origin; and Hector Garret presented Bridget Kennedy to his wife as his faithful and honoured servant, whom he recommended to a high place in her regard. Bridget Kennedy displayed more marked traces of race than her master, but it was the Celtic nature under its least attractive aspect to strangers, proud, passionate, fanciful, and vindictive. She was devoted to her master, and capable of consideration for Leslie on his account—though jealous of her entrance upon the stage of Otter; but she evinced this reflected interest by encroachments ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... however, founded on The Second Sight, the belief in which was common to our ancestors, I owe you, at the same time, an apology. For the tone and colour of the story are so different from those naturally belonging to a Celtic tale, that you might well be inclined to refuse my request, simply on the ground that your pure Highland blood revolted from the degenerate embodiment given to the ancient belief. I can only say that my early education was not Celtic enough to enable me to do better ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... Mandshu Tartars, the Mongols, the Turkish-Tartar tribes, the Samoyedes, the Fins, and the Magyars. These families have however no nearer relation to each other than the individual tongues of the Indo-European group, as the Indian, the Romanic, German, Celtic, Slavic, and Persian languages. Still he regards the Magyar and Finnic languages as having greater mutual affinities than the others, though not to such a degree that one of these races of men can be supposed to be derived from the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... was almost exclusively Latin under the empire. After the annexation of Spain, Gaul and Brittany, the old Iberian, Celtic and other religions were unable to keep up the unequal struggle against the more advanced religion of the conquerors. The marvelous rapidity with which the literature of the civilizing Romans was accepted by the subject ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... inhabited the unexplored regions of Central Europe, the Celts and Germans, [Footnote: The Cimbri, who formed a portion of this invading body, had their original home in the modern peninsula of Jutland, whence came also early invaders of Britain, and they were probably a Celtic people.] had gathered a mass comprising, it is said, more than three hundred thousand men capable of fighting, besides hosts of women and children, and were marching with irresistible force towards the Roman domains. Nine years before (B.C. 113), these barbarians had defeated a Roman army ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... organization, individuality, and a centre of social life of their own. The families and tribes that migrate in search of new settlements carry with them their family and tribal organizations, and retain it for a long time. The Celtic tribes retained it in Gaul till broken up by the Roman conquest, under Caesar Augustus; in Ireland, till the middle of the seventeenth century; and in Scotland, till the middle of the eighteenth. It subsists still in the hordes of Tartary, the Arabs of the Desert, and the Berbers ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... science—an epoch when all these earlier discoveries were to be interpreted by means of investigations in a different field: for, in 1847, a man previously unknown to the world at large, Boucher de Perthes, published at Paris the first volume of his work on Celtic and Antediluvian Antiquities, and in this he showed engravings of typical flint implements and weapons, of which he had discovered thousands upon thousands in the high drift beds near ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... of the following pages, and the subject of this sketch, was of French-English and Celtic, or Scotch-Irish, extraction—English through his paternal great-grandmother, who was the daughter of Hinchia Gilliam, and his wife (nee) Harrison; Scotch-Irish through his maternal ancestry. The name itself proclaims ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle
... friends invariably spoke of him as "a typical Irishman." They looked upon him as so much comic relief to the more serious things of their own lives, and seemed constantly to expect him to perform some amusing antic, some innately Celtic act of comic folly. At such times, Mr. Quinn felt as if he could annihilate ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... Opinion, if not yet enfranchised, was already tolerated. The people of Palestine, from the destruction of their temple an outcast and a wandering race, were allured by the traffic and the condition of the New World; and not the Saxon and Celtic races only, the children of the bondmen that broke from slavery in Egypt, the posterity of those who had wandered in Arabia, and worshiped near Calvary, found a home, liberty, and a burial place on the island ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Saxon or English settlers, and with the still more primitive Celtic inhabitants, the Northmen founded a race extremely like that which now inhabits our own country. To this day, the Norman peasants of the Cotentin retain many marks of their origin and their half-forgotten kinship with the English race. While other Frenchmen ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... he learned also that the gospel is wider than the forms of Greek philosophy. The speculations of Alexandrian theology were as little appreciated by the Celts of Asia as is the stately churchmanship of England by the Celts of Wales. They were the foreigner's thoughts, too cold for Celtic zeal, too grand for Celtic narrowness. Fickleness is not inconsistent with a true and deep religious instinct, and we may find something austere and high behind the ever-changing phases of spiritual ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... Celtic strain in him which rendered him liable to these strange and perverse forebodings of evil. On sundry other occasions in his earlier youth he had fallen with appalling swiftness from the heights of glad anticipation to the ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... existence as a separate shire were predetermined for it by the shape and consistence of the mud or sand which gathered at the bottom of the great Wealden lake, or filled up the hollows of the old inland cretaceous sea. Paradoxical as it sounds to say so, the Celtic kingdom of the Regni, the South Saxon principality of AElle the Bretwalda, the modern English county of Sussex, have all had their destinies moulded by the geological conformation of the rock upon which they repose. Where human annals see only the handicraft and interaction ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... origin, but Tennyson did not feel England beyond the Border. There the Celt intruded, and he looked askance upon the Celt. The Celtic spirit smiled, and took its vengeance on him in its own way. It imposed on him, as his chief subject, a Celtic tale and a Celtic hero; and though he did his best to de-celticise the story, the vengeance lasts, for the more he did this the more he injured his work. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... call you cold, because you are not prone To bursts of eloquence or flights of feeling; You do not emulate the fretful tone Of those who turn from boastfulness to squealing; Your temperament, I am obliged to own, Is not expansive, Celtic, self-revealing; But some of us admire you none the less For your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... years' life under the care of a notable gentlewoman, Miss Annie Cragg Farthing, who was yet at its head at the time of this visit, but who died suddenly, a martyr to her devotion to the children, a year later; and a great Celtic cross in concrete, standing high on the bluff across the river, now marks the spot of her own selection—a spot that gives a fine view of Denali—where her body rests, and also the Alaskan mission's sense of the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... I speak, the associate of your own distant progenitor, was the founder of our house, as far as mere titles are concerned. We were but squires of Northumbria, of ancient Celtic descent, before the time of Queen Elizabeth. My ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... the Queen having expressed some curiosity in regard to the Irish national dances, Grace made sign to her harper, a wild-eyed, white-haired, long-bearded old gentleman, who struck up a stirring Celtic air, and instantly her warlike followers rushed into the midst of the hall, and began dancing, in the strangest, maddest way imaginable. Faster and louder played the harper, wilder and more furiously they danced; they wheeled and leaped and shook their arms in the ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... Louis VII, adopted it for the emblem of his house, spelling was scarcely an exact science, and the fleur-de-Louis soon became corrupted into its present form. Doubtless the royal flower was the white iris, and as li is the Celtic for white, there is room for another theory as to the origin of the name. It is our far more regal looking, but truly democratic blossom, jostling its fellows in the marshes, that is indeed "born ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... the word clunk, it is in use throughout Cornwall in the sense of "to swallow," and is undoubtedly Celtic. On referring to Le Gonidec's Dictionnaire Celto-Breton, I find "Lonka, or Lounka, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... itself up to the disputation, Lady Sunderbund, an actress, a dancer—though she, it is true, did not say very much—a novelist, a mechanical expert of some sort, a railway peer, geniuses, hairy and Celtic, people of no clearly definable position, but all quite unequal to the task of maintaining that air of reverent vagueness, that tenderness of touch, which is by all Anglican standards imperative in so deep, so mysterious, and, nowadays, in mixed society ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... doubly fatal ending," says Santa Fe, shaking his head sorrowful, "related to cock-tails. In what I am persuaded was a purely jesting spirit, Brother Green cast aspersions upon Brother Michael's skill as a drink-mixer. The injustice of his remarks, even in jest, aroused Brother Michael's hot Celtic nature and led to a retort, harshly personal, that excited Brother Green's anger—and from words they passed quickly to a settlement of the matter with their guns. However, as the fight was conducted by both of them in an honorable ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... doubt he had been very useful to men of genius, in virtue of qualities they lacked, but the secret of his hold on them was in his own rich nature. He was not only a born man of letters, he was a deeply emotional human being whose appeal was as much to the heart as to the head. The romantic Celtic mysticism of 'Aylwin,' with its lack of fashionable Celtic nebulosity, lends itself, if you will, to laughter, though personally I saw nothing funny in it: it seemed to me, before I was in touch with the author, a work of genuine expression from ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... merely clever professors, who have so successfully undermined the ancient and venerable lore. And thirdly, and worst of all, Disraeli never suspected that the French Revolution, which in the same breath he once contemptuously denounced as "the Celtic Rebellion against Semitic laws," was, in spite of its professed attack against religion, really a profoundly Christian, because a democratic and revolutionary movement. What a pity he did not know all this! ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... back," the man repeated, while his companions looked down at the Colonel with a strange fixedness. The Celtic nature, prone to sudden rage, stirred in them. The stranger who an hour before had been indifferent to them now wore the face of an enemy. The lake and the bog—ay, the secret grave yearned for him: the winding-sheet was high upon his breast. "Stay, and it's but once in your life ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... Banneker out of placid, inscrutable eyes, soft as a dove's, while he chatted at large about theaters, politics, the news of the day. Afterward the applicant met the Celtic assistant, Mr. Mallory, who broadly outlined for him the technique of the office. With no further preliminaries Banneker found himself employed at fifteen dollars a week, with Monday for his day off and directions to report on the first of ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... by the one which is called Wanderings in quest of Manx Literature. Now the title alone of that book is worth a library of commonplace works, for it gives the world an inkling of a thing it never before dreamed of, namely, that the little Celtic Isle of Man has a vernacular literature. What a pity if the book itself should be eventually lost! Here some person will doubtless exclaim, 'Perhaps the title is all book, and there is no book behind it; what can Mr. Borrow know of Manx literature?' Stay, friend, stay! A Manx grammar ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... have so long lived, and the jet-black hair and broad faces which I saw around me, instead of the light hair and oval countenances so general a few miles back, showed me that I was among the pure Celtic race. ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... sat down by him, and talked about languages and literature. The writer, who was only a boy, was a little frightened at first, but, not wishing to appear a child of absolute ignorance, he summoned what little learning he had, and began to blunder out something about the Celtic languages and their literature, and asked the Lion who he conceived Finn Ma Coul to be? and whether he did not consider the 'Ode to the Fox,' by Red Rhys of Eryry, to be a masterpiece of pleasantry? Receiving no answer to these ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... nobleness to the impurity of their blood—to its perpetual loans from foreign veins. See how the serpentine curve of his nose, his long nostril, and protruding, sharp-cut lips, mark his share of Phoenician or Jewish blood! how Norse, again, that dome-shaped forehead! how Celtic those dark curls, that restless gray eye, with its "swinden blicken," like Von Troneg ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... classed as numerals in the strict sense of the word. German possesses exactly the same number of native words in its numeral scale as English; and the same may be said of the Teutonic languages generally, as well as of the Celtic, the Latin, the Slavonic, and the Basque. This is, in fact, the universal method observed in the formation of any numeral scale, though the actual number of simple words may vary. The Chiquito language has but one numeral of any kind ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... soon followed by a great calamity to Rome—the greatest she had ever suffered. The city fell into the hands of the Gauls—a Celtic race. They were rather pastoral than agricultural, and reared great numbers of swine. They had little attachment to the soil, like the Italians and Germans, and delighted in towns. Their chief qualities were ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... far as we know, by men of the Celtic (or Keltic) race, of which the native Irish are types. The names of the rivers, mountains, and other natural features of the land are mostly Celtic, just as in this country they are mostly Indian. About fifty years before ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Still thicker lay the slain: And after those strange horses Black Auster toiled in vain. 640 Behind them Rome's long battle Came rolling on the foe, Ensigns dancing wild above, Blades all in line below, So comes the Po in flood-time 645 Upon the Celtic plain:[61] So comes the squall, blacker than night, Upon the Adrian main. How, by our Sire Quirinus,[62] It was a goodly sight 650 To see the thirty standards Swept down the tide of flight. So flies the spray of Adria When the black squall doth blow, ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... of priests of Celtic day, Ancient Druids, holding sway By smattering of Occult law And man's eternal sense of awe. Stonehenge They used Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain Reputed Prehistoric Fane; Note each megalithic boulder; No Monument ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... by the kirkyards; barrows of the dead, standing stones; beside these, the faint, durable footprints and handmarks of the Roman; and an antiquity older perhaps than any, and still living and active—a complete Celtic nomenclature and a scarce-mingled Celtic population. These rugged and grey hills were once included in the boundaries of the Caledonian Forest. Merlin sat here below his apple-tree and lamented Gwendolen; here spoke with Kentigern; here fell into his enchanted trance. And ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... With the plot and some of the music he was already vaguely acquainted; and he had gathered, in a general way, that Ulick Dean was considered to be a man of talent. The British public might demand a new opera, and there had been some talk of Celtic genius in the newspapers lately. Dean's "Grania" might make an admirable diversion in the Wagnerian repertoire—only it must not be too anti-Wagnerian. Mr. Goetze prided himself on being in the movement. Now, if Evelyn Innes would sing the title role, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... ranchers who had banded together for mutual protection began to arrive by saddle and buckboard. Men of all ages, they comprised a dozen descents and nationalities, the Celtic ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... in the Sagas: Grettir, Egil, Skarphedin, are always singing. In Kidnapped, Mr. Stevenson introduces "The Song of the Sword of Alan," a fine example of Celtic practice: words and air are beaten out together, in the heat of victory. In the same way, the women sang improvised dirges, like Helen; lullabies, like the lullaby of Danae in Simonides, and flower songs, as in modern Italy. Every function of life, war, ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... wonder and a sense of strangeness in the presence of beauty. They saw Nature with new eyes; found a new richness in the Past, a new picturesque and savor in the life of other races, particularly in the wild Northern and Celtic strains of blood. Life grew again something mysterious, not to be comprehended by the "good sense" of the Augustans, or expressible in the terms of the rhymed couplet. Instead of the normal, poets sought the exceptional, then the strange, the far-away in time or place, or else the familiar set ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... which the daughters of the South borrowed from their Celtic and German neighbours, seems especially to have excited their indignation. Tertullian, in his treatise "De Cultu Foeminarum," declaims with his usual fiery rhetoric against this habit. "I see some women," says the African, "who dye their hair with yellow; they are ashamed of their very nation, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... in supposing that, among the relics of antiquity still existing in Sardinia, the monoliths, of somewhat similar character with the Celtic remains at Carnac, Avebury, and Stonehenge, and common also in other countries, belong to the earliest age. These Sarde monoliths are found in several parts of the island, being, as the name expresses, single stones, or obelisks, set upright in the ground. In Sardinia they are called Pietra- ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... one of them, James Faraday, born in 1761, being father to the philosopher. A family tradition exists that the Faradays came originally from Ireland. Faraday himself has more than once expressed to me his belief that his blood was in part Celtic, but how much of it was so, or when the infusion took place, he was unable to say. He could imitate the Irish brogue, and his wonderful vivacity may have been in part due to his extraction. But there were other qualities which we should hardly think of ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... widely spread; he is claimed alike as a prince in Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Cumberland, and the lowlands of Scotland; that is to say, his fame is conterminous with the Brithonic race, and does not extend to the Goidels or Gaels. As is now well known, Great Britain was twice invaded by races of Celtic blood and tongue; the first wave was that of the Goidels, and after a lapse of some considerable time a second Celtic wave, that of the Brithons, or Britons, from the east, overran Britain, and drove the Gaels to west and north. Finn and Ossian belong to the mythic ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... awake, acute, and ready for use; but there is a lack of depth, which will rouse the perpetual wonder of future generations. While the mass of the people exhibits the strong characteristics of the Saxon, the Celtic, and the South German races, physical endurance and occasionally intellectual pre-eminence,—for, saving some peculiarities of speech, made defects merely by comparison, there are no such natural orators ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... exclaimed Macnab with a Celtic sigh, as he sipped his tea that night in the mellow light of ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... case, for on several occasions I have heard, as at Chartres, a little wood called la gatine; and once at Hastings was surprised, on inquiring my way in the fields, to be directed to pass the gattin hard by; namely a small copse. The word is said to be Celtic, and may be derived either from geat, which means a plot of ground, or geas, a ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... clashed, it was like the meeting of Miltonic thunderclouds over the Caspian. But on the whole it was safe to wager that even then grandmother got her way. John MacAlpine first discharged his Celtic electricity, and then disengaged his responsibility with the shrug of the right shoulder which was habitual to him. After all, was there not always Horace in his pocket—which he would finger to calm himself even in the heat of a ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... who really had a shadow of right may be reduced to three. If the old primitive custom of Scotland was to be regarded—a custom dear to all Celtic nations—by which illegitimate children were considered to have an equal right to the succession with the legitimate ones, then there could be no question that the heir was Patrick de Galithlys, son of Henry, the natural son of Alexander the Second. But if not—and in this ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... and Cenoma'nni; the southern, Gallia Cispada'na, was possessed by the Boi'i, Leno'nes, and Lingo'nes. 7. These plains were originally inhabited by a portion of the Etrurian or Tuscan nation, once the most powerful in Italy; but at an uncertain period a vast horde of Celtic Gauls forced the passage of the Alps and spread themselves over the country, which ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... province called Farsistan, north-east of what we now call Persia, the dwelling-place of the Persians, there dwelt, in the sixth and seventh centuries before Christ, a hardy tribe, of the purest blood of Iran, a branch of the same race as the Celtic, Teutonic, Greek, and Hindoo, and speaking a tongue akin to theirs. They had wandered thither, say their legends, out of the far north-east, from off some lofty plateau of Central Asia, driven out by ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... was urged on her that with the spring strength would return to the child. "No", she persisted. "He was lying asleep in my arms last night, and William came to me and said that he wanted Alf with him, but that I might keep the other two." She had in her a strong strain of Celtic superstition, and thoroughly believed that this "vision"—a most natural dream under the circumstances—was a direct "warning", and that her husband had come to her to tell her of her approaching ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... terribly changing events which followed the break-up of the Roman dominion over Britain, recorded their views of the changes and their causes, and in course of time recorded also some of the events of Celtic history and of Anglo-Saxon history. Then for later periods, no country of the Western world possesses such magnificent materials for history as our own. In the vast quantity of public and private documents which are gradually being ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... broke out into open hostilities. Meanwhile, Perseus was not idle; he secured the attachment of his subjects by equitable and popular measures, and formed alliances not only with the Greeks and the Asiatic princes, but also with the Thracian, Illyrian, and Celtic tribes which surrounded his dominions. The Romans naturally viewed these proceedings with jealousy and suspicion; and at length, in 172, Perseus was formally accused before the Roman Senate by Eumenes, ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... back, his meagre, ferocious aspect, flanked by that tangled web of hair, stamps him the roving tenant of the desert. It is curious to find in this remote country a custom similar to that of the fiery cross, which in old times summoned the Celtic tribes to arms. On the alarm of invasion, a branch, torn by the priest from the nebek, (a tree bearing a fruit like the Siberian crab,) is lighted in the fire, the flame is then quenched in the blood of a newly slaughtered ram. It is then sent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Ryan was born in Norfolk, Virginia, August 15, 1839, whither his parents, natives of Ireland, had immigrated not long before. He possessed the quick sensibilities characteristic of the Celtic race; and his love for Ireland is reflected in a stout martial lyric entitled ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... was in despair at this announcement, but she smiled and hid her grief; or at least her grief, in the shape of a Celtic cook, was at that time not to be seen, being employed in the kitchen, where she had invited two of her friends to "come ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and in consequence the issues are confusedly presented to our mind." It is characteristic of the Morte d'Arthur fragment that it is apparently free from all allegorical intention. It is merely a moving human story with a fascinating element of mystery inspired by the original Celtic legend. An element of allegory lies in the epilogue, and The Passing of Arthur still further enforces the allegorical purpose. But here, as Mr. Brooke again writes (p. 371), "we are close throughout to the ancient tale. No allegory, no ethics, no rational soul, no preaching symbolism, ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... understood that the tales I now give are only those found practically identical in all European countries. Besides these there are others which are peculiar to each of the countries or only found in areas covered by cognate languages like the Celtic or the Scandinavian. Of these I have already covered the English and the Celtic fields, and may, one of these days, extend my collections to the French and Scandinavian or the Slavonic fields. Meanwhile it may be ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... rapidly in our little town of St. Ia, that it is difficult to set them down with the clearness they deserve. We Cornish people are an imaginative race, just as all people of a Celtic origin are, but we never dreamed of what has taken place. One week we were sitting idly in our boats in the bay, the next our lads had heard the call of their country, and had hurried away in its defence. One day we were at ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... sprang from an ancient Celtic hill fort, and, through successive stages, has since grown to a Roman, a mediaeval, and finally a modern city. It crowns the top of a very considerable eminence, the like of which, says Professor Freeman, does not exist in England. Like Chartres, too, it has always retained the balance ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... archaeology has come to throw more and more light on the early civilisations of Celtic lands that it has become possible to interpret Celtic religion from a thoroughly modern viewpoint. The author cordially acknowledges his indebtedness to numerous writers on this subject, but his researches into some portions of the field especially ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... bringing up his women with him to the siege-guns because of some uncanny satisfaction he finds in their presence there. There are moods, only less perverted, when I see him pursuing his course because it is his course, through sheer Highland Celtic obstinacy; lucid flashes when he appears, blinded by the glamour of his dream, and innocently regardless of actuality. Is it uncanniness? Is it obstinacy? Is it dreamy innocence? Or is it some gorgeous streak of Feminism? Is it the New Chivalry, that refuses to keep women back, ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... 'away,' and belongs to the class of herbs consecrated to the uses of magic, apart from any natural healing power. The Druids are said to have taken their knowledge of these properties from the magical teachers of the Chaldeans; but anyhow the belief in them lives on in Ireland and in other Celtic countries ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... enemies. Certainly the arrangements were well fitted for the purpose in those days, when the club and the spear were almost the only weapons of offense. Dr. Keller, who has investigated this subject with great care, is of the opinion that these lake dwellers were a branch of the great Celtic race. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... vein of poetry, of sub-conscious celtic sadness, ran through them all. It was associated with their love of music and was wordless. Only hints of this endowment came out now and again, and to the day of his death my father continued to express perplexity, and a kind of irritation at the curious ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... in many instances, oats, or any white crop whatever; but the potato was found to succeed very well in such places, and to give a larger quantity of sustenance than such land would otherwise yield. Its cultivation was therefore spreading, but spreading, it would seem, chiefly amongst the poor Celtic natives, who had to betake themselves to the despised wastes and barren mountains. In the rich lowlands, and therefore amongst the English colony (for whom alone all the publications of those times were intended), the potato was still a despised article of food. And to this the latter part of ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... the month of March "Lide." February used to be "Soul-grove," but I have never heard it called so. The pole of a scythe is the snead; the two handles are the nibs. They are fastened by rings called quinnets. Isaac Taylor says that the few remaining Celtic words we have in use (other than hill or river names) are words for obscure parts of tools. We have some queer intensives—"terriblish" or "tarblish" is one, and "ghastly," meaning ugly, is another. "A terrible ghastly sight" we say, meaning that ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... sit listlessly expecting the arrival of our modest conveyance, suggest to our companion—a bare-legged Celtic brother of the gentle craft, somewhat at the wrong side of forty, with a turf-coloured caubeen, patched frieze, a clear brown complexion, dark-grey eyes, and a right pleasant dash of roguery in his features—the tale, which, if the reader ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the fact is that no one can take a cab across Liverpool without having a quite complete and unified impression that the pathos is not a pathos of individual cases, but a pathos in bulk. People talk of the Celtic sadness; but there are very few things in Ireland that look so sad as the Irishman in Liverpool. The desolation of Tara is cheery compared with the desolation of Belfast. I recommend Mr. Yeats and his mournful ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... has perhaps noticed in the fairy tales of the first chapter the conspicuous absence of the fairies to which we are accustomed in German or Celtic stories. We have met ogres and magicians with magic powers, old men and women, and hermits who have aided the hero and heroine, and played the role of the "good fairy," but the fairy in the bright shape in which we see her in French and Irish stories, for example, ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... home. Ranching required capital. No, it couldn't be thought of; and yet he had thought of it, try as he would not to do so. And she? There was that about this man who had lived life on two continents, in whose blood ran the warm and chivalrous Celtic fire, which appealed to her. His physical manhood was noble, if rugged; his disposition genial and free, if schooled, but not entirely, to that reserve which his occupation made necessary—a reserve he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... may have to justify yourself. The fact remains, sir, that Wharfside is in my parish. If you have anything to say against that, I will listen to you," said the irascible Rector. His Welsh blood was up; he even raised his voice a little, with a kind of half-feminine excitement, common to the Celtic race; and the consequence was that Mr Wentworth, who stood perfectly calm to receive the storm, had all the advantage in the world over Mr Morgan. The Perpetual Curate bowed with immovable composure, and felt himself master of ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Semitic races. The first religious intuitions of the Indo-European race were essentially naturalistic. But it was a profound and moral naturalism, a loving embrace of Nature by man, a delicious poetry, full of the sentiment of the Infinite—the principle, in fine, of all that which the Germanic and Celtic genius, of that which a Shakespeare and a Goethe should express in later times. It was neither theology nor moral philosophy—it was a state of melancholy, it was tenderness, it was imagination; it was, more than all, earnestness, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... the children got a Celtic strain; and this is a matter of significance, meaning a predisposition to the superstition, imagination and horror that is a strand in all their work. Their mother, Maria Branwell, was of a good middle-class Cornish family, long established ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... with the men who were securing the horses, and Alice stood watching her husband's movements. She was a beautiful woman of that strong, dark Celtic type, so common in Ireland. Her strong supple figure was displayed to perfection in a simple tweed suit with a jacket of the Norfolk pattern. She stood for some moments watching with deep contemplative eyes. Then ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... came of a Celtic father, gay, humorous, full of impulsive chivalry and intense Irish patriotism, and of a practical New England mother, herself of Revolutionary stock, clear of judgment, careful of the household economy, upright, ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... Argils.—The Cimmerians, a people mentioned by Herodotus, who occupied principally the peninsula of the Crimea, are distinguished by Prichard from the Cimbri or Kimbri, but supposed by M. Amedee Thierry to be a branch of the same race, and Celtic. Many of their customs are said to present a striking conformity with those of the Cimbri of the Baltic and of the Gauls. Those who inhabited the hills in the Crimea bore the name of Taures or Tauri, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... sides, and a consciousness of that made lesser men tolerant with each other. Thus, an acquaintanceship between Marget and her mother and myself, although begun under a certain stress of circumstance, passed naturally into friendship, and, on my part, into something warmer. We were of the same Celtic strain, and, in the heart and mind of upbringing, blood tells all the time. But I had not seen much of them, and nothing at all since the tale of the Black Colonel's escape in the Pass had set the countryside talking and, doubtless, ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... must the others. Hobson had dropped in, and he, David, McHenry, Schlyter, and Lying Bill, trod a measure, and I, though with only a Celtic urge and a couple of years in Hawaii to teach me, faced Temanu. The bandsmen could not remain still, and, with Kelly to play the accordion, the rout became general. McHenry did not ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Luxembourg Celtic base (with French and German blend), Portuguese, Italian, Slavs (from Montenegro, Albania, and Kosovo) and European (guest ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... David Lloyd George, with thick gray hair and snapping Celtic eyes. Alert and magnetic, he was on the edge of his chair, questioning and interrupting. Frankly ignorant of the details of continental geography and politics, naive in his inquiries, he possessed the capacity for acquiring ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... station or stage which is mentioned in the Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum, or description of the various routes to Jerusalem, a work compiled for the use of pilgrims; and its name is apparently derived from the Kymerian language, apparently a Celtic dialect, in which port signifies a stage, station, or resting-place, and nav or naou signifies nine; Port-nav, Latinized into Portus naonis, and Frenchified into Portenau, implies, therefore, the ninth station, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... merry, merry men," boomed the voice of Gerald Moore, with a slightly Celtic roll of the "r's," as he drummed impatiently on the shutter of the cabin window, while his companion, Jack Blake, performed a similar tattoo on the adjoining window. "Faith, and it was daylight hours ago, and ye don't know what ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor |
