"Fiddler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remember me, Miss Trent, but I knew your father well enough, and I knew you when you was a little 'un. In those days I had the "Green Man" in the Cut; your father often enough gave us a toon on his fiddle. A rare good fiddler he was, too! Give us a song now, for old ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... happy and jolly. The fiddler swept his bow across the strings until they sang their gayest polka. The accordion puffed and wheezed in its attempt to follow the merry tune. The platform was crowded with dancers, whirling and stamping, turning and swinging, ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... taken outdoors by willing hands; the pupils' benches stood along the walls for the "women folk" during the intermissions; upon the slightly raised platform at one end of the room were the chairs for the musicians, fiddler and guitarist. And upon the floor was much shaved candle. For light there were the four coal-oil lamps with their foolish reflectors against the walls, and a full moon shining in through door ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... recall some moonlight walk home with a boyhood sweetheart along a maple-shaded lane, when "on your arm a soft hand rested," and "Money Musk" will carry you back to a lantern-lit barn floor with one fiddler perched on a pile of meal bags; and how delightful it was to clasp that same sweet girl's waist when "balance and swing" ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... word was that for him to be using, even in his mind? To-morrow she would be gone, this wandering fiddler, and all this would be forgotten in a day, for he had the new cattle to see to, and a ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... tossed her one of his pleasant smiles as he whirled breathlessly past, and her eyes followed him with a look which poor Barker would have given worlds to interpret as he stood sad and humble in all his unwonted magnificence by her side. The fiddler, who was a tin-peddler and a poet and the teacher of a "cipherin'-school," as well as a musician, played with great gusto, and was continually calling upon the dancers to "warm up 'n' shake their heels ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... Fizgig Ferociously Fought and Frightened a Fiddler, At midday, right in front of Cole's ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... the fiddler who at Tara Played all night to ghosts of kings; Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies Dancing in their ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... mother died. Maybe that's why I was so bewitched with Mary, for she had little ways with her that took your fancy and made you love her whether you would or no. I found her father was an honest fellow enough, a fiddler in the some theatre, that he'd taken good care of Mary till he died, leaving precious little but advice for her to live on. She'd tried to get work, failed, spent all she had, got sick, and was going to the devil, as the poor ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... the simplest manner in the world. A fortnight since I happened to be sitting in the stocks, in the absurd but accursed town of Bovey Tracey in Devonshire. My companion—for the machine discommodated two—was a fiddler, convicted (like myself) of vagrancy; a bottle-nosed man, who took the situation with such phlegm as only experience can breed, and munched a sausage under the commonalty's gaze. 'Good Lord,' said I to ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... us stop here," cried Hugh; "Mr. Toil will never dare to show his face where there is a fiddler, and where people are dancing ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... pleasant growth of the open air and the hills, as she was, she never dreamed of despising the little skipping tailor of Rapps, though he was shorter by the head than herself. She had heard his music, and evidently had danced after it. The fiddler and fiddle together filled up her ambition. But the old people!—they were in perfect hysterics of wrath and indignation. Their daughter!—with the exception of one brother, now absent on a visit to his uncle in Hungary, a great gold-miner ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the storm are musical chimes for a ghost-story, or one of those fearful tales with which the blind fiddler in Redgauntlet made "the auld carlines shake on the settle, and the bits of bairns skirl on their minnies out ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... proved. A certain Guetem, a fiddler of the Elector of Bavaria, had entered the service of Holland, had taken part in her war against France, and had become a colonel. Chatting one evening with his comrades, he laid a wager that he would carry ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... of heavy toil at log-rolling, the young men and boys bantered one another into foot races, wrestling matches, shooting contests, and other feats of strength or skill. And if a fiddler could be found, the day was sure to end with a "hoe-down"—a dance that "made even the log-walled house tremble." No corn-husking or wedding was complete without dancing, although members of certain of the more straitlaced religious sects already ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... it?' cried Lady Eveleen, springing up. 'We will begin this moment. Come out on the lawn. Here, Charles,' wheeling him along, 'No, thank you, I like it,' as Guy was going to help her. 'There, Charles, be fiddler go on, tum-tum, tee! that'll do. Amy, Laura, be ladies. I'm the other gentleman,' and she stuck on her hat in military style, giving it a cock. She actually set them quadrilling in spite of adverse circumstances, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... early example. One of the finest pieces in the collection is Fig. 29, a cracker in the form of a hooded monk; Fig. 30 being a charming bit of wood-carving in walnut wood, a somewhat grotesque figure representing an old fiddler. Fig. 33 is a curious cracker combining a useful pick almost in the form of the bill of a bird, Fig. 32 being of similar date. The next group shows the evolution from the metal screw to the more ordinary types, Figs. 36 and 38 being ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... books, with dangerous frontispieces, set to sale; who shall prohibit them, shall twenty licensers? The villages also must have their visitors to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebeck reads, even to the ballatry and the gamut of every municipal fiddler, for these are the countryman's Arcadias, and his ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... him to the house. His wing spread was 'bout six or eight feet. When I got him to the house I told 'em I had the biggest hawk they ever seen. A ole man by the same of William said, "Hell that ain't no hawk, that's a grey eagle." A ole colored fiddler, named Fred Roberts, sent word he'd buy it from me. He even got so fraid he wouldn't get it that he ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... would leave the company (often speaking to the fiddler to cease from playing, as if I was tired), and go out and walk about crying and praying, as if my very heart would break, and beseeching God that he would not cut me off, nor give me up to hardness of heart. Oh, what unhappy hours and nights I thus ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... day and night. Dropsical symptoms made their appearance. While sinking under a complication of diseases, he heard that the woman whose friendship had been the chief happiness of sixteen years of his life had married an Italian fiddler; that all London was crying shame upon her; and that the newspapers and magazines were filled with allusions to the Ephesian matron, and the two pictures in Hamlet. He vehemently said that he would try to forget her existence. He never uttered her name. Every memorial of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the midshipmen played upon the violin, and some of my people danced; at this they were so much delighted, and so impatient to show their gratitude, that one of them went over the ship's side into the canoe, and fetched up a seal-skin bag of red paint, and immediately smeared the fiddler's face all over with it: He was very desirous to pay me the same compliment, which, however, I thought fit to decline; but he made many very vigorous efforts to get the better of my modesty, and it was not without some difficulty that I defended ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... night as she had come. At this the girl and her sweetheart Roland resumed their natural shapes again, and they walked on the whole night until daybreak. Then the maiden changed herself into a beautiful flower which stood in the midst of a briar hedge, and her sweetheart Roland into a fiddler. It was not long before the witch came striding up towards them, and said to the musician: 'Dear musician, may I pluck that beautiful flower for myself?' 'Oh, yes,' he replied, 'I will play to you while you do it.' As she was hastily creeping into the hedge ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... although, when first caught, they were ignorance personified as far as sporting matters went. Their original incapacity will be easily credited, when I inform them that my second best man, Buctoo, had followed the sporting occupation of a village fiddler, before he entered my service, and knew as much of the capabilities of an English rifle as he did of the "Pleiades." Jye Sing was a little better informed, for he told me confidentially, one day, he had ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... drum, cymbals and so on; but the continuous slight discords caused by some of the players being various degrees in front and others various degrees behind; the scratching produced by uncertain bowing, or by an unfortunate fiddler finding himself a little behind the general body (as he does sometimes) and making a savage rush to catch it up; the hissing of panting flautists; and the barnyard noises produced by exhausted oboe-players. Even with Richter, stolid and trustworthy though ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... The fiddler was a boy of those parts, about twelve years of age, who had a wonderful dexterity in jigs and reels, though his fingers were so small and short as to necessitate a constant shifting for the high notes, from which ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... from now? Why, you're as fine as a fiddler!" cried Mr. Joel Ferris, who was fast becoming familiar, on the strength ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... of story-books! What kind of a business in life, what manner of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler." ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... wife, who, having robbed him of all his cash and valuable effects, had eloped from his house with one of his own customers, who appeared in the character of a French count, but was in reality no other than an Italian fiddler; that, in consequence of this retreat, he, the husband, was disabled from paying a considerable sum which he had set apart for his wine merchant, who being disappointed in his expectation, took out an execution against his effects; and the rest of his creditors following his ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the time of my hearing the first music I ever heard—unless you call the singing of the birds music (we had plenty of that), and the bells on the breeze from a distance, when the wind was south. The first music (so to call it) that I heard was from a blind fiddler that came to us. What brought him, I don't know—whether he lost his way, or what; but he lost his way after he left us. His dog seems to have been in fault: but he got into a pool in the middle of the wood, and there he lay drowned, with ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... Whereto the fiddler answered, "Never was king of any land better or happier, nor his kinsmen nor vassals; know that for certain. Right glad were they when we ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... the oft repeated anecdote of Paganini's playing with a light reed-stem, and I remember having seen at Christmas festivities in country homesteads, the village fiddler playing a brisk old-time tune with the long stem of his clay pipe; also, quite recently, I read an account of an "artiste" in the States who charmed his enlightened audiences with his performances on the violin by using a variety ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... achieved anything. We're too sane; we're merely reasonable. We lack the human touch, the compelling enthusiastic mania. People are quite ready to listen to the philosophers for a little amusement, just as they would listen to a fiddler or a mountebank. But as to acting on the advice of the men of reason—never. Wherever the choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman. For the madman appeals to what is fundamental, to passion and the instincts; ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... march that yon street-fiddler plies: She told me 'twas the same She'd heard from the trumpets, when the Allies Her ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... upon a time, ever so many thowsand years ago, before there was not no Lord Mares, nor no Shirryffs, nor not ewen no Aldermen, a Gent of the name of Horfay lived in Grease. He was the werry grandest Fiddler of his time, a regler JOEY KIM. Well, he married a werry bewtiful wife, of the name of Yourridisee, and they was both werry appy, till one day, as she was a having a run in a field, a norrid serpent bit her ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... artfully applied, Insensibly came on her side. It was an unforeseen event; Things took a turn he never meant. Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes; Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. When miss delights in her spinet, A fiddler may a fortune get; A blockhead, with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice: And oft the dancing-master's art Climbs from the toe to touch the heart. In learning let a nymph delight, The pedant gets a mistress by't. Cadenus, to his grief and shame, Could scarce ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... two or three kinds of pies and puddings, washed down (at least by those who chose so to do) with whiskey. Great hilarity prevailed—particularly after the introduction of the bottle. Immediately dinner was over, the tables were removed, the fiddler was called for, and the dance commenced, which was to last till the following morning. The dance was opened by Isaac and the bridesmaid, with another couple—beginning with a square four, and ending with what was termed ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... more beautiful,' said Claude, 'than the two first groups, the fiddler, and then the bride ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... to the ball-room floor, and were standing directly in front of the musicians' gallery. The young fiddler, Jim Otis, leaned over and looked ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fancy costume plunged into the restaurant at that moment and began to play wildly. The shock of his strange advent momentarily silenced the quarrel; but soon it leaped up again, under the shelter of the noisy music,—the common, tedious, tippler's quarrel. It rose higher and higher. The fiddler looked askance at it over his fiddle. Chirac cautiously observed it. Instead of attending to the music, the festal company attended to the quarrel. Three waiters in a group watched it with an impartial sporting interest. The English ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... go into the garden for? Be so good as to confess to me: you were not unwell! You did not go only into the garden! you went into the wood, and you remained a long time there! I saw it! You made a little visit to the handsome woman while the fiddler was here, did you not? I do not trust ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... Every fiddler he had a fine fiddle, And a very fine fiddle had he; "Twee tweedle dee, tweedle dee," went the fiddlers. Oh, there's none so rare, As can compare With King Cole ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... arrived; face towards the music-room, good people, and tell me how you like it. I call it "Only a fiddler", after Andersen's story. What name will ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... dress, if substantial and comfortable, were of coarse homespun—the product of their own labour. The sources of amusement were limited. The day of the harmonium or piano had not come. Music, except in its simplest vocal form, was not cultivated; only the occasional presence of some fiddler afforded rare seasons of merriment to the delight ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... may find a crab or two, perhaps, some jelly-fish, star-fish, and those wonderful living flowers, the sea-anemones. And then we will watch the great gulls sweeping about in the air, and if we are lucky, we may see an army of little fiddler-crabs marching along, each one with one claw in the air. We may gather sea-side diamonds; we may, perhaps, go in and bathe, and who can tell everything that we may do on the shores of the ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... admitted to his friendship and intimacy. Wilkie's 'Village Politicians' was the sensation of the Exhibition of 1806, and brought him two important commissions—one from Lord Mulgrave for the 'Blind Fiddler,' and the other from Sir George Beaumont for the 'Rent-Day.' It was now considered that Wilkie's fortune was made, his fame secure, and if his two chief friends—Haydon and Jackson—could not help ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Arcangelo, the greatest fiddler, till Paganini, that has appeared. He was born in the territory of Bologna, in ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... any of his friends, sir, but I daresay it wouldn't be much use if she did. Beyond the man's former name and business as a fiddler she told me nothing. I suppose, sir, she didn't tell you anything ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... told of the effect of music on a bull. A fiddler, residing in the country, not far from Liverpool, was returning, at three o'clock in the morning, with his instrument, from a place where he had been engaged in his accustomed vocation. He had occasion to cross ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... source of amusement in observing the various personages that daily passed and repassed beneath my window. The character which most of all arrested my attention was a poor blind fiddler, whom I first saw chanting a doleful ballad at the door of a small tavern near the gate of the village. He wore a brown coat, out at elbows, the fragment of a velvet waistcoat, and a pair of tight nankeens, so short as hardly to reach ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... banging of doors, and the ringing of bells. Music and dancing enlivened the inmates when their day's toil was over and time had to be killed. Thus, within, one could find anxious deliberation and warm debate; without, noisy revel and vulgar brawl. "Fate's a fiddler; ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... by the witchery of some street Orpheus, forgetful, not merely of all the troubles of existence, but of existence itself, until the strain had ceased, and silence aroused us to the matter-of-fact world of business. One blind fiddler, we know him well, with face upturned towards the sky, has stood a public benefactor any day these twenty years, and we know not how much longer, to receive the substantial homage of the music-loving million. But that he is scarcely old enough, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... man so various, that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome: Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... A poor ragged fiddler had spent the whole of one bitter winter morning playing through the dreary streets without any taking pity upon his plight. As he came to the cathedral he felt an overmastering desire to enter and pour out his distress in the presence of his Maker. So he crept in, a tattered ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... that Margit remained sitting there till Nils Skraedder, the fiddler, suddenly laid aside his instrument, as was his wont when he had had more than enough to drink, left the dancers to hum their own tune, took hold of the prettiest girl he could find, and, letting his feet keep as good time to the dance as music to a song, jerked off with the heel ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... of their ambition. The want of a regular education, and early habits, and some lurking remains of their dignity, will never permit them to become a match for an Italian eunuch, a mountebank, a fiddler, a player, or any regular practitioner of that tribe. The Roman emperors, almost from the beginning, threw themselves into such hands; and the mischief increased every day till the decline and final ruin of the empire. It is therefore of very great ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... room was well filled with traders, troopers, trappers and squaws. No buck ever participated in a white man's dance, but several stood by the door and looked on. Every one was in high spirits, and when the fiddler, a French 'breed, struck up, stamping his moccasined feet to keep time, each man secured a squaw and took his place. A brazen-lunged 'breed shouted, "Alleman' lef'! Swing yer partners!" and the ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... world? My mind rejected the idea, I thought it merest madness. But still that song rang in my ears. What deep compelling force was here—this curious power of the crowd that had so suddenly gripped hold of this simple Italian musician, this fiddler on excursion boats, and in a few short days and nights had made him pour into music the fire of ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... The corpulent black fiddler, and his friend who plays the tambourine, stamp upon the boarding of the small raised orchestra in which they sit, and play a lively measure. Five or six couple come upon the floor, marshalled by a lively young negro, who is the wit of the assembly, and the greatest dancer known. He never leaves ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... little from the other week days. The field work was suspended in the afternoon to allow the mothers time to wash their clothing. With sunset came the preparations for the weekly frolic. A fiddler furnished music while the dancers danced numerous square dances ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... post-captain among them, coming down to the Common Hard, after a dinner-party on shore, to go on board their ships, found the sentry fast asleep in his sentry-box. They, of course, were as sober as judges; he, evidently, drunk as a fiddler. They thereon held a consultation, and came to the unanimous conclusion that it was meet and fit that a man guilty of so flagrant an infraction of military discipline should receive condign punishment, and constituting ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... vaporous tint of golden pink or purple, which is the gift of this warm and wonderful light. A cricket that has climbed up one of the tender shoots strikes a low note, which is like the drowsy chirrup of a roosting bird. It is the first touch of a fiddler in the night's orchestra, and will soon be taken up by thousands of other crickets, bell-tinkling toads, croaking frogs in the valley, and the solitary owl that hoots from the hills. Below, how the river seems ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... and romantic effect to the principle here spoken of. Were they constant, they would become indifferent, as we may find with respect to disagreeable noises, which we do not hear after a time. I know no situation more pitiable than that of a blind fiddler who has but one sense left (if we except the sense of snuff-taking(1)) and who has that stunned or deafened by his own villainous ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... him," she said feverishly to Allan Daly. But somebody else had already asked him. The room grew very silent all at once. Outside the fiddler had stopped for a rest and there was silence there too. Afar off they heard the low moan of the gulf—the presage of a storm already on its way up the Atlantic. A girl's laugh drifted up from the rocks ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... ago mark the strokes of labour as of the evening hour when the professional village story-teller cries "cric-crac" and begins his tale of the loup-garou, or rouses the spirit of a pure patriotism by a crude epic of some valiant atavar; when the parish fiddler brings them to their feet with shining eyes by the strains of O Carillon. They are not less respectful to the British flag, nor less faithful in allegiance because they love that language and that land of their memories ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... had a fiddler. Ever so often he had a big dance in their parlor. I'd try to dance by myself. He had his own music by the hands on his place. He let them have dances at the quarters every now and then. Dancing was a ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... Armour. He met her on a race day at a house of entertainment which must have been popular, since it contained a dancing-hall, admission to which was free, any man being privileged to invite to it any woman whom he fancied and for whose diversion he was willing to disburse a penny to the fiddler. He was accompanied on this occasion by his dog, who insisted on following him into the hall and persisted in keeping at his heels while he danced,—a proof of its fidelity which created considerable amusement, and which its master turned to his personal account by saying he wished he ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... then, you know, that young fiddler was very bad, indeed, about the chick until he made ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... sloop began to move backward, very much like those fiddler crabs Perk had watched retreating before his attack on one of ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... I wouldn't give the twist of a fiddler's elbow for all the lot of 'em as ever pretended to handle a ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... happened six weeks prior to Christmas Eve, and they were six long, trying weeks for the two Bingles. The old man was sick two- thirds of the time and had to have a physician. He insisted on having the now famous Dr. Fiddler, one of the most expensive practitioners in New York, obstinately refusing to listen to reason. Fiddler had been the Hooper family physician years ago and that was all there was to be said. He WOULD have him. So poor Tom Bingle sent for the great man, who came and prescribed ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... in London; but there I was not the hero of the opera. This minstrel combined the whole affair in a most simple manner. He was Verdi, Costa, and orchestra all in one. He was a thorough Macaulay as historian, therefore I had to pay the composer as well as the fiddler. I compromised the matter, and gave him a few dollars, as I understood that he was Mek Nimmur's private minstrel; but I never parted with my dear Maria Theresa (* The Austrian dollar, that is the only large current coin in that country.) with so much regret as upon that occasion, ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... broken shutter and looked in. Around the blackened walls of the room stood a bleared mob, applausively watching, through a fog of smoke, the contortions of an old woman in a red calico wrapper, who was dancing in the centre of the floor. The fiddler—a rubicund person evidently not suffering from any great depression of spirit through the circumstance of being "out on bail," as he was, to Joe's intimate knowledge—sat astride a barrel, resting his instrument upon the foamy ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... to have been called Out of Paganini—founded upon that distinguished fiddler's life, although (as the Author says) "it is necessarily speculative ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... in his feet—say, he just naturally has to let his toes follow the tune, and if ragtime hadn't been invented he'd have walked slow all his life. And me? Well, I ought to dance, with Father a born fiddler, and Mother brought up with castanets in her hands. We danced twelve of the fourteen numbers together that night, and I never even noticed he had red hair. I'd been dying to dance for months. Some partner, Tim was too. That began it. We joined a class and started ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... not? where was your sight, OEdipus? you walk with hare's eyes, do you? I'll have them glazed, rogue; an you say the word, they shall be glazed for you: come we must have you turn fiddler again, slave, get a base viol at your back, and march in a tawny coat, with one sleeve, to Goose-fair; then you'll know us, you'll see us then, you will, gulch, you will. Then, Will't please your worship to have any ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... convert her and have her and her numerous votaries for their own. As the reverend brother thundered out his denunciations of the ungodly goddess he cast his eyes often in the direction of the leading dancer, and from her they would wander to the small fiddler who sat beside the tall hat in a back pew. But somehow neither Lily nor Apollo seemed in the least conscious of any personal appeal in his glance, and when finally the question of the Christmas ball was put ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... and pealings, of course they do! and the third fiddler, little Tweaks, of the county town, goes into fits. Ho, ho, ho, I can't bear it (mimicking); take me out! Ha, ha, ha! O what a one she is! She'll be the death of me. Ha, ha, ha, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... Gerald protested. "It was the tears I would have dried. Tears, idle tears, I know not whence they come; tears from the depth of some despairing fiddler." ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... which, in contending with many a storm, had not lost a wild and, careless expression of glee, animated at present, when he was exercising for his own pleasure the arts which he usually practised for bread,—all announced one of those peripatetic followers of Orpheus whom the vulgar call a strolling fiddler. Gazing more attentively, I easily discovered that though the poor musician's eyes were open, their sense was shut, and that the ecstasy with which he turned them up to heaven only derived its apparent expression from his own internal emotions, but received no assistance from the visible objects ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... ceremony in the church. The procession, first united like one long coloured scarf that undulated across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn, soon lengthened out, and broke up into different groups that loitered to talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing amongst themselves ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... And every fiddler, he had a fine fiddle, And a very fine fiddle had he; "Tweedle dee, tweedle dee," said the fiddlers, "Oh there's none so rare "As can compare "With King ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... party were, however, warmly welcomed on board, and Alphonse, who had now learned a good deal of English, became a great favourite both with officers and men. As there happened to be no fiddler among the crew, his violin was in great requisition. He had no pride, and as he took delight in giving pleasure, he constantly went forward to play to the men while they danced. There was nothing they would not have done for the "little mounseer," ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... And with that word she struck me on the head, And through the instrument my pate made way; And there I stood amazed for a while, As on a pillory, looking through the lute; While she did call me rascal fiddler, And twangling Jack, with twenty such vile terms, As she had ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... fiddler and more peasants appear. The men sit down on one side of the room, the women on the other, and the former lover, Mikko, thinking himself the bridegroom-elect, cheerfully invites every one to dance. The old fiddler strikes up a merry ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... money, let Ma know, and she will send it. She and Pamela are always fussing about change, so I sent them a hundred and twenty quarters yesterday—fiddler's change enough to last till I get back, I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shine the spires beneath the paly moon, And through the cloister peace and silence reign, Save where some fiddler scrapes a drowsy tune, Or copious ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... resolved to be still on the floor when the other had abandoned it in defeat—that being the test of victory. At last, the girl from Dryhill reeled, and was caught by half-a-dozen arms. Her adversary, holding the floor undisputed, slowed down, and someone stopped the fiddler. Sally turned from the crowded wall, and began looking about for Samson. He was not there. Lescott had seen him leave the house a few moments before, and started over to intercept the girl, as she came out to ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... foreigners, but especially also by the unfortunate employment of barrel- organs....It is this instrument which crushes among the people the practice of music, and takes the means of subsistence from the village fiddler, who becomes more and more rare since every tavern-keeper, in buying a barrel-organ, easily puts an end to all competition. We see already more and more disappear from our country sides these sweet songs and improvised refrains which the rustic minstrels remembered and repeated, and the truly ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... give him his reward, he would turn his back and laugh. In these humours of his he had many pretty songs, which I will sing as perfect as I can. For his chimney-sweeper's humours he had these songs: the first is to the tune of I have been a fiddler ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... the orchard. There were good Benedict and sturdy Basil the blacksmith and there were the priest and the notary. Beautiful Evangeline welcomed the guests with a smiling face and words of gladness. Then Michael the fiddler took a seat under the trees and he sang and played for the company to dance, sometimes beating time to the music ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... was wont to say to the little yellow fiddler, after an evening's frolic at the Interpreter's, "Davids, clear away the tables and the glasses, and play fishes-hornspikes."[55] He was a kind, affectionate creature, and his devotion to "Monsieur Johns" and "Madame Johns" ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... with a bunch of men and supplies to show them the way to our claim. Twenty jacks, a cook and a fiddler will be here late this afternoon, together with a knock-down bunk-house, sufficient food supplies for two weeks, tools, and I've got a supply of cash to pay the hands. Now what have you to say for yourself, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... of the square stood several tables covered with bottles of wine and beer and cake and bread; not far from the tables was a throne adorned with flowers, where sat the fiddler, gazing proudly around him, like a king who knows he is the crowning point ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Tagliabue, or the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Babbleton. I thought so too; every one was happy, and every one at their ease; and I do believe they would have stayed much longer, but the musicians took so much punch that one fiddler broke his fiddle, the other broke his head in going down the steps into the garden, and the fifer swore he could blow no longer; so, as there was an end to the music, clogs, pattens, and lanterns were called for, the shawls were brought out of the kitchen, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... holiday dress with flowers in their hats, a fiddler in the lead. They carry a keg of home-brewed beer and a smaller keg of gin, both decorated with greens which are placed on the table. They help themselves to glasses and drink. Then they sing and dance a country dance to the melody ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... Ashbjoern stared at the fiddler in amazement when he heard him name so large a sum. He thought that Clement believed the midget had some mysterious power and might be of service for him. He was by no means certain that the doctor would think him such a great find or would offer to pay so high a sum for ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... were sleeping, page and fiddler, Cook, scullion, free from care; Only Robin's Stallions from their stables Neighed as he ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... of the last note died away, when "Shout, shout, the devil's about," was heard from a stentorian voice. Above the peals of laughter with which the words were received, rose Jake's voice, "Come on, ole fiddler, play somefin a nigger kin kick up his heels to; what's de use of singing after dat fashion; dis ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... and stand at the door, A fiddler and singers three, And one with a bright lamp thrusts at the dark, And the music comes ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... our ways, the harp and violin sounds growing fainter as we receded, till they were like the buzzing of bees in drying clover, and the twilight grew rosier brown. I never met Mat Woods again, though I often heard of his fame as a fiddler. Whether my Anglo-Indian friend found the fortune so vaguely predicted is to me as yet unknown. But I believe that the prediction encouraged him. That there are evils in palmistry, and sin in card-drawing, and iniquity in coffee-grounding, and vice in ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... this is a wonderfully wicked world. To find out the two vagabonds would have been hopeless; unless I could have followed them to the Back of Beyond, where the mare foaled the fiddler. ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... a black fiddler on board, who went by the name of Jumbo; and while he played the sailors danced, greatly to the amusement of the passengers. Jack Ivyleaf, who was up to all sorts of fun, used to join them, and soon learned to dance the hornpipe as well as ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... life. He therefore employed the Highland tour in hearing all he could, that had any bearing on his now absorbing pursuit, and in collecting materials that might promote it. With this view, when on his way from Taymouth to Blair, he had turned aside to visit the famous fiddler and composer of Scotch tunes, Neil Gow, at his house, which is still pointed out, at Inver, on the Braan water, opposite the grounds of Dunkeld. This is the entry about him in Burns's diary:—"Neil Gow plays—a short, stout-built, honest Highland figure, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... fiddler moved into the chimney-corner and raked his violin with his bow. Jennie Wynn knew that he was about to ask the couples to take their places for the first dance. She did not want Westerfelt to feel obliged to ask her to be his partner, so ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... folks learn by previous experiences not to wear perishable finery at the barn dance, and the girls all come in pretty wash-dresses that will stand a good romp. Music is furnished by an old darkey fiddler, not violinist, who plays "Money Musk," "Fisher's Hornpipe," "Ole Dan Tucker" and any ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... found it, and strung it himself, and used to play on it slyly, and so taught himself to be a fiddler, before his mother had any idea he knew one note from another. She was extremely deaf at the last and could not hear him playing at odd ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... bamboo sharpened like a knife in one hand, he held another piece in the other, split in two, with the convex part uppermost, in which he had cut a small notch. He began passing the sharp piece slowly over the other, as a fiddler does his bow over his fiddle—strings, increasing in rapidity, till, in a very short time, the powder produced by the friction ignited, and fell down upon the ashes. This he quickly blew up, and even more rapidly than I could have done with my burning-glass, a flame was produced. The smoke ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Bessie Bowie, begging bawbees, than to be a king's daughter, fiddling and flinging the gate she did. I hae often wondered that ony ane that ever bent a knee for the right purpose, should ever daur to crook a hough to fyke and fling at piper's wind and fiddler's squealing. And I bless God (with that singular worthy, Peter Walker the packman at Bristo-Port),* that ordered my lot in my dancing days, so that fear of my head and throat, dread of bloody rope and swift bullet, and trenchant ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Old Tom has paid the fiddler, then, for nothing of mine would have bought off the hair, much less the skin. I didn't think men as keen set as them vagabonds would let a fellow up so easy, when they had him fairly at a close hug, and floored. But money is money, and somehow it's unnat'ral hard to withstand. Indian or white ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... up at old Collins', Quite a bunch was there before, You could hear the fiddler calling, And the scraping on the floor. Through the dingy sodhouse window Gleamed a sickly yellow light, Where I helped you from the wagon, Holding you so loving tight. Then they called out, "Choose your pardners, ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... Malaga, whose 'fancy' is a little tomtit of a fiddler of eighteen, cannot in conscience make such a boy marry the girl. Besides, she has no cause to do him an ill turn.—Indeed, Monsieur Cardot wants a man of thirty at least. Our notary, I feel sure, will be proud to have a famous man ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... one sometimes hears ignorant persons speak of technique with a certain supercilious contempt, as though it were a mere negligible and inferior element in an artist's equipment and not the art itself, the mere virtuosity of an accomplished fiddler who seems to say anything with his fiddle, and has never really said anything in his whole life. To the artist technique is another matter. It is the little secret by which he reveals his soul, by which he reveals the soul of the ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... is an unjust fact that if a man can play the fiddle, give legal opinions, and black boots just tolerably, he is called an Admirable Crichton, but if he does all three thoroughly well, he is apt to be regarded, in the several departments, as a common fiddler, a common lawyer, and a common boot-black. This is what has happened in the case of Stevenson. If 'Dr Jekyll,' 'The Master of Ballantrae,' 'The Child's Garden of Verses,' and 'Across the Plains' had been each of them one shade less perfectly done than ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... that hung from the roof and on the copper kettles and saucepans ranged along the wall. The wind raged against the shutters of the unglazed windows, and the maid-servants, distaff in hand, crowded closer to the blaze, listening to the songs of some wandering fiddler or to the stories of a ruddy-nosed Capuchin monk who was being regaled, by the steward's orders, on a supper of tripe and mulled wine. The Capuchin's tales, told in the Piedmontese jargon, and seasoned with strange allusions and boisterous laughter, were of little interest to Odo, who would creep ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... will get better," said Billy Mustard, who was a great favourite with the men from the fact that he was famous as a fiddler, and could rattle off anything from "Money Musk" up to "The Triumph;" and as to hornpipes, the somethingth said there wasn't a man in the service who could touch him. Billy Mustard had won the hearts of the sailors, too, during ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... and keep ye from all harm.' ... We went into three other cottages—to Mrs. Symons's (daughter-in-law to the old widow living next door) who had an 'unwell boy,' then across a little burn to another old woman's, and afterwards peeped into Blair's, the fiddler. We drove back and got out again to visit old Mrs. Grant (Grant's mother), who is so tidy and clean, and to whom I gave a dress and a handkerchief; and she said, 'You're too kind to me, you're over kind to me, ye ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... was a little melancholy. "The fairies have left us," he said. "All of a sudden, the revel is over." Then as they walked slowly homeward, he took Sophia's hand, and swayed it gently to and fro to the old fiddler's refrain,— ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Danish ballad of Ribolt, was taken down from the recitation of an old fiddler in Northumberland: in one verse there is an hiatus, owing to the failure of the reciter's memory. The refrain should be repeated in ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... extraction. His mother had kept the pleasantest public-house in town, and at her death Bill succeeded to her property and popularity. All the young ladies in the neighbourhood of Fiddler's Row, where he resided, set their caps at him: all the most fashionable prigs, or tobymen, sought to get him into their set; and the most crack blowen in London would have given her ears at any time for a loving word from Bachelor Bill. But Bill was a longheaded, prudent fellow, and ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was not without solace to his vanity. He lingered for some time in the square, answering the banter of the blooming market-women, inspecting the filigree-ornaments from Genoa, and watching a little yellow bitch in a hooped petticoat and lappets dance the furlana to the music of an armless fiddler who held the bow in his teeth. As he turned from this show Odo's eye was caught by a handsome girl who, on the arm of a dashing cavalier in somewhat shabby velvet, was cheapening a pair of gloves at a neighbouring stall. The girl, who was masked, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... a mystified man. He understood nothing, and while his wife calmly slept he tortured himself with questions. How came Racah the priest to be metamorphosed into Racah the pianist? Then the father plucked at the counterpane like a dying fiddler.... ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... his blood is a frightful mixture!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "The Casaubon cuttle-fish fluid to begin with, and then a rebellious Polish fiddler or dancing-master, was ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... candidate, is in the field, backed by a vile faction. The rank, wealth, and independence of Ballinafad are all ranged under the banner of Figsby and freedom. A party of Griggles' voters have just marched into the town, preceded by a piper and a blind fiddler, playing the most obnoxious tunes. A barrel of beer has been broached at Griggles' committee-rooms. We are all in a state of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... fiddler, in Islay, who told the story of Conall, as it had been handed down by tradition from generation to generation; just as thousands of years before the story of Odysseus and Polyphemos was told by ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... voices was now heard, and the other travelers came up joyously led by Michael the fiddler, who had lived with Basil since their exile, having no other task than that of cheering his companions by his merry music. Basil invited all the travelers to sup with them, and greatly did they marvel at the former blacksmith's wealth and many possessions. ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... now the stainless man felt himself dishonored, and with morbid sensitiveness referred everything he saw and heard to his own disgrace, while the inhabitants of the little town made him feel that he had been ill-advised, when he ventured to make a fiddler's daughter a citizen. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Hawsers were laid out, and with our usual good fortune, we again got into deep water, and in half an hour anchored off the town in a favourable position for cannonading it. We then landed our force, consisting of all the marines, with the drummer and fiddler, besides a party of small-arm men from the blue jackets, all armed with muskets, bayonets, and cutlasses. The officers, in addition to their swords, carried pistols in their belts. A feu-de-joie was now fired, for the double purpose of creating an awe among the crowd, and ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat |
