"Firth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sometimes infested the more cultivated parts of the island by the incursions of its inhabitants. The better to secure the frontiers of the empire, Adrian, who visited this island, built a rampart between the river Tyne and the firth of Solway: Lollius Urbicus, under Antoninus Pius, erected one in the place where Agricola had formerly established his garrisons: Severus, who made an expedition into Britain, and carried his arms to the more northern extremity of it, added new fortifications to ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... greater part of its length it divides Berwickshire from East Lothian; but at its seaward end there is one Berwickshire parish lying to the north of it—the parish of Cockburnspath. The land in this parish slopes down to the Firth of Forth; it is rich and well cultivated, and is divided into large farms, each of which has its group of red-roofed buildings, its substantial farmhouse, and its long tail of hinds' cottages. The seaward views are very fine, and include ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... on yer road, ye roarin' norlan' Wind, As ye cam' blawin' frae the land that's niver frae my mind? My feet they traivel England, but I'm dee'in for the north." "My man, I heard the siller tides rin up the Firth o' Forth." ...
— Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus • Violet Jacob
... self-defence. Meantime, D'Elboeuf, brother of Guise, had sailed with a powerful flotilla, which was however almost annihilated by a storm. For a time then at least there was no danger of another French expedition to Scotland. Wynter's fleet commanded the Firth of Forth, and the French soon found that, except for an occasional raid, they would have to confine their efforts to making their position at ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Edinburgh's dingy station carried one passenger who paid small attention to the scenery between the beautiful capital of Scotland and its famous university town. My one thought when we crossed over the great bridge which spans the Firth of Forth was that it was unconscionably long, and that the train slackened its ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... fainter, the low, blue land of Cantyre. Cottony clouds stood in a great castle over the top of Arran, and blew out in long streamers to the south. The sea was bitten all over with white; little ships, tacking up and down the Firth, lay over at different angles in the wind. On Shanter they were ploughing lea; a cart foal, all in a field by himself, capered and whinnied as if the spring ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at Firth, in the parish of Lilliesleaf, in the county of Roxburghshire, on the 17th of August, 1789. From his early youth he composed verses. He merited the attention of Sir Walter Scott, who afforded him pecuniary assistance. He died November 12, 1825, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... intrude My mossy, mist-clad solitude; When sudden down the steeps of sky Flames a long, lightening wind. On high The steel-blue arch shines clear, and far, In the low lands where cattle are, Towns smoke. And swift, a haze, a gleam,— The Firth lies like a frozen stream, Reddening with morn. Tall spires of ships, Like thorns about the harbour's lips, Now shake faint canvas, now, asleep, Their salt, uneasy slumbers keep; While golden-grey, o'er kirk and wall, Day ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... a Spaniard as well. The earliest ancestor that I know commanded the Santiago, wrecked on Achill Island, when the Armada came south from the Pentland Firth. The rest of me is Irish. I need hardly say more. That is why I ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... I left town for Ambleside and Abington, to shoot. Thence I went to the George R. Smiths', at Relugas; near Forres. Shot there, and then crossed the Moray Firth to Skibo and Uppat. Then I went on to Langwell, in Caithness, which the Duke of Portland had lent the Speaker (E. Denison), and spent some days with him. Returned to town by sea from Aberdeen. Shooting in September ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)] Pascua, Isla de (Easter Island) Chile Passion, Ile de la Clipperton Island Pashtunistan Afghanistan; Pakistan Peking (Beijing) China Pemba Island Tanzania Pentland Firth Atlantic Ocean Perim Yemen Perouse Strait, La Pacific Ocean Persian Gulf Indian Ocean Perth [US Consulate] Australia Pescadores Taiwan Peshawar [US Consulate] Pakistan Peter I Island Antarctica Philip Island Norfolk Island ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of his declining years tells us, and "almost thrust out by the authority of the church court,"[224] as another of them has it, he, on the 5th May 1571, took farewell of Edinburgh for a time, and crossing the Firth of Forth at Leith moved on by short and easy stages through Fife to the city in which "God had first opened his mouth" to proclaim His truth, and for which to the last he, as well as the Good Regent, cherished a special affection. As Mr John Davidson, then a teacher in one ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... lairds of Grandholm and Stoneywood having married sisters—Mackenzie by name. The laird of Stoneywood is known to posterity by his ingenious achievement of ferrying the rebel army across the Dornoch Firth in small fishing-boats collected by Stoneywood all along the coast. On the defeat of the Pretender, and the suppression of the insurrection in 1746, Stoneywood's estate was confiscated, and he fled to the Continent. Family tradition ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... passage from the Pentland Firth we had a violent gale from the north, which gave us an opportunity of experiencing how the Fram behaved in bad weather. The trial was by no means an easy one. It was blowing a gale, with a cross sea; we kept going practically under ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... by beginning hostilities, and attacking our fortresses, they inspired terror as daring to act offensively; insomuch that some persons, disguising their timidity under the mask of prudence, were for instantly retreating on this side the firth, and relinquishing the country rather than waiting to be driven out. Agricola, in the meantime, being informed that the enemy intended to bear down in several bodies, distributed his army into three divisions, that his inferiority of numbers, and ignorance of the country, might not give ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... to illustrate and stick to truth. There is the boatswain's whistle! I must go and see what's up. Pentland Firth is ever restless and nobody minds that, but she gets into sudden passions which need close watching, and I wouldn't wonder if there was not now signs ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... insubordination of Landais, who evinced great jealousy of his superior. Several prizes were taken, one of them by Jones off Cape Wrath, at the extremity of Scotland. Traversing the eastern coast, he arrived, with the Pallas and the Vengeance, at the Firth of Forth, and entertained the bold idea of attacking the armed vessels at the station, and putting not only Leith, but possibly the capital, Edinburgh itself, under contribution. He would certainly have made the attempt—indeed, it was in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... very well have befallen her the day before; and I instinctively lowered my voice when I addressed her. She admitted she had rooms to let—even showed them to us—a sitting-room and bedroom in a suite, commanding a fine prospect to the Firth and Fifeshire, and in themselves well proportioned and comfortably furnished, with pictures on the wall, shells on the mantelpiece, and several books upon the table, which I found afterwards to be all of a devotional character, and all presentation ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to Trevors's coup was to telegraph San Francisco for a Firth milking-machine, together with an expert sent out by the Firth Company to install and superintend its working for the first few days. At the same time she hired from one of the Sacramento dairies a man who was to be foreman of her own dairy industry, a capable fellow ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... minor offshoot up the Bristol Channel, and, curling round Anglesey, flows along the North Wales coast and fills Liverpool Bay and the Mersey. The third branch streams round the north coast of Ireland, past the Mull of Cantyre and Rathlin Island; part fills up the Firth of Clyde, while the rest flows south, and, swirling round the west side of the Isle of Man, helps the southern current to fill the Bay of Liverpool. The rest of the great wave impinges on the coast of Scotland, and, curling round it, fills up the North Sea right away ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... have assumed them to be true. Following this order, the two first on the list will naturally be the death, by Claverhouse's own hand, of John Brown, and the deaths, by drowning on the sands of Solway Firth, of the two women, Margaret Maclachlan and Margaret Wilson—popularly known as ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... Robert Southey (1774-1843) was an English poet. From 1813 until his death he was Poet Laureate of England. Bell Rock, or Inchcape, is a reef of red sandstone near the Firth of Tay, on the east coast of Scotland. At the time of the spring tides part of the reef is uncovered to the height of four feet. Because so many vessels were wrecked upon these rocks the Abbot of Aberbrothok is said to have placed a bell there, "fixed upon a tree or timber, which rang continually, ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... Hills were in sight. Sundry vessels had been described bound in for the Firth of Forth, on whose south shore, well up the Firth, stands Leith, the port of Edinburgh, distant but a mile or two from that capital. He resolved to dash at Leith, and lay it under contribution or in ashes. He called ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... by Breze and his squire, and also by the man of the cave, who was acquainted with the country, and acted as guide. They reached Carlisle in safety, and there embarked on board a vessel, which took them down the Firth and ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... miscellaneously, and picked up odd sorts of knowledge from many quarters—from workmen, carpenters, fishermen and sailors, and above all, from the old boulders strewed along the shores of the Cromarty Firth. With a big hammer which had belonged to his great-grandfather, an old buccaneer, the boy went about chipping the stones, and accumulating specimens of mica, porphyry, garnet, and such like. Sometimes he had a day in the woods, and there, too, the boy's attention was excited by the peculiar ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... just begun. Its bleak, rocky shores were world-famous for their danger, and few mariners cared to venture around them. At that time the coast "was lighted at a single point, the Isle of May, in the jaws of the Firth of Forth, where, on a tower already a hundred and fifty years old, an open coal-fire blazed in an open chaufer. The whole archipelago thus nightly plunged in darkness was shunned by seagoing vessels." [Footnote: ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... Montgomery—breaketh out into invective against the Edinburgh Reviewers—calleth them hard names, harpies and the like—apostrophiseth Jeffrey, and prophesieth.—Episode of Jeffrey and Moore, their jeopardy and deliverance; portents on the morn of the combat; the Tweed, Tolbooth, Firth of Forth [and Arthur's Seat], severally shocked; descent of a goddess to save Jeffrey; incorporation of the bullets with his sinciput and occiput.—Edinburgh Reviews 'en masse'.—Lord Aberdeen, Herbert, Scott, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... firth divide England from Scotland, and this borderland has been the scene of many deadly feuds, though happily only in the days long agone. The castle of Carlisle was a noted border stronghold, built ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... into the air. The dogs left their lair by the fire and, led by the Garm the old blind patriarch, made a tour of inspection among the outhouses to the edge of the birch woods. Presently would come a rending of the ice on the firth, and patches of inky water would show between the floes. The snow would slip from the fell-side, and leave dripping rock and clammy bent, and the river would break its frosty silence and pour a mighty grey-green flood to ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... Gatehouse-of-Fleet in Kircudbrightshire that, for once in a way, for some reason I do not bring to mind, Mac and I were separated for a nicht. I found a lodging for the night wi' an aged couple who had a wee cottage all covered wi' ivy, no sae far from the Solway Firth. I was glad o' that; I've aye ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... reconnaissance was strenuously carried on, and the squadron flew on an average about a thousand miles a week. Many non-commissioned officers and warrant officers were instructed in aviation. Some thirty miles south of Montrose, across the Firth of Tay, there is a three miles stretch of level sand at St. Andrews, and this was used for instruction in aviation—not without trouble and difficulty from the irresponsible and wandering habits of spectators. The more skilled of the pilots gained much experience ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... Who planned the economic use of the Niagara Falls? Who built the Brooklyn Bridge? Who projected the vast waterway from Chicago to the Gulf? Who first thought of a cable across the depths of seas? Who bridged the Firth of Forth, the Ganges, the Mississippi? Who projected the gray docks of Montreal? the Simplon Tunnel? Who wound the iron rails across the Alleghanies, the Rockies, the Sierras? Who drew the wall that has encircled China ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... after the withdrawal of the regular Roman troops, several bodies of heathen Anglo-Saxons, belonging to the three tribes of Jutes, English, and Saxons, settled en masse on the south-eastern shores of Britain, from the Firth of Forth to the Isle of Wight. The age of mere plundering descents was decisively over, and the age of settlement and colonisation had set in. These heathen Anglo-Saxons drove away, exterminated, or enslaved ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... barge, ye gallant crew, And, gentle lady, deign to stay! Rest thee in Castle Ravensheuch, Nor tempt the stormy firth to-day. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... art as a poet, were written from Burford Bridge in November 1817. See Colvin's edition of Keats's Letters, pp. 40-46.... "Emma" is Lady Hamilton, whom Admiral Nelson loved.... Queen's Ferry (properly Queensferry) is on the Firth of Forth, Scotland. See a few lines below in the text, where Stevenson gives the reference to the opening pages of Scott's novel the Antiquary, which begins in the old inn at this place. See also page 105 of the text, and Stevenson's foot note, where he declares that he did make use of Queensferry ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the surges, And sweethearts wander free, And the Firth as with laughter dimples . . . I would ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... The cyclone fans have been set up from Moray Firth to the Firth of Lorne. I am in two minds about asking the Tharios ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... are navigated, although I am ignorant of the duties of a seaman, I might, with the aid of a sailing master, be able without difficulty to reach the country of which Batten told us. Gilbert has already made two voyages to the Thames, and one as far as the Firth of Forth, so that he is not altogether ignorant of sea affairs, and lacks ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... rude and radiant earth That heaves and glows from firth to firth In vale and mountain, bright in dearth And warm in wealth, Which gave his fiery glory birth ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... dipped their colours off Wells-on-Sea or Cromer, whence they bore away for the mouth of Humber, where Hull tenders took up the running till met by those belonging to Sunderland, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Shields, which in turn joined up the cordon with others hailing from Leith and the Firth of Forth. Northward of the Forth, away to the extreme Orkneys, and all down the west coast of Scotland through the two Minches and amongst the Hebrides, specially armed sloops from Leith and Greenock made periodic cruises. Greenock tenders, again, united ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... the country of Sir Neil Campbell, and thence to cross for a time to the north of Ireland. Sir Neil accordingly started to obtain the necessary vessels, and the king and his company followed slowly. To reach the Firth of Clyde it was necessary to cross Loch Lomond. This was a difficult undertaking; but after great search Sir James Douglas discovered a small boat sunk beneath the surface of the lake. On being pulled out it was found to be old and leaky, and would hold at best but three. With strips torn from ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... a constitutional on the pier, not without a hope that my featureless friend might be blown away by the gusty wind, which came bellowing up from the Firth of Forth, with enough stinging salt and vivifying freshness in it, one might have fancied, to shrivel up a host of phantoms. I tramped him up and down the gleaming planks in the keen salt wind for half an hour, and he shadowed me unshrinkingly. ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... the war had been establishing a chain of air stations round the coast. These stations are at Calshot, on Southampton Water, the Isle of Grain, off Sheerness, Leven, on the Firth of Forth, ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... and the deer that, in later ages, would have been forbidden game to them. If I may trust Bede, born in 672, and finishing his History in 731, our friends were Picts, and spoke a now unknown language, not that of the Bretonnes, or Cymri, or Welsh, who lived on the northern side of the Firth of Clyde. Or the occupants of Dumbuck, on the north side of the river, were Cymri; those of Langbank, on the south side, were Picts. I may at once say that I decline to be responsible for Bede, and his ethnology, but he lived nearer to those ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... preach the Faith. Modern historians identify him with the Irish St. Odhran, who was driven from his country by the Danes and took refuge in Scotland. He preached the Gospel to the people of Fifeshire and the eastern counties. Eventually he founded a monastery on the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth. Here he suffered martyrdom, together {36} with a great number of his disciples, in an incursion of the Danes. A Priory was built on the island by David I, and placed under the Benedictine Abbey of Reading. Later on it was given over to the Canons Regular ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... Bartholomew Finagan David Finch John Fincher George Finer Dennis Finesy Francis Finley James Finley Dennis Finn John Finn Jeremiah Finner Jonathan Finney (3) Seth Finney Thomas Finney Robert Firmie Joseph Firth Asel Fish Daniel Fish Ezekiel Fish John Fish Nathaniel Fish (2) John Fisham Abraham Fisher Archibald Fisher Isaac Fisher Jonathan Fisher Nathan Fisher Robert Fisher (3) Simon Fisher William Fisher (2) William Fisk John Fist Solomon Fist Ebenezer Fitch Jedeiah Fitch Josiah Fitch Peter Fitch Theopilus ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... began this translation little was known about Giordano Bruno except through the valuable works of Sig. Berti and Sig. Levi, and since then Mrs. Firth has given us a life of the Nolan, written in English, and several able articles in the magazines have been published, in one of which, by C.E. Plumptre (Westminster Review, August, 1889), an interesting parallel is drawn between ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... built, and had been making a trial trip a few miles outside the Firth of Clyde. She was returning to Glasgow, and the Isle of Arran already loomed in the distance, when the sailor on watch caught sight of an enormous fish sporting in the wake of the ship. Lord Edward, who was immediately apprised of the fact, came up on the poop a few minutes ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... the British squadron so skilfully disposed in the North Seas, that when the Chevalier with a French squadron put to sea, he was so closely watched, that after vainly attempting to land, both in the Firth of Forth and the neighbourhood of Inverness, he was obliged to return to Dunkirk. This auspicious event entirely restored Marlborough's credit with the nation, and dispelled every remnant of suspicion with which the Whigs regarded him in relation to the exiled family; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... men gave directions for their burial, and they charged their sons to lay them beneath two barrows or mounds, one on each side of the narrow firth, whose murmurs would ever be sweet music as they slept, and across whose waves their spirits would ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... American publicists should see, personally, what Great Britain had done, and was doing in the war; and it had decided to ask a few individuals to pay personal visits to its munition factories, its great aerodromes, its Great Fleet, which then lay in the Firth of Forth, and to the battle-fields. It was understood that no specific obligation rested upon any member of the party to write of what he saw: he was asked simply to observe and then, with discretion, use his observations for his own guidance and information in future writing. In fact, ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... Pall Mall Gazette, in speaking of the accidents which had happened in connection with the Forth Bridge, tells of a man who trusted himself to work at the height of 120 feet above the waters of the Firth, simply grasping a rope. His hands became numb with cold, his grasp relaxed, and he fell backward down into the water, but was brought out alive. In another instance a spanner fell a distance of 300 feet, knocked off a man's cap, and broke its way ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... know how Victor Hugo transformed the Firth of Forth into the First of the Fourth, and then insisted that he was right; but this great novelist was in the habit of soaring far above the realm of fact, and in a work he brought out as an offering to the memory of Shakespeare he showed that his imagination carried him far away ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... company were privileged against arrest and imprisonment, and if placed in durance, the company was authorized to invoke both the civil and military power. The Great Seal was affixed to the Act; the books were opened; the shares were fixed at L100 sterling each; and every man from the Pentland Firth to the Galway Firth who could command the amount was impatient to put down his name. The whole kingdom apparently had gone mad. The number of shareholders were about fourteen hundred. The books were opened February 26, 1696, and the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... drawings, which were afterwards engraved and published. Miller's favourite design was, to divide the vessel into twin or triple hulls, with paddles between them, to be worked by the crew. The principal experiment was made in the Firth of Forth on the 2d of June 1787. The vessel was double-hulled, and was worked by a capstan of five bars. The experiment was on the whole successful. But the chief difficulty was in the propulsive power. After a spurt of an hour or so, the men became tired with their laborious ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... conspicuous service in the lobby work at Washington under the auspices of the National Suffrage Association were Mrs. John Glover South, Mrs. Thomas Jefferson Smith, Mrs. Edmund M. Post, Mrs. Samuel Castleman, Mrs. Charles Firth and Mrs. Samuel Henning. They were equally helpful in the State political work and among many others who deserve especial mention are Mrs. James A. Leech, Mrs. J. B. Judah and Mrs. Robinson A. McDowell. The association is indebted to Mr. McDowell for legal ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... most famous of the pirates. His history is told in Captain Charles Johnson's General History of the Pyrates (second ed., London, 1724), pp. 45-63. Two popular ballads respecting him are in Professor Firth's Naval Songs and Ballads, pp. 131-134. We print first the documents which first brought knowledge of his misdeeds, but the whole story in a consecutive order is better found in the examination of John Dann, document no. 63, post. The case is only partly American, ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... . At the close of a winter day, Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay; And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye, And one was Lord of the Wessex coast and all the lands thereby, And one was Master of the Thames from Limehouse to Blackwall, And he was Captain of the Fleet — the bravest of them all. Their good guns guarded their ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... if not, the grossest of fools. They prompted the king to equip a fleet against the Scots, and to put on board it 5000 land men. Had this been all, the design had been good, that while the king had faced the army upon the borders, these 5000, landing in the Firth of Edinburgh, might have put that whole nation into disorder. But in order to this, they advised the king to lay out his money in fitting out the biggest ships he had, and the "Royal Sovereign," the biggest ship the world had ever seen, which cost him no less than L100,000, was now ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... telegraphic instructions had reached them and that they were on their station. Before evening we all assembled in the lee of Sanda Island, in the Mull of Kintyre. I felt an admiral indeed when I saw my five whale-backs all in a row. Panza's report was excellent. They had come round by the Pentland Firth and reached their cruising ground on the fourth day. Already they had destroyed twenty vessels without any mishap. I ordered the Beta to divide her oil and torpedoes among the other three, so that they were in good condition to continue their ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Firth, an estuary, cognate with fjord, often becomes Frith, but this surname usually comes from frith, a park ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... repair to the brattach of his tribe, or stand to the punishment of fire and sword. The fiery cross hath flitted about like a meteor in every direction, and awakened strange and unknown tribes beyond the distant Moray Firth—may Heaven and St. Dominic be our protection! But if your lordships cannot find remedy for evil, it will spread broad and wide, and the patrimony of the church must in every direction be exposed to the fury of these Amalekites, with whom there is as little devotion to Heaven as there ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... bridges have been blown down; and a case recently occurred where an iron railroad bridge of 180 feet span, and 30 feet high, and presenting apparently almost no surface to the wind, was blown so much out of line that the track had to be shifted. The recent terrible disaster at the Firth of Tay was, no ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... interesting, and puzzling.... 'The Track of Midnight' deserves grateful recognition by lovers of tales well told; in it there is life, action, character, and admirable colour. If this is, as we think it is, Mr. Firth Scott's first novel, he has made an uncommonly ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... is altogether delightful, for 'Derbyshire' is attractive to the reader in his arm-chair as to the tourist wandering amid the scenes Mr. Firth ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... mouth of the Thames is too much encumbered by sand-banks to be approached at night or during bad weather. The Humber is also considerably obstructed in this way, so that the Roads of Leith, in the Firth of Forth, and those of Cromarty, in the Moray Firth, are the chief places of resort in easterly gales. But both of these had ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... Perth, the traitors had fixed upon that spot as the place of his doom; but the scheme was known to so many, that it could not be kept entirely secret, and warnings began to gather round the King. When, on his way to Perth, he was about to cross the Firth of Forth, the wild figure of a Highland woman appeared at his bridle rein, and solemnly warned him 'that, if he crossed that water, he would never return alive'. He was struck by the apparition, and bade one of his knights to enquire of her what she meant; but ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wild flight Of Spain, and save her water-casks, a trail Telling of utmost fear. And ever the storm Soared louder across the leagues of rioting sea, Driving her onward like a mighty stag Chased by the wolves. Off the dark Firth of Forth At last, Drake signalled and lay head to wind, Watching. "The chariots of God are twenty thousand," He muttered, as, for a moment close at hand, Caught in some league-wide whirlpool of the sea, The mighty galleons crowded and towered and plunged ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... more severely felt. There was widespread discontent in the country; and the king in sore financial distress was immovable in his resolve that no steps should be taken for refitting the fleet. The ships remained laid up in port, although the Dutch despatched in April a squadron to the Firth of Forth and ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... insured. Thereupon John Douglas, having still over 3000 pounds, invested it in what was then considered a safe concern, and finding his wants very few and very simple, repaired to the Renfrewshire coast, and found there a small cottage overlooking the Firth of Clyde and the sea, where he could live cheaply and comfortably. And he did live there very comfortably and contentedly, though not quite to the satisfaction of his neighbours, who resented the intrusion ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... their men to the attack, while Tew had died at his post at the entrance of the shikargah. Many more were desperately wounded: Colonel Pennefather and Major Wylie; Captains Tucker, Smith, Conway; Lieutenants Plowden, Harding, Thayre, Bourdillon; Ensigns Firth, Pennefather, Bowden, Holbrow. ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... said, And bade rest to the weary feet that had worn the wild so long. So they sat, and were men by seeming; and there rose up music and song, And they ate and drank and were merry: but amidst the glee of the cup They felt themselves tangled and caught, as when the net cometh up Before the folk of the firth, and the main sea lieth far off; And the laughter of lips they hearkened, and that hall-abider's scoff, As his face and his mocking eyes anigh to their faces drew, And their godhead was caught in the net, and no shift of creation they knew To ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... and awful, and a gold crown girdeth her head; And a sword of the kings she beareth, and her sun-bright hair is shed O'er the laps of the snow-white linen that ripples adown to her feet: As a swan on the billow unbroken ere the firth and the ocean meet, On the dark-blue cloths she sitteth, in the height of the golden place, Nor breaketh the hush of the hall, though her eyes be ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... of the voyage fogs and gales prevailed, and the "Blazer" was driven considerably out of her course to the northward, insomuch that she finally made the land on the north-western coast of Scotland. This induced the captain to run through the Pentland Firth, after passing through which they were beset ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... last, Admiral the Duke of Edinburgh, with the Naval Reserve Squadron under his command, arrived in the Firth of Forth and anchored in Leith Roads. His Royal Highness performed the ceremony of opening the new dock at Leith, which has been named after him. The "Edinburgh" Dock at Leith, which was commenced in 1874, consists of a center basin 500 ft. long and 650 ft. wide, and two basins 1,000 ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... the mountains, the rosy morning light bathing their sides in floods of sunshine, and turning each heather bell at their feet into an amethyst. Yonder could be seen the shores of Fife, nearer Preston Bay and Berwick. Between them rolled the broad Firth, islands floating on its bosom like emeralds ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... Carlyle. His father was a stone-mason and had built with his own hands the house in which his son Thomas was born. The little village of Ecclefechan was about six miles from the Solway Firth, among the pasture lands of the bale of Annan. Here Thomas grew to be a boy running about barefooted and sturdy with his many brothers and sisters, and one ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Mr. John Firth, of the Hudson's Bay Company here, gives us much information regarding these people who for thirty-seven consecutive years have traded with him. The Kogmollycs have been here "from the beginning," the Nunatalmutes moving into this region in 1889, driven out of their hunting grounds inland from Kotzebue ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... picturesque little Welsh watering-place, Lllgxtplll, and, despite desperate resistance on the part of an excursion of Evanses and Joneses from Cardiff, had obtained a secure foothold. While these things were happening in Wales, the army of Monaco had descended on Auchtermuchty, on the Firth of Clyde. Within two minutes of this disaster, by Greenwich time, a boisterous band of Young Turks had seized Scarborough. And, at Brighton and Margate respectively, small but determined armies, the one of Moroccan brigands, under Raisuli, ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... fortalice the young Lords of Douglas rode that autumn day, gaily as to a wedding, on their way to place themselves in the power of their house's enemies. The sea plain pursued them, flecked green and purple on their right hand. Little ships floated on the smooth surface of the firth, hardly larger in size than the boats of fisher folk, yet ships withal which had adventured into far seas and brought back rich produce into the barren lands of ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... taken at Prestonpans, to his uncle and his father with letters explaining all the circumstances. By Colonel Talbot's advice and help this messenger was sent aboard one of the English vessels cruising in the Firth, well furnished with passes which would carry him in safety ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... rejected, and many a man had he ousted from his lands, yet no redress could be obtained, and no man was bold enough to attack so great a chieftain or resist his will. Thorbiorn's house at Bathstead was one of the best in the district, and his lands stretched down to the shores of the firth, where he had made a haven with a jetty for ships. His boathouse stood a little back above a ridge of shingle, and beside a deep pool or lagoon. The household of Thorbiorn included Sigrid, a fair maiden, young and wealthy, who was his housekeeper; Vakr, an ill-conditioned and malicious fellow, ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... FIRTH. A corruption of frith, in Scotland applied to arms of the sea, and estuaries of various extent; also given to several ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... sons have tunnelled the Alps, cut the most arduous railway lines in America and India, brought up English ships from the deep, laid the caissons (a task of extreme danger) which support the great structure of the Bridge of the Firth of Forth, and left their bones to whiten at Panama. 'It is the universal testimony,' writes a high American authority, 'that no more faithful men have come among us.' What was the cause of the slaughter of the Aigues Mortes? That the Italians ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... that island from Cape de la Hogue. In the Race the tide ran with a strength and rapidity scarcely paralleled on the coasts of Britain. The famous gulf of Coryvreckan in the Hebridean Sea, and some parts of the Pentland Firth, are perhaps the only places where the currents are equally irresistible. To the latter strait, indeed, the Alderney Race bears a great resemblance; and an Orkney man unexpectedly entering it, would be in danger of mistaking Alderney for Stroma, and Cape de la Hogue ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... the southern bank of which probably formed the ranges of hills known in the time of the earliest Norse jarls as Ekkjals-bakki. Everywhere else Cat was bounded by the open sea, of which the Norse soon became masters, namely on the west by the Minch, on the north by the North Atlantic and Pentland Firth, and on the east and south by the North Sea; and the great valley of the Oykel and the Dornoch Firth made Cat almost ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... was lying in Asmundarvag (Osmundwall) in Rognvaldzey (South Ronaldsey) in a long-ship for he was about to sail over to Katanes (Caithness). Then did King Olaf sail his folk from the west & put into haven in the island because Pettlanzfjord (Pentland Firth) ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... hes hard soung and say, In gestis and storeis auld, The man that will nocht quhen he may Sall haif nocht quhen he wald. I pray to Jesu every day, Mot eik thair cairis cauld That first preissis with thee to play Be firth, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Saint James, we again mounted our horses and proceeded in the direction of Vigo. As we did not leave Saint James till late in the afternoon, we travelled that day no farther than Padron, a distance of only three leagues. This place is a small port, situate at the extremity of a firth which communicates with the sea. It is called for brevity's sake, Padron, but its proper appellation is Villa del Padron, or the town of the patron saint; it having been, according to the legend, the principal residence of Saint James during his stay in Galicia. By the Romans ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... was made by firing four shots at each plate in the bisectrix of the corners. Then the 6 in. gun was replaced by an 8 in. one, throwing a 209 lb. Firth projectile, with an energy at the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... Brodie had done exactly as Rahal Ragnor anticipated. The boat had made the journey in an abnormally short time. A full sea, and strong, favourable winds, had carried her through the stormiest Firth in Scotland, at a racer's speed; and she was at her dock, and had delivered all her passengers when Conall Ragnor arrived at his warehouse. Then he had sent word to Rahal, and consequently she ventured on the prediction ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... district at the head of his earls and barons, accompanied by a large army, and subdued an insurrection fomented by the local chiefs against his authority. On this occasion he built two castles within its bounds, one called Dunscath on the northern Sutor at the entrance to the Cromarty Firth, and Redcastle in the Black Isle. In the same year we find Florence, Count of Holland, complaining that he had been deprived of its nominal ownership by King William. There is no trace of any other earl in actual possession until we come to Ferquard or "Ferchair Mac an t' Sagairt," Farquhar the son ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... has been identified by Professor Firth with the Seven Champions of England, an extremely artificial romance, which may be taken as typical of hundreds more of its kind. The 1610 edition of it is a very lively book with a good deal of playing to the gallery, such as this: "As ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... there for this year, and Einar would use this cruise to do so, seeing that we must put to sea. We were not the first who had laid these shores under rule from the Orkneys, for Jarl Sigurd had conquered them, meeting his death at last in a Sutherland firth, after ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... lucency. At times thrilled by no perceptible wind, rather by the pulse of the sun's rays, the froth shook and parted; and then behold, deep in the crevasses vignetted and shining, an acre or two of the earth of man's business and fret—tilled slopes of the Lothians, ships dotted on the Firth, the capital like a hive that some child had smoked—the ear of fancy could ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... the Great Seal was affixed; the subscription books were opened; the shares were fixed at a hundred pounds sterling each; and from the Pentland Firth to the Solway Firth every man who had a hundred pounds was impatient to put down his name. About two hundred and twenty thousand pounds were actually paid up. This may not, at first sight, appear a large sum to those who remember the bubbles of 1825 and of 1845, and would assuredly not have ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... when life begins to wane, And we must sail the doubtful firth, How wild the longing to regain The ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... my reward. I had come from Italy, where I had wandered through churches and galleries, and had seen the supreme excellence of a generation whose like we shall not see again, and as we came up that stately firth and discovered a generation as supreme in their art as the Italians of the sixteenth century were in theirs, I ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... mountains on this side of Lochy, and the horse went Lochquhaher, agreeing, however, to meet again upon notice from the Pretender. And here being advised that two French frigates were come for their relief, and would lay in Pentland Firth till they should hear from them, the Lord Duffus, Sir George Sinclair, General Eckline and others, about 160 gentlemen in all, well mounted on horseback, made a sally from the hills, and crossing the shire of Murray,[62] came to the seaside near Burgh, where they got ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... left about: (Whether impell'd by all-directing Fate, To witness what I after shall narrate; Or whether, rapt in meditation high, He wander'd out he knew not where nor why) The drowsy Dungeon-clock,[61] had number'd two, And Wallace Tow'r[61] had sworn the fact was true: The tide-swol'n Firth, with sullen sounding roar, Through the still night dash'd hoarse along the shore. All else was hush'd as Nature's closed e'e: The silent moon shone high o'er tow'r and tree: The chilly ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... equanimity, and several of the beaten and despondent Saxons had joined the royal exiles. Their voyage, however, was an unprosperous one, and after much beating about by winds and storms they were at last driven up the Firth of Forth, where their ship found shelter in the little bay at the narrowing of the Firth, which has since borne the name of ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... mistress stood disdainfully by, "like pity on a monument, smiling at grief." Above all, conceive him taking the lover's leap—say from Dunnet or Duncansby-head, where the rocks tower four hundred feet above the Pentland Firth, and floundering in the waters like an enormous whale; the herring shoals hurrying away from his unwieldy gambols, as from the presence of the real sea-born leviathan. Cacus in love was not more grand, or the gigantic Polyphemus, sighing at the feet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... granted his request. He was very glad to obtain Archie Gordon as his first lieutenant. He at once wrote to Murray, saying how delighted he should be to have young Alick. His letter found the Stella lying in Leith Roads, she having put into the Firth of Forth to remain a few days. In less than twenty-four hours young Alick appeared with a letter from his father, requesting Jack to obtain the necessary articles for his outfit. Orders were received to get both ships ready for sea with all possible expedition, and the two captains found ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston |
