"Minstrelsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Warden fledst; and now, The fugitive of Fate, Thou farest in our life as in a dream, Still wandering with thy lute, Like that sweet paynim lady of old song, Who sang and wandered long, For love of her Aucassin, seeking him! So with thy minstrelsy Thou roamest, dreaming of the country dim, Below ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... transpired there long ago. Our second scene will picture Merrymount Where lived gay royalists who took no count Of Puritanic manners, and who sang And laughed till all the woods about them rang With outlaw merriment. These you will see Engaged in maypole dance and minstrelsy, While Puritans with grave and somber mien Condemn such light-foot revels on the green! These have you known on Hawthorne's living page. Now shall you see them pictured on our stage. Grant us your patience: lend your ears as well. The rest our ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... untrammelled by the forms of art, their sweetest melodies. How often do their lightsome, inspiriting carollings ring out upon the morning air, persuasively calling us from our couches to listen in delight to Nature's minstrelsy! "After man," says a writer, "the birds occupy the highest rank in Nature's concerts. They make the woods, the gardens, and the fields resound with their merry warbles. Their warbled 'shake' has never been equalled by human gifts of voice, nor ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... this there's a price— 'Tis the price of minstrelsy— You will never have of the things you play, Sad singer of poetry, And throughout your life you will go for aye, Heart-hungry and silently!" I heard a voice from the far away Softly say ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... rude as it was, had in it that warlike character which at any other time would have roused Halbert's spirit; but at present the charm of minstrelsy had no effect upon him. He made it his request to Christie to suffer him to retire to rest, a request with which that worthy person, seeing no chance of making a favourable impression on his intended proselyte in ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... and wider than that of minstrelsy wrought in the favorable influence of chivalry on the condition of women, causes psychological, physiological, and social. The exalting effect of love is well known; its inciting and glorifying power is seen even in birds and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... prelude of pipe, cittern and viol, touched with practised minstrelsy, began to play from a neighboring thicket in such a mirthful cadence that the boughs of the Maypole quivered to the sound. But the May-lord—he of the gilded staff—chancing to look into his lady's eyes, was ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sweet words among That heaven-resounding minstrelsy? Heardst thou not that those who die Awake in a world of ecstasy? How love, when limbs are interwoven, And sleep, when the night of life is cloven, And thought to the world's dim boundaries clinging, And music when one's ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... wandering and distempered child: Thou pourest on him thy soft influences. Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sheets, Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters, Till he relent, and can no more endure To be a jarring and a dissonant thing, Amid this general dance and minstrelsy; But, bursting into tears, wins back his way, His angry spirit healed and harmonized By the benignant touch ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... great stride. It is a sign—is it not?—of new vigor when the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet. I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provencal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the thing; I wonder where, What courtier with what courtesy First played it, with what lady fair, To music of what minstrelsy? I wonder did he seem to see Such eyes wherein a sunbeam starts, And did he love (as I) while she Played ping-pong ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... Lombarda,' the romance of the Baronessa di Carini, and the so-called Caso di Sciacca, may still be heard upon the lips of the people. But these exceptions are insignificant in comparison with the vast mass of songs which deal with love; and I cannot find that Tuscany, where the language of this minstrelsy is purest, and where the artistic instincts of the race are strongest, has anything at all approaching to our ballads.[21] Though the Tuscan contadini are always singing, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... but myself to care for, I live very much at my ease, and fare sumptuously every day. As for poetry, I have given it up, notwithstanding that Dr. Griswold—as the reader, of course, knows—has placed me at a fair elevation among our minor minstrelsy, on the strength of my pretty little volume, published ten years ago. As regards human progress (in spite of my irrepressible yearnings over the Blithedale reminiscences), let them believe in it who can, and aid ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... forces, he directed his march to Cuzco, which capital, though occasionally seduced into a display of loyalty to the Crown, had early manifested an attachment to his cause. Here the inhabitants were prepared to receive him in triumph, under arches thrown across the streets, with bands of music, and minstrelsy commemorating his successes. But Pizarro, with more discretion, declined the honors of an ovation while the country remained in the hands of his enemies. Sending forward the main body of his troops, he followed on foot, attended ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... stars above, In all their bloom and brightness given, Are, like the attributes of love, The poetry of earth and heaven. Thus Nature's volume, read aright, Attunes the soul to minstrelsy, Tinging life's clouds with rosy light, And all ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... Aikin's General Biog. Dict. (1801), and its successor, Chalmers's Biog. Dict. (1812), due mention is preserved of the Dialogue in enumerating the works of its author. Sir Walter Scott alludes to it in the Introduction to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802) as a "mystery," but his only knowledge of it is evidently derived from Waldron. Chalmers's Life of Lindsay (Poetical Works, 1806) has also kept it prominently before a considerable class of inquirers, ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... industrious philosophers have speculated much upon the thoughts of men about to die; yet it cannot be too ingenuous to believe that such thoughts vary as the men, their characters, and conditions of life vary. Nevertheless, pursuant with the traditions of minstrelsy and romance, it is conceivable that young, unmarried men, called upon to face desperate situations, might, at the crucial moment, rush to a common experience of summoning the vision, each of his heart's desire, and to meet, each his doom, with ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... four boatmen who, from time to time, in a low tone, as if afraid of awakening the dawn, chaunted, now an old song of Normandy, and now a ballad upon the fate of some lost voyageur. The moon was yet shining, and he was in the mood to enjoy such minstrelsy; but when they neared the opposite shore, a feeling of sadness and apprehension stole over him, as he thought of meeting his father, to whom he knew he must either communicate distasteful tidings, or ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... Goetz von Berlichingen—the first of which was hastily made into a little book, daintily printed and bound, in order to help his suit with an early love, so easy, so little premeditated, was this beginning. With equal simplicity and absence of intention he slid into the Border Minstrelsy, which he intended not for the beginning of a long literary career, but in the first place for "a job" to Ballantyne the printer, whom he had persuaded to establish himself in Edinburgh—the best of printers and the most attached of faithful ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... great lyrists inspired by a local genius, keenest of popular satirists, narrative poet of the people, spokesman of their higher as of their lower natures, stood on the verge between two eras. Half Jacobite, nursling of old minstrelsy, he was also half Jacobin, an early-born child of the upheaval that closed the century; as essentially a foe of Calvinism as Hume himself. Master musician of his race, he was, as Thomas Campbell notes, severed, for good and ill, from his fellow Scots, by an utter ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... wide earth echoing rung To their strange minstrelsy, The little glittering spirits sung, Or ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... mandolin's mild minstrelsy, My mental music magazine, My mouth, my mind, my memory, Must mingling ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... seemed all a-blaze, and of an appalling and suspicious brightness. Sounds, moreover, of mirth and revelry approached his ear. He would instantly have proceeded to ascertain the cause of this inauspicious merry-making had not Kate's injunction kept him aloof. The noise of minstrelsy was now heard—symptoms of the marriage-feast and the banquet. More than once he suspected some witchery, some delusion of the enemy to beguile him by enchantments. However, he resolved to be quiet; and, for the purpose of a more extended vision, he climbed, or ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... of no importance that Jubal invented rude instruments of music, calling them harp and organ; but they were the introduction of all the world's minstrelsy; and as you hear the vibration of a stringed instrument, even after the fingers have been taken away from it, so all music now of lute and drum and cornet is only the long-continued strains of Jubal's harp and Jubal's organ. It seemed to ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... fruitful for Heaven has been the year that is gone! . . . Our dear Father has seen that which the eye of man cannot see, he has heard the minstrelsy of the angels . . . now his heart understands, and his soul enjoys "the things which God hath prepared for those who love Him."[2] . . . Our turn will come, and it is full sweet to think our sails are set towards ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... Mardi much delighted to list to such noble minstrelsy, they agreed not with Bello's poets in deeming the lagoon their old ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... shining in the dark, And knew the Glow-worm by his spark; So, stooping down from hawthorn top, He thought to put him in his crop. The Worm, aware of his intent, Harangued him thus, right eloquent:— "Did you admire my lamp," quoth he, "As much as I your minstrelsy, You would abhor to do me wrong, As much as I to spoil your song; For 'twas the self-same power divine Taught you to sing and me to shine; That you with music, I with light, Might beautify and cheer the night." The songster heard his short oration, And, warbling ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... His minstrelsy may be unchaste - 'Tis much unto that motley taste, And loud the laughter he provokes From those sad ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... its in- terstices filled up with its yellow lutings; the same precision of outline in the prismatic angles, sharp as though chiseled by a sculptor's hand; the same sonorous vibration of the air across the basaltic rocks, of which the Gaelic poets have feigned that the harps of the Fingal minstrelsy were made. But whereas at Staffa the floor of the cave is always covered with a sheet of water, here the grotto was beyond the reach of all but the highest waves, while the prismatic shafts them- selves ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... crew, whom he hated, even in his dreams, till the foam flew from his mouth while he slept; yet at last I prevailed upon him to master his feelings, and make them subservient to his interests. For so delighted, even with the rudest minstrelsy, are sailors, that I well knew Harry possessed a spell over them, which, for the time at least, they could not resist; and it might induce them to treat with more deference the being who was capable of yielding them such delight. Carlo's organ they did not so ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... loss of the last nine and a half books must be considered irreparable. In the Germania he had shown the power of that liberty which the barbarians enjoyed, had indicated their polity, in which, even then the germs of feudalism, chivalry, the worship of the sex, troubadour minstrelsy, fairy mythology, and, above all, representative government, existed. In the Historiae he paints with tremendous power the disorganisation, of the Roman state, the military anarchy which made the diadem the gift of a brutal soldiery, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... shall tell us some old tale also; and I will reward him. And thou, I shall not make thee a man-at-arms this time, though trust me, I misdoubt thy hare-heart. There is no such look in thine eyes.' And he turned away and left us. So we wore the night merrily enough till the time appointed, what with minstrelsy and some deal of ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... minstrelsy, For this with flute and pipe came nigh The danger of the dog's heads three That ravening at hell's door doth lie; Fain was Narcissus, fair and shy, For love's love lightly lost and won, In a deep well to drown and die; Good luck has he that ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... attempted in these pages than to extract the marrow of the Scottish Ballad Minstrelsy. They will have served their purpose if they help to awaken, or to renew, a relish for the contents of the Ballad Book. To know and love these grand old songs is its own exceeding great reward; and it is ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... situated just beyond the Border in Scotland, in that region of romantic and poetical traditions, full of the charm of early legendary and ballad lore, of the associations of Burns's songs and Scott's Border minstrelsy, pervaded with the old superstitions, half-beliefs, dating from as far back as the days of Thomas the Rhymer, and the later powerful influence of the Wizard of the North, the mighty master-magician of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... majestically slow; Each angel spread his wings; in one dread swell Of triumph mingling as they mounted, trumpets And harps, and golden lyres, and timbrels sweet, And many a strange and deep-toned instrument Of heavenly minstrelsy unknown on earth, And angels' voices, and the loud acclaim Of all the ransom'd like a thunder shout, Far through the skies melodious echoes roll'd And faint hosannas distant ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... pioneers of the mediaeval revival were the Warton brothers. "The school of Warton" was a term employed, not without disparaging implications, by critics who had no liking for antique minstrelsy. Joseph and Thomas Warton were the sons of Thomas Warton, vicar of Basingstoke, who had been a fellow of Magdalen and Professor of Poetry at Oxford; which latter position was afterward filled by the younger of his two sons. It is interesting to note that a volume of verse by Thomas ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... it hewn." So the weapon was hung up on high that all might look upon it, and "by true title thereof tell the wonder." Then all the knights hastened to their seats at the table, so did the king and our good knight, and they were there served with all dainties, "with all manner of meat and minstrelsy." ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... produced by grief at being separated from a mavis. Their cages had long hung side by side in the parlour, and often had they striven to out-rival each other in the loudness of their song, till their minstrelsy became so stunning, that it was found necessary to remove the laverock ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... of the distress in Lancashire which was seen strikingly upon the streets of our large towns during some months of 1862. I allude to the wandering minstrelsy of the unemployed. Swarms of strange, shy, sad-looking singers and instrumental performers, in the work-worn clothing of factory operatives, went about the busy city, pleading for help in touching wails of simple song—like so many wild ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... circles, which sometimes appear yellow and blasted, sometimes of a deep green hue, and within which it is dangerous to sleep, or to be found after sunset. Cattle which are suddenly seized with the cramp, or some similar disorder, are said to be elf-shot. (Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... living world that sees him now Shall roll unconscious dust around the sun. Quelling from age to age the vital throb In human hearts, Death shall not subjugate The pulse that swells in his stupendous breast, Or interdict his minstrelsy to sound In thund'ring concert with the quiring winds; But long as Man to parent Nature owns Instinctive homage, and in times beyond The power of thought to reach, bard after bard Shall sing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... governess, teacher and saint, all in one. We must look to the Watt women as carefully as to the men; and these fortunately we find all that can be desired. His mother was Agnes Muirhead, a descendant of the Muirheads of Lachop, who date away back before the reign of King David, 1122. Scott, in his "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," gives us the old ballad of "The Laird of Muirhead," who played a great part ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... scenes in which Scott not only took such peculiar delight, but which furnished him themes both for his poems and romances, and which were rich in those old songs and narratives of border feats and raids which he has preserved in his Border Minstrelsy. Melrose, the Eildon Hills, the haunt of Thomas of Ercildoune, Jedburgh, Yetholm, the Cowdenknowes, the Yarrow, and Ettrick, all lie on different sides within a circle of twenty miles, and most of them ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... my hair and brushed my clothes in order that I might do credit to the Sabbath day. I thought of the old church at pretty D—-, the dignified rector, and yet more dignified clerk. I thought of England's grand Liturgy, and Tate and Brady's sonorous minstrelsy. I thought of the Holy Book, portions of which I was in the habit of reading between service. I thought, too, of the evening walk which I sometimes took in fine weather like the present, with my mother and brother—a quiet, sober walk, during which I would not break into ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... green-wood side, at summer eve, Poetic visions charm my closing eye; And fairy-scenes, that Fancy loves to weave, Shift to wild notes of sweetest Minstrelsy; 'Tis thine to range in busy quest of prey, Thy feathery antlers quivering with delight, Brush from my lids the hues of heav'n away, And all is Solitude, and all is Night! —Ah now thy barbed shaft, relentless ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... forest I hear a sound go free, Crashing the stately neighbours The pine and the cedar tree, Horns and harps and tabors, Drumming and harping and horning In savage minstrelsy— It wakes in my soul a warning ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... hereditaments, specimens, Walter Scott's Border Minstrelsy, Percy's collection, Ellis's early English Metrical Romances, the European continental poems of Walter of Aquitania, and the Nibelungen, of pagan stock, but monkish-feudal redaction; the history of the Troubadours, by Fauriel; even the far-back ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... France, went on principally in the south. The lands of Aquitaine and Provence had never dropped the old classical love of poetry and art. A softer form of broken Latin was then spoken, and the art of minstrelsy was frequent among all ranks. Poets were called troubadours and trouveres (finders). Courts of love were held, where there were competitions in poetry, the prize being a golden violet; and many of the bravest warriors were also distinguished troubadours—among them ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... MSS., and is the one on which Sir Walter Scott based the version given in the Border Minstrelsy. Byron notes in the preface to Childe Harold that 'the good-night in the beginning of the first canto was suggested by Lord Maxwell's Goodnight in the Border Minstrelsy.' ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... thou? Come here, old friend, I want thee now To ramble back with me again To where of old McPherson and Crane, And Francis Clemow, too, I think, Did business at the Basin's brink. And Bindon Burton Alton, who Has vanished from terrestial view; The poet with the flashing eye— The true born son of minstrelsy! Who sang so sweetly, memory still Trembles with the undying thrill. Which throbbed in melting tones of fire From Bindon Burton Alton's lyre, Alas! alas! that such a soul Should sink a victim to the bowl. Thomas MacKay, who's worthy name Is well known even ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... the rill's blithe minstrelsy; In willow bough or alder bush Birds sing, o'er golden filigree Of pebbles ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... all that day, with dancing-women and singing-women, and all the instruments of mirth and minstrelsy were smitten, whilst the queen and the Vizier and his son were exceeding assiduous in keeping up the festivities, so the Lady Bedrulbudour should rejoice and her chagrin be dispelled; nay, they left nought that day of that which exciteth unto liesse but they did it before her, so she ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... it is possible that the knight you favour may be notoriously inept in arms, you shall have resource to another trial of skill—namely that of minstrelsy. Here (like my predecessor of the same name, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine) I ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... stories from the Bible, did the same. No text was necessary. The picture told the tale to a people who could not read, just as the stained-glass windows and mosaics in the churches did. Everywhere the feeble literature of the period took the form either of verbal minstrelsy, drama, or pictured representations. You will recall how most of the early races first wrote in pictures instead of letters. There were hieroglyphics in Egypt; 'speaking stories' in Assyria; and picture-writing in Turkey, China, and Japan. The picture book of ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... their vanities amiable at all. It was the view of Authority that the Devil had dispatched three lesser D's to be the damnation of nuns, and those three D's were Dances, Dresses, and Dogs. Medieval England was famous for dancing and mumming and minstrelsy; it was Merry England because, however plague and pestilence and famine and the cruelties of man to man might darken life, still it loved these things. But there were no two views possible about what the Church thought of dancing; it was accurately ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... courtier gay, Dipped down with a dalliant song, And twanged his wings through the roundelay Of love the whole day long: Yet my rose turned from his minstrelsy And hid in the leaves in wait ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... spared any very severe shock—and what then will we ordinarily find? A few good old church melodies, almost lost amid a dreary maze of the most recent droning platitudes, or a multitude of worldly acquaintances, negro minstrelsy, ancient love ditties, bar room roundelays, passionate scenes from favorite operas, with snatches from instrumental symphonies, concertos, or what not! Music, as I have said, is even more subtile in its power of expression than speech, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... sharp twang of a citerne was heard in the street below her window,—nothing new in these piping times of love and minstrelsy; but so sensitive was the ear now become to exterior impressions, that she started, as though expecting a salutation from the midnight rambler. Her anticipations were in some measure realised, the minstrel pausing beneath her lattice. A wooden balcony projected ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... funeral elegy on Ann Bradstreet, the Eve of our female minstrelsy?" interrogated Miss Hurribattle; "there are two lines in it which are still ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... breathing clarionet Type what the poet fain would be; For none o' the singers ever yet Has wholly lived his minstrelsy, ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... houses, crying in dreadful voices, 'Les Allemands!' And there, by the old church, round the corner, came the Highlanders! I stood still on the pavement and sang 'Scots wha hae' at the top of my old cracked voice, and they, appreciating the welcome, and excusing the minstrelsy, waved their hands to me. The Staff was here, the Flying Corps, three regiments, English and Scottish—such brave, bright, orderly, kind young men. On September 6 the cannon sounded very near. I went into the street and said to a demure, douce young Highlander, 'Do ye think the Germans are coming?' ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... London's graceful state, Be unperform'd; as shows and solemn feasts, Watches in armour, triumphs, cresset-lights[268], Bonfires, bells, and peals of ordnance. And, Pleasure, see that plays be published, May-games and masques, with mirth and minstrelsy, Pageants and school-feasts, bears and puppet plays. Myself will muster upon Mile-end Green, As though we saw, and fear'd not to be seen; Which will their spies in such a wonder set, To see us reck so little such ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... certain expressions, gentle reader, which occur in the notes to the life of Robin Hood, prefixed to the ballads which go under his name: 1795. 2 vols. 8vo.—also a Dissertation on Romance and Minstrelsy in the first vol. of Ancient Metrical Romances, 1802, 3 vols. 8vo. A very common degree of shrewdness and of acquaintance with English literature will shew that, in Menander and Sycorax, are described honest TOM WARTON and snarling 'mister' ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the idle wind shakes down in autumn from the tree, The grasshopper who for an hour makes gayest minstrelsy— ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... heart was melted at Tristram's minstrelsy, and he said: "That is wonderful harping. Now ask what thou wilt of me, and it shall be thine, whatever ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... repetition of that exciting air, he struck a chord or two of some Beethoven, but shook his head with a sigh and gave it up. However, less ambitious attempts were open to him, and he had happened on Irish minstrelsy; so, left to himself, he sang ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... possibly accounted for the contrary character of the names, for there was little euphony in the minstrelsy of the one or a monopoly of brindle appearance in the other, for each faction's contingent, were about equally spotted with the sons of Ham. My friends, Benjamin & Barnes, were prominent as Brindles, and I, being to an extent a novice in the politics of the State, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... several letters to her Cousin Ann dated from Beulah and explaining the sad accident that had occurred. As she concocted these documents between her naps she could never remember in her whole life any such night of mirth and minstrelsy, and not one pang of conscience interfered, to cloud the present joy nor dim that ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... first importance in this anthology of traditional song are the "Cleveland Lyke-wake Dirge" and "A Dree Neet." The former has been well known to lovers of poetry since Sir Walter Scott included it in his Border Minstrelsy; the latter, I believe, was never published until the appearance of T' Hunt o' Yatton Brigg in 1896. The tragic power and suggestiveness of these two poems is very remarkable. It is, I think, fairly certain ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... on her face, was to Haldane like the watch of the shepherds on the hillside near Bethlehem. At times, in the deep hush that followed the storm, he was almost sure that he heard, faint and far away, angelic minstrelsy and song. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... they come, group after group, until the Stage, even of Old Drury, can hold no more, and there is scarcely room for them all to move, much less to indulge in any "kicking up ahind and afore," as was the wont of the Ancient JOSEPH, whose fame is hymned in Nigger Minstrelsy. A most brilliant scene, never to be forgotten!—that is, until next Pantomime Season, when Sir DRURIOLANUS will, in all probability, show us something equally magnificent, and as perfect ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... year 1200, at the height of the Middle Ages, a genuine, hearty enjoyment of the external world was again in existence, and found lively expression in the minstrelsy of different nations, which gives evidence of the sympathy felt with all the simple phenomena of nature—spring with its flowers, the green fields, and the woods. But these pictures are all foreground, without perspective. Even the crusaders, who travelled so far and saw so much, are not recognizable ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... have I, all noble; I play at chess so free, At ravelling runes I'm ready, At books and smithery; I'm skilled o'er ice at skimming On skates, I shoot and row, And few at harping match me, Or minstrelsy, I trow." ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... way—that he couldn't refuse to hear what she might have, so very elaborately, to say for herself—he ought certainly to be at his ease; in illustration of which he whistled odd snatches to himself as he hung about on that cloud-dappled autumn Sunday, a mild private minstrelsy that his lips hadn't known since when? The interval of the twenty-four hours, made longer by a night of many more revivals than oblivions, had in fact dragged not a little; in spite of which, however, our extremely brushed-up ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... [10] Was thy voice mute amid the festal crowd, When lay of hopeless love, or glory won, Aroused the fearful or subdued the proud. At each according pause was heard aloud Thine ardent symphony sublime and high! Fair dames and crested chiefs attention bowed; For still the burden of thy minstrelsy Was Knighthood's dauntless ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... fowler bold in me you see, A man of mirth and minstrelsy; My name is ever in demand, With old and young thro'out the land— I set my traps, the birds flock round, I whistle, and they ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... (Beichan, Buchan, Bateman) is really Becket, Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas of Canterbury. Every one has heard how HIS Saracen bride sought him in London. (Robert of Gloucester's Life and Martyrdom of Thomas Becket, Percy Society. See Child's Introduction, IV., i. 1861, and Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. xv., 1827.) The legend of the dissolved marriage is from the common stock of ballad lore, Motherwell found an example in the state of Cantefable, alternate prose and verse, like Aucassin and Nicolette. Thus the cockney rhyme descends from ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... in 1545 (Toxophilus, p. 29) 'that the laudable custom of England to teach children their plain song and prick-song' is 'so decayed throughout all the realm as it is,' denounces the great practise of instrumental music by older students: "the minstrelsy of lutes, pipes, harps, and all other that standeth by such nice, fine, minikin fingering, (such as the most part of scholars whom I know use, if they use any,) is far more fit, for the womanishness of it, to dwell in the Court among ladies, than ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... day, whence the English word "Wednesday" has been derived. It was customary for the people to assemble at his shrine on festive occasions, to hear the songs of the scalds, who were rewarded for their minstrelsy by the gift of golden bracelets or armlets, which curled up at the ends and ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... sonnets to Chloe's false ringlets, of odes to red heels and epics to lap dogs, of tinseled struttings in gilded drawing-rooms. It was town-and-alley, this age; and though the fields lay daily in their new creation with sun and shadow on them, together with the minstrelsy of the winds across them and the still pipings of leaf and water, London, the while, kept herself in her smudgy convent, her ear tuned only to the jolting music of her streets, the rough syncope of wheel and voice. Since then what countless winds have blown ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... political life has long since been forgotten, but whose name is well remembered because of his success in quite a different field—Winthrop Mackworth Praed, the charming author of delightful verses, the founder of that English school of minstrelsy which sings for the drawing-room and the club-room, the feasts and the fashions, the joys and the well-ordered troubles of the West-End. Sidney Herbert and Praed were made joint Secretaries to the Board of Control, the department established ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... botanical border, consisting of leeks, oak-leaves, laurel, and mistletoe, which had a very rare and agreeable effect. Nor were these hieroglyphical decorations without a deep meaning to a Cambrian; for while the oak-leaf typified the durability of Welsh minstrelsy, the mistletoe its mysterious origin, and the laurel its reward, the national leek was pleasantly suggestive of its usual culinary companions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... of the dance of Time ye start, Start at the cold touch of Eternity, And cast your cloaks about you, and depart: The minstrels pause not in their minstrelsy. ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... Bride hath paced into the hall: Red as a rose is she; Nodding their heads before her goes The merry minstrelsy. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... occhi a terra inchina." When Love doth those sweet eyes to earth incline, And weaves those wandering notes into a sigh Soft as his touch, and leads a minstrelsy Clear-voiced and pure, angelic and divine, He makes sweet havoc in this heart of mine, And to my thoughts brings transformation high, So that I say, "My time has come to die, If fate so blest a death for me design." But to my soul thus steeped in joy the sound Brings such a wish to keep ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... returned to his own pure and original style; and, like the dying swan, he sings the sweeter as he is approaching the land where the voice of his minstrelsy shall no more be heard. There is a calm melancholy in the close of his present ode which is very ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... "Gung-oigh" of the pump is strangely stilled; The smoke-house door bangs once emphatic'ly, Then bangs no more, but leaves the silence filled With one lorn plaint's despotic minstrelsy. ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... understanding, while its meaning must be perfectly clear and perspicuous to the practised patterer of Romany, or Pedler's French. I have, moreover, been the first to introduce and naturalize amongst us a measure which, though common enough in the Argotic minstrelsy of France, has been hitherto utterly unknown to our pedestrian poetry." How mistaken Ainsworth was in his claim, thus ambiguously preferred, the present volume shows. Some years after the song alluded to, better ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... people in boats who had been singing or playing banjos or guitars or even upright pianos. For, it must be explained, there were many in that aquatic crowd who were there to be heard as well as seen, and this gave the affair its pathos. Not that negro minstrelsy as the English have interpreted the sole American contribution to histrionic art, is in itself pathetic, except as it is so lamentably far from the original; but that any obvious labor which adds to our gayety is sorrowful; and ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... they lay sleeping under the Eildon Hills, waiting to be awakened at the Crack of Doom. He sang of Gawaine, and Merlin, Tristrem and Isolde; and those who listened to the wondrous story felt somehow that they would never hear such minstrelsy again. ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... the sweet girls go by? "Beshrew the grey-beard's tune!— What ails his minstrelsy To sing us snow in June!" Shall they too laugh, and fleet Far ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... times are badly chang'd with her, From Edward's days to these. Then all was jollity, Feasting and mirth, light wantonness and laughter, Piping and playing, minstrelsy and masking; 'Till life fled from us like an idle dream, A show of mummery without a meaning. My brother, rest and pardon to his soul, Is gone to his account; for this his minion, The revel-rout is done—But you were speaking Concerning ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... far in the gloom, the furtive scamper of scrub fowl among leaves made tender by decay, the splash of startled fish in the shadows, commingled and blended to the accompaniment of that subdued aerial buzz by which Nature manifests the more secret of her functions and art—that ineffable minstrelsy to which her silent battalions keep step. Preoccupation, the whirl of my own temperate thoughts, scared silence, while as soon as the mental machine was stilled, the very trees became vocal. Thus have I caught fleet silences as they passed ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... jousting and minstrelsy. Isoult sat in a green silk bower, clothed all in white, her black hair twisted with pearls, a crown of red roses upon all. The hooded falcon showed again on baldrick and girdle, the fesse dancettee flickered on a new shield, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... coral caves, and the sprite that lives in the waterfalls shall mourn! Strange shapes shall hew thy monument in the recesses of the lonely rocks! ever by moonlight shall the fairies pause from their roundel when some wild note of their minstrelsy reminds them of thine own,—ceasing from their revelries, to weep for the silence of that mighty lyre, which breathed alike a revelation of the mysteries of spirits and ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... silent hour to float, Where, from the bustling world remote, The lyre might wake its melody! One feeble strain is all can swell. From mine almost deserted shell, In mournful accents yet to tell That slumbers not its minstrelsy. ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... are things of earth— That both are not of heavenly birth? While gathered blossoms fade away, The Poet's thoughts for ever stay— E'en as the rose's perfumed breath Survives the faded flow'ret's death. No pleasure human hand can give Is lasting—all things briefly live. But sounds which flow from Minstrelsy Vibrate through all eternity! Then welcome! welcome! one and all, To this, our Nation's Festival. Come rich—come poor: come old and young And join our Feast of ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... what could have determined Mr. Gellatley on an excursion of such unwonted extent, Edward began to dress himself in all haste, during which operation the minstrelsy of Davie changed ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... joyous hospitalities of the baronial hall. The castle door was always open to the wandering singer and story-teller, and it was amidst the scenes of festivity within that the ballads and romances of mediaeval minstrelsy and literature had ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... "pictorial scholarship," and "pictorial theology," remind me how strange it must appear to you that in this sketch of the intellectual state of Italy in the thirteenth century I have taken no note of literature itself, nor of the fine art of Music with which it was associated in minstrelsy. The corruption of the meaning of the word "clerk," from "a chosen person" to "a learned one," partly indicates the position of literature in the war between the golden crest and scarlet cap; but in the ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... were broken. In the shallow water of the ford down at the river splashed a horse's hoofs and she heard a voice singing in the weird falsetto of mountain minstrelsy an old ballade which, like much else of the life there, was ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... jests were given and taken in good humour, the whole relation between the pair degenerates into the unedifying complicity of a debauched old chaplain and a witty and dissolute young scholar. At this rate the house with the red door may have rung with the most mundane minstrelsy; and it may have been below its roof that Villon, through a hole in the plaster, studied, as he tells us, the leisures of ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said I was dead?" laughs the new god Pan (Laughs till his faun-cheeks quiver), "I'm still at my work, on a new-fangled plan. Scare is my business; I think I succeed, When the Mob at my minstrelsy shakes like a reed, And I mock, as ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... thy melody, We go debating of its power, As churls, who hear it hour by hour, Contemn the skylark's minstrelsy— ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... the sense of strength and assurance which these simple children obtain from their Moses and the Prophets. Yet external Nature does its share in their training; witness that most poetic of all their songs, which always reminds me of the "Lyke-Wake Dirge" in the "Scottish Border Minstrelsy":— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Verona, Padua, Ferrara, six hundred years ago. There was not a lively sympathy with Sordello himself. Who were the "Pisan pair"? Lanzi's pages were turned up to discover. And Greek scholars recognized the "Loxian." But any reader might be pardoned for not at once divining that the double rillet of minstrelsy, on page 37, was the Troubadour and the Trouvere, nor for refusing to read pages 155 and 156 without a tolerable outfit of information upon the historical points and personages ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... were the very words that the bloody Earl of Douglas said to keep the king's messenger in hand while he cut the head off MacLellan of Bombie, at the Threave Castle; and put Steenie mair and mair on his guard. So he spoke up like a man, and said he came neither to eat nor drink, nor make minstrelsy; but simply for his ain—to ken what was come o' the money he had paid, and to get a discharge for it; and he was so stout-hearted by this time that he charged Sir Robert for conscience's sake (he had no ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... Border Minstrelsy. Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border: consisting of Historical and Romantic Ballads, collected in the Southern Counties of Scotland. 3rd ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... "Goetz von Berlichingen." The creation of Mignon, in "Wilhelm Meister," furnished Scott with the character of Fenella in his "Peveril of the Peak." Scott began his career as a writer with a translation of Buerger's "Ballads." His most successful metrical pieces, "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion," and "The Lady of the Lake," for the most part appeared during the opening years of the Nineteenth Century. Then came the great series of the "Waverley Novels," named after the romance ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... O, mournfully, This midnight wind doth swell! With its quaint, pensive minstrelsy, Hope's passionate farewell: To the dreamy joys of early years, Ere yet grief's canker fell On the heart's bloom—ay, well may tears, Start at ...
— Fostina Woodman, the Wonderful Adventurer • Avis A. (Burnham) Stanwood
... knew how to fight, belike he was slain. Thus old Martin was left with the Flemish wife and her little one on his hands, for whose sake he did what went against him sorely, joined himself to this troop of jugglers and players, so as to live by the minstrelsy he had learnt in better days, while his daughter-in-law mended and made for the company and kept them in smart and shining trim. By the time I fell in with them his voice was well-nigh gone, and his hand sorely shaking, but Fire-eating Nat, the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of the pine trees, wafted by the land-breeze, seemed like incense mingling with their orisons, and the carols of the birds were in accordance with their matin-hymn of praise. This second reference to the minstrelsy of the grove, will not be wondered at by those who have visited that region in the spring of the year. The various notes of the feathered choristers are enchanting, even now, when the din of population has frightened ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... orchard sides Is a fine couch to me; The common note of each small bird Passes all minstrelsy. It would not seem so dread a thing If, when the Reaper wills, He might come there and take my hand ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... character of the music changed, ... from an appealing murmurous complaint and persuasion, it rose to a martial and almost menacing fervor; the roll of drums and the shrill, reedy warbling of pipes and other fluty minstrelsy crossed the silvery thread of strung harps and viols, ... the light from the fiery globe shot forth a new effulgence, this time in two broad rays, one a dazzling, pale azure, the other a clear, pearly white. Nelida's graceful movements grew slower ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... complained that his life had been without an aim; now he determined that it should be so no longer. The dawning hope began to gladden him that he might take his place among the bards of Scotland, who, themselves mostly unknown, have created that atmosphere of minstrelsy which envelopes and glorifies their native country. This hope and aim is recorded in an entry of his commonplace book, of the probable ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... 116 & ay a segge soerly[7] semed by her wede[gh]; So with marschal at her mete mensked ay were, Clene men i{n} compaynye for-knowen wern lyte, [Sidenote: All are well entertained "with meat and minstrelsy."] & [gh]et e symplest in {a}t sale wat[gh] serued to e fulle, 120 Boe with menske, & w{i}t{h} mete & mynstrasy noble, & alle e layke[gh] at a lorde a[gh]t i{n} londe schewe. [Sidenote: Each with his "mate" ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... banquet, and the last pilaff— Forbidden draughts, 'tis said, he dared to quaff, Though to the rest the sober berry's juice[208] The slaves bear round for rigid Moslems' use; 640 The long chibouque's[209] dissolving cloud supply, While dance the Almas[210] to wild minstrelsy. The rising morn will view the chiefs embark; But waves are somewhat treacherous in the dark: And revellers may more securely sleep On silken couch than o'er the rugged deep: Feast there who can—nor combat till they must, And ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... appointed corporal, will soon be reduced to the ranks; the animal is spoiled by sheer drink. Having been drunk every day in Khartoum, and now being separated from his liquor, he is plunged into a black melancholy. He sits upon the luggage like a sick rook, doing minstrelsy, playing the rababa (guitar), and smoking the whole day, unless asleep, which is half that time: he is sighing after the merissa (beer) pots of Egypt. This man is an illustration of missionary success. He was brought ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... the mark; and then, when some unwary youth fired his piece into the ground at half-cock, such infinite guffawing and delight, such rolling over and over on the grass, such dances of ecstasy, as made the "Ethiopian minstrelsy" of the stage appear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... silvery, and sweet—upon mine ear, as the tones of a well-touched harp: sad were they—luxuriously sad; and their unearthly melody infused into my bosom a repose unknown to mortality. As I listened with awe and rapture to that delicate minstrelsy, I seemed to become all soul; tears—far indeed from tears of sorrow—suffused my wondering eyes, and my heart, in the delirium of gratitude, raised itself in solemn thanksgivings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... a contention with bow and arrow that would not have disgraced the best men-at-arms of Maisonforte—here again, later in the day, was minstrelsy of a higher order than his father's ears had cared for, but of which his mother ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in his notes to the 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' says that the common people of the high parts of Liddlesdale and the country adjacent to this day hold the memory of Johnnie Armstrong in ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... would be my garden, Dear love, from thee apart? Whose every bush and bower and tree, Its founts, perfumes, and minstrelsy And all its flowers spring all from thee, Thou sunlight ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... dimly shine as day draws on, And the moon must veil her beauties at the rising of the sun. Let the grove be wrapt in silence as the nightingale outflings Her unrivaled minstrelsy, th' eclipse of ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... for thee I'd tune the lyre; Might minstrelsy my song inspire; Could I a gifted offering bring, I'd boldly sweep each silken string, And wake a sweet and thrilling strain, Thy heart ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... I'm come! like a seraph's sigh Breath'd to ethereal minstrelsy, And well ye'll deem what a sigh must be From the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... troubadours alike. The pastourelle has sometimes been described as a popular form, but it would be difficult to determine wherein its 'popularity,' in the sense intended, consists, for it is easily recognized as the offspring of a knightly minstrelsy, and indeed is scarcely less artificial or conventional than the Italian eclogue. Although the situation is frequently developed with resource and invention on the part of the individual poet, the general type is rigidly fixed. The narrator, who is a ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Edwin was no vulgar boy; Deep thought oft seemed to fix his infant eye. Dainties he heeded not, nor gaude, nor toy, Save one short pipe of rudest minstrelsy. Silent when glad; affectionate, though shy; And now his look was most demurely sad, And now he laughed aloud, yet none knew why. The neighbours stared and sighed, yet blessed the lad: Some deemed him wondrous wise, and some believed ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... Thy song was wont to cheer me. What is this?" "By Jove!" quoth Corvus, "I sing not amiss. Phoebus," quoth he; "for all thy worthiness, For all thy beauty and all thy gentilesse, For all thy song and all thy minstrelsy, And all thy watching, bleared is thine eye; Yea, and by one no worthier than a gnat, Compared with him should ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... the Lord of Love went by To take possession of his flowery throne, Ringed round with maids, and youths, and minstrelsy; A little while I sighed to find him gone, A little while the dawning was alone, And the light gathered; then I held my breath, And shuddered at the sight of ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... faking his own accompaniment at the piano, had sung for her a number of carefully expurgated lumberjack ballads, the lunatic humour of which had delighted her exceedingly. She marvelled now at his choice of minstrelsy, for the melody was hauntingly plaintive— the words Eugene Field's poem of ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... be diverted; for the temper of England's Rulers was against vain pastimes and junketings. The Maypoles had been pulled down; the players whipped and banished; the bear and bull baitings, and even the mere harmless minstrelsy and ballad-singing of the streets, all rigorously pulled down. But whatever the worthy Turkey merchant and his household could do in the way of carrying Arabella about to suppers, christenings, country gatherings, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala |
