"Distaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in obedience to the King, set about carding the flax, preparing and putting it on the distaff, twirling her spindle, reeling it and working away without ceasing; so that on Saturday evening her thread was all done. But Renzolla, thinking she was still the same as in the fairy's house, not having looked ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... of feminine habits had Clorinda been from her childhood. She disdained to put her hand to the needle and the distaff. She renounced every soft indulgence, every timid retirement, thinking that virtue could be safe wherever it went in its own courageous heart; and so she armed her countenance with pride, and pleased herself with making it stern, but not to ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... Nevertheless he came to be the Restorer, so called, of Danish independence; sole remaining representative of Knut (or Knut's sister), of Fork-beard, Blue-tooth, and Old Gorm; and ancestor of all the subsequent kings of Denmark for some 400 years; himself coming, as we see, only by the Distaff side, all of the Sword or male side having died so soon. Early death, it has been observed, was the Great Knut's allotment, and all his posterity's as well;—fatal limit (had there been no others, which we see there were) to his becoming "Charlemagne of the North" in any considerable ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... that had stood there the day before. But, on entering the house, he was much more surprised and delighted to find a beautiful young girl, with raven hair, sitting by the window and spinning on her distaff with the air ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... watchful intentness for his lady's faintest first dawn of an inclining to a wish. Mr. Dudley Sowerby's eye upon Nesta was really an apprentice. There is in Love's young season a magnanimity in the male kind. Their superior strength and knowledge are made subservient to the distaff of the weaker and shallower: they crown her queen; her look is their mandate. So was it when Sir Charles and Sir Rupert and the estimable Villiers Davenant touched maidenly hearts to throb: so is it now, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... all that a rich farmer like my father could possess. I engaged and dismissed the servants, and was the stewardess of the estate. The spare hours that were left from the management of the farm I spent with the needle, the lace cushion, and the distaff, or else I would read some good hook ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... of yore raised on the field of battle by the scalds of the yet heathen Saxons. Her long dishevelled gray hair flew back from her uncovered head; the inebriating delight of gratified vengeance contended in her eyes with the fire of insanity; and she brandished the distaff which she held in her hand, as if she had been one of the Fatal Sisters who spin and abridge the thread ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... be more tender than many infants of a month old. Indeed I have remarked in myself, from my earliest recollection, a delicacy or effeminacy of complexion, which but for a spice of the devil in my temper would have consigned me to the distaff ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... his wife had seen: and one winter evening beside the peat-fire, as Annette was busy with her distaff, and he sat smoking and watching the glowing embers, he told her her mother's story. She and Paul's father, the elder Paul Gignol, had been betrothed in their youth; but his fishing-smack had struck on the ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... a wide-opened door, was seen another chamber, where a troop of domestics were busy at their tasks. Some were grinding the yellow grain in hand-mills, others were walking to and fro at the loom, and others sat plying distaff and spindle, nodding their heads like poplars waving in the wind. Very choice was the fabric woven in that chamber, for the women of Phaeacia were famed beyond all others for their skill in weaving, even as the men surpassed all the world ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... to her husband's house, she finds at the door a broom; or, if he takes possession of her's, a ploughshare is placed there: both allegorical of their duties. The distaff of the bride is carried by an old woman ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... the corruption of Pausanias, he is not one who will allow us to feel contempt. Through all the voluptuous softness acquired by intercourse with these Barbarians, the strong nature of the descendant of the demigod still breaks forth. Even at the distaff I recognize Alcides, whether for evil or for good. Pausanias is one on whom our most anxious gaze must be duly bent. But in this change of his I rejoice; the gods are at work for Athens. See you not that, day after day, while Pausanias ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... to be broken in! It was so far well that the MacKelpies—that was the maiden name of Mrs. St. Leger—were reputable—so far as fighting was concerned. It would have been too humiliating to have allied to our family, even on the distaff side, a family both poor and of no account. Fighting alone does not make a family, I think. Soldiers are not everything, though they think they are. We have had in our family men who fought; but I never heard of any of them who fought because they wanted to. Mrs. St. Leger had a ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... determined by the laws of musical concord. "These orbs in their motion could not but produce a certain sound or note, depending upon their distances and velocities; and as these were regulated by harmonic laws, they necessarily formed as a whole a complete musical scale." "In the whorl of the distaff of necessity there are eight concentric whorls. These whorls represent respectively the sun and moon, the five planets, and the fixed stars. On each whorl sits a siren singing. Their eight tones make one ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... by Leif, who was low-born and of no account, but by one or other of the chiefs of the Shield-ring. Biorn was happy on such occasions, for he himself came into the songs, since it was right to honour the gentle lady, the Queen. He heard how on the distaff side he was sprung from proud western earls, Thorwolf the Black, and Halfdan and Hallward Skullsplitter. But on the spear side he was of still loftier kin, for Odin was first in his pedigree, and ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... to leave her, seated on a stone beneath a thorn-bush, distaff in hand, with bread, cheese, and a pitcher of milk for her provisions, and three or four cows grazing before her. From the higher ground below the wood of ash and hazel, she could see the undulating fields and orchards, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little private flock was being tended by a girl, one spinning with a distaff, another seated on a wall and intently making lace. This last, when we addressed her, leaped up in a panic and put out her arms, like a person swimming, to keep us at a distance, and it was some seconds before we could persuade her of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... extraneous impurities before the process of reduction is commenced. In all the minor details of the mill there has been the same marked change, until the modern merchant mill of to-day no more resembles that of twenty-five years ago than does the modern cotton mill the old-fashioned distaff. The change has extended into the winter wheat sections, and no mill in the United States can hope to hold its place in the markets unless it is provided with the many improvements in machinery and processes ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... stripping the immigrant of much of what he has inherited from the centuries. He is the finished product of those centuries. His speech, his manner, his dress, his ideas along social and political and industrial lines have been fashioned upon the distaff of time. He lands upon American soil and at once there is a strangeness in the atmosphere that awes him, it is a new world in truth and the newness of it repels him and drives him back upon himself. The faintest link between the new ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... brought before King Menelaus, and he welcomed them kindly, and meat was set before them, and wine in cups of gold. While they were talking, Helen came forth from her fragrant chamber, like a Goddess, her maidens following her, and carrying for her an ivory distaff with violet-coloured wool, which she span as she sat, and heard Paris tell how far he had travelled to see her who was so famous for her beauty even in countries ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... wit, and wisdom old, More skill than I, in all mine arts untrue, To thee my purpose great I must unfold, This enterprise thy cunning must pursue, Weave thou to end this web which I begin, I will the distaff hold, come ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... on the Continent; and Evie who is a widow and whose life has been spent being happy through others—her husband, her children, her friends. Evie's young daughter Alex is the fifth woman in the family, and the drama of The Distaff Side centers chiefly in her and her two suitors who represent such different things. But if the plot belongs to Alex, the honors of the play go to her mother—for seldom has a modern playwright drawn so warm and womanly and endearing a character as Evie. ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... hills occupy both sides of our path, and the fine level road is adorned with a beautiful red flower named Bolcamaria. The markets or sleeping-places are well supplied with provisions by great numbers of women, every one of whom is seen spinning cotton with a spindle and distaff, exactly like those which were in use among the ancient Egyptians. A woman is scarcely ever seen going to the fields, though with a pot on her head, a child on her back, and the hoe over her shoulder, but she is employed ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Gauguinesque type, results; she is presented to Adam; they eat the fruit; they take to foliage; they are judged; the leaves become real garments; they are driven forth to toil, Adam with an axe and Eve with a distaff. ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. She girdeth her loins with strength, And maketh strong her arms. She perceiveth that her merchandise is good. Her lamp goeth not out by night. She layeth her hands to the distaff And her hands hold ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... of Grecian and Roman history, we find Penelope and Lucretia at the loom, Nausicaa, a laundress, the daughter of the king of the Lestrigons, fetching water from the spring, Odysseus, a carpenter, a queen of Macedonia as a cook, and finally the distaff of Tanaquil.(348) In the highlands of Scotland, in 1797, there were a great many peasants all of whose clothing was home-made, with the exception of their caps; nothing coming from abroad except the tailor, his needles and iron ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... all seven children would be cursed. Now it happened that the king had to go away to war; and before departing he said to the queen, "Listen. If you have a son, hang a lance out of the window; if a daughter, a distaff; so that I can see as soon as I arrive which it is." After the king had been gone a month, the queen gave birth to the most beautiful girl that was ever seen. Imagine how pleased the queen was at having a girl. She could ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... the lion in her toils, Such are her charms, he dare not raise his mane, Far less expand the terror of his fangs. So great Alcides made his club a distaff, And spun to please fair ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Father-in-law; but it is not on that ground that he looks to inherit. He is Nephew of old Anton Ulrich, Son of a younger Brother (who was also "Bevern" in Anton's time); and is the evident Heir-male; old Anton being already fallen into the distaff, with nothing but three Grand-daughters. Anton's heir will now be this Nephew; Nephew has wedded one of the Grand-daughters, youngest of the Three, youngest Daughter of Ludwig Rudolf, Sovereign Duke that now is; which Lady, by the family she brought him, if no ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... an old man and an old woman at the side of a burn. They had two cows, five hens, and a cock, a cat and two kittens. The old man looked after the cows, and the old wife span on the distaff. The kittens oft gripped at the old wife's spindle, as it tussled over the hearthstone. "Sho, sho," she would say, "go away;" and ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... denied admittance to the dooty's house, and could not obtain even a handful of corn. Reaching, however, a humble hut at which an old motherly-looking woman sat spinning cotton, he made signs that he was hungry. She immediately laid down her distaff, and desired him in Arabic to come in, setting before him a dish of kous-kous. In return he gave her one of his pocket-handkerchiefs, and asked for a little corn for his horse, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... fell through the window upon old Ursela, as she sat in the warmth with her distaff in her hands while Otto lay close to her feet upon a bear skin, silently thinking over the strange story of a brave knight and a fiery dragon that she had just told him. Suddenly Ursela broke ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... me a spindle and about four pounds of hemp upon a distaff, and sent me out to keep the sheep, assuring me that there could not be a pleasanter occupation, and that I could take my ease as much as I pleased. I was forced to set out, very unwillingly, as you may imagine, but I had not walked far before I came to a shady bank in what ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... trimmed, Agnes took it on her arm. Elsie raised and poised on her head the great square basket that contained her merchandise, and began walking erect and straight down the narrow rocky stairs that led into the gorge, holding her distaff with its white flax in her hands, and stepping as easily as if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... partly play You must on St. Distaff's Day; Give St. Distaff all the right, Then give Christmas ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... said the old woman; "and a kennel be your burying-place! May the evil demon Zernebock tear me limb from limb, if I leave my own cell ere I have spun out the hemp on my distaff!" ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... and the political motive for silence ceased to operate, and there were, just then, evident motives for speech. There was no hope that Catharine would have a son, and the secret that a queen may reign by her own right, that the nation may be ruled by the distaff, had not been divulged in England. In foreign policy and in home policy alike, there were interests which favoured a new marriage, if its ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... cried, in a haughty tone. 'Clothe me more beautifully than mortal maid was ever clad before, so that I may find favour in the prince's sight and become the bride of the castle. I would that I were done for ever with the spindle and the distaff.' ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and Court were in residence at the rural palace of Eaux-Perdues. Need I relate what happened then? It is well known how the Princess Aurore, wandering one day through the castle, came to the top of a keep, where, in a garret, she found a dear old woman, all alone, plying her distaff. She had never heard of the King's regulations, forbidding the ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... certain marvellous Maiden, born on the borders of France, in the duchy of Lorraine, and the see of Toul, towards the Imperial territories. This Maiden her father and mother employed in tending sheep; daily, too, did she handle the distaff; man's love she knew not; no sin, as it is said, was found in her, to her innocence the neighbours bore witness . . ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... it is too little; and this second paper, which you have kept in order to proceed by degrees, probably contains some demand more difficult to grant than that of yielding to a child scarcely a year old a crown which belongs to me by birthright, and to abandon my sceptre to take a distaff." ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... strings of maize and bunches of dried vegetables that hung from the roof and on the copper kettles and saucepans ranged along the wall. The wind raged against the shutters of the unglazed windows, and the maid-servants, distaff in hand, crowded closer to the blaze, listening to the songs of some wandering fiddler or to the stories of a ruddy-nosed Capuchin monk who was being regaled, by the steward's orders, on a supper of tripe and mulled wine. The Capuchin's tales, told in the Piedmontese jargon, and seasoned with strange ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... and KURT go into the Rathaus, followed by all the men. Exit ANSELM with the Holy Book into the Minster.—The children play Mouse, to and fro, round about the PIPER.—The women, some of them, spin on the doorsteps, with little hand distaff's, ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody
... Catheron Royals," she said, "and a fine baby no doubt, as babies go. I don't pretend to be a judge. He is very bald and very flabby, and very fat just at present. Whom does he resemble? Not you, Victor. O, no doubt the distaff side of the house. What do you call him, nurse? Not christened yet? But of course the heir of the house is always christened at Catheron Royals. Victor, no doubt you'll follow the habit of your ancestors, and ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... act of grinding oats into meal for their dinner with a quern, consisting of two diminutive millstones turned by the hand; this was placed upon a praskeen, or coarse apron, spread under it on the floor to receive the meal. An old woman, her mother, sat spinning flax with the distaff—for as yet flax wheels were scarcely known—and a lubberly young fellow about sixteen, with able, well shaped limbs and great promise of bodily strength, sat before the fire managing a double task, to wit, roasting, first, a lot of potatoes in the greeshaugh, which consisted of half embers ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... a bank of clouds; his preference was always for the winning portraits of Mary, with her tiny smiling mouth and delicate outstretched hands. By degrees he had made quite a collection of them all—of Mary between a lily and a distaff, Mary carrying her child as if she were his elder sister, Mary crowned with roses, and Mary crowned with stars. For him they formed a family of lovely young maidens, alike in their attractiveness, in the grace, kindliness, and sweetness of their countenances, so youthful beneath ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... still in her father's house. She did not meet her brothers, but she felt, as it were, a fire burning in her hand, but it did not hurt her, for it was the jewel she was bringing to her father. When she awoke, she thought for a moment that she still held the stone, but it was the knob of her distaff that she was grasping. During the long nights she had spun incessantly, and round the distaff was turned a thread, finer than the finest web of the spider; human eyes were unable to distinguish the separate threads. She had ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... was Diana, leading to the chase Her kilted nymphs, her hounds with eyeballs burning; And here was Hercules in woman's dress, His warlike hand the peaceful distaff turning. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... state of nakedness, lay sprawling, as if to be crushed by the hoofs of the first passing horse. Occasionally, indeed, when such a consummation seemed inevitable, a watchful old grandam, with her close cap, distaff, and spindle, rushed like a sibyl in frenzy out of one of these miserable cells, dashed into the middle of the path, and snatching up her own charge from among the sunburnt loiterers, saluted him with a sound cuff, and transported him back to his ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... order or arrangement, as they would have been in an auction room or an antique shop. In one corner stood a low table of Italian mosaic, bearing a somewhat battered statuette of Saint Genevieve plying her distaff, and the walls were fairly covered with photographs— photographs, for the most part, of women more anxious to display their charms of person to an admiring world than to observe the ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... Cloth Halls of Norfolk are two fine reliefs in plaster, one showing the Argo, bringing the golden fleece, the other a flock of sheep of the day, with a saint in Bishop's mitre and robes preaching to them. The shepherd, in a smock, is spinning wool with a distaff; and the sheep feeding around him, though carefully modelled, are quite unlike any of the modern breeds. Many of the domestic sheep of hot countries are more slender and less woolly than the wild sheep of the mountains. The ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... learning consisted of yore In spreading their generous boards; In twisting the distaff, or mopping the floor, And obeying the will of their lords. Now, misses may reason, and think, and debate, Till unquestioned submission is quite ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... human flesh and blood. 350 'Twas he that brought upon his knees The hect'ring, kill-cow HERCULES; Transform'd his leager-lion's skin T' a petticoat, and made him spin; Seiz'd on his club, and made it dwindle 355 T' a feeble distaff, and a spindle. 'Twas he that made emperors gallants To their own sisters and their aunts; Set popes and cardinals agog, To play with pages at leap-frog. 360 'Twas he that gave our Senate purges, And flux'd ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... the seventh son to heal the evil (mentioned in the MS. I have cited) is humourously alluded to in the Tatler (No. 11.). I subjoin the passage, which occurs in a letter signed "D. Distaff." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... bigger monster, "the father", came ashore, and he also was slain. But the most powerful enemy had yet to be dealt with. "The next night a Big Hag came ashore, and the tooth in the front of her mouth would make a distaff. 'You killed my husband and son,' she said." Finn acknowledged that he did, and they began to fight. After a prolonged struggle, in which Finn was almost overcome, the Hag fell and ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... she would marry him if he could peel a block of sandstone and cut a whip-handle from ice without making a single splinter. And Wainamoinen did both these things, but still the maiden refused to go until he had performed a third task. This was to make from the splinters of her distaff a little ship, and to launch it into ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... and partly play Ye must on St. Distaff's day; From the plough soon free your team, Then come home and fodder them; If the maids a-spinning go, Burn the flax and fire the tow; Scorch their plackets, but beware That ye singe no maiden-hair; Bring in pails of water then, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... withstood By feeble human flesh and blood. 'Twas he that brought upon his knees The hect'ring kil-cow Hercules; Transform'd his leaguer-lion's skin T' a petticoat, and made him spin; Seiz'd on his club, and made it dwindle T' a feeble distaff and a spindle. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Benedicite, *early What aileth you? some gay girl, God it wote, Hath brought you thus upon the viretote: By Saint Neot, ye wot well what I mean." This Absolon he raughte* not a bean *recked, cared Of all his play; no word again he gaf*, *spoke For he had more tow on his distaff Than Gerveis knew, and saide; "Friend so dear, That hote culter in the chimney here Lend it to me, I have therewith to don*: *do I will it bring again to thee full soon." Gerveis answered; "Certes, were it gold, Or in a poke* nobles all untold, *purse ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... beginnings. He was bred to the sedentary trade of a tailor, and worked for some years with his relation, Mr. Austerbury, of Friday Street, Cheapside; but love, which works so many changes, and which has ere now transformed blacksmiths into painters, and which induced Hercules to exchange his club for the distaff, caused this Knight of the Steel Bar to relinquish the shop-board and patch up his fortune by the patty-pan. He married his landlady, a widow, who resided in Turnmill Street, Clerkenwell. He had a soul above buttons, and abandoned the making ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... fair-wrought with bronze. And she teaches to tender maidens in the halls all goodly arts, breathing skill into their minds. Nor ever doth laughter-loving Aphrodite conquer in desire Artemis of the Golden Distaff, rejoicing in the sound of the chase, for the bow and arrow are her delight, and slaughter of the wild beasts on the hills: the lyre, the dance, the clear hunting halloo, and shadowy glens, and cities of ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... was cool. These families were engaged in all the usual domestic avocations of a household. The mothers were dressing the children, or getting the breakfast, while the grandmothers and aunts were knitting, or spinning thread with a distaff and spindle. The men were often ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... streets. He would have marked the very street-boys in wide, inexpensive straw hats of various and astonishing colours. Woman he would have found in beautiful shades of blue, in such light garments "woven wind" as Theocritus speaks of when he presents the wife of his doctor with a new ivory distaff. ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... hands,' yielded a famous vintage. The people had a soft industry of their own, they fashioned the 'Coan stuff,' transparent robes for woman's wear, like the [Greek], the thin undulating tissues which Theugenis was to weave with the ivory distaff, the gift of Theocritus. As a colony of Epidaurus, Cos naturally cultivated the worship of Asclepius, the divine physician, the child of Apollo. In connection with his worship and with the clan of the Asclepiadae (that widespread stock to which Aristotle ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... wives, daughters and children, my father, brother and myself wished to make sure by a last look that nothing was lacking for the defense of that car which held our dear ones. My mother, Margarid, as calm as when she held the distaff in the corner of her own fireplace, was leaning against the oak panel which formed the body of the chariot. She had set Henory and Martha to work, giving more play to the straps which, fastened to pegs driven in the edge of the chariot, secured the handles of the scythes, which were ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... had grown jealous of his too successful lieutenant, and was glad of an opportunity to insult him. No sooner did he hear of Bahram's defeat than he sent off a messenger to the camp upon the Araxes, who deprived the general of his command, and presented to him, on the part of his master, a distaff, some cotton, and a complete set of women's garments. Stung to madness by the undeserved insult, Bahram retorted with a letter, wherein he addressed Hormisdas, not as the son, but as the daughter of Chosroes. Shortly afterwards, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... with their tongues out; behind the cart the man pushed. It contained a disorderly freight: a large feather-bed, a copper cauldron, a bird-cage, a mattock, a clock curiously carved, a spinning-wheel with a distaff impoverished of flax, and some kitchen utensils, which, as the woman stumbled and the cart ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... in to light the lamp, which she placed on a square table in front of the fire; then she fetched her distaff, her ball of thread, and a small stool, on which she seated herself in the recess of a window and began as usual to spin. Gasselin was still busy about the offices; he looked to the horses of the baron and Calyste, saw that the stable was in order for the night, and gave ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... gaudy stripes display, And from afar the distant stragglers lure. The children leave their play and round him flock; E'en sober aged grand-dame quits her seat, Where by the door she twines her lengthen'd threads, Her spindle stops, and lays her distaff by, Then joins with step sedate the curious throng. She praises much the fashions of her youth, And scorns each gaudy nonsense of the day; Yet not ill-pleas'd the glossy ribband views, Uproll'd, and changing hues with ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... kneeling. It is not natural that you should kneel. You are like Samson with his locks shorn, or Hercules with a distaff." ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... roaring noise for the object of counteracting any evil influences, and for other purposes. 9. 10, 11, 12. Needles, etc. from the fibulas of kangaroos, wallabies, emus, etc. 13. Kangaroo bone, used as a knife. 14. Stone with hollow in centre for pounding roots. 15. Stone hatchet. 16. Distaff with string of hair upon it. 17. Lenko, or net hung round the neck in diving to put muscles, etc. in. 18. Kenderanko, net used in diving, vide p. 260. 19. Drinking cup made of a shell. 20. Drinking cup, being the scull of a native with the sutures ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... temper, and made a rush for the door. A horrified shriek recalled him. The umbrella! He had forgotten that! His mother thrust it on him. Gathered up into a bunch and tied, not folded, it in shape resembled a charged distaff of unusual size. With it tucked beneath his arm, the youth escaped at last into the ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... servitude. A free woman who intermarried with a slave condemned herself and offspring to perpetual bondage. Among the Ripuarian Franks, a free woman thus disgracing herself, was girt with a sword and a distaff. Choosing the one, she was to strike her husband dead; choosing the other, she adopted the symbol of slavery, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he idleth away his time with the sons of the quarter, vagabonds like himself, and his father (O regret of me!) died not save of dolour for him. And I also am now in piteous plight: I spin cotton and toil at my distaff, night and day, that I may earn a couple of scones of bread which we eat together. This is his condition, O my brother-in-law; and, by the life of thee, he cometh not near me save at meal-times and none other. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... stupid, the square presented a lively spectacle. At one time there were three carts, twelve horses, and six men all in a snarl, while a dozen women stood at their doors and gave advice. One was washing a lettuce, another dressing her baby, a third twirling her distaff, and a fourth with her little bowl of soup, which she ate in public while gesticulating so frantically that her sabots [Footnote: Sabots: wooden shoes.] clattered on ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... burial in her native land, And none left desolate a-bed for France! One wak'd to tend the cradle, hushing it With sounds that lull'd the parent's infancy: Another, with her maidens, drawing off The tresses from the distaff, lectur'd them Old tales of Troy and Fesole and Rome. A Salterello and Cianghella we Had held as strange a marvel, as ye would A Cincinnatus or ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... instead of being a mere heraldic bearing, has to be used as the shape of a shield for the actual use of the painter or engraver, it must of necessity be widened into the lozenge; and as the latter is probably only the same distaff with little more wool upon it, there seems no objection to the arrangement. BROCTUNA is too good an antiquary not to know on recollection that the "vyings of widows" had little to do with funeral arrangements in those days. Procrustes, the herald, came down at all great funerals, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... a goddess of the Libyan people; but her worship was firmly implanted by them in Egypt. She was a goddess of hunting and of weaving, the two arts of a nomadic people. Her emblem was a distaff with two crossed arrows, and her name was written with a figure of a weaver's shuttle. She was adored in the first dynasty, when the name Merneit, 'loved by Neit,' occurs; and her priesthood was one of the most {49} usual in the pyramid period. ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... dislike at my raillery; and, by her bridling up, I perceived she expected to be treated hereafter not as Jenny Distaff, but Mrs. Tranquillus. I was very well pleased with this change in her humor; and, upon talking with her on several subjects, I could not but fancy I saw a great deal of her husband's way and manner in her remarks, her phrases, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... in. Indeed, from the hordes of wretched curs which barked after the heels of his horse, Edward might have supposed them meant to serve as kennels—save, that is, for the ragged urchins who sprawled in the mud of the road and the old women who, distaff in hand, dashed out to rescue them from being trampled upon ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... enfolding heels in its edges; Snowy the fillets that bound heads aged by many a year-tide, And, as their wont aye was, their hands plied labour unceasing. 310 Each in her left upheld with soft fleece clothed a distaff, Then did the right that drew forth thread with upturn of fingers Gently fashion the yarn which deftly twisted by thumb-ball Speeded the spindle poised by thread-whorl perfect of polish; Thus as the work was wrought, the lengths ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... mouse. Suddenly she pounced, seized the old woman's food bag from her feet, swept it on to the floor, and disappeared with it beneath the dais, where all the rest of the cats followed. The old woman, who had been plying distaff and spindle the while, let out a yell of fury and half disappeared beneath the platform. We all roared with laughter, while beneath us the cats spat and the old woman cursed, beating about with the handle of her distaff till she had rescued her dinner. She backed out ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... gratification of an individual, or, at most, of the comparatively few persons by whom he may be seen in the course of not more than a single day; for every renovation of the dress is, in its kind, a new work of Art. As men emerge from the savage state and acquire mechanic skill, the distaff, the spindle, and the loom produce the earliest fruits of their advancement, and dress is the first decorative art in which they reach perfection. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the most beautiful articles of clothing, the most tasteful and comfortable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... involuntary respect for this power, wherever we can recognize it, acknowledging it to be a greater power than manipulation, or calculation, or observation, or any other human faculty. If we see an old woman spinning at the fireside, and distributing her thread dexterously from the distaff, we respect her for her manipulation—if we ask her how much she expects to make in a year, and she answers quickly, we respect her for her calculation—if she is watching at the same time that none of her grandchildren fall into the fire, we respect her for her observation—yet ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... brothers who were going out to manly labor: and they chatted meanwhile of books, studies, embroidery; discussed the last new poem, or some historical topic started by graver reading, or perhaps a rural ball that was to come off next week. They spun with the book tied to the distaff; they wove; they did all manner of fine needle-work; they made lace, painted flowers, and, in short, in the boundless consciousness of activity, invention, and perfect health, set themselves to any work they had ever read or thought of. A bride ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sat weaving, in and out, in and out, she was a twentieth century version of any one of the Fates, with the Klinger darner and mender substituted for distaff and spindle. There was something almost humanly intelligent in the workings of Martha's machine. Under its glittering needle she would shove a sock whose heel bore a great, jagged, gaping wound. Your ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... gift, but fairer still would be that other gift of an army for which she was asking. As she kept saying this to every thing which was given, at last Euelthon sent out to her a present of a golden spindle and distaff, with wool also upon it: and when Pheretime uttered again the same saying about this present, Euelthon said that such things as this were given as gifts to women and not ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... are two of the earliest arts practised by man. Yarn for the making of cloth was spun in the earliest times by the use of the distaff and spindle. The spindle was a round stick of wood a foot or less in length, tapering at each end. A ring of stone or clay was placed on the spindle to give it steadiness and momentum when it revolved. At the top ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... So plain that all Men sure must know it, That of this Tree the Club was made, With which he overcame ('tis said) Thespius' Daughters, all grown wild, And fifty Mad-Women made mild; Which very Club—(it makes one Laugh) Omphale turn'd into a Distaff. Nay, the Hesperian Tree was this, As shew the Poma Veneris; These Apples doubtless were the Fruit That 'twixt the Queens rais'd such Dispute, To make 'em all stark-naked stand, While Paris held it in his Hand, And chuck'd ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous
... 'the blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen.' That looks as if the richer gave the raw material, and the women gave the labour. Poor women! they could not give, but they could spin. They had no stores, but they had ten fingers and a distaff, and if some neighbour found the stuff, the ten fingers joyfully set the distaff twirling, and spun the yarn for the weavers. Then there were others who willingly undertook the rougher work of spinning, not dainty thread for the rich soft stuffs whose colours were ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... had been a bit of statuary representing Hercules and Omphale. The mighty one was wearing the woman's kirtle and carrying her distaff, and the girl was staggering under the lion-skin and leaning on the bludgeon. Marie Louise always hated the group. It seemed to her to represent just the way so many women tried to master the men they infatuated. But Marie Louise despised ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... spinneth day and night For him had not yet drawn the distaff off, Which Clotho lays for each one ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... afterwards, in allusion to Hercules, bids him 'lay down the lion's skin, and take the distaff;' and, in the following speech, utters her passion ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... been sent from Portugal, a country which is near Spain, and very like it in all respects. It is a very fine country, famous for wine, and oil; and the sheep are much prized for their superior wool. The ladies of rank still spin flax from a distaff, to show their industry. The peasantry are not very well off; their only luxury is tobacco, and their usual fare is bread, made of Indian corn, with a salted pilchard, or a head of garlic, to give it a relish. They are polite and hospitable; but the people of the towns have not the ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... Kalevide and Sarvik engaged in a terrific wrestling-match, which lasted for seven days and nights, with varying success. At length the shade of Linda, who was looking on, took her distaff, swung it ten times round her head, and dashed it to the ground. The hint was not lost on her son. He seized Sarvik by the garters, whirled him ten times round, and then hurled him down, set his knee on his chest, and seized his throat and tried to strangle ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... the manly sex they seat, To ply the distaff, broider, card and sow, In female gown descending to the feet, Which renders them effeminate and slow; Some chained, another labour to complete, Are tasked, to keep their cattle, or to plough. Few are the males; and scarce the warriors ken, Amid a thousand ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... seven, unkempt but bright-eyed and engaging, play around the door-step, watched over by their grandmother, or may be their great-grandam, who with her wizened face enfolded in her yellow kerchief, her skinny neck, and her distaff in the bony fingers, looks as if she had stepped out of some Renaissance painting of the Three Fates in a Florentine gallery. Crimson carnations in earthenware pots stand on the steps of the outside staircase, giving a touch of refinement to the squalid ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... old spinning wheel, the clock reel, the linen wheel with its distaff, your grandfather's knapsack and cartridge-box and Continental coat, your great-aunt's Leghorn bonnet and side-saddle, or pillion, great files of the village newspapers—the "Morning Cry" and "Midnight Yell," besides ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... Minstrelsy, ascribes to the clan of Tweedie, a family once stout and warlike, a descent which would not have misbecome a hero of antiquity. A baron, somewhat elderly we may suppose, had wedded a buxom young lady, and some months after their union he left her to ply the distaff alone in his old tower, among the mountains of the county of Peebles, near the sources of the Tweed. He returned after seven or eight years, no uncommon space for a pilgrimage to Palestine, and found his ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... and before making a choice he was applying himself with great success to the study of mathematics. He ultimately decided upon the military profession, thus imitating Achilles, who preferred the sword to the distaff, and he paid for it with his life like the son of Peleus; though not so young, and not through a wound inflicted by an arrow, but from the plague, which he caught in the unhappy country in which the indolence of Europe allows the Turks to perpetuate that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... list of the objects of every variety found among the ruins of Troy, with the aid of which we can form a very definite idea of the private life of its people. Some fragments of an ivory lyre, and some pipes pierced with three holes at equal distances, bear witness to their taste for music; a distaff, still full of charred wool, deserted by the spinner when she fled before the conflagration, tells of domestic industry and manual dexterity, while marble and stone phalli prove that the generative forces ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... rode slowly out of the town towards some low huts scattered in the suburbs. At the door of a hovel hut, an old woman with a benevolent countenance sat spinning cotton. Mr. Park made signs that he was hungry, on which she immediately laid down her distaff, invited him to the hut, and set before him a dish of kouskous, of which he made a comfortable meal. In return for her kindness Mr. Park gave her a pocket handkerchief, begging at the same time a little corn for his horse, which ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... than the Master does?" asked Winfried; "and will you take the wood that is fit for a bow to make a distaff?" ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... which were specified within the tablets. For instance, the poet, with a wry face, drew one of his own poems (no physician ever less willingly swallowed his own draught); the warrior drew a case of bodkins, which gave rise to certain novel witticisms relative to Hercules and the distaff; the widow Fulvia obtained a large drinking-cup; Julia, a gentleman's buckle; and Lepidus, a lady's patch-box. The most appropriate lot was drawn by the gambler Clodius, who reddened with anger on being presented ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... fellow, it will not be; I have more tow on my distaff than I can well spin; The cursed Friar doth ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... told the Princess a story, they had to keep the word "spinning" out of it; and if they showed her a book they had to take pains to see it did not contain a picture of a spinning-wheel, or any reference to a distaff or spindle, lest she should ask what they were. The King's Customs officers, on the boundaries of the kingdom, had to examine every waggon-load of merchandise that came into the country for fear it should contain a spinning-wheel; and if anybody was found ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... thirteen, playing at ball with little Ned on the terrace, and coming with tardy steps to her daily task of spinning, had little of the princess about her; and yet when she sat down, and the management of distaff and thread threw her shoulders back, there was something in the poise of her small head and the gesture of her hand that forcibly recalled the Queen. Moreover, all the boys around were at her beck and call, not only Humfrey and poor Antony ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... panel of "Useful Arts" does honor to skilled labor. Men and women are shown busy with the spinning-wheel, the anvil, the forge and other implements of skilled craft. Satisfying figures in the niches, the Woman with the Distaff and the Man with the Sledge-Hammer, continue the same idea. Mr. Young's place in art is unique in that he has won distinguished consideration in three branches - painting, etching and sculpture. In the Palace of Fine Arts he exhibits twelve etchings and ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... Brazil-nut, suspended from a rude tripod; this they swung to and fro to the tune of a weird Kurdish song. Behind one of the tents, on a primitive weaving-machine, some of them were making tent-roofing and matting. Others still were walking about with a ball of wool in one hand and a distaff in the other, spinning yarn. The flocks stood round about, bleating and lowing, or chewing their cud in quiet contentment. All seemed very domestic and peaceful except the Kurdish dogs, which set upon us with loud, fierce growls and ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... Lydgate. "But then I am not a mighty man—I shall never be a man of renown. The choice of Hercules is a pretty fable; but Prodicus makes it easy work for the hero, as if the first resolves were enough. Another story says that he came to hold the distaff, and at last wore the Nessus shirt. I suppose one good resolve might keep a man right if everybody ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... engravings some curious illustrations are met with showing Englishwomen using the distaff. St. Distaff's Day was formerly the 7th of January, for it was then that the women resumed work after the Christmas festivities were over. The distaff and the spindle belonged to an age little understood now, and the occupations of the women of that date are almost forgotten. The spinning ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... tell you; But you must swear to keep it secret. Enter SEJANUS. Sej. I knew the Fates had on their distaff left More ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... the hurly-burly of washing over. Dorcas had nearly finished her "stent" on the little wheel. As she sat by the open door, diligently trotting her foot, and softly pulling the last flax from her distaff, her glance went hastily and often towards the setting sun. She could see beyond the sloping orchard, no longer loaded with fruit, the Great Meadows, extending along the banks of the Connecticut. She could see on the eastern side great white mountains, that went modestly by the name of hills, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... strange sounds were in his ears Which none might hear but he. A woman fair and stately, But pale as are the dead, Oft through the watches of the night Sat spinning by his bed. And as she plied the distaff, In a sweet voice and low, She sang of great old houses, And fights fought long ago. So spun she, and so sang she, Until the east was gray. Then pointed to her bleeding breast, And ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... into his sunny native valley, to the place with the old gabled houses, to his father's house which stood amidst the fruit-trees, and the thread to which his fingers still clung involuntarily led him into the room where it had been spun from his mother's distaff. And there she sat and span the thread, with her pale face and soft wrinkles and kind eyes, and directly the boy stood near her she told him tales of the Saviour. He listened to her and was a happy child. That was his dream. And when ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... absence, my finger is still in limbo as you may see by the writeing. I have not paid my compliments to Madam Smith,[44] for, altho' I can drive the goos quill a bit, I cannot so well manage the needle. So I will lay my hand to the distaff, as the virtuous woman did of old—Yesterday was very bad weather, neither aunt, ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... was snapped; her head was bowed; Life dropt the distaff through his hands serene; And loving neighbors smoothed her careful shroud, While Death and ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... are two anchors let fall from a swift ship. May friendly gods grant to both peoples[14] an illustrious lot: and thou O lord and ruler of the sea, husband of Amphitrite of the golden distaff, grant this my friend straight voyage and unharmed, and bless the joyous flower ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... there came into her chamber the three unerring Fates who spin the destinies of men. White-robed and garlanded, they stood beside the babe, and with unwearied fingers drew out the lines of his untried life. Clotho held the golden distaff in her hand, and twirled and twisted the delicate thread. Lachesis, now sad, now hopeful, with her long white fingers held the hour-glass, and framed her lips to say, 'It is enough.' And Atropos, blind and unpitying as the future always is, stood ready, with cruel shears, to clip the ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... which, as we went upstairs and crossed the ante-chambers, all was darkness, except one candle which the servant carried before us. In a small bedroom, well furnished, with a fire just lighted, we found Madame de la Rochejacquelin lying on a sofa—her two daughters at work—one spinning with a distaff, and the other embroidering muslin. Madame is a large fat woman, with a broad round fair face, with a most open benevolent expression, as benevolent as Molly Bristow's or as Mrs. Brinkley's. Her hair cut short, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... at early dawn the old woman took her distaff, and drove the straw ox out into the steppe to graze, and she herself sat down behind a hillock, and began spinning her flax, and cried: "Graze away, little ox, while I spin my flax. Graze away, little ox, while I ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... wood wandered the much-confused knight, recognizing, step by step, the path of the night before. The turf hut was before him—the door was open—and in the doorway sat the maiden herself, spinning, the distaff by her side, the spindle dancing on the ground, and the pilgrim's hat no longer hiding her beauteous brow and wealth of dark braided hair. But, intolerable sight, seven or eight of last night's loungers were dispersed hither and thither in the bushes, gazing with all their eyes, endeavouring ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a Somersetshire woman, a clothier's daughter; and if she had thrown away her lyre and gone back to the distaff, I do not think Parnassus would have broken its heart. Then there is our fair friend, Mrs. Molesworth. Her father was a Right Honorable Irish peer of the same name, who had some acquaintance, if not a friendlier connection, with John Locke. Her Muse was rather high-skirted, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... to avoid this misfortune told by the old splenetic and malicious fairy, caused immediately his royal proclamation to be issued forth, whereby every person was forbidden, upon pain of death, to spin with a distaff or spindle; nay, even so much as to have a spindle in any of ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... Thebes of Egypt, where is the chiefest store of wealth in the houses. He gave two silver baths to Menelaus, and tripods twain, and ten talents of gold. And besides all this, his wife bestowed on Helen lovely gifts; a golden distaff did she give, and a silver basket with wheels beneath, and the rims thereof were finished with gold. This it was that the handmaid Phylo bare and set beside her, filled with dressed yarn, and across it was laid a distaff charged with wool of violet blue. So Helen sat her ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... maintained the equilibrium of this elegant, but unsteady circle. Pickles, hemp, chickens, curds and whey, butter; washing the clothes, minding the children, seeing to the meals of the household: say that and you have summed up the strenuous woman's round of ideas. On her left side, the distaff, with its load of flax; in her right hand, the spindle turning under a quick twist of her thumb, moistened at intervals with her tongue: so she went through life, unwearied, attending to the order and the welfare of the house. I see her in my mind's eye particularly on ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... abound in the popular language of those districts. 'On entering a house there, one will find the housewife sitting with her rock (Dan., Rok; Eng., a distaff) and spoele (Dan., Spole; Eng., spool, a small wheel on the spindle); or else she has set both her rock and her garnwindle (Dan., Garnvinde; Eng., reel or yarn-winder) aside, whilst standing by her back-bword (Dan., Bagebord; Eng., baking-board) she is about to knead dough (Dan., Deig), ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... of the gutter-grating in Little Distaff-lane has, at length, awakened the attention of the parish authorities. For several days past it has been choked by an accumulation of rubbish, but we are now enabled, on good authority, to state that the parish-beadle has been directed to poke it with his staff, which it is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... my spinnin'-wheel, [Blessings on] O leeze me on my rock and reel; [distaff] Frae tap to tae that deeds me bien, [top to toe, clothes, comfortably] And haps me fiel and warm at e'en! [wraps, well] I'll set me down and sing and spin, While laigh descends the simmer sun, [low] Blest wi' content, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... we not make it light enough? We might choose the finer fibres of the hemp; and spin and weave it with scrupulous care. Ossaroo here is a perfect Omphale in his way. I'll warrant he could beat Hercules with the distaff." ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... desire to reveal the humbler immigrant parents to their own children lay at the base of what has come to be called the Hull-House Labor Museum. This was first suggested to my mind one early spring day when I saw an old Italian woman, her distaff against her homesick face, patiently spinning a thread by the simple stick spindle so reminiscent of all southern Europe. I was walking down Polk Street, perturbed in spirit, because it seemed so difficult ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... is pleased to term the "routine" reason is after all but one among many, and is not better substantiated than some of the others quoted by me; for though the lozenge has a "supposed" resemblance to the distaff or fusil, heraldically it is but a supposed one, and by most writers the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... bright-white to the feet, with a purple border of issue. Wreaths sat on each hoar crown, whose snows flush'd rosy beneath them; Still each hand fulfilled its pious labour eternal. 310 Singly the left upbore in wool soft-hooded a distaff, Whereto the right large threads down drawing deftly, with upturn'd Fingers shap'd them anew; then thumbs earth-pointed in even Balance twisted a spindle on orb'd wheels smoothly rotating. So clear'd softly between and tooth-nipt even it ever 315 Onward moved; still clung on wan ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... know, were quite poor, and had to work pretty hard for a living. Old Philemon toiled diligently in his garden, while Baucis was always busy with her distaff, or making a little butter and cheese with their cow's milk, or doing one thing and another about the cottage. Their food was seldom anything but bread, milk, and vegetables, with sometimes a portion ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... every fortune hunter in India, should anything happen!" There was a ferocious, wild gleam in Alan Hawke's eyes as the aide grasped his hat and stick. "I wish to probe the family records and find out what I can of the 'distaff side of the line,' as Mr. Guy Livingstone would say. I have some really valuable presents, and I am on honor to the Viceroy in this, for, of course, a baronetcy must not be given into sullied hands. Johnstone will probably hermetically seal the girl up till the Kaisar-I-Hind has spoken officially. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... beautiful from her modesty; and Nourgehan was charmed when he saw the sage who had proposed the question agree that she had answered with her usual justness, when she said that it was a Chestnut. She answered the third without hesitation, that it was a Distaff. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... existence of the—class of poems, French, Latin, and German, of which the Provencal Pastourela is the original type, and which represent the courting, by the poet, who is, of course, a knight, of a beautiful country-girl, who is shown us as feeding her sheep or spinning with her distaff. But these poems are, to the best of my knowledge, all of a single pattern, and extremely insincere and artificial in tone, that I feel inclined to class them with the pastorals—Dresden china idylls ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... their garments were made of the wool from their own flocks. First the wool had to be spun into yarn. They did not even have spinning wheels in those days, so a spinner took a handful of wool on the end of a stick called a distaff, which she held in her left hand. With her right hand she hooked into the wool a spindle. This was a round, pointed piece of wood about ten inches long with a hook at the pointed end, and with a small ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... discovery really did bewilder Johnny, and make him believe that fairy tales might be true, after all, for how could he know that the strange woman was an Italian servant, in her native dress, with a distaff in her hand? After pausing a moment, to rub his eyes, he took another look, and made fresh discoveries by twisting his head about. A basket of oranges stood near the Princess, a striped curtain hung from a limb of the tree to keep the wind off, and several books fluttered their ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... virgin, ravished by force from her sacred asylum, [58] were insufficient to satisfy the impotence of his passions. The master of the Roman world affected to copy the dress and manners of the female sex, preferred the distaff to the sceptre, and dishonored the principal dignities of the empire by distributing them among his numerous lovers; one of whom was publicly invested with the title and authority of the emperor's, or, as he more properly styled himself, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Not that I am personally interested in the exclusiveness of the Order, my connection with the Brooks of Brookcotes being on the distaff side. My mother was Sir Robert's only sister. My father was a military man—3rd Buffs—died when I was twelve or thirteen years of age. Sir Robert was a confirmed bachelor, and I was his only nephew. Now ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... surely a worm-eaten, wooden chest which excites curiosity. The dust is lying on it hand high, the lock is still there, but there is no need to look for the key; for one can forage in it wherever one wants, and when with fear and trembling the child does so, he pulls out a torn boot, or the broken distaff of a spinning wheel which was laid aside half a century ago. Shuddering he flings away the double find, because involuntarily he asks himself where is the leg that wore the boot and where is the hand that set ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... while she read, tatted while she taught, tatted while she watched the potatoes boiling for dinner. Some even asserted that they had seen her tat on horseback with all the diligence attributed to Bertha the beautiful queen of old Helvetia, who spun from a distaff fastened to the saddle of ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... it; With the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. She girdeth her loins with strength, And maketh strong her arms. She perceiveth that her merchandise is profitable; Her lamp goeth not out by night, She layeth her hands to the distaff, And her hands hold the spindle. She spreadeth out her hand to the poor: Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy, She is not afraid of the snow for her household, For all her household are clothed with scarlet. She maketh herself carpets of tapestry; Her clothing is fine and purple. ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... sometimes committed still. Let us not fall into the mistake of fancying that everything antiquarian, which we do not see at first sight the exact use of, must necessarily be something very mysterious. Old distaff-whorls, armlets, etc., have, in this illogical spirit, been sometimes described as Druidical amulets and talismen; ornamented rings and bosses from the ancient rich Celtic horse-harness, discovered in ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... Feargus. Her sons shall forget the use of the blade, her daughters of the distaff—for heroes and warriors she shall bring forth pipers and fiddlers, pandars and posturers; for heroines and matrons, songstresses, dancing girls, and harlots. The beginning thou seest now, the end ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... years ago in Hellas, Lydia, wife of Melas the Spartan, sat upon a stool in the court of her house, with her wool-basket beside her, spinning. She was a tall, strong-looking young woman with golden hair and blue eyes, and as she twirled her distaff and twisted the white wool between her fingers she sang a little song to herself that sounded like the humming of bees in ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... teeth; this, though not much used now, is still occasionally employed, except in large factories. This combing is repeated two or three times, till it is sufficiently smooth and even for spinning. Spinning or converting wool, or cotton, silk, &c. into thread, was anciently performed by the distaff and spindle: these we find mentioned in sacred history, and they have been used in all ages, and in all countries yet discovered. The natives of India, and of some other parts of the world, ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... silver pins, much in the manner of some of the ancient statues. The costume of the peasantry, there, and all the way to Rome, is very striking and picturesque. I remember one woman whom I saw standing at her door spinning with her distaff: her long black hair, floating down from its confinement, was spread over her shoulders; not hanging in a dishevelled and slovenly style, but in the most rich and luxuriant tresses. Her attitude as she stood suspending her work to gaze at me, as I gazed at her with open ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... the long year, who beholds all things, {and} through whom the earth sees all things; the eye, {in fact}, of the universe. Believe me, thou art pleasing to me.' She is affrighted; and in her alarm, both her distaff and her spindle fall from her relaxed fingers. Her very fear becomes her; and, he, no longer delaying, returns to his true shape, and his wonted beauty. But the maiden, although startled at the unexpected sight, overcome by the beauty ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... of the family linen. These humble housewives count their sheets by the dozen of dozens, and linen is still spun at home, although not on the scale of former days. The better-off purchase strong, unbleached goods of local manufacture. Here and there I saw old women plying spindle and distaff, but the spinning-wheel no longer ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... somewhat moved by the good sherris and his own good feeling—"for it's a well-written log that has no blots; but hang it, as I said before, I never could spin a yarn like my friend Robin here, either from the wheel, which I mean to typify the head—or the distaff, which, be it understood, signifies the heart: So here goes—" and, with a trembling hand, and a sparkling eye, the generous Springall drained the deep tankard, to the health ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Against thy majesty; and boys, with women's voices, Strive to speak big, and clap their female joints In stiff unwieldy arms against thy crown; Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows Of double-fatal yew against thy state; Yea, distaff-women manage rusty bills Against thy seat: both young and old rebel, And all goes worse than ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... the distaff of Omphale may be stronger than the club of Hercules. Here is an inconstant Romeo escaped from his Juliet, and yet unable to shake off the magnetic spell which must haunt him to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... her broad Tuscan hat with its old-fashioned black velvet—for she would never give in to the modern innovations of flowers and ostrich feathers—held her distaff in her hand, and as she twisted the spindle and drew out the thread evenly, she thought with satisfaction of the improved behaviour of ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... For example, you, as the female dancer will come upon the stage, with a distaff, twirling it, or with a pail to draw water; or with a spade for digging. Your companion will come next perhaps driving a wheel-barrow, or with a sickle to mow corn, or with a pipe a-smoaking; and though the scene should ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... coward, wreak thy wif; By corpus domini, I will have thy knife, And thou shalt have my distaff and go spin. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... tired out with their play, And stamping the snow from their feet by the way, Come slipping and stumbling and scrambling along, While the big brother catching the baby-girl's song, "Oh, my finders are told!" gives her now a gay toss, The golden hair streaming like distaff of floss; And so cheery the group that is ranged round the board, That for snow, blessed snow! we all thank the ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... ancient distaff at the bosom fixed. Casting the whirling spindle as they walk. . . . . . . . . . . This was of old, in no inglorious days, The mode of spinning, when the Egyptian prince A golden distaff gave that beauteous nymph, Too beauteous Helen; ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... skipped among the rocks or lay at his feet. Meek, mouse-colored donkeys, laden with panniers of freshly cut grass passed by, with a pretty girl in a capaline sitting between the green piles, or an old woman spinning with a distaff as she went. Brown, soft-eyed children ran out from the quaint stone hovels to offer nosegays, or bunches of oranges still on the bough. Gnarled olive trees covered the hills with their dusky foliage, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... similar to huckleberries. In this region the women were employed in beating and preparing the inner rind of the juniper bark, to which they gave the appearance of flax, and others were spinning with a distaff; again, others were weaving robes of this fibrous thread, intermixed with strips of sea-otter skin. The men were fishing on the river with drag nets between two canoes, thus intercepting the salmon coming up ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... sides, and loud above all rings the regular Io Talasse—whatever that may have meant, for no man now knows, and almost certainly no one knew then. In the midst of the procession Marcia, followed by bearers of her spindle and distaff, is being led by two pretty boys, while a third carries a torch; Silius meanwhile is scattering nuts or walnuts, or confetti made like them, to the crowd. Arrived on the Caelian, the bride is once more seized and lifted over the threshold; when inside the hall, Silius ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... elsewhere, [Footnote: Wanderings in West Africa, vol. i, p. 17. Chapter II., 'A Day at Madeira,' was written after my second and before my third visit.] and need not repeat, was probably an 'ingenious account' invented for politico-international ends or to flatter Dom Enrique, a Britisher by the distaff-side. It is told with a thousand variants, and ignored by the learned Fructuoso. According to the apocryphal manuscript of Francisco Alcoforado, the squire who accompanied the Zargo, this elopement took place in the earlier days of Edward III. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... used for holding the bunch of wool, flax, or other fibers. It was a short stick on one end of which was loosely wound the raw material. The other end of the distaff was held in the hand, under the arm or thrust in the girdle of the spinner. When held thus, one hand was left free for ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... Tremoille. During this fruitless labor amongst the French the Duke of Bedford sent for five thousand men from England, who came and settled themselves at Paris. One division of this army had a white standard, in the middle of which was depicted a distaff full of cotton; a half-filled spindle was hanging to the distaff; and the field, studded with empty spindles, bore this inscription: "Now, fair one, come!" Insult to Joan was accompanied by redoubled war against France. Joan, saddened and wearied by the position of things, attempted to escape ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot |
