"Gaelic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very beautiful romance of the Shetland Islands, with a handsome, strong-willed hero and a lovely girl of Gaelic blood as heroine. A sequel to "Jan ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... a long walk by a young man with his advantages. And if you had not had your knife in him last night I do not think she would have accompanied us this morning to attend the ministrations of Father McColl. He preached in Gaelic.' ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... battle-scenes, where it suggests the crash of maces and swords, and the blare of horns, the galloping of horses, and the general din of huge battle. Leading-motives are much used, too, with good effect and most ingenious elaboration, notably the Banquo motive. A certain amount of Gaelic color also adds interest to the work, particularly a stirring Gaelic march. The orchestration shows both scholarship ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... winter, was thenceforth his base of operations. But he shot meanwhile erratic in many directions: twice to America, as we have seen, on telegraph voyages; continually to London on business; often to Paris; year after year to the Highlands to shoot, to fish, to learn reels and Gaelic, to make the acquaintance and fall in love with the character of Highlanders; and once to Styria, to hunt chamois and dance with peasant maidens. All the while, he was pursuing the course of his electrical studies, making fresh inventions, taking up the ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fifth century. [15] The northern Highlands, a nest of rugged mountains washed by cold and stormy seas, have always been occupied in historic times by a Celtic-speaking people, whose language, called Gaelic, is not yet extinct there. This part of Scotland, like Wales, was a home of freedom. The Romans did not attempt to annex the Highlands, and the Anglo- Saxons and Danes never penetrated their fastnesses. On the other hand the southern Lowlands, which ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... the eastmost window of Mrs. MacPhail's house, that's the superior tenement. I believe the auld women wad hae agreed, for Luckie MacPhail sent down the lass to tell my friend Mrs. Crombie that she had made the gardyloo out of the wrang window, out of respect for twa Highlandmen that were speaking Gaelic in the close below the right ane. But luckily for Mrs. Crombie, I just chanced to come in in time to break aff the communing, for it's a pity the point suldna be tried. We had Mrs. MacPhail into the Ten-Mark Court—The Hieland limmer of a lass wanted to swear herself ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... though by no means excluded, does not make so good a show as its energy and talents would seem to warrant. Our native composers are especially noticeable for their wide range of themes, for the Celtic and Gaelic glamour which they infuse into their treatment of them, and for their realistic titles. We have drawn up a list of instrumental works which illustrate these characteristics, but which are unfortunately conspicuous by their absence from Sir HENRY WOOD'S scheme. As, however, it is subject to alteration ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... MR. WHEELER,—Your letter followed me here, where at least one can breathe. This really is a most beautiful country filled with self-respecting Gaelic-speaking Scotch from the islands of the north—crofters driven here to make place for sheep and fine estates on their ancestral ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... fought as soon as they felt the invaders' pressure. Wales itself had never been all held by the Romans. The legions had covered the south from Caerleon in Monmouthshire to Saint Davids in Penfro, a region held by Silures and Gaelic Celts. They had marched along the northern coast to the island of Mona, establishing, just as Edward the Conqueror did in his day, strongholds from which to dominate the dangerous mountains: these regions also were held by Gaels. But just south of those ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... name. She was Ellen Douglas, and was in banishment on an island with her father. You are Ellen, and Josephine is your old harper—Allan Bane; she talks French, you know, and that will do for Highland: Gallic and Gaelic sound alike, you know. There! Then I'm going out hunting, and my dear gallant grey will drop down dead with fatigue, and I shall lose my way; and when you hear me wind my horn too-too, you get upon your ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at any rate as he told it, in quaint uncertain English, intermixed with spates of his own Gaelic as he got excited over the account of his prowess. One of them was an officer, and Donald finished up by ferreting out of his meal-bag a magnificent gold watch, lawful prize from his point of view, taken out of ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... wealth that thieves cannot steal, she put aside her disappointment. Allister was home, he was well and prosperous and that was surely enough happiness for one day. She sat beside him, keeping tight hold of his hand, patting it occasionally and repeating Gaelic words of endearment, precious words he had not heard since he was a child and which brought a ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... dark red or violet-coloured rock, must be seen to more advantage in the full light of day. Yet we question whether we could have been more deeply sensible of the beauty and grandeur of the scene than we were under the unusual circumstances we have described. The boatmen sang a Gaelic joram or boat-song in the cave, striking their oars very violently in time with the music, which resounded finely through the vault, and was echoed back by roof and pillar. One of them, also, fired a gun, with the view of producing a still stronger effect ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... into a kind of roar, as near to the above as English letters will sound. Perhaps he was laughing in Gaelic, with a cross of Scandinavian; but, whatever it was, he seemed heartily ashamed of his rudeness, and looked ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... Carey and Simeon, thus linked to each other by Martyn, find another pleasant and fruitful tie in the Rev. Alexander Stewart, D.D., Gaelic scholar and Scottish preacher. It was soon after Carey went out to India that Simeon, travelling in the Highlands, spent a Sunday in the manse of Moulin, where his personal intercourse and his evening sermon after ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... Edinburgh one,—to remain on board, and study his discourse for the morrow. I found, however, no unmeet companion for my excursion in his trusty mate John Stewart. John had not very much English, and I had no Gaelic; but we contrived to understand one another wonderfully well; and ere evening I had taught him to be quite as expert in hunting dead crocodiles as myself. We reached the Ru-Stoir, and set hard to work with hammer and chisel. The fragments of red shale were strewed ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Hindustanee dada; Latin, atta, tatta; Greek atta, tatta; Albanian, Albania, at, atti; Calabria and Sicily tata; Celtic, Welsh tad; Cornish and Bret tat; Irish, daid; Gaelic daidein; English (according to Skeats of Welsh) dad, daddy; Old Slav, tata otici; Moldavian tata; Wallachian tate; Polish tatus; Bohemian, Servian Croatian otsche; Lithuanian teta; Preuss thetis; Gothic ata; Old Fries tate; O. H. G. tato; Old Swed ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson
... to appear en Francaise, my true character," smiled Berthe. "I never could sacrifice my Gaelic taste to the hideous color mixtures and utilitarian ugliness of the English machine-made toilette. An Englishwoman can only be trusted with a blue serge, a plain gray traveling dress, or in the easy safety of black or white. They are not the 'glass of fashion and the mold of form.' Now, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... girls of true Gaelic blood came and gazed curiously at us one evening, as we thus sat. The elder of the two, a head shorter than her companion, responded readily to the Bailie's questions,—among other things naively accounted to us for her diminutive size, as if it were a foregone and inevitable result of her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... has a certain air of being Norse. But the story of Scottish nomenclature is confounded by a continual process of translation and half-translation from the Gaelic which in olden days may have been sometimes reversed. Roy becomes Reid; Gow, Smith. A great Highland clan uses the name of Robertson; a sept in Appin that of Livingstone; Maclean in Glencoe answers to Johnstone at Lockerby. ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... associate, that they consulted one another from time to time with grave and searching eyes, and that once or twice, when Sempronia, who alone of those present understood their language, was at a distance, they uttered a few words in Gaelic, not in the most agreeable ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... they talk Gaelic and French also; the first two they learned from their father, and ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... by innumerable bottles of port and burgundy at Carlton House; and the whole surmounted by a bonnet with waving plumes. Scott was chiefly responsible for disguising that elderly London debauchee in the costume of a wild Gaelic cattle-stealer, and was apparently insensible of the gross absurdity. We are told that an air of burlesque was thrown over the proceedings at Holyrood by the apparition of a true London alderman in the same costume as his master. An alderman who ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... speak Gaelic and also Erse, which languages he had learnt during his childhood, which was spent partly in the Highlands of Scotland and ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... among my converts?" He seized my hand and kissed it, saying, "I'll seal it with a kiss." Don't be alarmed—he is fully eighty years of age but blithe and frolicsome—sang and acted out a Scotch war-song in the real Gaelic. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... English, Welsh (about 26% of the population of Wales), Scottish form of Gaelic (about ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... (The). Ossian said to Oscar, when he resigned to him the command of the morrow's battle, "Be thine the secret hill to-night," referring to the Gaelic custom of the commander of an army retiring to a secret hill the night before a battle, to hold communion with the ghosts of departed ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... corner of this kingdom. The Irish came into the new order of things frankly and in good faith; and if wise counsels prevailed then amongst our rulers, oh, what a blessed ending there might have been to the bloody feud of centuries. The Irish submitted to the Gaelic King, to whom had come in the English crown. In their eyes he was of a friendly, nay of a kindred race. He was of a line of Gaelic kings that had often befriended Ireland. Submitting to him was not yielding to the ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... doots," said Don, falling into his Gaelic-accented English, as he often did when he seemed to be wrestling with a problem, "if yon appetite of Pepper's can increase much wi'out ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... Meester Steve Young, sir. Ton't you try to imitate ta gran' Gaelic tongue, pecause she can never to it. She'd have to pe porn north o' Glasgie to speak ta gran' Gaelic ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... know who—and that the combat took place in this square. Now, my dear fellow, here is the prison, which ought to give you some idea of human vicissitudes. Gil Blas didn't change his condition more often than this monument its purposes. Before Caesar it was a Gaelic temple; Caesar converted it into a Roman fortress; an unknown architect transformed it into a military work during the Middle Ages; the Knights of Baye, following Caesar's example, re-made it into a fortress; the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... the child of a cotter pair, who had an acre or two of their father's farm, and helped him with it. Her real name has not reached me; Dawtie means darling, and is a common term of endearment—derived, Jamieson suggests, from the Gaelic dalt, signifying a foster-child. Dawtie was a dark-haired, laughing little darling, with shy, merry manners, and the whitest teeth, full of fun, but solemn in an instant. Her small feet were bare and black—except on ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... (2) Born in New York City, Dec. 31, 1885. Was educated at Harvard University where he took the degrees of A.B. and A.M., making a special study of the Gaelic language and literature in which he has also done some valuable research work. Having, through his own Celtic descent, a particular interest in Ireland and its literature, and having spent a part of ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... I can't make it out. Back of those men's time the English are just simply foreigners, nothing more, nothing less; they talk Danish, German, Norman French, and sometimes a mixture of all three; back of THEM, they talk Latin, and ancient British, Irish, and Gaelic; and then back of these come billions and billions of pure savages that talk a gibberish that Satan himself couldn't understand. The fact is, where you strike one man in the English settlements that you can understand, you wade through awful swarms that talk something ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... present county of Pictou, where a very few American colonists from Philadelphia had preceded them. In later years a steady tide of Scotch population flowed into eastern Nova Scotia and did not cease until 1820. Gaelic is still the dominant tongue in the eastern counties, where we find numerous names recalling the glens, lochs, and mountains of old Scotland. Sir William Alexander's dream of a new Scotland has been realised in ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... of Hungary is its language. Though one knows that Jokai writes in the strange tongue which sticks its verb into the middle of its noun, yet one vaguely thinks of it as of Gaelic or Welsh—something archaic, kept for Eisteddfods and Renaissances—and it is not till one arrives in Hungary that one realises that it is a living, disconcerting reality. The great European languages have affinities with one another: Latin puts one on ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... hunting-grounds. Very probably these were on both sides of the Earn—stretching westward into the neighbouring parish of Dunning, the northmost part of which is still called Dalreoch or Dailrigh, a word which, in Gaelic, means the King's haugh ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... time, possessed several of these dogs, verified as being derived from the best stock on the island, from which their parents—who understood no language but Gaelic—were brought direct, I have noted some of their odd, whimsical ways, a few of which I will illustrate, taking for my exponent one very remarkable little fellow who was a genuine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... we use, we are speaking the tongue of the Trans-Alpine Gauls, taking a syllable from the word of a half-forgotten people. From yet another source is the locative "ham." Chester is of Roman origin, tun is of Gaelic; but "ham" is Anglo-Saxon, and means village, whence the sweet word home. Witness the use of this suffix in Effingham and the like. "Stoke" and "beck" and "worth" are also Saxon. "Thorpe" and "by" are Danish, as in Althorp and Derby. These reminiscent instances from ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... American wilderness you will meet them, side by side with the backwoods-pioneer himself, and even pushing him from his own ground. From the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Sea, they have impressed with their Gaelic names rock, river, and mountain; and many an Indian tribe owns a Scotchman for its chief. I say, again, ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... was on deck then, and with the wisdom of the Celt she understood. She put her lean hand upon the great head of the Russian and blessed him in Gaelic. Ivan bowed before her, then as she offered him a rosy apple he led her toward Anna, a great Viking leading a withered old woman who walked with the grace ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of preaching and education in the Highlands. The sum, in the Scotland of that time, might go as far as L7000 or L8000 a year now, though in England it would have been worth only about L4200 of present value. Spent on an effective Gaelic mission of travelling pastors, and on a few well-planted schools, it might have accomplished a good deal.[2]—Since the beginning of the Protectorate there had been some care in finding new funds for the Scottish Universities ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... of the Gaelic land where he walked as a boy, the cliffs were as fantastic as the clouds. Heaven seemed to humble itself and come closer to the earth. The common paths of his little village began to climb quite suddenly and seemed resolved to go to heaven. The sky seemed to fall down towards the hills; ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... two hundred souls. In the neighbourhood of the little cluster of villages was some copsewood and some pasture land; but a little further up the defile no sign of population or of fruitfulness was to be seen. In the Gaelic tongue Glencoe signifies the Glen of Weeping; and in truth that pass is the most dreary and melancholy of all the Scottish passes, the very Valley of the Shadow of Death. Mists and storms brood over it through ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... raw and rainy; elderly gentlemen would have needed "their lass with a lantern," to escort them from their chambers. The old city guard sputtered their Gaelic, and stamped up and down for warmth. The chairmen drank their last fee to keep out the cold—and in and out of the low doorways moved middle-aged women barefooted, and in curch and short gown, who, when snooded maidens, had gazed on the white cockade, and the march of Prince Charlie Stuart ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Monterey, charged with tender greetings. Pray you, take him in. He comes from a house where (even as in your own) there are gathered together some of the waifs of our company at Oakland; a house—for all its outlandish Gaelic name and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Scotchmen, Welshmen feel themselves one people in the general affairs of the world. A secession of Scotland or Wales is as unlikely as a secession of Normandy or Languedoc. The part of the island which is not thoroughly assimilated in language, that part which still speaks Welsh or Gaelic, is larger in proportion than the non-French part of modern France. But however much either the northern or the western Briton may, in a fit of antiquarian politics, declaim against the Saxon, for all practical political purposes ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... EXPOUNDED. Mainly after Motherwell. There are several broadsides, differing slightly, of this ballad. Riddling folk-songs similar to this in general features have been found among the Germans and Russians and in Gaelic literature. Speird, asked. Unco, uncanny. Gin, if. Pies, magpies. Clootie, see ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... political connexion. The peoples have, from an early date, been, to some extent, intermingled, and this mixture of blood renders necessary some account of the racial relationship. It has been a favourite theme of the English historians of the nineteenth century that the portions of Scotland where the Gaelic tongue has ceased to be spoken are not really Scottish, but English. "The Scots who resisted Edward", wrote Mr. Freeman, "were the English of Lothian. The true Scots, out of hatred to the 'Saxons' nearest to them, leagued with the ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... on the shoulder with a huge hand, and his voice took on the Gaelic accent of his childhood learned from his father, that McCrae who had in his time ruled a thousand miles of wilderness for ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... years it had lain hid in a Samoan chest, the present writer came across the mimic war correspondence here presented to the public. The stirring story of these tin-soldier campaigns occupies the greater share of the book, though interspersed with many pages of scattered verse, not a little Gaelic idiom and verb, a half-made will and the chaptering of a novel. This game of tin soldiers, an intricate "Kriegspiel," involving rules innumerable, prolonged arithmetical calculations, constant measuring with foot-rules, and the throwing of dice, sprang ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man could be behind it—to wit JAMES STEPHENS, Crock-of-Gold STEPHENS. Fantastic things indeed happen in The Demi-Gods (MACMILLAN), which is a kind of inspired nightmare, a sort of Chestertonian inconsequence done into Gaelic, a little less violent and with a little less malt, but even less coherent. At the risk of being reckoned among the egregiously imperceptive I would ask Mr. STEPHENS solemnly whether he is not in danger of letting his fancy take bit between teeth and land him in some bog of sheer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... devoted much of his time to collecting and studying the oral traditions of his own district and of many lands. His equipment as a student of West Highland folklore was unique. He had the necessary knowledge of Gaelic, the hereditary connection with the district which made him at home with the poorest peasant, and the sympathetic nature which proved a master-key in opening the storehouse of inherited belief. It is not likely ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... to which Edward sat down, told of the Chief's immense hospitality. After the meal, healths were drunk, and the bard of the clan recited a wild and thrilling poem in Gaelic—of which, of course, Edward could not understand so much as one word, though it excited the clansmen so that they sprang up in ecstasy, many of them waving their arms about in sympathy with the warlike verses. The Chief, exactly in the ancient manner, presented a silver ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Europe, such as the Norse tale of Big Peter and Little Peter, the Danish tale of Great Claus and Little Claus; the German tale (Grimm) of the Little Farmer; the Irish tale of Little Fairly (Samuel Lover's collection of Irish Fairy Legends and Stories); four Gaelic versions in Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands; a Kaba'il version in Riviere's French collection (Contes populaires Kabylies); Uncle Capriano in Crane's recently published Italian Popular ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the Highland character and ways of life. He was a good shot, rode and swam well, and taught his boys athletic exercises, boating, salmon fishing, and such like. He learned to dance a Highland reel, and began the study of Gaelic; but that speech proved too stubborn, craggy, and impregnable even for Jenkin. Once he took his family to Alt Aussee, in the Stiermark, Styria, where he hunted chamois, won a prize for shooting ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... taken down by J. Dewar in prose from oral recitation in Gaelic in 1860. Translated by H. McLean, of Islay. It is ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... less, a hundred and twelve lines,' said the insufferable Merton. 'Could you give us them in Gaelic?' ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... Arnot, this is a long tale of yours, and we will cut it with a drink; as the Highlander says, Skeoch doch nan skial ['Cut a tale with a drink;' an expression used when a man preaches over his liquor, as bons vivants say in England. S.]; and that 's good Gaelic.—Here is to the Countess Isabelle of Croye, and a better husband to her than Campobasso, who is a base Italian cullion!—And now, Andrew Arnot, what said the muleteer to this ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... you could speak Gaelic," said my father, thinking of his wife, I believe, whose mother tongue it was. "But that is not what you want most to learn. Do you think Kirsty could teach you ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... hospitality. From Loch Goil we took the coach for Inverary, a beautiful drive of about two hours. We had seats on the outside, and the driver John, like some of the White Mountain guides, was full of song and story, and local tradition. He spoke Scotch and Gaelic, recited ballads, and sung songs with great gusto. Mary and the girls stopped in a little inn at St. Catherine's, on the shores of Loch Fine, while Henry and I took steamboat for Inverary, where we found the duchess waiting in a carriage for us, with Lady ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... None hinted at less than seventy. No one could remember his coming to Muirtown, and none knew whence he came. His birthplace was commonly believed to be the West Highlands, and it was certain that in dealing with a case of aggravated truancy he dropped into Gaelic. Bailie McCallum used to refer in convivial moments to his schooldays under Bulldog, and always left it to be inferred that had it not been for that tender, fostering care, he had not risen to his high estate in Muirtown. Fathers of families who were elders in the kirk, and verging on grey hair, ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... as on the county," said Dr. Mortimer. "A glance at our friend here reveals the rounded head of the Celt, which carries inside it the Celtic enthusiasm and power of attachment. Poor Sir Charles's head was of a very rare type, half Gaelic, half Ivernian in its characteristics. But you were very young when you last saw Baskerville Hall, ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... alone, To do his ghostly battling, With curdling groan and dismal moan, And lots of chains a-rattling! But no—the chiel's stout Gaelic stuff Withstood all ghostly harrying; His fingers closed upon the snuff Which ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... was in earnest discussion with one of his men, and he was not using English but sputtering a torrent of shrill Gaelic, shrugging his shoulders, throwing his arms about, thrilling with excitement—but for all that, he was the picture of a man that most ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Scottish man having killed with his own hand Enrique, a Danish general, presented the head of the enemy to his Sovereign, and, holding in his hand the bloody dagger with which the deed had been performed, exclaimed, in Gaelic, "Eris Skyne," alluding to the head and the dagger; upon which the surname of Erskine was imposed on him. The armorial bearing of a hand holding a dagger, was added as a further distinction, together with the motto, Je pense plus, in allusion to the declaration ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... Irish (Gaelic), spoken mainly in areas located along the western seaboard, English is the ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... one occasion she played the Schumann concerto with the Boston Orchestra at a week's notice, in place of a soloist who had canceled an engagement at the last moment. On another occasion she played her own pianoforte concerto with the orchestra with splendid effect. Last year her "Gaelic Symphony," in E minor, was played in Boston and also in Brooklyn by the Boston Orchestra. Her instrumentation is said to be excellent and the work a ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... crowd, Mr Brand! Macnab didna like what ye said. He had a laddie killed in Gallypoly, and he's no lookin' for peace this side the grave. He's my best friend in Glasgow. He's an elder in the Gaelic kirk in the Cowcaddens, and I'm what ye call a free-thinker, but we're wonderful agreed on the fundamentals. Ye spoke your bit verra well, I must admit. Gresson will hear tell of ye as ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... would sooner bank on Tuscan, Ay, or even on Etruscan, Than on Erse; But fanatical campaigners, Gaelic Leaguers and Sinn ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... it is given as 'Canadian Boat Song, from the Gaelic.' The author of the English version was Burns' 'Sodger Hugh,' the 12th Earl of Eglinton, who was M.P. for Ayrshire from 1784 to 1789, and was the great-grandfather of the present Earl. When in Canada the author is said to have heard a song of lament sung by evicted ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... noble decurion named Calphurnius espoused Conchessa, the niece of St. Martin of Tours. Heaven blessed their union with several children, the youngest of whom was a boy, who received at his baptism the name of Succath, which in the Gaelic tongue signifies "valiant." ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... vent to his feelings in Gaelic when labouring under strong excitement. On this occasion his utterances were terrible in tone whatever ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... interpretation of life—the age was not less remarkable. Dr. Johnson was still alive when Coleridge came up to school at Christ's Hospital, Goldsmith had died eight years before. But a new spirit was abroad in the younger generation. Macpherson's "Fingal," alleged to be a translation from the ancient Gaelic poet Ossian, had appeared in 1760; Thomas Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," a collection of folk-ballads and rude verse-romances such as the common people cherished but critics had long refused to consider as poetry, ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of the Gothamites are found almost unaltered in Gaelic. That of the twelve fishers has been already mentioned, and here is the story of the attempt to drown an eel, which Campbell gives in similar terms in his Tales of ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... contemporaries in Great Britain, was filled with disgust at the blind carnage of the Revolution. He returned to Scotland and began a series of tours in the Highlands, studying the conditions of life among his Celtic countrymen and becoming proficient in the use of the Gaelic tongue. Not France but Scotland was to be the scene of ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... so long ago, when Dan and I kneeled on the stone-flagged floor beside one another and listened to my uncle pray and pray and pray in Gaelic, I whispered— ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... the loaning; do you mind, ma'am?" asked the draper. (We have long since discovered that this use of the verb is a bequest from the Gaelic, in which there is no present tense. Man never is, but always to be blessed, in that language, which in this particular is not unlike ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... What is the song the harper sings, what tongue Is this he speaks? for in no Gaelic lands Is speech like this upon the lips of men. No word of all these honey-dripping words Is known to me. Beware, beware the words Brewed in the moonshine under ancient oaks White with pale banners of the mistletoe Twined round them ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... was familiar with, but she abhorred the dark, frowning castle and the loneliness of the place and would not stay. In fact, no governess would stay, and so Angus became my tutor and taught me old Gaelic and Latin and Greek, and we read together and studied the ancient books in the library. It was a strange education for a girl, and no doubt made me more than ever unlike others. But my life was ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... catamarans, and General Service stink-pontoons filled with indescribable apparatus, manned by men no dozen of whom seem to talk the same dialect or wear the same clothes. The mustard-coloured jersey who is cleaning a six-pounder on a Hull boat clips his words between his teeth and would be happier in Gaelic. The whitish singlet and grey trousers held up by what is obviously his soldier brother's spare regimental belt is pure Lowestoft. The complete blue-serge-and-soot suit passing a wire down a hatch is Glasgow ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... translations from the Gaelic on pages 77 and 78 were made by the late P. H. Pearse, who was executed in Dublin for his part in the Easter Rebellion. The translations appeared in New Ireland, and I am indebted to the Editor of that review for permission ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... precisely identical with the above. They are described as a diminutive race of beings of a mixed or rather dubious nature, capricious in their dispositions and mischievous in their resentment. They inhabit the interior of green hills, chiefly those of a conical form, in Gaelic termed Sighan, on which they lead their dances by moonlight; impressing upon the surface the marks of circles, which sometimes appear yellow and blasted, sometimes of a deep green hue, and within which ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... Roxburghshire, Scotland, 2 m. W. of Jedfoot Bridge station on the Roxburgh-Jedburgh branch of the North British railway. Pop. (1901) 973. The earlier forms of the name, "Alnecrumba,'' "Ankrom'' and "Alnecrom,'' indicate its Gaelic derivation from crom, "crooked''—"the crook or bend of the Alne.'' The village is of considerable antiquity, and was formerly held by the see of Glasgow. Its cross, said to date from the time of David I., is one ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ed. at Eton and Edin., was afterwards Sec. to the Lighthouse Commission. He was an authority on Celtic folk-lore, and pub. Popular Tales of the West Highlands (4 vols., 1860-62), and various Gaelic texts. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... 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, ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... reached their new home in March, 1848, under the guidance of Captain Cargill, an old soldier, who had been chosen as leader of the new settlement. At the head of a fine harbour, which they called Port Chalmers, they laid the foundations of a town, to which they gave the patriotic name of Dunedin, Gaelic for Edinburgh. It was in a fine district, troubled by few natives, and it steadily grew. Less than a year later, it had 745 inhabitants, who could boast of a good jetty, and a newspaper. The life of pioneers cannot be very ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... man was counting his sheep, using the ancient Gaelic numerals from one to ten, which had been handed down from one shepherd to another from time immemorial. And as he called out the numbers his hand fumbled among the bed-clothes as though he were searching for the notches ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... lift our mortal burden with oceanic merriment, only the New Movement frightens them. They are afraid they would not be "Greek" enough—or "Scandinavian" enough. Meanwhile the miserable populace have to choose between Babylonian Pantomimes and Gaelic Mythology, if they are not driven, out of a kind of spite, into the region ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... attention by spending money. He said he tried to get into public notice one time by planting a little public square on the east side with garlic for free use of the poor; but Carnegie heard of it, and covered it over at once with a library in the Gaelic language. Three times he had jumped in the way of automobiles; but the only result was five broken ribs and a notice in the papers that an unknown man, five feet ten, with four amalgam-filled teeth, supposed to be the last of the famous Red Leary ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... at old McTaggart's. He's the head-keeper and a real friend. McTaggart "has the Gaelic." But he hasn't much else, so perhaps ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... of them—on the Prince Edward Island farm where Donald was born; and still more generations of them in old Scotland. Pure Scotch on both sides of the house for hundreds of years were the Mackintoshes, and the Gaelic tongue was to-day freer spoken ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... new doctor! Hoch, yes, yes, it is welcome you will be to Elmbrook. Eh, and we would not be expecting such a fine-looking one. Indeed, no! And it would be a fine Scottish name, too, oh, a fine name indeed, Allen. And—you would not be hafing the Gaelic, I suppose?" His eyes gleamed wistfully from between the hat and ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... opposite shore of the lake is a large rock, called "Bull's Rock," having a door in the side, with a stairway cut through the interior to a pulpit on the top, from which the pastor at Arroquhar preaches a monthly discourse. The Gaelic legend of the rock is, that it once stood near the summit of the mountain above, and was very nearly balanced on the edge of a precipice. Two wild bulls, fighting violently, dashed with great force ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... the Gaelic Chapel, on 'I know that my Redeemer liveth,' with more seeming power on the people than for a while. I never remember of compelling souls to come in to Christ so ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... the Gaelic Caroh, a ship, because of the shape which the fruit takes. By cultivation the root becomes more succulent, and the fruit larger, whilst more oily, and therefore acquiring an increase of aromatic taste and odour. In Germany the seeds are given for hysterical affections, being ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... giving some sign. Rob Don, the Sutherlandshire bard, owed much less to nature than Milton did, and so little to learning that he could neither read nor write; and yet his better songs promise to live as long as the Gaelic language. And though both Burns and Shakespeare had very considerable disadvantages to struggle against, we know that neither of them remained 'mute' or 'inglorious,' or even less extensively known ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... in Co. Down, Banney (i.e. Ban-ea, "ea" also meaning water) in Yorkshire, Bain in Herefordshire; Banavie (avon) is a place on the brightly running river Lochy in Argyleshire; and, as meaning "white," a fair-haired boy or girl is called in Gaelic "Bhana." ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... many churches of various denominations, but was particularly interested in my own, the Protestant Episcopal. The Rt. Rev. H. C. Potter, Bishop of New York, and his secretary, Rev. Percy S. Grant, were passengers on board our ship, the Gaelic. The special purpose of the Bishop's visit to Honolulu was to effect the transfer of the Episcopal churches of the Sandwich Islands to the jurisdiction of our House of Bishops. He expressed himself as delighted with his ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... ecclesiastical authority which that of 1610 possessed, and was still more hopelessly discredited by its association with the persecution of the Covenanting remnant; but even under these disadvantages it was yielding not inconsiderable benefits to the religious life of Scotland. Under it our Gaelic-speaking highlanders first received the entire Bible in their native tongue; the Episcopate was adorned by the piety of Leighton and the wisdom of Patrick Scougal; while Henry Scougal in his Life of God in the Soul of Man produced a ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... article for Dana too. Are we going to be read? I feel we are. The Gaelic league wants something in Irish. I hope you will ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... essentially Gaelic in appearance, is situated on the west side of the strait, between Lakes St. Clare and Erie, and is within sight of Malden in Canada, with the shores of which province a constant trade or communication is kept up by steam. Here is situated an extensive government agency ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... A torrent of Gaelic broke from Duncan, into the midst of which rushed another from Mrs. Catanach, similar, but coarse in vowel and harsh in consonant sounds. The marquis stepped into the room. "What is the meaning of all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... the Mackenzie estates during the minority of his nephew, the grandfather of the first Earl of Cromarty, and was said to have been a man of much ability and considerable culture for the times in which he lived. At the same time he was a man of strong personality though of evil repute in the Gaelic-speaking districts, as the following couplet still current among ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... S. Lectures on the Irish Language Movement. Delivered under the auspices of various branches of the Gaelic League. London, 1904. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... he has penetrated to the heart of the entire body of legends, has imbued himself with their ultimate spirit and significance, and has bodied it forth in his music with splendid veracity and eloquence. He has attempted no mere musical recounting of those romances of the ancient Gaelic world at which he hints in his brief motto. It would be juster to say, rather, that he has recalled in his music the very life and presence of the Gaelic prime—that he has "unbound the Island harp." Above all, he has achieved that "heroic beauty" ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... Peerless brought his beautiful little vessel from the Clyde in 6000 pieces, and is justly proud of her. I sat next him at dinner, and found that we knew some of the same people in Scotland. Gaelic was a further introduction; and though so many thousand miles away, for a moment I felt myself at home when we spoke of the majestic Cuchullins and the heathery braes of Balquidder. In the Peerless every one took ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... died when he was sixteen. When twenty years old he collected his tenants, and in one night made a road across a hill which had been pronounced impracticable. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Gaelic traditions; defended the authenticity of Ossian; supported Highland games, and brought Italian travellers to listen to the music of the bagpipes. When he presented himself to his tenants in the Highland costume, on the withdrawal of its prohibition, they expected him to lead them in a ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... guiding an anxious inquirer no one could hold the candle to William Guthrie. Descriptions of his preaching abound in the old books, such as this: A Glasgow merchant was compelled to spend a Sabbath in Arran, and though he did not understand Gaelic, he felt he must go to the place of public worship. Great was his delight when he saw William Guthrie come into the pulpit. And he tells us that though he had heard in his day many famous preachers, he ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... annual meeting of the Nor'westers at Fort William in July of 1814. Like generals on field of war they laid out their campaign. Duncan Cameron, a United Empire Loyalist officer of the 1812 War, is to don his red regimentals and proceed to Red River, where his knowledge of the Gaelic tongue may be trusted to win over Selkirk settlers. "Nothing but the complete downfall of the colony will satisfy some," wrote one of the fiery Nor'westers to a brother officer. Such was the mood of the Nor'westers when they came back from ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the English language, is that it was not the primitive and original tongue of any of the British Islands, nor yet of any portion of them. Indeed, of the whole of Great Britain it is not the language at the present moment. Welsh is spoken in Wales, Manks in the Isle of Man, and Scotch Gaelic in the Highlands of Scotland; besides which there is ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... type than that of the Iberians; their weapons, their war-chariots, their mode of life and their treatment of women, are all so closely similar to that of the Greeks of Homer that a theory has been advanced and ably defended, that the Homeric Greeks were really invading Celts—Gaelic or Gaulish tribes from the north of Europe. If it indeed be so, we owe to the Celts a debt of imperishable culture and civilisation. To them belongs more especially, in our national amalgam, the passion for the past, the ardent ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... Cupples,' said she, 'for some book to help me to learn Gaelic. I want very much to ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... window, a small boy, with a dog and a cat, was playing at being on a raft. The boy's name was Gervase Taunton, but he was known to a large circle of acquaintances as "the Mhor," which, as Jean would have explained to you, is Gaelic for "the great one." Thus had greatness been thrust upon him. He was seven, and he had lived at The Rigs since he was two. He was a handsome child with an almost uncanny charm of manner, and a gift of make-believe that made his days one ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... legendary discoverer of tin in Cornwall was originally a totally different character from the Irish saint, St. Kiran. If one might indulge in a conjecture, I should say that there probably was in the Celtic language a root kar, which in the Cymbric branch would assume the form par. Now cair in Gaelic means to dig, to raise; and from it a substantive might be derived, meaning digger or miner. In Ireland, Kiran seems to have been simply a proper name, like Smith or Baker, for there is nothing in the legends of St. Kiran that points to mining or smelting. In Cornwall, on the contrary, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... this the holy renowned bishop, head of justice and faith in the Gaelic island came into Ireland, i.e. Patrick sent by Celestinus, the Pope. Aongus Mac Nathfrich went to meet him soon as he heard the account of his coming. He conducted him (Patrick) with reverence and great honour to ...
— The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore • Anonymous
... rewarded after death by a national monument; his fellow-townsmen let the living starve to deify him when dead. Cervantes and his like have met the same fate elsewhere. Leaving Thurso for the Hebrides, in company with no fewer than 700 Gaelic fishermen, we passed the magnificent cliffs of Cape Wrath in a pleasant calm,—which next day when we had reached Stornoway turned to a furious storm: had we encountered it with those 700 loading the deck it would ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and pitiless executioner of the king's justice. But he is after all the most interesting character in the piece, with his Biblical references in broad Lowland Scots (we may suppose that the Stewarts speak Gaelic among themselves), his superstition, his remorseless cruelty. We should like to see how he takes the discovery that, perhaps for the first time, he has been baffled in his career of ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... Jamie, meaning himself,—"hersel' may go to ta deevil if he wull; ta little lassie sall be a lady." (Jamie's Scotch always grew more Gaelic as he got excited.) It was evident that he regarded religion as a sort of ornament of superior breeding, that Mercedes must have, though he could do without it. And Mr. James Bowdoin looked in Jamie's eye, and held his peace. In those days deference ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... magnificent of these rocks is one called in Gaelic "Dun-Bug" ("Yellow Rock"), the favorite haunt of the white sea-gulls. It stands alone, as if torn from the land and hurled into the tossing waves by some giant hand. Two hundred feet in height and a thousand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... Lavender, he could not help confessing to a sense of lightness and vivacity that the young man seemed to bring with him and shed around him. Nor was this matter of the sketches the only thing that had particularly recommended Lavender to the old man. Mackenzie had a most distinct dislike to Gaelic songs. He could not bear the monotonous melancholy of them. When Sheila, sitting by herself, would sing these strange old ballads of an evening, he would suddenly enter the room, probably find her eyes filled with tears, and then he would in his inmost heart devote the whole of Gaelic minstrelsy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... persuade Captain Morrison—the best and kindest master ever man had—not to go either.' 'Not going? What in the world do you mean, Angus?' was my very natural exclamation of surprise. 'Well, sir,' said Angus (the reader will please understand that our talk was in Gaelic). 'Well, sir,' said Angus, 'You must not be angry with me if I tell you that on the last three nights my father, who has been dead nine years, as you know, has appeared to me and warned me not to ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... is nearly the same as the Gaelic, and there was much in the Irish and Highland institutions showing their common origin. The clan system prevailed in Ireland, the clans being called Septs, and all having, as a surname, the name ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and petted favorite in the household. He was a captive, to be sure, but allowed at times to be outside his cage on parole; and, always observing good faith and gratitude for such indulgences, they were repeated as often as appeared consistent with safe custody. The few words of Gaelic which he had picked up in his voyage to the north, were just sufficient, on his arrival, to bespeak the good-will of the family, and recommend himself to their hospitality; but his vocabulary was soon ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... vivid pictures of people and things, but it is not full of beauty and of tender imagination like many of the Gaelic stories. Among the most beautiful and best known of these are perhaps the Three Sorrows of Story-Telling. These three stories are called: The Tragedy of the Children of Lir; The Tragedy of the Children of ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... that of translating into English "the best and most approved poetry of the Ancient and Modern Scoto-Gaelic Bards, with such notes on the usages and superstitions therein alluded to, as will enable the English reader to form a clear and correct idea of the originals." In the course of a rather ornate letter, Borrow offers ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... her son exclaim in Gaelic, "This is a fatal lamb for me." As her son lived several miles from Uig, and was a fisherman, realisation seemed to my father very unlikely, but one month afterwards the realisation occurred only too true. Unknown to his mother, who had warned him against having anything to do with sheep or lambs, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... inclination would lead me to say as little as possible about myself. My great-grandfather fell at Culloden, my grandfather used to tell us national stories, and my grandmother sang Gaelic songs. To my father and the other children the dying injunction was, "Now, in my lifetime I have searched most carefully through all the traditions I could find of our family, and I never could ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... which has so often made our young blood run cold. Sister Anne is represented, and so are the rescuing brothers, the latter in the person of the heroine's old friend and playmate, Toennis the goose-herd. Several very curious Gaelic versions of the story are given by Mr. Campbell ("Tales of the West Highlands," No. 41, ii. 265-275). Two of the three daughters of a poor widow look into a forbidden chamber, find it "full of dead gentlewomen," ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... being forgotten, or of Japanese, Indian, or Burmese intricacies? Sir Arthur Sullivan did study Burmese music, but was not that quite exceptional? Writers too, generally have a smattering of some dead languages, and even advocate the study to-day, of Sanskrit, and Gaelic. ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... from which the ascent is made of Ben Lomond, the greatest elevation in these parts. The boatmen are fine, athletic men; one of those with us this evening, a handsome young man of two or three and twenty, sang to us some Gaelic songs. The first, a very wild and plaintive air, was the expostulation of a girl whose lover has deserted her and married another. It seems he is ashamed, and will not even look at her when they meet upon the road. She implores him, if ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... accompanied the bailiff was a Scotchman called Stracan, the head of the Reformed College of Loudun. Hearing this answer, he called on the demon to translate aqua into Gaelic, saying if he gave this proof of having those linguistic attainments which all bad spirits possess, he and those with him would be convinced that the possession was genuine and no deception. Barre, without ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Uxbridge road she breathed more freely, and in the lightness of her heart she continued her conversation with Bras, giving that attentive animal a vast amount of information, partly in English, partly in Gaelic, which he answered only by a low whine or a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... are, however, so far determined by the fragments of Gaelic originals, since published by Scottish antiquaries, that the amplifications of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... strongly to their ancient speech is doubted by many Welshmen. These hold that it cramps and dwarfs the national genius; but in the mean time in Ireland the national genius, long enlarged to our universal English, offers the strange spectacle of an endeavor to climb back into its Gaelic shell. ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... was the lilt of a Gaelic song in these pages that brought a sorrow on me. That very sweet language will be gone soon, if not gone already, and no book learning will revive the suppleness of idiom, that haunting misty loveliness.... It is a very ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... which cannot be denied. One well-authenticated fact suffices, however, to set the question at rest: "It is quite certain," says E. Curry, "that the Irish Druids and poets had written books before the coming of St. Patrick in 432; since we find THAT VERY STATEMENT in the ancient Gaelic Tripartite life of the Saint, as well as in the "Annotations of Tirechan" preserved in the Book of Armagh, which were taken by him (Tirechan) from the lips and books of his tutor, St. Mochta, who was the pupil and disciple of St. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... visit the tenants who'd hired the castle from him, if they happened to be people he knew, and would 'do' him well. He and his daughter were mostly in London, where they had a flat, and prided themselves on knowing no Gaelic. They took pains to show that they considered the crofter's son a common brat, and resented the meenister's' expecting them to do anything for his future, just because his name happened to be MacDonald, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... full of people and fertile in adventure. Our new companions were not of the most agreeable cast: they were rough and surly, hiding, we thought, a desire to avoid communication under the pretence of inability to speak any thing but Gaelic; while, in the midst of their Celtic communications with each other, they swore profusely in the Scottish vernacular. What their pursuits were, or what occasion they had to be in that wild region, was to us a complete mystery, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... II., and apologizing for his apparent want of respect, by saying, that he should never be able to keep his scholars in subjection, if they thought that there was a greater man in the world than himself. The same feeling seems to have actuated the Gaelic chiefs, who were excessively proud of their rank and prerogatives. When the first Marquess of Huntly, then the chief of the clan Gordon, was presented at the court of James VI., he did not so much as incline his head before his sovereign. Being asked why he ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... that poor fellow Gibbie Mackerrach, one of the band of gipsies who are staying here just now,' he said. 'Go away, Gibbie,' he added in Gaelic, shaking his head, since it was unlikely that the gipsy would be able to hear distinctly where he ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... the old Celtic speech throughout almost all England and the Scotch Lowlands before the end of the eleventh century; it drove out the Cornish in the eighteenth century; and it is now driving out the Welsh, the Erse, and the Gaelic, under our very eyes. In language at least the British empire (save of course India) is now almost entirely English, or ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... remarkable—hardly less than grand, with a certain aquiline expression, although the nose was not roman. His eyes appeared very dark, but in the daylight were greenish hazel. Usually he talked with the girl in Gaelic, but was now speaking English, a far purer English than that of most English people, though with something of the character of book-English as distinguished from conversation-English, and a very ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... at present, spoken throughout Great Britain, is neither the ancient primitive speech of the island, nor derived from it; but is altogether of foreign origin. The language of the first inhabitants of our island, beyond doubt, was the Celtic, or Gaelic, common to them with Gaul; from which country, it appears, by many circumstances, that Great Britain was peopled. This Celtic tongue, which is said to be very expressive and copious, and is, probably, one of the most ancient languages in the world, obtained ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... a solid hour trying to decide on a name for the shack. I wanted to call it "Crucknacoola," which is Gaelic for "A Little Hill of Sleep," but Dinky-Dunk brought forward the objection that there was no hill. Then I suggested "Barnavista," since about all we can see from the door are the stables. Then I said "The Builtmore," in a spirit of mockery, and then Dinky-Dunk ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... mystery as to what mountain is intended by the name Monboso (Comp. Vol. I Nos. 300 and 301). It seems most obvious to refer it to Monte Rosa. ROSA derived from the Keltic ROS which survives in Breton and in Gaelic, meaning, in its first sense, a mountain spur, but which also—like HORN—means a very high peak; thus Monte Rosa would mean literally the High Peak.], a peak of the Alps which divide France from Italy. The base of this mountain gives birth to the 4 rivers ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... published the first installment of what professed to be a translation of the poems of Ossian, a Gaelic bard, whom tradition placed in the 3d century. Macpherson said that he made his version—including two complete epics, Fingal and Temora, from Gaelic MSS., which he had collected in the Scottish Highlands. A fierce ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... for I knew that garlic is not a language, but a smell. But when he had repeated the word several times, I found that he meant Gaelic; and when we had come to this understanding, we cordially shook hands and willingly parted. One seldom encounters a wilder or more good-natured savage than this stalwart wanderer. And meeting him raised my hopes of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... enjoy his hearty grasp than the cold formality of conventional humbug. The hardy old pioneer has realized a very comfortable independence, and he told me his only neighbours were a band of his countrymen at the back of the hill, who speak Gaelic exclusively and scarce know a word of English. They mostly came out with "The Macnab," but from time to time they are refreshed by arrivals from the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... mammoth and cave-bear. We have slight but definite knowledge of this very ancient race—enough to show us that its peculiar type lingers to this day in a few remote islands on the Galway and Kerry coast, mingled with many later races. This type we find described in old Gaelic records as the Firbolgs, a race weak and furtive, dusky and keen-eyed, subjected by later races of greater force. Yet from this race, as if to show the inherent and equal power of the soul, came holy saints and mighty warriors; to the old race of the ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... in practically the whole of his work. Nothing could be quoted as a more distinctive note of his genius than that blend. It is seen perhaps most clearly in such stories as The Last Supper and The Fisher of Men. In these tales of unsurpassable power and beauty, Fiona Macleod has created the Gaelic Christ. The Christ is the same as He of Galilee and of the Upper Room in Jerusalem, and His work the same. But he talks the sweet Celtic language, and not only talks it but thinks in it also. He walks ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... hair, taller figures, and far handsomer features. I visited several of their cabins, and found myself surrounded by physiognomies so Norwegian, that I could have fancied myself in Scandinavia itself, if the Gaelic language now spoken by the people, and their wretched dwellings, had not reminded me that I was in one of those poor districts in the north-west of Europe where the Gaels or Celts are still allowed a scanty existence. The houses, as in Shetland, and partly in Orkney, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... Richard, John Crawford looked older than he did even in his sickness; for the exposures of a year had browned his round and ruddy face, if it had not dimmed the brightness of his blue eye; and the heavy waved brown hair and moustache in which he retained so prominent a characteristic of his Gaelic ancestry of a hundred years before, added materially to the appearance of manly maturity. Were it a preux chevalier sitting under this verbal lens for his photograph, there might be difficulty in proceeding ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... friend to speak to. An inexpressible longing for home came over him. There was a shop in a by-street which exposed photographs of Galway scenery in its windows for a time. Hyacinth used to go day by day to gaze at them. The modest front of the Gaelic League Hyce was another haunt of his. He used to stand Debating his eyes on the Irish titles of the books in the window, and repeating the words he read aloud to himself until the passers-by turned to look at him. Once he entered a low-browed, dingy shop merely ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham |
