"Jackdaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the water. On the opposite bank stood the great rocks which have caused this part of the river to be called the Gorge of Hell. Here human beings in perpetual terror of their own kind cut themselves holes in the face of the precipice, and lived where now the jackdaw, the hawk, the owl, and the bat are the only inhabitants. In the Middle Ages the English companies turned the side of the rock into a stronghold which was the terror of the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... "I'm a jackdaw, Nelsy," he said, trying to smile. "Do you remember how I used to carry on up there? I had a rotten time in Mt. Alban, but it was the best time I ever had. I wish to the good Lord I could do something besides banking. But my salary is now $750, ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... of the circumstances were at all understood. Wilfrid, however, knew well who had sung those three bars, concerning which the 'Prima donna' questioned Mr. Pericles, and would not be put off by hearing that it was a startled jackdaw, or an owl, and an ole nightingale. The Greek rubbed his hands. "Now to recommence," he said; "and we shall not notice a jackdaw again." His eye went sideways watchfully at Wilfrid. "You ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... noise, the fall of a leaf, or the flight of a jackdaw changing its perching-place among the pinnacles of Notre-Dame, would have been enough to bring the stranger's mind to earth again, to have made the youth drop from the celestial heights to which his soul had soared on the ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... blessing of original composition is, that it makes you insensible to the mere mechanical labour of writing,—but the intellectual saving would be tremendous. I say nothing of the moral deterioration. I say nothing as to what a mean, contemptible pickpocket, what a jackdaw in peacock's feathers, you will feel yourself. There is no kind of dishonesty which ought to be exposed more unsparingly. Whenever I hear a sermon preached which has been stolen, I shall make a point of informing every one who knows ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... rubber and the day before yesterday's Petit Journal. The femme de chambre and the dirty, indeterminate man in a green baize apron, who went about raising casual dust with a great feather broom, at first stowed the litter away daily, with jackdaw ingenuity of concealment, until Septimus gave them five francs each to desist; whereupon they desisted with alacrity, and the books became the stepping-stones aforesaid, stepping-stones to higher things. His only concern was the impossibility ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... to boisterous will assist it, and we guess that it will be accepted. In the little glossary at the end of the book goistering is explained as guffawing. That word is not so descriptive of the jackdaw, since it suggests 'coarse bursts of laughter', and the coarseness is absent from the fussy vulgarity and mere needless ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... Evelyn devote himself to the task of stripping the borrowed feathers from this fine jackdaw. After inaugurating his work by quoting the Horatian sneer, "Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?" he at once plunges in medias res, and not mincing his language, says:—"This impudent vagabond is a native of ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... at once, of course, of a jackdaw or a magpie—these birds' thievish reputations made the guess natural. But the marks on the match were much too wide apart to have been made by the beak of either. I conjectured, therefore, that it must be a raven. So that, when we arrived near the coach-house, I seized the opportunity of ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... the genus Eulabes, often talk as well as parrots. The common introduced European starling often says a few words quite clearly. I once knew a long-tailed glossy starling (Lamprotornis caudatus) which shared an aviary with an accomplished albino jackdaw. The starling had acquired much of the jackdaw's repertoire, and the 'conversations' carried on between the ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... simple act of charity! In order to repeat it habitually I shall have to rely on the fortuitous attendance of a boy and a policeman, or have a policeman and a boy permanently attached to my person, which would be as agreeable as the continuous escort of a jackdaw and a yak. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... He's tellin' everybody hisself. It comed to a climax to-day. The auld bird's hoppin' all awver the village so proud as a jackdaw as have stole a shiny button. He'm bustin' ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... comes home or goes out, when in a word she believes she is alone, your wife will exhibit all the imprudence of a jackdaw and will tell her secret aloud to herself; moreover, by her sudden change of expression the moment she notices you (and despite the rapidity of this change, you will not fail to have observed the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the dining-room had been our father's study during many of his most strenuous years of office. The floor was heaped high with pyramids of despatch-boxes. One day some consternation was caused by our pet jackdaw, who had found his way in and pulled off all the labels, no doubt intending, in mischievous enjoyment, to tear to ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... the most perfect friendliness and confidence in us, and we became greatly attached to them. They and the fowls seemed excellent travellers, and after a long day's march would come up smiling, like the jackdaw of Rheims, "not a ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the second day at Nijne Novgorod I started for Moscow. As we drove from the hotel to the railway the jackdaws, perched everywhere on the roofs, were unusually noisy. Leaving Asia and entering Europe, the magpie seemed to give place to the jackdaw. The latter bird inhabits the towns and cities east of the Ural mountains, and we frequently saw large flocks searching the debris along the Volga road. He associates freely with the pigeon, and appears well protected ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... preceptor, by undertaking to enlighten the mind of his pupil, enlightens his own. He becomes twice the man in the sequel, that he was when he entered on his task. We admire the amateur student in his public essays, as we admire a jackdaw or a parrot: he does considerably more than could have been ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... enterprising, resourceful, and good all round. He will not starve in the desert. No wholesome food comes amiss to him—grub, slug, or snail, fruit, eggs, a live mouse or a dead rat, and he can deal with them all. Such are the magpie, the crow, the jackdaw, and all of that ilk; and these are the birds that are found in all countries and climates, and ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... house-swallows are a standing proof of a change of habit since chimneys and houses were built, and in America this change has taken place within about three hundred years. Thread and worsted are now used in many nests instead of wool and horsehair, and the jackdaw shows an affection for the church steeple which can hardly be explained by instinct. In the more thickly populated parts of the United States, the Baltimore oriole uses all sorts of pieces of string, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Theatricals, and much studious to make himself notable, and useful to the Princely kind. A D'Arnaud of nearly no significance, to Friedrich or to anybody. A D'Arnaud whose bits of fooleries and struttings about, in the peacock or jackdaw way, might surely have been below the notice of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... hour bent over her own drawing, which made practically no progress; and he would often catch her following his movements with those great eyes of hers, while the sheep-dogs would lie perfectly still at her feet, blinking horribly—such was her attraction. His birds also, a jackdaw and an owl, who had the run of the studio, tolerated her as they tolerated no other female, save the housekeeper. The jackdaw would perch on her and peck her dress; but the owl merely engaged her in combats of mesmeric gazing, which never ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and then picked up a little cushion-like patch of velvety green moss and pitched it down towards a jackdaw that was sitting on a projecting stone just below a hole, watching him intently, first with one eye and then with the other, as if puzzled to know what he was doing so near to his private residence, where his wife was sitting upon a late batch of eggs, an accident connected ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... has become of you, you son of a bitch? Are you lost or have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more wood!" shouted a red-haired and red-faced man, screwing up his eyes and blinking because of the smoke but not moving back from the fire. "And you, Jackdaw, go and fetch some wood!" said ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... not understand. It was time, however, to send him to school. They would see what the schoolmaster would do for him. But the schoolmaster was as blind as the parents, and Tommy's doom was sealed, when one morning, while the school was at prayers, a jackdaw poked its head out of his pocket ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... of you is which! Lilias, Dulcie, Roland, Bevis, Clifford!" she declared, shaking hands with each. "I'm very rich to have five new cousins all at once! To-morrow you must show me everything, the rabbits and the dogs, and the tame jackdaw! Oh yes! I've been hearing about them and about you! Cousin Clare told me just what you would be like. I kept asking her questions the ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... stones, They wagg'd their tails in scorn of her flesh, And turn'd up their bills at her bones. The convent mastiff trotting along, Sniff'd hard at the mortal leaven, Then bristled his hair at her brimstone smell, And howl'd out his fears to heaven. Then the jackdaw screech'd his joy, That he spurn'd the royal feast, And keen'd all night to the grievous owl, And the howling mastiff beast. Loud on that night was the thunder crash, Sad was the voice of the wind, Swift was the glare of the lightning ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... birds, in the cloister, Peckham denounces these breaches of decorum as grave offences, which were not to be passed over and not to be allowed. What! a black monk stalking along with a bull-pup at his heels, and a jackdaw, worse than the Jackdaw of Rheims, using bad words in the garth, and showing an evil example to the chorister boys, with his ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... have they been thought to be as harmless as the curse of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Rheims, who banned the thief—both body and soul, his life and for ever—who stole his ring. It was an awful curse, but none of the guests seemed the worse for it, except the poor jackdaw who had hidden the ring in some sly corner as a practical joke. But, if we are to believe traditionary and historical lore, only too many of the curses recorded in the chronicles of family history have been productive of ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... (falco), is very common, as is the crow, gadak (corvus), and jackdaw, pong (gracula), with several ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... be silent," said the Varangian, moved somewhat beyond his mood. "If you trust my word, so; if you think I am a jackdaw that must be speaking, whether in or out of place and purpose, I am contented to go back again, and therein we can ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... she was so busy with herself, that, although close to him, she never sees he—always remembering that the night was dark. So Poll turned her eyes up, for all the world like a dying jackdaw." ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... fool. I'll go and tell Professor Baumgarten all about it and ask his advice. I'd rather face a loaded cannon; but it must be done. Then I'll sell out, pay my debts, and go back where I belong. Better be an honest pauper than a jackdaw among peacocks'; and Nat smiled in the midst of his trouble, as he looked about him at the little elegancies of his room, ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... was a king one time that had a daughter; and she went out one day in the garden, and there she saw a bird—a jackdaw it was—and she thought it very nice, and she followed it on. And at last it spoke to her, and it said: "Will you give me your promise to marry me at the end of a year and a day?" "I will not," she said; and she ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... persuasion" made its appearance in due course of time; and the joyful mother, accompanied by her brother, set off walking to Buda, with the small boy and the ring for credentials. When resting by the way in a forest the child began playing with the ring, and a jackdaw, who in all ancient story has a weakness for this sort of ornament, pounced upon the shining jewel and carried it off to a tree. The brother with commendable quickness took up his bow and shot the bird; thus the ring was recovered, and the story duly related to the king, ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... while this picture I draw: In chattering a magpie, in pride a jackdaw; A temper the devil himself could not bridle; Impertinent mixture of busy and idle; As rude as a bear, no mule half so crabbed; She swills like a sow, and she breeds like a rabbit; A housewife in ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... and made as meaningless as the concededly evanescent shades of variety, trooping busily over the lawn and blackening the leafless China-trees. But they have a crony never seen by us. This is the crow-blackbird of the South, or jackdaw as it is wrongly called, otherwise known as the boat-tailed grackle, from his over-allowance of rudder that pulls him side-wise and ruins his dead-reckoning when a wind is on. His wife is a sober-looking lady in a suit of steel-gray, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... king's doctor, Who sewed it on again; The Jackdaw for this naughtiness Deservedly ...
— Aunt Friendly's Picture Book. - Containing Thirty-six Pages in Colour by Kronheim • Anonymous
... charming voice this Countess had! How it melted, swelled, and trembled! How it moved, and even agitated me! What a pity that a hoarse old jackdaw should have power to crow down such a Philomel! "Alas! what a life it is!" I moralized, wisely. "That beautiful Countess, with the patience of an angel and the beauty of a Venus and the accomplishments of all ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... art right, for when Caesar reads to us a new book from the Troyad, thou, instead of crying out like a jackdaw, wouldst have to give an opinion that was ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... eating out of the bowl with a wooden spoon, a tame jackdaw who had been sitting on an old stool by the fireside, hopped over and perched himself ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... Georgiana, shooting an arrow; H is for Harry, wheeling a barrow. I 's for Isabella, gathering fruit; J is for John, who is playing the flute. K 's for Kate, who is nursing her dolly; L is for Lawrence, feeding Poor Polly. M is for Maja, learning to draw; N is for Nicholas, with a jackdaw. O 's for Octavius, riding a goat; P 's for Penelope, sailing a boat. Q is for Quintus, armed with a lance; R is for Rachel, learning to dance. S 's for Sarah, talking to the cook; T is for Thomas, reading a book. U 's for ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... insects; the wagtails came too, sparrows, robins, hedge-sparrows, and occasionally a lark; a bare blank wall to all appearance, and the bare lichen as devoid of life to our eyes. Yet there must have been something there for all these eager bills—eggs or pupae. A jackdaw, with iron-grey patch on the back of his broad poll, dropped in my garden one morning, to the great alarm of the small birds, and made off with some large dark object in his beak—some beetle or shell probably, I could not ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... her magic potions. Minos interrupts the joy of AEgeus on the return of his son, and wages war against him; having collected troops from all parts, even from Paros, where Arne has been changed into a jackdaw. Minos endeavours to gain the alliance of AEacus, who, however, refuses it, and sends the Myrmidons, (who have been changed into ants from men after a severe pestilence), under the command of Cephalus to assist AEgeus. Cephalus relates to Phocus, the son of AEacus, how, being carried ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... or so they are connoisseurs. They join in the plunder of the eighteenth century, buy rare old books, fine old pictures, good old furniture. Their first crude conception of dazzling suites of the newly perfect is replaced almost from the outset by a jackdaw dream of accumulating ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... wondering if it was on account of any special one of his latest escapades that he had been summoned to the office—the breaking of the window in the Long Hall by the stone he had flung at the rook, or the climbing of the South Tower for the jackdaw's nest. ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... hands as if he had just taken his fingers from a poultice; while your lawyer is recognised at once by his perking, conceited, cross-examination phiz, the exact counterpart to the expression of an over-indulged jackdaw. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... of the Gipsy are pleasantly illustrated by the fact that the collection of "animated books," which no Rommany gentleman's library should be without, generally includes a jackdaw. When the foot of the Gorgio is heard near the tent, a loud "wa-awk" from the wary bird (sounding very much like an alarm) at once proclaims the fact; and on approaching, the stranger finds the entire party in all probability asleep. Sometimes a dog acts as ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... no one here who can handle a bow but Charlie Stympson. One Alison is a spoon, and the other is a giant made to be conquered. When he shot before, his arrows went right over the grounds, and stuck into a jackdaw's nest on the church tower! I ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rejoice. gozo m. joy, pleasure, delight. grabar engrave. gracia f. grace, charm, gracefulness; ——s thanks. gradera f. steps; —— de caracol torcida spiral staircase. grajo m. jackdaw, crow. grana f. scarlet. grande adj. great, important. grandeza f. greatness, grandeur. grandioso, -a great, impressive. grato, -a pleasing. grave adj. heavy. gritar cry, shout, cry out. gritera f. outcry, shouting, screaming. grito m. cry, howl. grotesco, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... told Nellie in confidence that, just then, the old gentleman so comically resembled 'Blinkie,' a dissipated old tame jackdaw they had at home, in the way he cocked his head on one side, with his ruffled hair and all, that he couldn't have helped laughing, if he ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... myself by stripping up my sleeves, and showing my naked arms and breasts in their sight, when my protector was with me. At which times they would approach as near as they durst, and imitate my actions after the manner of monkeys, but ever with great signs of hatred; as a tame jackdaw with cap and stockings is always persecuted by the wild ones, when he happens ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... voice, like a judge's, and a quick, pert eye, like a jackdaw's. Outwardly he was as unlike Margaret as the haft of a pike is unlike a lily, but I already ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... is nothing in it, only an old nest of a jackdaw,—a bundle of bare twigs. Trying to deceive me you are ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... crowned: "the jeweled crown shines on a menial's head." But, really, that is "un peu fort"; and the mob of spectators might raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, and the dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins of treason. For the dauphin could not lend more than belonged to him. According to the popular notion, he had no crown for himself; consequently none to lend, on any pretence whatever, until ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... with his feet up, and his hands round his knees, on the window-seat, perfectly at his ease, and chattering to Power like a young jackdaw. A thrill of pleasure passed through Walter's heart as a glance showed him how well his proposal had succeeded. Power evidently had had no reason to repent of his kindness, and Eden looked more like the bright and happy child which he had once been, than ever ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... crank and used to laugh at me good-naturedly, saying that even my own father denounced me, and they used to say that they very seldom went to church and that many of them had not been to confession for ten years, and they justified their laxness by saying that a decorator is among men like a jackdaw among birds. ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... said Mrs. Clowes, tossing a lump of sugar out of the window to a lame jackdaw. She had many such pensioners, alike in a community of misfortune. "And, yes, Berns, you're right, we flirted a little—only a little: wasn't it natural? It was only for fun, because we were both young ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde |
