"Minstrel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stories and to listen to them. The most primitive and unlettered peoples and tribes have always shown and still show this universal characteristic. As far back as written records go we find stories; even before that time, they were handed down from remote generations by oral tradition. The wandering minstrel followed a very ancient profession. Before him was his prototype—the man with the gift of telling stories over the fire at night, perhaps at the mouth of a cave. The Greeks, who ever loved to hear some new thing, were merely ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... lyceum-audience to suppose that it can have a strong and permanent interest in a trifler; and it is a gross injustice to every respectable lecturer in the field to introduce into his guild men who have no better motive and no higher mission than the stage-clown and the negro-minstrel. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... extreme austerity St. Modan, finding his end approaching, retired to the solitude of Rosneath, where he died. Devotion to him was very popular in Scotland. Scott alludes to it in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel": ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... with poetry and song, Music and books led the glad hours along; Worlds of the visioned minstrel, fancy-wove, Tales of old time, of chivalry and love; Or converse calm, or wit-shafts sprinkled round, Like beams from gems, too light and fine to wound; With spirits sparkling as the morning's sun, Light as the dancing wave he smiles upon, Like his own course—alas! ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... sister. The song had been composed by the poet attached to his house; it was graven in the stone of the second rock-room of the tomb, and Neferhotep had left a plot of ground in trust to the Necropolis, with the charge of administering its revenues for the payment of a minstrel, who every-year at the feast of the dead should sing the monody to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that helped to make this common subject and spirit of mediaeval literature was the minstrel, who was attached to every well-appointed castle. This picturesque poet—gleeman, trouvere or troubadour sang heroic stories and romances of love in the halls of castles and in the market places of towns. He borrowed from ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... minstrel old, had set me dreaming Of a sweet bow'd down face with yellow hair; Betwixt green leaves I used to see it gleaming, A half smile on the ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... Donna of old Castile And a Troubadour were I, I'd sing at night beneath your room And weave you dreams in a minstrel's loom With rainbow tears and the roses' bloom And star-shine out of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... real thing! Just as it sounded to the rude crowd of Greek peasants who sat in a ring and guffawed at the rhymes and watched the minstrel stamp it out into "feet" as he ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... a Minstrel's Song, on the Restoration of Lord Clifford the Shepherd, which is in a very different strain of poetry; and then the volume is wound up with an 'Ode,' with no other title but the motto, Paulo majora canamus. This is, beyond all doubt, the most illegible and unintelligible ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... since, while strolling through the woods, my attention was attracted to a small densely-grown swamp, hedged in with eglantine, brambles, and the everlasting smilax, from which proceeded loud cries of distress and alarm, indicating that some terrible calamity was threatening my sombre-colored minstrel. On effecting an entrance, which, however, was not accomplished till I had doffed coat and hat, so as to diminish the surface exposed to the thorns and brambles, and, looking around me from a square yard of terra firma, I found myself the spectator of a loathsome yet fascinating scene. Three ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Meistersingers, or minstrel tradesmen of Germany. An association of master tradesmen to revive the national minstrelsy, which had fallen into decay with the decline of the minnesingers, or love minstrels (1350-1523). Their subjects ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... dryflies whizzed sleepily in the sunlight, of the world he would live in when he grew up. He had planned so many lives for himself: a general, like Caesar, he was to conquer the world and die murdered in a great marble hall; a wandering minstrel, he would go through all countries singing and have intricate endless adventures; a great musician, he would sit at the piano playing, like Chopin in the engraving, while beautiful women wept and men with long, curly ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... burlesques, concerts, minstrel entertainments, never lacked audiences, especially when the proceeds were destined for the Union Defence Committee; the hotels, Bancroft, St. Nicholas, Metropolitan, New York, Fifth Avenue, were all brilliantly thronged at night; cafes and concert halls like the Gaieties, Canterbury, and American, ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... modern Englishman Handel is almost a contemporary. Paintings and busts of this great minstrel are scattered everywhere throughout the land. He lies in Westminster Abbey among the great poets, warriors, and statesmen, a giant memory in his noble art. A few hours after death the sculptor Roubiliac took a cast of his face, which he wrought into ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... said gayly, "I cannot lay claim to any distinguished relationship, even to that 'Nelly Bly' who, you remember, 'winked her eye when she went to sleep.'" He stopped in consternation. The terrible conviction flashed upon him that this quotation from a popular negro-minstrel song could not possibly be remembered by a lady as refined as his hostess, or even known to her superior son. The conviction was intensified by Mrs. Brooks rising with a smileless face, slightly shedding the possible ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... poets, or bards, were legion, and possessed a marked influence over the imaginations of the people. They excited the Gael to deeds of valor. Their compositions were all set to music,—many of them composing the airs to which their verses were adapted. Every chief had his bard. The aged minstrel was in attendance on all important occasions: at birth, marriage and death; at succession, victory, and defeat. He stimulated the warriors in battle by chanting the glorious deeds of their ancestors; exhorted them to emulate those distinguished ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... has caught this sentiment and plays upon it skillfully. His setting is in keeping with his story. The wandering minstrel, the turreted castle, the festive board, the high-vaulted hall with its oaken rafters, the chase, the wide reaches of the forests of Franconia, the beetling ramparts of old feudal castles by the Rhine or the lovely shores of the Lake of Constance, the ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... Minstrel, as were all those in the island who sang original verses at dances and serenades. He was a tall young man, slender, and narrow shouldered, a youth not yet eighteen. As he sang he coughed, his slender neck swelled, and his face, of a transparent whiteness, flushed. His ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... great Elements we know of are no mean comforters: the open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown—the Air is our robe of state—the Earth is our throne, and the sea a mighty minstrel playing before it. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... long-lost sister that they propose to keep her with them, but Nicolette assures them she will never be happy until she rejoins Aucassin. Meantime she learns to play on the viol, and, when she has attained proficiency on this instrument, sets out in the guise of a wandering minstrel to seek her beloved. Conveyed by her brothers to the land of Biaucaire, Nicolette, soon after landing, hears that Aucassin, who has recently returned, is sorely bewailing the loss of his beloved. Presenting herself before Aucassin,—who does not recognize her owing ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... The Buchanan cabinet had left little except a burglar's tool or two here and there to mark its operations, and, with the aged and infirm General Scott at the head of a little army, and no encouragement except from the Abolitionists, many of whom had never seen a colored man outside of a minstrel performance, the President stole incog. into Washington, like a man who ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... cried the King, "that won't do! I do know better than that. It was Richard's minstrel ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... O'Reillys from the great houses, O'Reillys in tophats and O'Reillys in tam o' shanter. He was assured, and came near believing it, that in both looks and wisdom, he was the spitting image of the Great O'Reilly, one of the many last rightful Kings of Ireland. A minstrel composed a lay about him, "The Golden Judge of Ireland"; he was smothered in shamrock, and could have swum in the gifts of potheen. Secretly he much preferred Scotch whisky to Irish, but the swarming O'Reillys made the disposal of the potheen ...
— The Golden Judge • Nathaniel Gordon
... a minstrel. Offspring of a race, and not the inheritor of a formula, he narrated to his contemporaries, bewildered by the lyrical deformities of romanticism, stories of human beings, simple and logical, like those which ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... no dream, or fairy tale, Or minstrel's strain of music rare; But ever foremost in its train, Walk duty stern, ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... eye of Jonathan Oldbuck, who was himself once in love but has come to see that he was a fool for his pains. Certainly, somehow or other, they are apt to be terribly wooden. Cranstoun in the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' Graeme in the 'Lady of the Lake,' or Wilton in 'Marmion,' are all unspeakable bores. Waverley himself, and Lovel in the 'Antiquary,' and Vanbeest Brown in 'Guy Mannering,' and Harry Morton in 'Old Mortality,' ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Poetical literature is akin to music. Poetry was originally sung by the minstrel, and the thought and feeling were communicated to the audience solely by the ear. The study of poetry by the eye is artificial, modern, and contrary to our hereditary instincts. We should not argue that the best way to appreciate music is found in following the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... good practical joke; as the garland adorning The hair of a maiden it shines, as the balm that is shed On the brain of a wandering minstrel; it comes without warning, Transmuting to gold an existence that once was as lead. It glads, it rejoices the soul; recollecting it after One well-nigh explodes; but I say there are seasons for laughter, And, like ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... the man holding down his head as he struck the chords of his harp with a bold and vigorous hand. I learnt that they were uncle and niece. I shall not readily forget the effect of these figures, or of the songs which they sang; especially the sonorous notes of the mastersinger, or minstrel. He had a voice of most extraordinary compass. I quickly perceived that I was now in the land of music; but the guests seemed to be better pleased with their food than with the songs of this old bard, for he had scarcely received a half ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... After ten years the City was taken by the Kings and Princes of Greece and the thread of war was wound up. But still Odysseus did not return. And now minstrels came to Ithaka with word of the deaths or the homecomings of the heroes who had fought in the war against Troy. But no minstrel brought any word of Odysseus, of his death or of his appearance in any land known to men. Ten years more went by. And now that infant son whom he had left behind, Telemachus, had grown up and was a young man ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... once when Meadow Green got too small for you, years ago, you started out with a minstrel show—'The Darktown Merrymakers,' they ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... did not have such large, handsome show- bills to draw the crowds (to the bill-boards, I mean) in those days, as they have now; but this young showman knew a thing or two, so he adopted the plan that is largely practiced by our minstrel troupes at this late day. He got some of us ordinary-looking chaps to show him the town—I don't mean like it is done in these days. He wanted us to walk around all the nice streets, so he could see the people, and so the girls could see him. We did ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... seemed perennial, the silence was suddenly broken by a strain so rapid and gushing, and touched with such a wild, sylvan plaintiveness, that I listened in amazement. And so shy and coy was the little minstrel, that I came twice to the woods before I was sure to whom I was listening. In summer, he is one of those birds of the deep Northern forests, that, like the Speckled Canada Warbler and the Hermit-Thrush, only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... the wife is set at the upper end of the table, and the husband next unto her. They fall then to drinking, till they be all drunk; they perchance have a minstrel or two. And two naked men, who led her from the church, dance naked a long time before all the company. When they are weary of drinking, the bride and the bridegroom get them to bed (for it is in the evening always when any of them ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... the Minnesingers, as already intimated, were less fiery than those of the Troubadours. While the Provencal minstrel allowed his homage to his chosen lady to proceed to extreme lengths, his German brother paid a less excessive but far purer tribute to the object of his affections. Very often, too, the German poets rose to a still higher level, and sang praises of the ideal qualities ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... epigram: "A woman who writes, commits two sins: she increases the number of books, and she decreases the number of women;" for they were content, for the most part, to be the source of inspiration for their minstrel knights. Violante's gay court was looked upon with questioning eye, however, by the majority of her rude subjects, and, finally, when the sum demanded from the Cortes each year for the maintenance of this brilliant establishment continued to increase in a most unreasonable manner, the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... name he went by, though he had been christened Dominick. And he came from Borgo San Sepolcro—far cry from windy Chioggia—a place among the brown Tuscan hills, just where they melt into Umbria; and he was by trade a minstrel, and going to Ferrara. Of so much, with many bows, he informed the two girls, being questioned by Olimpia. But he looked at Bellaroba as he spoke, and she listened the harder and looked the longer ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... a greeting for me, Heaven's own happy minstrel-bird'? Thou whose voice, like some sweet angel's, Viewless, in ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... that the mountain's shelt'ring bosom shields, And all the dread magnificence of heaven; O how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven! ..... These charms shall work thy soul's eternal health, And love, and gentleness, and joy, impart. THE MINSTREL ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... of duty to the living-room of the barrack in Ballymoy for a whole morning, he had accomplished a series of runs and trills through which the air of "The Minstrel Boy" seemed to struggle for expression. His attention was fixed on this composition, and not at all on the newspaper ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... part in the battle. It was a mournful beginning for a young warrior. Harald beheld the fall of his noble brother, and was himself severely wounded. He was led from the field by a faithful bonder, who hid him in his house; but the spirit of the young minstrel warrior was undaunted, and, during his recovery, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... eager feet the forest carpet springs, We march through gloomy valleys, where the vesper sparrow sings. The little minstrel heeds us not, nor stays his plaintive song, As with our brave coureurs de bois we swiftly ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... tell-tale incidents and remarks which, like atrophied organs in an animal body, reveal its gradual formation. Art and a deliberate pursuit of unction or beauty would have thrown over this baggage. The automatic and pious minstrel carries it with him ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... approach the thrush Or blackbird's accents in the hawthorn bush? Or with the lark dost thou poor mimic, vie, Or nightingale's unequal'd melody? These other birds possessing twice thy fire Have been content in silence to admire." "With candor judge," the minstrel bird replied, "Nor deem my efforts arrogance or pride; Think not ambition makes me act this part, I only sing because I love the art: I envy not, indeed, but much revere Those birds whose fame the test of skill will bear; I feel no hope arising to surpass, Nor with their charming songs ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... returning with the baggage-checks, and he discovered both Eileen and Professor Hodgson examining him with the frank curiosity that one might bestow upon some wandering minstrel, a foreigner, an alien. He felt, as the odd member of any triangle is sure to feel, that he was a lone bird; that Eileen and her glowering professor were drawn together by some bond unknown to him, but whose nature ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... began, in due time signed. And long years thence, when Age had scared Romance, At some old attitude of his or glance That gallery-scene would break upon her mind, With him as minstrel, ardent, young, and trim, Bowing ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... born some years earlier you would have been even as these unnamed Immortals, leaving great verses to a little clan— verses retained only by Memory. You would have been but the minstrel of your native valley: the wider world would not have known you, nor you the world. Great thoughts of independence and revolt would never have burned in you; indignation would not have vexed you. Society would not have given and denied her caresses. You would have been happy. ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... peering at her under his thoughtfully knitted brows, "you do belong to another era. You don't remember the old negro minstrel song." ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... nature of this American Poem was known to the proprietor of the Quarterly Review. So far as it was a burlesque on the Lay of the Last Minstrel, I know it was; yet was he as a publisher so anxious to get it, that he engaged Lord Byron to use his utmost influence with me to obtain it for him, and his Lordship wrote a most pressing letter upon the occasion. He asked me to let Mr. Murray, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... the true explanation of the Talmudical saying: "If speech is worth one piece of silver, silence is worth two." And this, likewise, was the meaning of the verse in 2 Kings ch. iii. v. 15: "When the minstrel played, the spirit of God came upon him." That is to say, when the minstrel became an instrument and uttered music, it was because the spirit of God played upon him. So long as a man is self-active, he cannot receive the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Notes on the Months, p.418, the Song "Bryng us in good ale," copied from the MS. song-book of an Ipswich Minstrel of the 15th century, read by Mr Thomas Wright before the British Archological Association, August, 1864, and afterwards published in The Gentleman's Magazine. P.S.—The song was first printed complete ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... obediently responsive to rhythm, and in that composite blending of races each in his dancing brought some of the poetry of his own far land. The scene was amazing in its beauty and simplicity, like the strong, inspirational power and rugged rhythm of some old border minstrel. One by one the dancers glowed with better understanding; discordant elements, alien nations were fused to harmony in this ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... a lark in a cage, and heard him trilling out his music as he sprang upwards to the roof of his prison, but we felt sickened with the sight and sound, as contrasting, in our thought, the free minstrel of the morning, bounding as it were into the blue caverns of the heavens, with the bird to whom the world was circumscribed. May the time soon arrive, when every prison shall be a palace of the mind—when we shall seek to instruct and cease to punish. PUNCH ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... should be as careful of Lloyd's comfort as her own. She trudged along, taking no part in the conversation. It was a general one, extending all along the line, for Rob at the tail and Ranald at the head shouted jokes and questions back and forth like end-men at a minstrel show. Laughing allusions to the maid of honor and Ca'line Allison were bandied back and forth, and when the line grew unusually straggling, Kitty would bring them into step with ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... high deas, and feasting amid his high vassals and Paladins, eating blanc mange, with a great gold crown upon his head, or else charging at the head of his troops like Charlemagne in the romaunts, or like Robert Bruce or William Wallace in our own true histories, such as Barbour and the Minstrel. Hark in thine ear, man—it is all moonshine in the water. Policy—policy does it all. But what is policy, you will say? It is an art this French King of ours has found out, to fight with other men's swords, and to wage his soldiers out of other men's purses. Ah! it ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... is up, Piercing the dazzling sky beyond the search Of the acutest love: enough for me To hear its song: but now it dies away, Leaving the chirping sparrow to attract The listless ear,—a minstrel, sooth to say, Nearly as good. And now a hum like that Of swarming bees on meadow-flowers comes up. Each hath its just and yet luxurious joy, As if to live were to be blessed. The mild Maternal influence of nature thus Ennobles both the sentient and the dead;— The human heart is as an altar wreathed, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... is o'er," said all; "Silent now the bugle's call. Love should be the warrior's dream,— Love alone the minstrel's theme. Sing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... revival of his original plan. If he could have made a fortune with his great inventions in 1876, what might he not accomplish by the same means in 1598! He pictured to himself the delight of the ancient worthies when they heard the rag-time airs and minstrel ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... Roy; "but you'd better trot down to the river now and wash your face. You look like the end man in a minstrel show. Then come on back and we'll reel ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, "This is my own, my native land!" Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd, As home his footsteps he hath turn'd From wandering on a foreign strand! If such there breathe, go mark him well; For him no Minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concent'red all in self. Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... not follow is, that he ever sat down and said: "Now let us write an epic." Conditions would be against it. A wandering minstrel makes ballads, not epics; for him Poe's law applies: that is a poem which can be read or recited at a single sitting. The unity of the Iliad is one not of structure, but of spirit; and the chances ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... be to become a hermit on some far mountain side, wearing a grey robe, clear-browed and calmly speculative under the stars—or, maybe,—more wonderful: a singer for men, a travelling minstrel—in each case, whether minstrel or hermit, whether teaching great doctrines or singing great songs for all the world—to have come to me, as a pilgrim seeking enlightenment, the most beautiful maiden in the world, one who was innocent of what ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... be a north-country gentleman," said the persevering minstrel, "whilk I wad judge from your tongue, I can play 'Liggeram Cosh,' and 'Mullin Dhu,' and ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... pretty phrase, Some poeesy for woe it wins, Commemorating roundelays And troubadours and mandolins: We seem to view some minstrel-boy Beside his shattered music mute, The shattered string, the ruined joy— The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... be a drink of forgetfulness which you speak of, then have I also charmed myself with it. I have fared as the minstrel who learned the nixie's songs in order to charm his sweetheart;—he charmed and charmed so long that at length the magic wove itself round his own soul too, and he could never win ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... disguise as a minstrel?" said Denham banteringly—"like King Alfred did when he went to see about the Danes? Have you ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... clerks, but on becoming better acquainted you would notice certain peculiarities, a looseness of mouth, a restless, nervous inquietude of manner, an indescribable gleam of the eye. They were very fond of performing and singing at amateur minstrel shows and developed a certain comic vein they thought original, though it reminded me of professional corner-men. However, I enjoyed their singing and drinking habits and went to their lodgings several ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... office, to which James Shepherd was appointed at 6s. a week. Shortly after this the office became a thing of the past, and John Ward, Beadle, disappears from our view, to join the company of the last minstrel, the last fly wagon, the last stage coach, and ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... well served by his spies in Ferrara, received news of what was going on and immediately informed his brother Alfonso. This was in July, 1506. The conspirators sought safety in flight, but only Giulio and the minstrel Guasconi succeeded in escaping, the former to Mantua and the latter to Rome. Count Boschetti was captured in the vicinity of Ferrara. Don Ferrante apparently made no effort to escape. When he was brought before the duke he threw himself ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... bracken was like elfin plumes; each stone, wrapped in moss, was a lump of silver coated with verdigris; distant cliffs seen between the trees were cut out of gray-green jade, against a sea of changing opal; and in the high minstrel-galleries of the latticed beeches a concert ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Rev. Thomas Percy, fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, and afterwards Bishop of Dromore. "The reviver of minstrel poetry in Scotland was the venerable Bishop of Dromore, who, in 1765, published his elegant collection of heroic ballads, songs, and pieces of early poetry under the title of 'Reliques Of Ancient English Poetry.' The plan of the work was adjusted in concert ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the North! that mouldering long hast hung On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung, Till envious ivy did around thee cling, Muffling with verdant ringlet every string,— O Minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep? Mid rustling leaves and fountains murmuring, Still must thy sweeter sounds their silence keep, Nor bid a warrior smile, nor teach a ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... as well as other monkeys in cap and jerkin. You're a minstrel or a mountebank, I'll be sworn; you look for all the world as silly as a tumbler when he's been upside down and has got on his heels again. And what fool's tricks hast thou been after, Tessa?" she added, turning to her daughter, whose frightened face was more ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... emulate The Minstrel Boy, and we shall find you Storming its barred and bolted gate With reams of lyrics ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... Humbly as a minstrel might enter the court of his king, I went before the editor, and stood expectantly while he said: "That was an excellent article. I have sent it to Mr. Howells. You should know him and sometime I will give you a letter to him, but not now. Wait awhile. War is being made ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... frock coat, rusty from dust and wear, did not fit him. The sleeves escaped his wrists by several inches; his trousers had hitched up as he sat down, so that one half of his shanks was exposed to view, leaving his monstrous feet, like the slap-boots of a negro minstrel, for ludicrous inches over the floor. His neck was long and feminine, and stuck up grotesquely much above a sort of Byronic collar held together by a black stock tie. I had never seen a man ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... in the history of the minstrel king David gives us a more warm and personal feeling towards him than his longing for the water of the well of Bethlehem. Standing as the incident does in the summary of the characters of his mighty men, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Scott, speaking with a pronounced accent, "ye ken the auld proverb, sirs, 'Ower mony cooks,' or as the Border minstrel sang— ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... whose visionary brain Holds o'er the past its undivided reign. For him in vain the envious seasons roll Who bears eternal summer in his soul. If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay, Spring with her birds, or children with their play, Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart, - Turn to the record where his years are told, - Count his gray ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... matter was produced. He was not ambitious to write—not then. He wanted to be a journeyman printer, like Pet, and travel and see the world. Sometimes he thought he would like to be a clown, or "end man" in a minstrel troupe. Once for a week he served as subject for a traveling hypnotist-and was dazzled ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... her that his silence was eloquent of the inherent generosity of the man, even as his poetic outburst of a few minutes before had been eloquent of the minstrel in him. She rode in silence, regarding him critically from time to time, and when they came to the tree where the panther hung he gave her the calf to hold while he deftly skinned the dead marauder, tied the pelt behind his saddle, relieved her of the calf and ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... practising songs, sacred and secular, and our friend the street minstrel produces an old flute and plays an obbligato, whilst the quivering voice of his poor old wife again wants to know the ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... as classics of our prose, and hailing with tears of joy the herald of the emancipation in Cowper. Surely our novice may be excused if, despite certain misgiving memories of such reviews as that of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," he concludes that Jeffrey has been maligned, and that he was really a Romantic before Romanticism. Unhappy novice! he will find his new conclusion not less rapidly and more completely staggered than his old. Indeed, until the clue is once gained, Jeffrey must appear to ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Fr. huissier, door-keeper, Fr. huis, door, Lat. ostium. I conjecture that Lusher is the French name Lhuissier, and that Lush is local, for Old Fr. le huis; cf. Laporte. Wait, corruptly Weight, now used only of a Christmas minstrel, was once a watchman. It is a dialect form of Old Fr. gaite, cognate with watch. The older sense survives in the expression "to lie in wait." Gate is the same name, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... with her glorious pencil, than a generation of monk-describers and ruined-castle-builders sprang up, until the very name of convent or castle became an abhorrence. Sir Walter Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel," rich and romantic as it was, was nearly buried under an overflow of heavy imitations, which drove his genius to other pursuits, and which filled the public ear with such enormities of octo-syllabic ennui, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... that those who sing or say the geste of Sir Tristram do not repeat the story exactly as Thomas made it.[64] Even though one must recognize the probability that sometimes the immediate oral source of the minstrel's tale may have been English, one cannot ignore the possibility that occasionally a "translated" saint's life or romance may have been the result of hearing a French or Latin narrative read or recited. A convincing example of reproduction from memory appears ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... Orfeo, as a minstrel, so charms the Fairy King with the music of his harp, that he promises to grant him whatever he should ask. He immediately demands his lost Heurodis; and, returning safely with her to Winchester, resumes his authority; a catastrophe, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... reaction against his genius; he died in the fulness of a happy age and of renown. This full-orbed life, with not a few years of sorrow and stress, is what Nature seems to intend for the career of a divine minstrel. If Tennyson missed the "one crowded hour of glorious life," he had not to be content in ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... In the vernacular of the farm, the mulatto girls are called "strawberry blondes," and one that would have attracted attention anywhere was led out by a droll, full-blooded negro, who would have made the fortune of a minstrel troupe. She was tall and willowy. A profusion of dark hair curled about an oval face, not too dark to prevent a faint color of the strawberry from glowing in her cheeks. She wore neither hat nor shoes, but was as unembarrassed, apparently, in her one close-fitting garment, as could be any ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... chin, sir? Needs Must she be fair: thou, wrapt in age's weeds, Whose blood, if time have touched it not and stilled, The sun's own fire must once have kindled,—thou Sing praise of soft-lipped women? doth not shame Sting thee, to sound this minstrel's note, and gild A girl's proud face with praises, though her brow Were bright as dawn's? And had her grace no name For men ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to be the simple commoner. Dull at the Chateau! Good Lord! don't I know it!" He paused, lifting his head with a quick, bird-like motion: a cunning smile wrinkled his face and he smote the table with his open hand. "Dull, are they? There, my hedge-minstrel from Valmy, is your welcome ready made. Bring your lute and make pretty Ursula's grey eyes dance to a love song, prude ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... hair fell down over his shoulders like a shower of gold. His heart was as light as a bird's, and no bird was fonder of green woods and waving branches. He had lived since his birth in the hut in the forest, and had never wished to leave it, until one winter night a wandering minstrel sought shelter there, and paid for his night's lodging with songs of love and battle. Ever since that night Fergus pined for another life. He no longer found joy in the music of the hounds or in the cries of the huntsmen in forest glades. ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... headaches in the morning. Punch was too sweet, you see. Sweet punch is sure to make your headache. He! he! But I'm done with clubs and Delmonico's, you know. I'm going to settle down and be a steady family man." Walking to the door, he sang in capital minstrel style: ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... no scientific grammar, no definitions of nouns and verbs, no names for declensions, moods, tenses, and voices. Rude societies have versification, and often versification of great power and sweetness: but they have no metrical canons; and the minstrel whose numbers, regulated solely by his ear, are the delight of his audience, would himself be unable to say of how many dactyls and trochees each of his lines consists. As eloquence exists before syntax, and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Muenster, translated into the old Norse language, and no doubt somewhat modified by the influence of Scandinavian legends on the mind of the translator. In its present form it is not a poem but a prose work, and though the flow of the ballad and the twang of the minstrel's harp still often make themselves felt even through the dull Latin translation of Johan Peringskiold, there are many chapters of absolutely unredeemed prose, full of genealogical details and the marches of armies, as dry as any history, though ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... all that the minstrel has told, When two that are linked in one heavenly tie, With heart never changing and brow never cold, Love on through all ills, and love on till they die. One hour of a passion so sacred is worth Whole ages of heartless and wandering bliss; And oh! if ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... than the Italian eclogue. Although the situation is frequently developed with resource and invention on the part of the individual poet, the general type is rigidly fixed. The narrator, who is a minstrel and usually a knight, while riding along meets a shepherd-girl, to whom he pays his court with varying success. This is the simple framework on which the majority are composed. A few, on the other hand, depart from the type and depict purely rustic scenes. Others—and the fact is at least ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... "Minstrel," whose last lay was o'er, whose broken harp lay low, And with him glorious "Waverley," with glance and step of wo; And "Stuart's" voice rose there, as when, 'midst fate's disastrous war, He led the wild, ambitious, proud, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... he, and consented to being blacked up like a negro minstrel, in order to pose as a prince?" asked Ned. "I reckon, however, that the credit does not all belong to the lad. He seems to have had a ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... minstrel may fling, Preluding the music yet mute in each string, A swift hand athwart the hush'd heart of the whole, Seeking which note most fitly must first move the soul; And, leaving untroubled the deep chords below, Move pathetic in numbers remote;—even so The voice which was moving the heart of that ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... financial successes of the stage today are built upon music and dancing. We find these two essential elements in opera, revue, musical comedy, pantomime and vaudeville, while the place of the dance in moving pictures may well be recognized. Should the old-time minstrel show come back, as it is certain to do, there will be added another name to the list of active entertainments that call for a union of music and ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... County children and their parents was not discontinued, but half an hour before recess was given up to some secular choruses, patriotic or topical, in which the little ones under Twing's really wonderful practical tuition exhibited such quick and pleasing proficiency, that a certain negro minstrel camp-meeting song attained sufficient popularity to be lifted by general accord to promotion to the devotional exercises, where it eventually ousted the objectionable "Hebrew children" on the question of melody alone. Grammar was still taught at Pine Clearing School in spite of the Hardees ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the child of some minstrel or troubadour," said the Prince. "We will send in search of him as soon as we ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... medieval Europe the wandering poet or minstrel went from place to place repeating his wondrous narratives, adding new verses to his tales, changing his episodes to suit locality or occasion, and always skilfully shaping his fascinating romances. In court and cottage he was listened to with breathless attention. He might be compared ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... having seen the Rose of Sharon, shall we cease to admire the humbler flowers of spring? The wood thrush's song today is divine, yet, the simpler ditty of the wren has a sweetness not found in the larger minstrel's song. Here one is not bored with the "ohs" and "ahs" of gasping tourists, who scream their delights in tones that drown the voice of the falls. You can at least grow intimate with them, and their beauty although not awesome, grows upon you like a river into the life of childhood. It ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... respecting the merits of Sir Richard Blackmore may prove too little exciting at the present time, and he can turn for relief to the epistle "Studiosus" addresses to "Alcander." If the lines of "The Minstrel" who hails, like Longfellow in later years, from "The District of Main," fail to satisfy him, he cannot accuse "R.T. Paine, Jr., Esq.," of tameness ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... never troubadours: and though a good knight held his education to be imperfect unless he could write a sonnet and sing it, he did not esteem his castle to be at the mercy of the "editor" of a manuscript. He might indeed owe his life to the fidelity of a minstrel, or be guided in his policy by the wit of a clown; but he was not the slave of sensual music, or vulgar literature, and never allowed his Saturday reviewer to appear at table without ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... are at the sleepless slit of light which is her window in the armoured stone of her fortified bridal tower. The only news of her husband she can hope for in a full year or more will be the pleasing lies of some flattering minstrel, or broken soldier, or imaginative pilgrim. On such rumours she must feed her famishing heart—and all the time her husband's bones may be whitening unepitaphed outside the ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne |
