"Troubadour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that Christmas miracles were often wrought, and she herself knew that this was true. Had not the Fool secured his voice, so that he who had been but lightly held became the village troubadour, and slept warm and ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... luth du troubadour S'accordait pour chanter les saules de l'Adour; Le vin francais coulait dans la coupe etrangere; Le soldat, en riant, parlait ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... story of the Troubadour Rudel and the Princess of Tripoli, celebrated in one of Browning's poems, represents all worship of ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... the dark bluish-red of the butcher's stall—they all take on a value not their own in the garish lights flaring down the markets of the dusk. Pause to the shrill music of the street musician, hear the tuneless voice of the grimy troubadour of the alley-ways; and then hark to the one note that commands them all—the call which lightens up faces sodden with base vices, eyes bleared with long looking into the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Man of the Mountain and his Assassins; the Wars of Charlemagne; Clovis and Pepin of France; the Fall of Lucifer; Gui de Nanteuil; Oliver of Verdun; the Flight of Daedalus, and how Icarus was drowned through his vanity. The songs of Marcabrun, the troubadour, find a place in ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... comes to fall in love with a woman and be wedded to her, or else be fatally parted from her. Is it due to excess of poetry or of stupidity that we are never weary of describing what King James called a woman's "makdom and her fairnesse," never weary of listening to the twanging of the old Troubadour strings, and are comparatively uninterested in that other kind of "makdom and fairnesse" which must be wooed with industrious thought and patient renunciation of small desires? In the story of this passion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... tall brother, and yet 'tis belike but some gentle troubadour that singeth songs to their delectation, and 'tis meet to hark to ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... reverenced and repeated as is the name of the woman of Spain called Teresa of Jesus who, four hundred years ago, ruled a few nuns within the enclosure of a convent? Are any musicians or artists loved to-day with such rapture as is God's little troubadour, called Francis, who made music for himself and the angels by ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... religious festivals were celebrated with a gaiety which had its mundane side; love and malicious sport demanded an expression as well as pious joy. But in tracing the forms of lyrical verse anterior to the middle of the twelfth century, when the troubadour influence from the South began to be felt, we must be guided partly by conjecture, derived from the later poetry, in which—and especially in the refrains—earlier fragments have ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... linked mail [?] and her long hair streaming on the wind, swings back her scythe in order to cut down a company of the rich ones of the earth, Castruccio Castracani and his gay companions, seated under an orange-grove, and listening to the music of a troubadour and a female minstrel; little genii or Cupids, with reversed torches, float in the air above them; one young gallant caresses his hawk, a lady her lapdog,—Castruccio alone looks abstractedly away, as if his thoughts ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... General de Espana, the most ancient of the Prose Chronicles of Spain, in which adventures of the Cid are fully told. This old Chronicle was compiled in the reign of Alfonso the Wise, who was learned in the exact science of his time, and also a troubadour. Alfonso reigned between the years 1252 and 1284, and the Chronicle was written by the King himself, or under his immediate direction. It is in four parts. The first part extends from the Creation ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... should have loved to be a troubadour, or a trouvere, Frank; that was my true metier, to travel from castle to castle singing love songs and telling romantic stories to while away the tedium of the lives of the great. Fancy the reception they ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... crowned turban of red, and yellow cotton handkerchief on her head, appeared at the parlor door. Mr. Tiffany paused: he saw the Moorish princess before him; rallying, however, he was proceeding to describe himself as a friendly troubadour, whose affection had been responded to, when the Captain placing his mouth to his ear, as in confidence, uttered in a portentous whisper, ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... reassured, she goes round to inspect her from the right, where she remains until her superior has completed her confidences, and it is time to lead her away. Operatic confidant sympathetic—but a more modern heroine might find one "get on her nerves," perhaps. Manrico a very robust type of Troubadour—but oughtn't a Troubadour to carry about a guitar, or a lute, or something? If Manrico has one, he invariably leaves it outside. Probably doesn't see why, with so many competent musicians in the orchestra, he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... young troubadour, bring your guitar and sit down upon this cushion at my feet and play an accompaniment to my song, as ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the embodiment of undying youth," asserted the troubadour beside me. It was untrue, and it was improper, but for a moment or two at least my hungry heart closed about that speech the same as a child's hand closes about a chocolate-drop. Women are made that way. But I had to keep ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... became the fashion in surrounding countries. The sovereigns of Europe adopted the Provencal language, and enlisted themselves among the poets, and there was soon neither baron nor knight who did not feel himself bound to add to his fame as a warrior the reputation of a gentle troubadour. Monarchs were now the professors of the art, and the only patrons were the ladies. Women, no longer beautiful ciphers, acquired complete liberty of action, and the homage paid to them amounted ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Having dismissed this gallant Troubadour, He summoned straight his council, and secure And steadfast in his purpose, from the throne All the adventure of the night made known; Then asked for sentence; and with eager breath Some answered ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Marry Me? The Star of Love Well-A-Day Not Married Yet Lady of England Oh, This Love Mary The Beam of Devotion The Welcome and Farewell 'Tis Now the Promised Hour The Songs of Home Masonic Hymn The Dismissed Lord of the Castle The Fallen Brave Song of the Troubadour Champions of Liberty The Hunter's Carol Washington's Monument The Sister's Appeal Song of the Reapers Walter Gay Grounds For Divorce Temperance Song Boat-Song Willie The Rock of the Pilgrims Years Ago The Soldier's Welcome Home The Origin of Yankee Doodle Lines on the Burial ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... form an item in these pleasant little excursions. He certainly was no use with an oar, but it was the 'bravo' captain's delight to dress as a troubadour and sit twanging the light guitar under the awnings, while Aileen ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... the poor. Moreover, exaggerated as some of her husband's ideas upon wifely submission appear today, the book leaves a strong impression of good sense and of respect as well as love for her. The Menagier does not want his wife to be on a pedestal, like the troubadour's lady, nor licking his shoes like Griselda; he wants a helpmeet, for, as Chaucer said, 'If that wommen were nat goode and hir conseils goode and profitable, oure Lord God of hevene wolde never han wroght hem, ne called ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... Boys, and at 'em"), or something similar, appears to have been the usual war-cry of both parties. So a trumpet-like poem of the Troubadour warrior Bertram de Born, whom Dante found in such evil plight below (xxviii. 118 seqq.), in which he sings with extraordinary spirit the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... moment longer," wrote he, "repress my enthusiastic admiration for one who has arisen in our days to strike in France with a master hand the lyre of the troubadour and to fling into the shade all the triumphs of bygone minstrelsy. Need I designate Beranger, who has created for himself a style of transcendent vigor and originality, and who has sung of war, love, and wine, in strains far excelling those ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... "The troubadour of the North Platte, I call him," laughed Nola; "the queerest little traveling musician in a thousand miles. He belongs back in the days of romance, when men like him went playing from castle to court—the last one ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... grace and the same delicate emotion in his recent story, "The Garnet Necklace," a tale which is analogous to the legend of the troubadour Geoffrey Rudel, which has been made into a play by ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... and he has gone to face the Academicians. There is another little thing I sent—"Blondel" I call it—a troubadour playing under a castle wall. They have not much chance; but there is always the little print-shop in Long Acre. My sketches of mail-coaches continue to please the public; they have raised ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... arms unbraced (my casque unlatched, My falchion pawned, my buckler, too, attached) Resume the cuishes and the broad cuirass, Accomplishing my body all in brass, And arm in battle royal to oppose A village poet singing through the nose, Or strolling troubadour his lyre who strums With clumsy hand whose fingers all are thumbs? No, let them rhyme; I fought them once before And stilled their songs—but, Satan! how they swore!— Cuffed them upon the mouth whene'er ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... They will recount their privileges and ecstasies, and how ingeniously and wonderfully God has tried and proved them. But indeed the true God was not the lover of Madame Guyon. The true God is not a spiritual troubadour wooing the hearts of men and women to no purpose. The true God goes through the world like fifes and drums and flags, calling for recruits along the street. We must go out to him. We must accept his discipline and fight his battle. The peace of God comes not by thinking about ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... away in the wilderness: "You shall not hear a simple song, but you shall remember that music is the voice of love," whispered the letter against my heart. What a brave thing is life when we have love and the hope of spring latent within us! I admit, as I listened to the little red troubadour of the pine, that, had you been as near as the dreams and fancies that wrapped me about, this fight in me for freedom would have been at an end. Do not trust these feeble moods of mine, however; not one of them would last half the length of time you would need to make ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... his education Peter Martyr is silent, nor does he anywhere mention under whose direction he began his studies. In the education deemed necessary for young men of his quality, the exercises of chivalry and the recreations of the troubadour found equal place, and such was doubtless the training he received. He spent some years at the ducal court of Milan, but there is no indication that he frequented the schools of such famous Hellenists as Francesco Filelfo who, in 1471, was there lecturing on the Politics of ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... troubadour, the boy poet, beloved by all, burning for fame; and, in his innocence, he performs the mean work of ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... stood, the woman was constantly claiming the tribute of sympathy and admiration. Her eager desire was to be a heroine, a beauty, the queen of hearts, cynosure of gallants' eyes; to reign supreme in the court of love and chivalry; to be the watchword and war-cry of the knight and the theme of the troubadour. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... difficulty that M. Lupot obtains silence for his daughter's song. At sight of the old neighbour and his guitar a smothered laugh is visible in the assembly. It is undeniable that the gentleman is not unlike a respectable Troubadour with a barrel organ, and that his guitar is like an ancient harp. There is great curiosity to hear the old gentleman touch his instrument. He begins by beating time with his feet and his head, which latter movement ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... forth, that they might hear the two new pages of her morning's work. It was a Fouque-like tale, relieving and giving expression to the yearnings for holiness and loftiness that had grown up within Isabel Conway in the cramped round of her existence. The story went back to the troubadour days of Provence, where a knight, the heir of a line of shattered fortunes, was betrothed to the heiress of the oppressors, that thus all wrongs might be redressed. They had learnt to love, when Sir Roland discovered that the lands in ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the central point of Dante's speculation. A shadow of her old sovereignty was still left her in the primacy of the Church, to which unity of faith was essential. He accordingly has no sympathy with heretics of whatever kind. He puts the ex-troubadour Bishop of Marseilles, chief instigator of the horrors of Provence, in paradise.[227] The Church is infallible in spiritual matters, but this is an affair of outward discipline merely, and means the Church as a form of polity. Unity was Dante's leading doctrine, and therefore he puts Mahomet among ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... do not contain anything so nice as that, or as its great author's more famous couplet respecting Africa and the men thereof. The longer romances of the same date, "Gog," "Lilian," "The Troubadour," are little more than clever reminiscences sometimes of Scott, Byron, Moore, and other contemporaries, sometimes of Prior and the vers de societe of the eighteenth century. The best passage by far of all this ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... fleuron tranchant, c'est l'homme et le baron. Elle a des tribunaux d'amour qu'elle preside; Aux copistes d'Homere elle paye un subside; Elle a tout recemment accueilli dans sa cour Deux hommes, un luthier avec un troubadour, Dont on ignore tout, le nom, le rang, la race, Mais qui, conteurs charmants, le soir, sur la terrasse, A l'heure ou les vitraux aux brises sont ouverts, Lui font de la musique ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... Barcelona first introduced its use into Europe. The first mention of it is given in a treatise on Natural History by Alexander Neckam, foster-brother of Richard, Coeur de Lion. Another reference, in a satirical poem of the troubadour, Guyot of Provence (1190), states that mariners can steer to the north star without seeing it, by following the direction of a needle floating in a straw in a basin of water, after it had been touched by a magnet. But little use, however, seems to have been made of this, for ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... But as the Troubadour nestles more warmly into the rhythm of his verse, the birds are all forgotten, and the beautiful spring, and there is a sturdy clang of battle, that would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... two strains in the English blood, the one northern and ascetic, the other southern and epicurean. In the modern English poet the austere prophetic character of the Norse scald is wedded to the impressionability of the troubadour. No wonder there is a battle in his breast when he tries to single out one element or the other as his most distinctive quality of soul. Yet, were it not unsafe to generalize when our data apply to only one country, we should ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... near Palmer, who should I discover but Mr. and Mrs. J. T. Fields, returning from a Western trip, as gay as a troubadour. I took an empty seat next to them, and we had a jolly ride to Boston. I drove to Mr. Williams's house, where I met the Chelsea agent, who informed me that there was no hotel in Chelsea, but that they were expecting to send over for me. So I turned at once toward 148 Charles ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... books and music which served so often as the excuse for a visit to the Lawn. He wanted pounds for very trivial purposes; but he wanted them desperately. A lover without pounds is the most helpless and contemptible of mankind; he is a knight-errant without his armour, a troubadour without his lute. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... this I took little note—other and "more attractive metal" met my eye, for around me were kings and princes—peer and peasant—lords and ladies—turbaned infidel and helmeted knight—the wild roving gipsy and the wandering troubadour. In short, I found myself in the world of the immortal master of Abbotsford, and surrounded by those to whose enchanting company I had oft been indebted for dispelling many a weary hour of sickness and gloom—friends whom at my bidding ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... 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
... inscribed W. R. S. at the top) are precisely a return in kind for the quatrain above quoted: but we place it as a beacon to all young gentlemen of poetical propensities on the French Parnassus. Few would proceed better on the Gallic Pegasus, than the Anglo-troubadour on ours. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... the inn 'twixt joy and fear, And the Romany looked at me. Said I, "We ha' come to a parting here And I know not who you be." But he only laughed as I smote on the door: "Go, take ye the fighting chance; Mayhap I once was a troubadour In the knightly days of France. Oh, the feast is set for those who dare And the reddest o' wine outpoured; And some sleep sound after peril and care At ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... future owner of their whole heart—their highest and completest love. Roger looked to find a grand woman, his equal, and his empress; beautiful in person, serene in wisdom, ready for counsel, as was Egeria. Molly's little wavering maiden fancy dwelt on the unseen Osborne, who was now a troubadour, and now a knight, such as he wrote about in one of his own poems; some one like Osborne, perhaps, rather than Osborne himself, for she shrank from giving a personal form and name to the hero that was to be. The squire was not unwise in wishing ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... without which it is incomprehensible throughout that period—the reputation of being in the very vanguard of chivalry. The great romances of the Round Table, the attachment of knighthood to the name of a British king, belong to this period. Richard was not only a knight but a troubadour; and culture and courtesy were linked up with the idea of English valour. The mediaeval Englishman was even proud of being polite; which is at least no worse than being proud of money and bad manners, which is what many Englishmen in our ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... Troubadour songs[7] often shew mind and Nature very strikingly brought together, either in harmony or contrast. For example, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... a spark of it remains, in forgotten places, For I saw a blinded boy strumming a guitar, Playing with his face a-smile, with the arts and graces Of a troubadour of ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... doubting which way that flows! And this vivacity, this new beat of the heart of poetry, is common to Chaucer and the humblest ballad-maker; it pulses through any book of lyrics printed yesterday, and it came straight to us out of Provence, the Roman Province. It was the Provencal Troubadour who, like the Prince in the fairy tale, broke through the hedge of briers and kissed ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... cafe. He would sit before the counter, his little tail well arranged behind him, his ears cocked up politely, his eyes full of tears—he wept like a cow this poor Nepomucene—they called him Nepomucene—and when Mimi looked at him he would utter little cries of the heart like a strangulated troubadour. Ah, it was hopeless this passion; but for one long year he never wavered. The Quartier respected him. Of him it was said: "Love is given to us as a measure to gauge our power of suffering." Suddenly Mimi disappeared. She married a certain Godiveau, a charcoal merchant ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... He too is a seeker after new forms of expression for psychical reactions; but he presents himself to us from the very first as a purer nature of greater delicacy and lucidity. He introduces himself as a troubadour of narrative art in his first two novels Yester and Li, a Story of Longing (1904) and Ingeborg (1905). With unutterable tenderness and richness of tone he depicts in each of these two novels the love-longing of a solitary ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... troubadour of the twelfth century, meets the undiscerning critic more than half-way. Let none judge, he writes, till he be capable of separating the grain from the chaff; 'for the fool makes haste to condemn, and the ignorant ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... troubadour story," said Lady Pentreath, an easy, deep-voiced old lady; "I'm glad to find a little romance left among us. I think our young people now are ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... young men entered their box the burlesque was at the beginning of the second act. The scene represented an orange grove by moonlight, and a handsome girl in spangled muslin was whispering loudly, to an accompaniment of harps, her eternal fidelity to a gesticulating troubadour. Both performers were immensely popular, and the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... servitor closes his narrative and he and his companions depart, the Count di Luna enters and lingers by the apartment of the Duchess Leonora, with whom he is in love. Hearing his voice, Leonora comes into the garden, supposing it is Manrico the troubadour, whom she had crowned victor at a recent tournament, and of whom she had become violently enamoured. As she greets the Count, Manrico appears upon the scene and charges her with infidelity. Recognizing her error, she flies to Manrico for protection. The Count challenges him ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... criticism, and an enemy of scholasticism could not have more ingeniously demonstrated that it was a kind of mechanism. Raymond de Lulle was at once a learned man and a well-informed and most enquiring naturalist for whom Arabian science held no secrets. With that he was poet, troubadour, orator, as well as very eccentric and attractive. He was beloved and persecuted in his lifetime, and long after his ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... foreign parts." Little Francis was Triptolemus, in the Pirate, an excellent figure, and Mrs. Carr his sister Baby. Isabella, an old lady in an old-fashioned dress, and Laura as her daughter in a court dress and powder; Anna, a French troubadour singing beautifully and speaking French perfectly; William, the youngest son, a half-pay officer, king of the coffee house; Tom, a famous London black beggar, Billy Waters, with a wooden leg; Morton, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... the French busard, and our buzzard,) you get from it the delightful compound "busacador," "adorer of buzzards"—meaning, generally, a sporting person; and then you have Dante's Bertrand de Born, the first troubadour of war, bearing witness to you how the love of mere hunting and falconry was already, in his day, degrading the military classes, and, so far from being a necessary adjunct of the noble disposition of lover or soldier, was, even to contempt, showing ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... to bed, sleep did not long detain him, for, in his own happy-go-lucky, troubadour sort of life, he was one of the most occupied of men even in this great, hurrying, bustling capital of the world. As soon as he had donned his dressing-gown and come into the sitting-room, he swallowed a cup of coffee that was waiting for him, and then, to make sure that unholy hours and cigarettes ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... weak, the strong, O Troubadour of love and strife, Co-Litanist of right and wrong, Sole Hymner of the whole ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Edelinde—cultivated literature at one and the same time: when, in Arnold's opinion, almost the whole of Europe was plunged in barbarism and ignorance. Then comes Guenther, in the fifteenth century; with several brave geniuses in the intervening period: and, latterly, the collection of the Old Troubadour Poetry of Alsace, by Roger Maness—of which there is a MS. in the Royal Library at Paris; and another (containing matter of a somewhat later period) in the Public library here; of which latter ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Philip finished the song. "You demoralize the fair sex by warbling your sentimental love and constancy under all sorts of vile treatment. Nothing short of having your heads served up in a dish like that mediaeval tenor or troubadour, would prevent you from expressing your entire resignation. I must administer an antidote, while Miss Deane prepares to tear herself ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... again enter into the Presence. But on this occasion duty called. The troubadour with lady's glove in helm never showed a bolder front than the journalist in search of copy. And boldness, it seemed, was to be rewarded. As I approached the Pontifical Personage it appeared certain that he did not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... look of appeal to Pupkin, and Pupkin looked one glance of comprehension, and turned and fled down Oneida Street. And if the scene wasn't quite as dramatic as the renunciation of Tancred the Troubadour, it at least had something of the same elements ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... thought it great sport, till they got captured and carried off prisoners. It was not sport at all being shut up in stuffy old houses with only a little food and nothing to do. Francis used to cheer them up with troubadour songs and stories. But although he always seemed so cheerful, it was doing great harm to his health, and when, after a year, the prisoners were freed and returned to Assisi, Francis became very ill indeed. So ill was he that he came near ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... him. He has his ways of getting even with you, they say. But I wasn't afraid of Jerry! I saw him working in his garden, and I leaned out of my saddle and double-thonged him between the shoulders, over the hedge. Well, my dear, for the first time since Dad gave him to me, my Troubadour (I wish you could see the sweet creature!) shied across the road, and I spilled out into the hedge-top. Most undignified! Jerry pulled me through to his side and brushed the leaves off me. I was horribly pricked, but I didn't care. "Now, Jerry," I said, "I'm going to take the hide off ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... and in antiquity the man of letters, a sort of encyclopaedic doctor, a successor of the troubadour and the poet, all-knowing, was almighty. Literature lorded it over society with a high hand; kings sought the favor of authors, or revenged themselves for their contempt by burning them,—them and their books. This, too, was a way of recognizing ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... wholly ignorant and of whose very existence he was doubtful. The narrow slits which lighted the cell in which he was confined might look into an inner court, or the cell itself might be below the surface of the soil. The legend of the troubadour who discovered King Richard of England's place of captivity by singing without the walls had always been present in his mind, but no such plan would be practicable here. He knew no song which his father, and his father only, would ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... charming imagery. One of the best is L'Amiradou (The Belvedere), the story of a fairy imprisoned in the castle at Tarascon, "who will doubtless love the one who shall free her." Three knights attempt the rescue and fail. Then there comes along a little Troubadour, and sings so sweetly of the prowess of his forefathers, of the splendor of the Latin race, that the guard are charmed and the bolts fly back. And the fairy goes up to the top of the tower with the little Troubadour, and they stand mute with love, and look out over all the beautiful ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... yours addressed to a poet of whom you know nothing personally. All writers are not angels; they have many defects. Some are frivolous, heedless, foppish, ambitious, dissipated; and, believe me, no matter how imposing innocence may be, how chivalrous a poet is, you will meet with many a degenerate troubadour in Paris ready to cultivate your affection only to betray it. By such a man your letter would be interpreted otherwise than it is by me. He would see a thought that is not in it, which you, in your innocence, have not suspected. There are as many natures ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... quietly active, even as it is with all of us during the days of weariness and restlessness after some long journey. To such a society the strongly realistic Carolingian epic had ceased to appeal: the tales of the Welsh and Breton bards, repeated by trouvere and jongleur, troubadour and minnesinger, came as a revelation. The fatigued, disappointed, morbid, imaginative society of the later Crusades recognized in this fairyland epic of a long refined, long idle, nay, effete race, the realization of their own ideal: ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... shadows were creeping from one hut to another did Bakahenzie and his satellites return from the ghoulish offices of the dead. Zalu Zako, the chiefs and magicians arose to the wild beating of the drums and the wailing chant of the hereditary troubadour with the five stringed lyre. With Kingata Mata carrying a brand of the newly lighted sacred fire, was Kawa Kendi led in procession through the deserted village ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... other. She calls me her Troubadour. She has the prettiest hands of any woman out of Paradise. She 's as sweet as remembered kisses after death. She 's as sharp as a needle. She 's as bright as morning roses lightly tipped with dew. She has a house of her own in Kensington. And ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... was fifty-four years old, that he decided to tie together and to publish his first sheaf of them. From that time onward, every year until his end, a fresh sheaf of from six to a dozen appeared; and, although no name went with them, all of his townsfolk knew that it was their own Troubadour of the Nativity who made them so excellent a gift just as the nougat bells began to ring. The organ of St. Pierre, touched by his master hand, taught the gay airs to which the new noels were cast. And all Avignon presently would be ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... of chivalry and of love, that all-enduring passion, where maidens and their lovers sighed for twice seven years, and all too brief a trial of their truth and constancy! As she listened, her soul seemed to hang on the minstrel's tongue; that erratic troubadour, Gaffer Gee, being a welcome and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Chretien. The following supposition is tenable, if the chronology of Foerster is correct. After the works of his youth, consisting of lyric poems and translations embodying the ideals of Ovid and of the school of contemporary troubadour poets, Chretien took up the Arthurinn material and started upon a new course. "Erec" is the oldest Arthurinn romance to have survived in any language, but it is almost certainly not the first to have ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... to be sure?" Well, yes, it is gratifying—thank you. It is at least as gratifying to be certified sober as to be certified romantic, though such certificates would not qualify one for the secretaryship of a temperance association or for the post of official troubadour to some lordly democratic institution such as the London County Council, for instance. The above prosaic reflection is put down here only in order to prove the general sobriety of my judgment in mundane affairs. ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... barely intelligible remarks very disparaging to "that Nell," who stood, under her, at the head of the kitchen department, had disappeared to oversee the venison pasty. Clarice was doing something which she had not done for eight years, though hardly aware that she was doing it—humming a troubadour song. Getting past an awkward place in her work, words as well ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... flame for George. Her bright eyes, looking into his, had touched off the spiritual trinitrotoluol which he had been storing up for so long. Up in the air in a million pieces had gone the prudence and self-restraint of a lifetime. And here he was, as desperately in love as any troubadour ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... records of miracles wrought at Roc-Amadour. Gauthier de Coinsy, a monk and poet born at Amiens in 1177, has left a poem telling how the troubadour, Pierre de Sygelard, singing the praises of the Virgin in her chapel at Roc-Amadour to the accompaniment of his vielle (hurdy-gurdy), begged of her as a miraculous sign to let one of her candles come down ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... this discourse in a royally gallant, troubadour tone which must have astonished the beautiful ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... with manicure scissors from the same vest pocket. His light and Gallic spirits underwent a sudden, miraculous change. He hummed a blithe San Salvador Opera Company tune; he grinned, smirked, bowed, pirouetted, twiddled, twaddled, twisted, and tooralooed. Gayly, the notorious troubadour, could not have ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... Dog Tenderness Te whit, te who Texts. See Bible. Thrush Tiger Tiger Moth Tom Tramp Trotwood, Betsy Troubadour ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... hard logically to reconcile with Shaw's old diatribes against sentimentalism and operatic romance. If Nature wishes primarily to entrap us into sexual union, then all the means of sexual attraction, even the most maudlin or theatrical, are justified at one stroke. The guitar of the troubadour is as practical as the ploughshare of the husbandman. The waltz in the ballroom is as serious as the debate in the parish council. The justification of Anne, as the potential mother of Superman, is really the ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the sweet-souled troubadour of reform, sang for woman's freedom in suffrage conventions all ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... I tell him? That I was following a woman? That I had given her my name, and that I must protect her? It would sound to him like a parrot's laughter. This was no court of love. It was war. A troubadour's lute would tinkle emptily in these woods that had seen massacre and knew the shriek of the death cry. Again I set ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... even had a play in hand which treated of the fate of the troubadour Bernard de Ventadours in rhymeless, ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... Truth is a dull quality, it belongs to facts; but Nestie, he does not live among facts, he flies in the air, in the atmosphere of poetry. He is a raconteur. A tournament with knights on the North Meadow—good! Our little Nestie, he has been reading Ivanhoe and he is a troubadour." And the Count took off his hat in homage to Nestie's remarkable powers as ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... that somewhere among the princess' ancestors there was a troubadour; for she was something of a poet. Indeed, I have already remarked that she wrote verses. The atmospheric change of the morning turned her mind into sentimental channels. How she envied the peasant woman, who might come and go at will, sleep in the open ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... went south to Toulouse, where I saw the large room in the Museum in which Jasmin first recited his poem of 'Franconnette'; and the hall in the Capitol, where the poet was hailed as The Troubadour, and enrolled member of the Academy of Jeux Floraux—perhaps the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... brought you back into this realm, my hero, my troubadour?" inquired Mr. Kecskerey. "Some love-adventure, some notable affair, I'll be bound. I'll dare to guess that you have abducted ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... they seen and heard me! There I was, with Johnson at my piano, like some wayside tinker setting up his cart and working at his trade! But I did not care for appearances—not a whit. For the moment I was care free, a wandering minstrel, like some troubadour of old, care free and happy in my song. I forgot the black shadow under which we all lay in that smiling land, the black shadow of war in which ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... Blanche may be Blanche of Castille, but more likely she was a vision of Villon's own, for what did St. Louis' mother ever sing? Berte is the legendary mother of Charlemagne in the Epics; Beatris is any Beatrice you choose, for they have all died. Allis may just possibly be one of the Troubadour heroines, more likely she is here introduced for rhyme and metre; Haremburgis is strictly historical: she was the Heiress of Maine who married Foulque of Anjou in 1110 and died in 1126: an ancestress, therefore, of the Plantagenets. Jehanne ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... of satire is now and then visited upon the 'Troubadour Songs,' which have become so afflictingly common of late years. Some of these we have already given; and we find them on the increase in England. We have before us, from the London press of TILT AND BOGUE, 'Sir WHYSTLETON ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... undeveloped, suggestive of infinitude. Standing thus in the happiness of loving and being loved, the soft indefiniteness of the landscape and the incessant hum of the field-crickets and katydids, sounds which came out of the everywhere, soothed Charlton like the song of a troubadour. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... always wore a diamond ring on the little finger of his right hand, an ornament permitted in the time of the Empire, but ridiculous to-day—Pons, who belonged to the "troubadour time," the sentimental periods of the first Empire, was too much a child of his age, too much of a Frenchman to wear the expression of divine serenity which softened Schmucke's hideous ugliness. From Pons' melancholy ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... name familiar to the Don Juan story, to wit "Haidee," and opposite that name was the name of Elsie April. He waited for her—he had no other interest in the evening—and he waited in resignation; a young female troubadour (styled in the programme "the messenger") emerged from the unseen depths of the forest in the wings and ejaculated to the hero and his friend, "The Woman appears." But it was not Elsie that appeared. Six times that troubadour-messenger emerged and ejaculated, "The Woman appears," ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... Good, though limited, anthology, without music and with illuminating comments. A pamphlet collection that Thorp privately printed at Estancia, New Mexico, in 1908, was one of the first to be published. Thorp had the perspective of both range and civilization. He was a kind of troubadour himself. The opening chapter, "Banjo in the Cow Camps," of his posthumous reminiscences, Pardner ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... Sweet lady, 'tis no troubadour, That sings so sweetly at your door, To tell you of the joys in store, So grand and gay; But one that sings "Remember th' ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... myself alone may be conceived. Yet was it no ecstasy, but a sober exhilaration; such as stirred my pulses indeed, and bade me once more face the world with a firm eye and an assured brow, but was far from holding out before me a troubadour's palace or any dazzling prospect. The longer I dwelt on the interview, the more clearly I saw the truth. As the glamour which Henry's presence and singular kindness had cast over me began to lose ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... said Castruccio, "that the old days of romance are returned, when a queen could turn from princes and warriors to listen to a troubadour." ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Tomas Pedro, only he would rather the words had not been addressed to Costanza, although she had not heard one of them. The only person who found fault with the romance was a muleteer, nicknamed Barrabas. As soon as this man saw the singer run off, he bawled after him; "There you go, you Judas of a troubadour! May the fleas eat your eyes out! Who the devil taught you to sing to a scullery-maid about celestial realms, and spheres, and ocean-beds, and to call her stars and suns and all the rest of it? If you had ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... illuminated, as with ten thousand lamps, many lands and nations, until they held every people in spell. In miracle and morality play, they reappeared in beauty. They attuned the harp and instrument of the musician and the troubadour, and these sang the gospel in all lands, north and south, while telling the stories of Adam, and of Abraham, of Bethlehem, and of the cross, of the Holy Grail, and of Arthur and his Knights. All the precious lore of the Celtic race became transfigured, to illustrate and enforce Christian ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... beauty, my dear," she thought to herself. "Countess or bastard, you are a little beauty. And there is countess in your blood somewhere, I'll take an oath. Hands and feet, neck and head, tell the story. There was love and a young countess and a hot-brained troubadour went to the making of you, my little lady. A ditch-full of witches could not bring such tokens to a villein. Galors, my dear friend, if I owed nothing to Master le Gai, I doubt if I should help you to this. 'Tis too much, my friend, with an earldom. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... one sees the pink and purple mountains of the Aures. We ride to the Sulphur Baths, we drive to Sidi-Okba. We take our dejeuner out to the yellow sand dunes, and we sip our coffee among the keef smokers in Hadj's painted cafe. We listen to the songs of the negro troubadour, and we smile at Algia's dancing when the silver moon comes up and the Kabyle dogs round the nomads' tents begin their serenades. And then I give Safti five francs and my blessing, and he bids me "Bonne nuit!" and his ghostly figure is lost in ...
— Smain; and Safti's Summer Day - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... such a believer in the romantic—stickler for old knight-errantry—instead of regretting it, should be glad! Look there! Lovers coming from all sides—suitors by land and suitors by sea! Knights terrestrial, knights aquatic. No lady of the troubadour times ever had the like; none ever honoured by such a rivalry! Come, Carmen, be proud! Stand firm on your castle-keep! Show yourself worthy to receive ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... outblossom the rest, one rose in a bower. I speak after my fancies, for I am a Troubadour, you know, and won the violet at Toulouse; but my voice is harsh here, not in tune, a nightingale out of season; for marriage, rose or no rose, has ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... craft backed away and turned for Nine-Mile Point. And here came the Troubadour, with whistles trumpeting a troubadour's salute to the new queen of the river. The Hayle boat's people had espied their own commodore and the black mass on their ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... it safe for the grave Rector of Holby to adopt the inflated style of a troubadour in addressing the Lady of Thornton Grange? Neither of them thought of it. They simply improved the shining hour after this fashion, until at length the conversation was interrupted by the opening of folding-doors, and the entrance of a servant ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... darkly frowned, "What would you, sir, with me?" The troubadour he downed Upon his ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... Bearsville landing is a gayly painted barge, the home of Price's Floating Opera Company, and in front its towing-steamer, "Troubadour." A steam calliope is part of the visible furniture of the establishment, and its praises as a noise-maker are sung in large type in the handbills which, with numerous colored lithographs of the performers, adorn the shop windows in the ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... that, in spite of this high ideal, sensuality flourished undiminished, and a troubadour who loudly sang the praise of chastity and blatantly professed his entire disinterestedness in the service of his mistress, did not see the least inconsequence in carrying on a dozen intrigues at the same time with other women. Sordello, one of the best known poets of this period, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... they chatted formed a violent contrast. If Drew suggested the Viking type, Parmalee would, with equal fitness, have filled the role of a troubadour. The one was powerful and direct, the other suave and subtle. One could conceive of Drew's wielding a broad axe, but would have put in Parmalee's hands a rapier. Each had his own separate and distinct appeal ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... they are merry, convivial, boon companions, and are never happier than when dancing, singing their war songs and love romances, or listening to the "guslar"—the national troubadour. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... straw. The steel-blue smoke floated out lazily, which his steel-blue eyes regarded with appreciation. It was an Elysium of indolence. The cigar, the not having to kill anybody for a few minutes, and a place to lean against, these were content. Troubadour phrases droned soothingly in his brain. Of course he had to apostrophize ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... in the hills half heard, Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred, Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall, The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall, The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung, That once went singing southward when all the world was young. In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid, Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade. Strong ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... assured, how true it was, informed me to my face that any man situated as happily as I am was an infernal fool to entangle himself with a wife, and bade me a curt and everlasting good-morning on the spot. Yet every day the theme of this old troubadour's talk around the hotels is female entanglements—mendacious, ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... rather for coarseness of manner and brutality of intellect than for refinement or learning, Count Renneberg, on the contrary, was an elegant and accomplished gentleman—the Sydney of his country in all but loyalty of character. He was a classical scholar, a votary of music and poetry, a graceful troubadour, and a valiant knight. He was "sweet and lovely of conversation," generous and bountiful by nature. With so many good gifts, it was a thousand pities that the gift of truth had been denied him. Never did treason look more amiable, but it was treason of the blackest die. He was treacherous, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... trees as he entered this last village of his march, but the air was too dull with heat for him to catch so much as a whiff of her refreshing saltness, and for the present he could not go down to greet her. He was still the lonely troubadour, dressed in a native cloth around the loins, with a turban of rags upon his head, and a battered accordion slung from his back, come in from afar to sing and pull ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... the clearer it will seem that these old experiences are now only alive, where they have found a lodgment in the Catholic tradition of Christendom, and made themselves friends for ever. St. Francis is the only surviving troubadour. St. Thomas More is the only surviving Humanist. St. Louis is the only ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... But day by day, she was finding in him something which rather modified these impressions—his feminine fairness, except where he was burned by the sun, the increasingly martial aspect of his moustachios, the agility with which he mounted his horse, his air of a troubadour, intoning with a rather weak tenor voluptuous romances whose words she did ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... within. A money-box is like a Quaker beauty: demure without, but what a figure of a woman! Outside gallery: an architectural feature I approve; I count it a convenience both for love and war: the troubadour - twang-twang; the craftsmen - (MAKES AS IF TURNING KEY.) The kitchen window: humming with cookery; truffles, before Jove! I was born for truffles. Cock your hat: meat, wine, rest, and occupation; men to gull, women to fool, and ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... Montez was not by any means the first who ever burst into the responsive heart of Ludwig I. She had many predecessors there. One of them was an Italian syren. But that Lola soon ousted her is clear from a poetical effort of which the royal troubadour was delivered. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... into heaven; the rapid river, the thousand white tents dotting the valley, the camp fires, the shadowy forms of soldiers; in short, just enough of heaven and earth visible to put one's fancy on the gallop. The boys are in groups about their fires. The voice of the troubadour is heard. It is a pleasant song that he sings, and ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... Simms, who played the part of cavalier to Mme. Lasalle, and of poet and troubadour ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner |
