"Murrain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... notice Marmaduke, darted elsewhere to ply their discordant trade, and the Nevile, crossing himself devoutly, muttered, "Jesu defend us! Those she Will-o'-the-wisps are eno' to scare all the blood out of one's body. What—a murrain on them!—do they portend, flitting round and round, and skirting off, as if the devil's broomstick was behind them! By the Mass! they have frighted away the damozel, and I am not sorry for it. They have left me small heart for the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "A murrain on the bugs," he said. "We shall have a creepy night of it. Let us bottle this treasure and lay the mattress out of their reach on the sarcophagus. Endure them a while, Deborah, till we make ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... generally speaking, first been affected, and then the root." From this mode of manifesting itself, the potato disease was commonly called in Ireland, as in Scotland, the Potato Blight. It had other names given to it; potato murrain, cholera in the potato, and so on; but Potato Blight in Ireland, at least, was and is its all but universal name. The whole stem soon became affected after the blight had appeared on the leaves, more ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... water was bad and very rare, dysentery came with the scorch and the toil of this endless charge; the chief in command, M. le Marquis de Chateauroy, swore heavily as he saw many of his best men dropping off like sheep in a murrain, and he offered two hundred napoleons to whosoever should bring either the dead Sheik's head or ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the king invaded the bishopric of Rochester; and this year came first the great murrain of cattle ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... 'Sebastian first put me in the way of it. I had come down here, not to serve God as a craftsman should, but to show my people how great a craftsman I was. They cared not, and it served me right, one split straw for my craft or my greatness. What a murrain call had I, they said, to mell with old St. Barnabas's? Ruinous the church had been since the Black Death, and ruinous she should remain; and I could hang myself in my new scaffold-ropes! Gentle and ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... "A murrain on the beast!" muttered Robin angrily, tugging in vain at the creature on whom death had taken pity. "I must e'en leave him by the wayside and ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... "Now a murrain on thee, Shrope, for mentioning that name," cried Elizabeth her humor changing instantly. "We, too, have somewhat to say of Francis Stafford, but the time is not yet ripe. When it is, then will I hear what thou hast to say. ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... another, the daily changes and variations create a variety which must be constantly watched and provided for. A sudden freshet and unseasonable access of heat or cold, a scourge of hail, a drought, a murrain among the cattle, call for ingenuity and for resourcefulness; and for courage, a higher moral quality. Constant comradeship with Nature seems to beget placidity and quiet assurance. From using the great natural forces which ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... "for King he is none, and crowned he will never be, should be in Orleans, leading his men; and lo! he is tied to the belt of fat La Tremouille, and is dancing of ballets at Chinon—a murrain on him, and on them that make his music!" Then he fell to cursing his King, a thing terrible to hear, and so to asking me questions about myself. I told him that I had fled my own country for a man-slaying, hoping, may Heaven forgive me! to ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... nations; no man thought himself secure, either in his person or possessions, from the machinations of the devil and his agents. Every calamity that befell him he attributed to a witch. If a storm arose and blew down his barn, it was witchcraft; if his cattle died of a murrain—if disease fastened upon his limbs, or death entered suddenly and snatched a beloved face from his hearth—they were not visitations of Providence, but the works of some neighbouring hag, whose wretchedness or insanity caused the ignorant ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... entertainment on every road. "For the belly one will play many tricks"; and Asirvadam, in financial straits, may teach dancing to nautch-girls; or he may play the mountebank or the conjurer, and with a stock of mantras and charms proceed to the curing of murrain in cattle, pip in chickens, and short-windedness in old women,—at the same time telling fortunes, calculating nativities, finding lost treasure, advising as to journeys and speculations, and crossing out crosses in love ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... "A murrain on your youth," cried Adrian, testily. "However, since there 's no quieting you otherwise, I suppose, for the sake of peace, I 'd best tell you, and have done with it. Well, then,"—he stood off, to watch the effect of his announcement,—"Craford's ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... attached the disease, as they fancied, by some ceremonies, to a buffalo, and drove it across the Ganges, or into some other village. This latter course frequently caused fighting between the villagers. It was also found that a similar transmission of cakes had taken place on a former occasion, when a murrain attacked the cattle of the districts bordering Oude, and the disease was supposed to be stayed as soon as the said cakes reached the holy fanes of Hurdwar. The agitation was fostered, and false rumours founded thereon, prejudicial to government, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... had subsided, a murrain attacked the cattle, and great numbers of all kinds died; so that they became reduced in the same proportion as the race of ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... by the persecution of this very year, hated him with a deadly hatred. His French alliances, his declaration of war with the Emperor, hindered the trade with Flanders and secured the hostility of the merchant class. The country at large, galled with murrain and famine and panic-struck by an outbreak of the sweating sickness which carried off two thousand in London alone, laid all its suffering at the door of the Cardinal. And now that Henry's mood itself became ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... presume, of my disastrous love-business; and with all an author's relish of emotion, in others, chose his gambit swiftly. "Mr. Townsend, is it not? Then may a murrain light upon thee, Mr. Townsend,—whatever a murrain may happen to be,—since you have disturbed me in the concoction of an ever-living ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... another frost, at another drought or a deluge of rain, or mildew, or other pest, will obliterate all the fair creations and designs of men; or behold, his fleecy flocks most fairly nurtured, then comes murrain, and the end most ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... some of which have not yet been explored. The whole floor was strewn, from one end to the other, with hundreds of bones, like a huge dog-kennel. The workmen wondered a little at their discovery, but, remembering that there had been a murrain among the cattle in this region some years before, they came to the conclusion that these must be the bones of cattle that had died in great numbers at that time; and, having so settled the matter to their own satisfaction, they took ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... idea of its origin, and merely continue it as an amusement. Kelly mentions, in his Folklore, that a calf was sacrificed in Northamptonshire during the present century, in one of these fires, to "stop the murrain." The superstitious use of fire still continues in England and Scotland, though we believe the Beltinne on St. John's Eve is peculiar to Ireland. The hunting of the wren[150] on St. Stephen's Day, in this country, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... its deadly work on a vast scale. Scientific men have acquainted us with the history of the Potato fungus, and this may eventually result in as efficient a remedy as that which renewed the vineyards of France. Such a remedy for the Potato murrain has yet to be discovered. Meanwhile, we must continue to resist the foe with the plough, spade, draining tool, and above all with a wise selection of sorts. It is an acknowledged fact that many ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... think that never runs so thin The milk as when it leaves the milkman's tin; That every link the sausageman prepares Harbours some wandering Towser unawares. And Binns, the baker (whom a murrain seize!), Immune from fraud's accustomed penalties, Sells me a stuff compound of string and lead, And has the nerve to name the substance bread. But deafer far to the voice of conscience grown The type that cuts me off a pound of bone ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various |
