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Selkirk   /sˈɛlkərk/   Listen
Selkirk

noun
1.
Scottish sailor who was put ashore on a deserted island off the coast of Chile for five years (providing the basis for Daniel Defoe's novel about Robinson Crusoe) (1676-1721).  Synonyms: Alexander Selcraig, Alexander Selkirk, Selcraig.



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"Selkirk" Quotes from Famous Books



... lodgings, she gave birth to male twins in the house of a Madame le Brun. The parents in 1749 returned to Scotland where one of the children died; in 1761 the Duke of Douglas had himself followed. Three claimants took the field, the Duke of Hamilton as heir male of line, the Earl of Selkirk as heir of provision under former deeds, and Archibald Steuart or Douglas. Lady Jane died in 1753, and Sir John in 1764, both on their death-beds testifying to the legitimacy of their surviving child. The Duke of Douglas, long prejudiced against this son's claim by the machinations of the ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... at Winnipeg is much wider than at any other point, yet so high are the banks, that until quite close to it one cannot see the water. On the opposite or western shore is St. Boniface, the terminus of the branch line from Selkirk, and the site of the Roman Catholic cathedral, convents, and schools. The cathedral, a large square building, has a musical chime of bells, and the ringing of the "angelus," whose sound floated over the prairie unmarred ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... the latter for food, but so tame that they would stay upon the branches while the gun was levelled at them; in fact, little Alexander, returning one day with several of them that he had shot, complained of want of sport, quoting the lines of his namesake Selkirk in Cowper,—"Their tameness is ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... galley-slaves making bread-stuffs for the feast. Knowing whom I had to provide for, I confined myself to making that Australian standby—damper, and simple cakes, but Maggie produced a wonderfully elaborate and rich bun for their delectation, which she called a "Selkirk bannock," and which I privately thought ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... buccaneers who were really the creators of the British mercantile marine and Navy, who lived centuries before my generation, I was obliged to deal with some of them, such as Hawkins, Drake, Frobisher, Daimper, Alexander Selkirk of Robinson Crusoe fame, and others who combined piracy with commerce and sailorism. After I had written all I thought necessary about the three former, I instinctively slipped on to Nelson as the greatest sea personality of the ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... frae Selkirk Town, Who have been buying, selling, 10 Go back to Yarrow, 'tis their own, Each Maiden to her Dwelling! On Yarrow's Banks let herons feed, Hares couch, and rabbits burrow! But we will downwards with the Tweed, Nor turn aside ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth

... residence of Sir Walter Scott, situated on the S. bank of the Tweed, about 3 m. W. of Melrose, Roxburghshire, Scotland, and nearly 1 m. from Abbotsford Ferry station on the North British railway, connecting Selkirk and Galashiels. The nucleus of the estate was a small farm of 100 acres, called Cartleyhole, nicknamed Clarty (i.e. muddy) Hole, and bought by Scott on the lapse of his lease (1811) of the neighbouring house of Ashestiel. It was added to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... man, woman, or child who has not sympathized with the poor seaman before the mast, Alexander Selkirk, typified by the genius of Defoe as his inimitable Crusoe, whose name (although one by no means uncommon in middle life in the east of England,) has become synonymous for all who build and plant in a wilderness, "cut off from humanity's reach?" ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... the adventures of Alexander Selkirk, sailing-master of the Cinque Ports Galley, who was left by Captain Stradling on the desolate island of Juan Fernandez for four years and four months (1704-1709), when he was rescued by Captain Woodes Rogers ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... depict the terrors of those lonely days and still lonelier nights? Most persons left as solitary tenants of an island have dwelt, like Alexander Selkirk, in regions nearer the tropics, where there was at least a softened air, a fertile soil, and the Southern Cross above their heads; but to be solitary in a prolonged winter, to be alone with the Northern Lights,—this offered peculiar terrors. To be ice-bound, ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... known beyond Crusoe. I do not know who wrote Quarll. I never thought of Quarll as having an author. It is a poor imitation; the monkey is the best in it, and his pretty dishes made of shells. Do you know the Paper in the Englishman by Sir Rd. Steele, giving an account of Selkirk? It is admirable, and has all the germs of Crusoe. You must quote it entire. Captain G. Carleton wrote his own Memoirs; they are about Lord Peterborough's campaign in Spain, & a good Book. Puzzelli puzzles me, and I am in a cloud about Donald M'Leod. I never heard of them; so you see, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... him for ever: So his father carried him home, and put him to the college, and there he became a diligent student, of great expectation, and shewed himself a sincere convert; and so he proceeded to the ministry. His first settlement was at Selkirk, while he was yet very young, and the country rude. While he was there, his ministry was rather admired by some, than received by many; for he was always attended by the prophet's shadow, the hatred of the wicked; yea, even the ministers of that country, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... to us his desire and intention of returning to the Countess of Selkirk some plate, which his people ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... contradicted the general. "You talk as if I were requiring you all to Selkirk on a ten acre island, instead of going to one of the pleasantest and most populous counties in the oldest state in the Union. Mr. Byrd, the former owner of Shirley, told me that the neighborhood was very thickly settled ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... this time in the hands of three men—Col. George F. Selkirk, J. L. Lamed, and Thomas A. Kennett. Colonel Selkirk was business manager, Lamed was political editor. With the purchase of Kennett's share Clemens became a sort of general and contributing editor, with a more or less "roving commission"—his hours ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Shaw—the high and ample space he filled in the opinion of the country, particularly of those who best knew him, and the honourable testimony which one of the most enlightened personages who in this age have done honour to the peerage of Great Britain (lord Selkirk) has borne to his talents and virtues, would prompt us to enlarge upon this theme, if we did not feel that it would be injuring the matter to take it out of the hands of the editor, J. E. Hall, Esq. whose words, as being ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various

... sunny day. This threatens absolutely Syrian drought. As the Selkirk election comes on Monday, I go out to-day to Abbotsford, and carry young Davidoff and his tutor with me, to see our quiet way of managing the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... prevalent, along the Borders, an opinion that the arms of the town of Selkirk represent an incident which occurred there at the time of the battle of Flodden. The device, it is well known, consists of a female bearing a child in her arms, seated on a tomb, on which is also placed the Scottish lion. Antiquaries tell us that this device was adopted in consequence ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... 1. Establishment.—Lord Selkirk, a Scottish philanthropist, and a shareholder in the Hudson's Bay Co., purchased from the Company 70,000 square miles of land around Red River for Scotch colonies, 1811. About three hundred settlers came within three years. Miles Macdonell at ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... motive? Why should he still cling to a place of endless tribulation? It could not be because he knew no other country, for the region is limitless, food is everywhere, and he was known at least as far as Selkirk. Nor could his motive be revenge. No animal will give up its whole life to seeking revenge; that evil kind of mind is found in man alone. The brute ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... long time thought that Defoe was ignorant, that he accidentally happened to write Robinson Crusoe because he had been told of the recent experience of Alexander Selkirk on a solitary island in the Pacific. It is now known that Defoe was well educated, versed in several languages, and the most versatile writer of his time. Robinson Crusoe was no more of an accident than any other ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... way of contrast through the long isolated peninsula of Fife, say to representative towns like Kirkcaldy and Largo, we still see the conditions of that individualism of which Adam Smith and Alexander Selkirk ("Robinson Crusoe") have each in his way become the very prototypes. In such ways the connection of regional geography, history, and social psychology becomes increasingly clear. Again, we explore the other old Fife seaports, a series of survivals like those of the Zuyder ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... are so called because they never had any defences and never needed any. As a matter of fact, in the early days, when the Hudson Bay Company made its first establishments on the upper river, there was supposed to be some need of fortification, and Fort Selkirk and Fort Yukon were stockaded. Fort Selkirk, indeed, was sacked and burned sixty years ago, but not by Yukon Indians. The Chilkats from the coast, indignant at the loss of their middle-man profits by the invasion of the interior, crossed ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... made for a dogged, strong, obstinate race. At the time of the fall of French power at Quebec in 1759 there were about two thousand of these wilderness hunters in the West. Fifty years later by way of Hudson Bay came Lord Selkirk's Settlers—Orkneymen and Highlanders, hardy, keen and dauntless as their native ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... romantic story of the Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists in Manitoba, and is appropriate and timely in view of the Centennial celebration of this event which will be ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... time, through herculean efforts, to bring all along on the one haul. He did not seem moved when the captain of police told him his man was hitting the high places for Dawson, and was by that time, probably, half-way between Selkirk and Stewart. Nor did he appear interested when informed that the police had broken the trail as far as Pelly; for he had attained to a fatalistic acceptance of all natural dispensations, good or ill. But when they told him that Dawson was in the bitter clutch of famine, he smiled, threw ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... other it had disappeared. Had that story proved true, one pleasant bower would have perished, raised by Pink as a memorial expression of his youthful feelings either towards De Foe, or his visionary creature, Robinson Crusoe—but rather, perhaps, towards the substantial Alexander Selkirk; for it was raised on some spot known or reputed by tradition to have been one of those most occupied as a home by Selkirk. I say, "rather towards Alexander Selkirk;" for there is a difficulty to the judgment in associating ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... and economical effects of these changes have been traced by Lord Selkirk with great precision and accuracy. But the change, though steadily and rapidly progressive, has nevertheless been gradual; and, like those who drift down the stream of a deep and smooth river, we are not aware of the progress we have made until we fix ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott



Words linked to "Selkirk" :   Alexander Selkirk, Alexander Selcraig, Selcraig, crewman, Selkirk Mountains, sailor



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