"Tartan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Scottish soldiers on their way up the line. Such a bit of luck in the shape of a free cinema show had rarely come their way and they were bent on enjoying it to the fullest extent. The fact that the officer now standing ruefully on the bank was in Tartan riding "troos" of course added to ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... earliest of my recollections," wrote he in 1824, "that I lay in bed one morning during the grievous famine in Britain in 1800-1, while my poor mother took from our large kist the handsome plaid of the tartan of our clan, which in her early life her own hands had spun, and went and sold it for a trifle, to obtain for us a little coarse barley meal, whereof to make our scanty breakfast; and of another time during the same famine when she left me at home crying from hunger, and for ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... strong Cheshire cheese, wheeled their chairs to the fire, while Bags the butler cleared the table and placed it between them. They were dressed in full suits of flaming large-check red-and-yellow tartans, the tartan of that noble clan the 'Stunners,' with black-and-white Shetland hose and red slippers. His lordship and Jack had related their mutual adventures by cross visits to each other's bedrooms while dressing: and, dinner being announced by the time they were ready, they had fallen to, and ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... dances to represent agriculture and the vintage performed with wine-skins; (3) the simple arts, such as weaving, where the dancers, each holding a long coloured ribbon, dance round a pole on which is gradually formed a pattern like a Scotch tartan; (4) war-dances, as the sword-dance and others; (5) religious dances in procession before the Host and before the altar; (6) ceremonial dances in which both sexes take part at the beginning and end of a festival, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... am I once more returned, after having made an excursion to the far-famed city of Granada and still more renowned palace of the Alhambra. My last letter was dated from Gibraltar on the 17th of Decr. We left the Rock in a Vile Tartan,[12] rendered still less agreeable by belonging to Spaniards, who, at no time remarkable for cleanliness, were not likely to exert themselves in that point in a small trading Vessel. We were crowded with Passengers and empty Casks—both ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... elegance to her figure that was in classic harmony with the surrounding scenery. At the moment of my appearance she was in the act of dressing the wounded shoulder of a stag, that had recently been shot; and from the broad tartan riband I perceived attached to its neck, added to the fact of the tameness of the animal, I presumed that this stag, evidently a favourite of its mistress, was the same I had fired at and wounded. The rustling I made among the bushes had ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... at the strangers. On the contrary, there was a prevailing air of comfort and "bienness" about the people and their houses. He saw handsome girls with coal-black hair and fresh complexions, who wore short and thick blue petticoats, with a scarlet tartan shawl wrapped round their bosom and fastened at the waist; stalwart, thick-set men, in loose blue jacket and trowsers and scarlet cap, many of them with bushy red beards; and women of extraordinary breadth of shoulder, who carried enormous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... intention, with a degree of inveteracy which, at such a distance of time, a mortal offence would neither have authorized or excited in any well-constituted mind)"Yes, she scorned and jested at mebut let them that scorn the tartan fear ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... be less of a shining mark for the enemy than the other, and, its adoption would probably result in saving many lives. You know their decision. I think I hear them say, "All this may well be true; but we stand by the kilt and the tartan." That, a critical world may say, is magnificent, but it is not war. We say, magnificent or not, it is war; for the kilt and the tartan are inseparable from the sentiment that makes these men the redoubtable soldiers they are. Take those ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Hakkabut, and he was a native of Cologne. Nearly the whole of his time, however, he informed Captain Servadac, had been spent upon the sea, his real business being that of a merchant trading at all the ports of the Mediterranean. A tartan, a small vessel of two hundred tons burden, conveyed his entire stock of merchandise, and, to say the truth, was a sort of floating emporium, conveying nearly every possible article of commerce, from a lucifer match to ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... crimsoned the pines; the riders were gathered along the hill-side, bending far out in their saddles to scan the valley below. McCraw, his white face bound with a bloody rag, drew his straight claymore and wound the tattered tartan around his wrist, motioning ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... Henry Morton perceived an old woman, wrapped in her tartan plaid, supported by a stout, stupid-looking fellow, in hoddin-grey, approach the house of Milnwood. Old Mause made her courtesy, but Cuddie took the lead in addressing Morton. Indeed, he had previously stipulated with his mother ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... I saw Lady Randolph was at Punchestown races, in 1887, where I went with my new friends, Mrs. Bunbury, Hatfield Harter and Peter Flower. I was standing at the double when I observed a woman next to me in a Black Watch tartan skirt, braided coat and astrachan hussar's cap. She had a forehead like a panther's and great wild eyes that looked through you; she was so arresting that I followed her about till I found some one who could tell ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... to the misty sea at Budden, four men were walking. Two wore uniform—one an alert, grey-haired general, sharp and brusque in manner, with many war ribbons across his tunic; the other a tall, thin-faced staff captain, who wore the tartan of the Gordon Highlanders. With them were two civilians, both in rough shooting-jackets and breeches, one about forty-five, the other a ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... 've surely heard of famous Neil, The man who play'd the fiddle weel; He was a heartsome merry chiel', And weel he lo'ed the whisky, O! For e'er since he wore the tartan hose He dearly liket Athole brose![63] And grieved he was, you may suppose, To ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... affairs and politics with their tools upon their arm. But the most part are of a different order—skulking jail-birds; unkempt, barefoot children; big-mouthed, robust women, in a sort of uniform of striped flannel petticoat and short tartan shawl: among these, a few supervising constables and a dismal sprinkling of mutineers and broken men from higher ranks in society, with some mark of better days upon them, like a brand. In a place no larger than Edinburgh, and where the traffic is mostly centred ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fool he felt himself that night, as he confronted his brilliant image in the glass. A Scot of the Scots, kilted in vivid plaid, a rakish cap on his black hair, a tartan draped across his shoulder, short, heavy stockings clasping his legs and low ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... at a cock-fight in one of them, there're as gaudy as a salmon-fly," said Drysdale, feeling the stuff which the obsequious Schloss held out. "But it seems nice stuff, too," he went on; "I shouldn't mind having a couple of waistcoats of it of this pattern;" and he chucked across to Schloss a dark tartan waistcoat which was lying near him. "Have you got the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Princess Galitzin, where were a whole covey of Princesses of Russia arrayed in tartan! with music and singing to boot. The person in whom I was most interested was Mad. de Boufflers,[399] upwards of eighty, very polite, very pleasant, and with all the agremens of a French Court lady ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... of the most close and conclusive argument, brilliant with all the exuberance of an imagination which ranged over all nature for illustrations, and yet managed and applied each of them with the same unerring dexterity, as if that single one had been the study of a whole life. "The tartan beats us," said Mr. Canning; "we have no preaching like ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... yet on his lips, while I am still smiling up at him, under the soaked tartan there comes a ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... striae. spectrum, rainbow, iris, tulip, peacock, chameleon, butterfly, tortoise shell; mackerel, mackerel sky; zebra, leopard, cheetah, nacre, ocelot, ophite^, mother-of-pearl, opal, marble. check, plaid, tartan, patchwork; marquetry-, parquetry; mosaic, tesserae^, strigae^; chessboard, checkers, chequers; harlequin; Joseph's coat; tricolor. V. be variegated &c adj.; variegate, stripe, streak, checker, chequer; bespeckle^, speckle; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... had not. It is also true that Colonel Fraser was a gentleman, detesting the parish-burning to which his command was ordered for a time. But the habitantes laid much to his blue eyes and yellow hair, and the picturesqueness of the red and pale green Fraser tartan. They nudged one another when Jeannette began to plait her strong black locks, and make a coronet of them on her sloping head. She was always exact and neat in her dress, and its mannishness stood ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... said against him, as a rule, but that he looked a trifle too like a wedding guest to be quite a gentleman. Today he had fallen altogether from these heights. He wore a flannel shirt of washed-out shepherd's tartan, and a suit of reddish tweeds, of the colour known to tailors as 'heather mixture'; his neckcloth was black, and tied loosely in a sailor's knot; a rusty ulster partly concealed these advantages; and his ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... that minute of dreadful uncertainty, Phil was reminded of what he had read about some Highland chief leading his tartan clan to battle, a Rob Roy McGregor, it ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... garrisoned by five or six hundred men, among whom are bare-legged Highlanders (I must say that this costume is very fine and becoming, tho their thighs did look blue and frost-bitten) and also some soldiers of other Scotch regiments, with tartan trousers. Almost immediately on passing the gate, we found an old artillery-man, who undertook to show us round the castle. Only a small portion of it seems to be of great antiquity. The principal edifice within the castle wall is ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... Rag, being indisposed in a hotel in London, the landlord came to enumerate the good things he had in his larder, to prevail on his guest to eat something. The earl at length, starting suddenly from his couch, and throwing back a tartan night-gown which had covered his singularly grim and ghastly face, replied to his host's courtesy; "Landlord, I think I could eat a morsel of a poor man." Boniface, surprised alike at the extreme ugliness of Lord B.'s countenance, and the nature of the proposal, retreated from the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... consist in a confusion of words somewhat alike in sound, a confusion that is apt to follow some of us through life. "Matins'' has been mixed up with "pattens,'' and described as something to wear on the feet. Nonconformists are said to be persons who cannot form anything, and a tartan is assumed to be an inhabitant of Tartary. The gods are believed by one boy to live on nectarines, and by another to imbibe ammonia. The same desire to make an unintelligible word express a meaning which has caused the recognised but absurd spelling of sovereign (more wisely spelt sovran ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... strain of these visits, Ralph once or twice tried the experiment of leaving Paul with his grand-parents and calling for him in the late afternoon; but one day, on re-entering the Malibran, he was met by a small abashed figure clad in a kaleidoscopic tartan and a green velvet cap with a silver thistle. After this experience of the "surprises" of which Gran'ma was capable when she had a chance to take Paul shopping Ralph did not again venture to leave his son, and their subsequent Saturdays ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... Fetu, but Mother Fetu transformed, magnificent in a clean white cap, a new gown, and tartan shawl wrapped round her shoulders. Her voice, however, still retained its plaintive tone ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... island crag was the old cock-fighting pit of a ruder day. There, in a broken-down carrier's cart, abandoned among the nameless abominations of publichouse refuse, Auld Jock lay huddled in his greatcoat of hodden gray and his shepherd's plaid. On a bundle of clothing tied in a tartan kerchief for a pillow, he lay very still and ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... my grandmother, all in black, gazing stoically; my uncle giving his arm to my mother down to the carriage in which I had been placed already; at the top of the flight my little cousin in a short skirt of a tartan pattern with a deal of red in it, and like a small princess attended by the women of her own household; the head gouvernante, our dear, corpulent Francesca (who had been for thirty years in the service of the B. family), the former nurse, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... the impatient orphan and dragged off to witness the triumph of Isaac and Rebekah. When the geese had been sufficiently admired, and even poor Keturah's small achievement duly noted, the doctor escaped, and making a wide detour of the tartan shawls, found his way to the grand-stand. Here, seated on the dry pine-needles, under a spreading tree, was a group of three: Malcolm Cameron, with his sister and the ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... races the most warlike, and amongst whom the most remarkable conquerors have been produced. They are faithful and honest, and capable of much disinterested attachment; kind and hospitable to strangers; all of which points are far from being at variance with the Tartan character. But they are somewhat dull, and their capacities are by no means of a high order, and in these respects they again ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... ye the bagpipe, or saw ye the banners That floated sae light o'er the fields o' Kildairlie; Saw ye the broadswords, the shields and the tartan hose, Heard ye the muster-roll sworn to Prince Charlie? Saw ye brave Appin, wi' bonnet and belted plaid, Or saw ye the Lords o' Seaforth and Airlie; Saw ye the Glengarry, M'Leod, and Clandonachil, Plant the white rose in their bonnets ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... shapes of the mountains, but the kilts and hardy forms of the Albanese,—all, as he says, "carried him back to Morven;" and, in his last fatal expedition, the dress which he himself chiefly wore at Cephalonia was a tartan jacket. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... my horse to grass,' replied George, giving a peculiar whistle, which brought to his side a shock-headed, barefooted lad, in a shepherd's tartan and little else, but with limbs as active as a wild deer, and ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... know, with his Bootjack. But Sir Walter for ever! What a fine Picture would that make of Evan Dhu's entrance into Tully Veolan Breakfast Hall, with a message from his Chief; he standing erect in his Tartan, while the Baron keeps his State, and pretty Rose at the Table. There is a subject for one of your Artists. Another very pretty one (I thought the other Day) would be that of the child Keats keeping guard with a drawn sword at his ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... filled any townsman with amazement. Black he wore once a year, on Sacrament Sunday, and, if possible, at a funeral; topcoat or waterproof never. His jacket and waistcoat were rough homespun of Glen Urtach wool, which threw off the wet like a duck's back, and below he was clad in shepherd's tartan trousers, which disappeared into unpolished riding boots. His shirt was grey flannel, and he was uncertain about a collar, but certain as to a tie which he never had, his beard doing instead, and his hat was soft felt of four colours and seven different shapes. His point ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... reader may have noticed, had no goodwill to the Highland race. "I will wager on Old Nick, of whom I should know something, he being indeed a worker in the same element with myself, against Catharine on that debate: the devil will have the tartan, that ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Outside, the night was slightly frosty. A clear moon shone over the sloping reaches of the park; the trees shone silverly in the cold light, their black shadows cast along the grass. Robert found himself quartered in the Stuart room, where James II. had slept, and where the tartan hangings of the ponderous carved bed, and the rose and thistle reliefs of the walls and ceilings, untouched for two hundred years, bore witness to the loyal preparations made by some bygone Wendover. He was mortally tired, but by way of distracting his thoughts a little ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... short time the English nation, still heated by the recent conflict, breathed nothing but vengeance. The slaughter on the field of battle and on the scaffold was not sufficient to slake the public thirst for blood. The sight of the tartan inflamed the populace of London with hatred, which showed itself by unmanly outrages to defenceless captives. A political and social revolution took place through the whole Celtic region. The power of the chiefs was destroyed: the people were disarmed: the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the old man's two sons, who had been at poor Menie's last funeral, but were now grown up, and studying for the medical profession at the college in Glasgow. Their father evidently kept them on short allowance, judging from their coarse tartan clothes, and continual munching of oaten cakes: but I was told they were hard students, and particularly clever in the anatomy class. One dark, dreary morning, about the Christmas-time, I noted that Lady Catherine and her family had been in my dreams all night—their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... could be useful men, honored and respected, if we always did what was right. It was a repetition of Helen Macgregor, in her reply to Osbaldistone in which she threatened to have her prisoners "chopped into as many pieces as there are checks in the tartan." But the reason for the outburst was different. It was not because the occupation suggested was peaceful labor, for we were taught that idleness was disgraceful; but because the suggested occupation was somewhat vagrant in character and ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... from this animal's tooth resembles a gun-shot wound; it is generally followed by a great deal of sloughing and discharge, and pains are felt in the part periodically ever afterward. I had on a tartan jacket on the occasion, and I believe that it wiped off all the virus from the teeth that pierced the flesh, for my two companions in this affray have both suffered from the peculiar pains, while I have escaped with only the inconvenience of a false joint in my limb. The man whose shoulder ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... London was reached, and an audience obtained with the Duke of Argyie. His Grace's heart warmed to the tartan when Jeannie appeared before him in the dress of a Scottish maiden of her class. His grandfather's letter, too, was a strong injunction to assist Stephen Butler, his friends or family, and he exerted himself to such good purpose, that he brought her into the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... persecuted Episcopalian Church in Scotland. Mr. Forbes collected his information very carefully, closely comparing the narratives of the various actors in the story. Into the boards of his volumes are fastened a scrap of the Prince's tartan waistcoat, a rag from his sprigged calico dress, a bit of his brogues—a twopenny treasure that has been wept and prayed over by the faithful. Nobody, in a book for children, would have the heart to tell the tale of the Prince's later ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... part speak nothing but Irish; and in former time were those people which were called the Red-shanks.[22] Their habit is shoes with but one sole apiece; stockings (which they call short hose) made of a warm stuff of divers colours, which they call tartan: as for breeches, many of them, nor their forefathers never wore any, but a jerkin of the same stuff that their hose is of, their garters being bands or wreaths of hay or straw, with a plaid about their shoulders, which is a mantle of divers colours, of much finer and lighter stuff ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... rather undersized, but still too big for his clothes, which were stretched on him tightly, his short trousers showing the tops of his patched boots, which were several sizes too large for him, and gave him a very ungraceful appearance. He had not even a collar, only an old tartan scarf knotted round his neck, and from the shrunk sleeves of the old jacket his hands, red and bony, appeared abnormally large. But when she looked at his face, at the eyes which looked out from the tangle of his hair, she forgot all ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... deep, bass-like, violoncello notes, gathering up all the others and fusing them into a pealing strain, it was electin'. Everybody sang. Old voices, that had not sung for a quarter of a century or more, joined in. It was a furor: Dalgetty swung his tartan cap, Sandy his hat; handkerchiefs were waved, staves rang on the floor. The children, half frightened in spite of their pleasure, ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... admiral. He wore a blue dress-coat, trimmed with lace, and bearing a Government gilt button. In his hand he carried a cocked hat. At the Communion on Sunday (he sat on Dr. Wilson's right hand, who sat on my right) he wore a blue surtout, with Government gilt buttons, and shepherd-tartan trousers; and he had a gold band round his cap[67]. I spent two hours In his society last evening at Dr. Wilson's. He was not very complimentary to Burton. He is to lecture in ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... hearing that it had been remarked among a party of Edinburgh masons that, though regarded as the first of Glasgow stone-cutters, he would find in the eastern capital at least his equals, he attired himself most uncouthly in a long-tailed coat of tartan, and, looking to the life the untamed, untaught, conceited little Celt, he presented himself on Monday morning, armed with a letter of introduction from a Glasgow builder, before the foreman of an Edinburgh squad of masons engaged upon one of the finer buildings at ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... manage with the muslin dressing-gown, and the satin shoes; in the hall, she might find her hat, her little sabots which she wore in the garden, and the large tartan cloak for driving in wet weather. She half-opened her door with infinite precautions. Everything slept in the house; she crept along the corridor, she descended ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy |
