"Bagpipe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the middle of a by-road. He turned aside sharply, charged, picked the pig neatly up on the point of his lance, and galloped after his friends, accompanied by a tune that would have done credit to a Scotch bagpipe. ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... nimbly on the kettle-drum, that he has reduced that noisy instrument to an object of sight; for, if you don't see the tricks with his hands, it is no better than ordinary: another plays on a violin and trumpet together: another mimics a bagpipe with a German flute, and makes it full as disagreeable. There is an admired dulcimer, a favourite salt-box, and a really curious jew's-harp. Two or three men intend to persuade you that they play on a broomstick, which is drolly brought ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... minute or two there was no sound but the wind, which had found a loose chimney cowl on the roof and screwed out of it an odd sound like the drone of a bagpipe. Dickson, unable to remain any longer in one place, moved into the centre of the hall, believing that Leon had gone to the smoking-room. It was a dangerous thing to do, for suddenly a match was lit a yard from him. He had the sense to drop low, and so was out ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... Mr. Punch's sharp contemporary, the Lancet, the effect of bagpipe-playing upon the teeth is to blunt them; in fact, in course of time, to wear them away. To the auditor the music has a contrary effect. Mr. Punch is able to say, from experience, that he has never listened to the National instrument ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... beastly sort, In sweate and labour hauing most chiefe comfort, On the holy day assoone as morne is past, When all men resteth while all the day doth last, They drinke, they banket, they reuell and they iest They leape, they daunce, despising ease and rest. If they once heare a bagpipe or a drone, Anone to the elme or oke they be gone. There vse they to daunce, to gambolde and to rage Such is the custome and vse of the village. When the ground resteth from rake, plough and wheles, Then moste they it trouble ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... maypole new, with glee and merriment, While as the bagpipe tooted it, Thyrsis and Chloris fine together footed it: And to the joyous instrument Still they went to and fro, and finely flaunted it, And then both met again and thus ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... Bartle Massey, contemptuously; "I've heard enough o' the Scotch tunes to last me while I live. They're fit for nothing but to frighten the birds with—that's to say, the English birds, for the Scotch birds may sing Scotch for what I know. Give the lads a bagpipe instead of a rattle, and I'll answer for it the corn ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... was on to him would be a sign of bad luck. I wiggled around kind of careless to see if there was any more of him. There was. Nine more. Here was Saunders Colorado and Colin Hiccup Grunt, fortified by—say six, drops of Scotch whiskey, a Scotch sword and a Scotch bagpipe, up against ten Tontos armed with rifles. I would have traded my life interest in this world for an imitation dead yaller dog. "Oh, they won't do a thing to us, thing to us, thing to us!" sings I to myself, ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... false. The master gave them leave to go in, that they might discover their pigs and move them away. As soon as they had crossed the drawbridge they seized upon the master, threw off their false clothes, drew their weapons, and blew a blast upon the bagpipe; and forthwith appeared their comrades from their hiding-places in the neighboring woods. They took possession of the castle, its master and mistress, and all their folk; and, settling themselves ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... tea, as a special mark of her favour, or from some other unaccountable cause, I could not for some time get to sleep. I found out that Sam Short did snore, and most lustily and variously too, with notes resembling what one might fancy a broken-winded bagpipe with a bad influenza would give forth more than any other sounds. My other friends were not much behind him in the loudness of their snores, though rather less varied and musical. At length, in spite of the delicious concert, I did manage, by dint ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... north play a kind of bagpipe, which reminds one of the Scotch ones; but the songs of the Slovak have got very much mixed with the Hungarian. The Rumanian music is of a distinct type, but the dances all resemble the Csardas, with the difference that the quick figures in the Slav and Rumanian dances are much ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... the cawing rooks, until servitude seemed intolerable, and he prayed for the voice of the bearward that summoned him to Southwark. And when the chained bear, the familiar monkey on his back, followed the shrill bagpipe along the curious street, Briscoe felt that blood, not ink, coursed in his veins, forgot the tiresome impediment of the law, and joined the throng, hungry for this sport of kings. Nor was he the patron of an enterprise wherein he dared take no part. He was as bold and venturesome ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... cried the Scot, dropping to the pavement a true Highland knee. Whereon forth shrieked a bagpipe, and Dolfin's minstrel sang, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... youngest of a noble line." There is a good deal also about his maternal ancestors, in a poem on Lachin-y-gair, a mountain where he spent part of his youth, and might have learnt that a pibroch is not a bagpipe, any more than a ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Jerome Duigenan, Dominic Mongan, Denis Hempson, Charles Byrne, James Duncan, Arthur Victory, and Arthur O'Neill were celebrated as harpers. The Belfast meeting of 1792 revived the vogue of the national instrument. Nor was the bagpipe neglected. Even in America, in 1778, Lord Rawdon had a band of pipers, with Barney Thomson as Pipe Major. At home, Sterling, Jackson, MacDonnell, Moorehead, Kennedy, and Macklin sustained the reputation ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... is a ceremony used at funerals: the evening after the death of any person, the relations and friends of the deceased meet at the house, attended by bagpipe or fiddle; the nearest of kin, be it wife, son, or daughter, opens a melancholy ball, dancing and greeting; i.e. crying violently at the same time; and this continues till daylight; but with such gambols and frolicks, among the younger part ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... and dignity that, though it heaved, panted, and struggled, it could never once get vent. Speaking through his apoplectic organs, I could not understand myself: it was a mumbling hubbub, the drone of a bagpipe, and the tantalizing strum strum of a hurdy-gurdy! Never was hearer more impatient to have it begin; never was hearer better pleased to have it over! Every sentence did but increase the fever of my mind. Enoch himself perceived it, though ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... on: 'During this song, methinks, it was as if nightingale, owl, and echo had combined in song, and if ever I had been able to hear the morning star, or to try to imitate the melody on my bagpipe, I should have slipt away out of the hut to join in the melody, so beautiful it seemed; but ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... of the Guard alone, off to the right, seems untouched, and on it comes. Suddenly the sound of a bagpipe is heard. The Scots are awake. From the trenches an avalanche rushes forward toward the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... were not for Pony we should press on to the settlement, but we must give Pony a respite. Pony is an enthusiastic little fellow, but his lungs are too much for him, they have blown him out like a bagpipe. A mile farther and then eleven miles back to Deer's Castle, is a great undertaking for so small an animal. In the meanwhile, we will ourselves rest and take some "home-brewed" with the landlord, who is harbor-master, inn-keeper, store-keeper, fisherman, shipper, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... for decay. - There will come an immediate decree In thy mind for the opposite party's decease, If he bends not an instant knee. Expunge it: extinguishing counts poor gain. And accept a mild word of police:- Be mannerly, measured; refrain From the puffings of him of the bagpipe cheeks. Our political, even as the merchant main, A temperate gale requires For the ship that haven seeks; Neither God of the winds ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... same combination of notes and tones do not excite devotion, love, or poetic melancholy in a native of Indostan and of Europe. And "the Highlander has the same warlike ideas annexed to the sound of a bagpipe (an instrument which an Englishman derides), as the Englishman has to that of a trumpet or fife," (Dr. Brown's Union of Poetry and Music, p. 58.) So "the music of the Turks is very different from the Italian, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... (DEAN) angel with book; (2) angel with shield bearing date 1489; (3) lion versus griffin; (4) griffin devouring human leg; (5) owl; (6) mermaid with mirror and hair-brush; (7) two pigs dancing to bagpipe played by a third; (8) Jonah thrown to the whale; (9) man wheeling another who holds a reed and a bag; (10) fox caught carrying off goose by dog and by woman with distaff; (11) winged animal; (12) hart, gorged and chained; (13) pelican feeding young; (14) Jonah ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... she doesn't have a servant, and all the time she has a mother-in-law, who is pie crust, and Miss Lou Barbee, who's a bagpipe, and with the doors locked and windows shut so no one can see, she has worked herself to death. What I want done is to have an invitation sent her from an old friend to be the guest of the hospital here for a month, and you will be the friend and she will never know it. Miss ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... and imposing scene. As the procession moved slowly along, the band in the Chief's boat struck up a lively, martial sort of air, on instruments similar to those we had heard last night; the tone of which is not unlike the drawling sound of the bagpipe, the bass or drone being produced by a long horn, and the squeaking sounds by four trumpets, two of which have stops in the middle, by which the ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... vineyards. Close at her father's side was the gentle Evangeline seated, Spinning flax for the loom, that stood in the corner behind her. Silent awhile were its treadles, at rest was its diligent shuttle, While the monotonous drone of the wheel, like the drone of a bagpipe, Followed the old man's songs and united the fragments together. As in a church, when the chant of the choir at intervals ceases, Footfalls are heard in the aisles, or words of the priest at the altar, So, in each pause of the song, with measured ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the seditious pretext that the length of the Office of incensing was too long to be filled up entirely by singing, M. Widor, seated at his desk, rolled forth stale fragments of music splashed about above, imitating the human voice and the flute, the bagpipe and the bassoon, or indeed, tired of affectations, he blew furiously on the keys, ending by imitating the roll of locomotives over iron bridges, letting all ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... it is that three merrier maids never travelled from St. Malo to Le Mans on a summer's day. Even the Raven forgot her woes, and became so exhilarated that she smashed her bromide bottle out of the window, declaring herself cured, and tried to sing 'Hail Columbia,' in a voice like an asthmatic bagpipe. ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... morning when we left Halifax I was awakened by the roll of the British drum and the stirring strains of the Highland bagpipe. Ready equipped for the tedious journey before us, from Halifax to Pictou in the north of the colony, I was at the inn-door at six, watching the fruitless attempts of the men to pile our mountain ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... acquired habit they could suffer pandemonium to reign all over the house, and yet lie ranked in the kitchen like Egyptian mummies, only that the sound of their snoring rose and fell ceaselessly like the drone of a bagpipe. Here the Six-Footers invaded them—in their citadel, so to speak; counted the bunks and the sleepers; proposed to put me in bed to one of the lasses, proposed to have one of the lasses out to make room for me, fell over chairs, and made noise enough to waken the dead: the whole ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conclusion there was a moresca in which was simulated the agricultural work of the peasants. The fields were prepared, the seed sown, the grain cut and threshed, and the harvest feast followed. Finally a native dance to the accompaniment of the bagpipe was executed. ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... a harp to give out the nasal whine of the bagpipe, or the throat of a nightingale to emit the caw of a raven, the aesthetic sense would not be more startled and offended than to hear from feminine lips, rosily wreathed by beauty and youth, issue the words, "The concert will come off on Wednesday." This vulgarism should never be heard beyond the ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... which was situated at the end of the long and rather gloomy corridor of the upper storey. Highly incensed at her sister's slowness, she was hastening along the corridor, when, to her supreme astonishment, she suddenly saw the figure of a man in kilts, with a bagpipe under his arm, emerge through the half-open door of the boudoir, and with a peculiar gliding motion advance towards her. A curious feeling, with which she was totally unfamiliar, compelled her to remain mute and motionless; and in this condition she awaited the approach ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... only weep with him. At last he said, 'Dear Antonio, I see there is no remedy. You say your master is below, beg him, I pray, to stay till to-morrow, and we will send for the maidens of the neighbourhood, and for a violin and a bagpipe, and we will dance and cast away care for a moment.' And then he said something in old Greek, which I scarcely understood, but which I think was equivalent to, 'Let us eat, drink, and be merry, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe. ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... is a wild, irregular species of music, peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland. It is performed on a bagpipe, and adapted to excite or assuage passion, and particularly to rouse a martial spirit among troops ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Dastard, fast and loose, Thou weathercocke of mutabilitie, White-livered Paisant, wilt thou vowe and sweare, Face and make semblance with thy bagpipe othes Of that thou never meanst to execute? Pure cowardice, for feare to cracke thy necke With the huge Caos of thy bodies waight, Hath sure begot this true contrition. Then fast and pray, and see if thou canst winne, A goodlie pardon ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... unpleasant to him; and I really am persuaded he has a conscience that would gild the inside of a dungeon. The feats of our bare-legged warriors in the late War [BERG-SCHOTTEN, among whom I was a Colonel], accompanied by a PIBRACH [elegiac bagpipe droning MORE SUO] in his outer room, have an effect on the old Don, which would delight you." [Keith, i. 129; "Dresden, 25th February, 1770:" to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... timbrel and the harp, And delight in the sound of the bagpipe; They while away their days in bliss, And in a twinkling go down to ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... and louder, and the dance of the white moon-fires more and more rapid. Gradually they began to be aware of a sound of distant music. It was the sound of a bagpipe, and they rode towards it with great joy. It came from the bottom of a deep, cup-like hollow. In the midst of the hollow was an old man with a red cap and withered face. He sat beside a fire of sticks, and had a burning torch thrust into the earth at ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... When the mighty heart of Scotland, all too big to slumber more, Burst in wrath and exultation, like a huge volcano's roar! There they stand, the batter'd columns, underneath the murky sky, In the hush of desperation, not to conquer but to die. Hark! the bagpipe's fitful wailing—not the pibroch loud and shrill, That, with hope of bloody banquet, lured the ravens from the hill— But a dirge both low and solemn, fit for ears of dying men, Marshall'd for their latest battle, never more to fight ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... through the gothic window of Alloway kirk, and on riding near, beheld a batch of the district witches dancing merrily round their master, the devil, who kept them "louping and flinging" to the sound of a bagpipe. He knew several of the old crones, and smiled at their gambols, for they were dancing in their smocks: but one of them, and she happened to be young and rosy, had on a smock shorter than those of her companions by two spans at least, which so moved the farmer that he exclaimed, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... a man of forty, and under the Commonwealth he had been famous in Dryden's contemptuous phrase as "the loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train"; but he was no sooner a minister of Charles than he flung himself into the debauchery of the Court with an ardour which surprised even his master. "You are the wickedest dog in England!" laughed the king at some ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... he was carried to the gallows, Jack played a fine tune of his own composing on the bagpipe, which retains the name of Macpherson's tune to ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... despondency; and Malcolm, who hated crowds, and knew himself a mark for the rude observations of a free-spoken populace, shrank up to him, when Sir James, nodding in time to the tones of a bagpipe that was playing at the hostel door, flung his bridle to Brewster the groom, laughed at his glum and contemptuous looks, merrily hailed the gudewife with her brown face and big silver ear-rings, seated himself on the bench at the long wooden table under the great garland of fir-boughs, ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are great auditoriums where big events, musical and oratorical, bring the people together in a way that enlarges their spiritual horizon. Andrew Carnegie has ever had a passion for music. At Skibo Castle the meals are announced by bagpipe. Of course I admit that whether the bagpipe is a musical instrument or not is a matter of argument, for just what constitutes music my Irish friend, George Bernard Shaw, says is a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... early middle ages the name chorus was given to a primitive bagpipe without a drone. The instrument is best known by the Latin description contained in the apocryphal letter of St Jerome, ad Dardanum: "Chorus quoque simplex, pellis cum duabus cicutis aereis, et per primam inspiratur per secundam vocem emittit." Several illuminated MSS.[1] from the 9th to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... quiet, mysterious manner, and the three dogs looked at him uneasily, Sneeshing uttering a low growl, as if he had unpleasant memories of bagpipe melodies and stones thrown at him because he had been unable to bear the ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... a charade is to try and puzzle your audience as much as you can. You must choose a word of two or more syllables, such as "Bagpipe." First you must act the word "Bag," and be sure that the word is mentioned, though you must be careful to bring it in in such a way that the audience shall not guess it is ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... Pelisson during his confinement in the Bastile, which consisted in feeding a spider, which he had discovered forming its web in the corner of a small window. For some time he placed his flies at the edge, while his valet, who was with him, played on a bagpipe: little by little, the spider used itself to distinguish the sound of the instrument, and issued from its hole to run and catch its prey. Thus calling it always by the same sound, and placing the flies at a still greater distance, he succeeded, after several months, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... master had also studied wild animals. He is most successful in the bear. In the same gallery is another chef-d'oeuvre of the same year—a hilly landscape with a shepherdess singing to her child, a shepherd playing on the bagpipe, and ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... cried aloud, "To you it is commanded, O peoples, nations: 'The moment you hear the sound of the trumpet, flute, lute, harp, bagpipe, and all kinds of musical instruments, you shall fall down and worship the golden image. Whoever does not fall down and worship shall be thrown into a burning, fiery furnace.'" So when all the people heard the ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... fancy for oak boughs and white roses. The weather was pleasant, the company of the best, the roads very noble after our Highland sheep tracks. Together with our English friends, and enlivened by much good claret and by music of bagpipe and drum, we strolled on through a fine, populous country until we came to a town called Preston, where we thought we would tarry for a day or two. However, circumstances arose which detained us somewhat longer. (I dare say you ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... sounds a flourish on that delightful sonorous instrument, the bagpipe, then loquitor, "Tak tent a' ye land louping hallions, the meickle deil tamn ye, tat are within the bounds. If any o' ye be foond fishing in ma Lort Preadalpine's gruns, he'll be first headit, and syne hangit, and syne droom't; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... at night, he is not precisely as cool and collected as he was at one in the day. Another one calls a man so when he lies on the floor and holds himself on by the carpet. So,—as to soundness, some persons can not see that a horse is unsound, unless he works his flanks like the drone of a bagpipe, or blows and roars like a blacksmith's bellows; while some are so fastidious as to consider a horse as next to valueless because he may have a corn that he never feels, or a thrush for which he is not, nor likely to be, ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... he writes Bannockburn and the spirit is fired with patriotic devotion to native land. We hear the bagpipe and the drum and see the martial clans gathering in serried ranks and catch the glint of their arms and armor as they flash back the sunlight. We hear their lusty calls as they rush together to defend the hills and the homes they love. We see, again, the Wallace and the Bruce ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... a word, he familiarized his readers with the AEsthetik of Germany. He published in 1830 his Sartor Resartus, which, clothing the man in 'der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid,' usurped for him at once an office not inferior to that of the Erd-geist in Faust. The shrill notes of the bagpipe of the critic of Craigenputtock blew across the mountains and valleys of his island home, rousing the judge on the bench, and, penetrating the long halls of Cambridge and Oxford, streamed yet distinct and powerful to our shores. Astonished ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... fashion when Christmas was come To call in all his old neighbours with bagpipe and drum, With a good cheer enough to furnish every old room, And old liquor able to make a cat speak, and man dumb; Like an old courtier of the queen's, And the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... triumph in a better cause. But that day was an evil day to all at Logan Braes. A recruiting sergeant got Lawrie into the tent, over which floated the colours of the 42d Regiment, and in the intoxication of victory, whisky, and the bagpipe, the young champion was as fairly enlisted into his Majesty's service, as ever young girl, without almost knowing it, was married at Gretna Green; and as the 42d were under orders to sail in a week, gold could not have bought off such ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... there will be the knight's ale, and the foresters' venison, and there will be Kit Scrapesqueak with his fiddle, and little Tom Whistlerap with his fife and tabor, and Sam Trumtwang with his harp, and Peter Muggledrone with his bagpipe, and how I shall dance with Will Whitethorn!" added the girl, clapping her hands as she spoke, and bounding from the ground with the ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... first sight. So had the child's family, which was only natural. But the doctor's case was what struck me. He was the usual cut-and-dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong Edinburgh accent, and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir, he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that Sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him. I knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... yet seen in the New World. They advanced in three divisions—the regulars in the centre, commanded by the gallant Lord Howe, and a blue column of provincials on either flank. To the martial music of their bands or the shrill notes of the bagpipe they gaily marched through the midsummer woods, the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... Sheil, where the Prince's monument now stands. Charles, with a small body of Macdonalds, was the first to arrive, early in the morning. He and his men rowed up the long narrow Loch Sheil. The valley was solitary—not a far-off bagpipe broke the silence, not a figure appeared against the skyline of the hills. With sickening anxiety the small party waited, while the minutes dragged out their weary length. At last, when suspense was strained to the utmost, about two in the afternoon, a sound of pipes was heard, and a body ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... Pibroch, (pi'-brok). In Scotland, a Highland air played on the bagpipe before the Highlanders when they go out to battle.—-Doneuil Dhu, (donnil ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... arches of an old Gothic window which still faces the highway, to see a dance of witches, merrily footing it round their old sooty blackguard master, who was keeping them all alive with the power of his bagpipe. The farmer, stopping his horse to observe them a little, could plainly descry the faces of many old women of his acquaintance and neighbourhood. How the gentleman was dressed tradition does not say, but that the ladies were all ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... windmills, on the left. At the end of Bishopgate-Street-Without a considerable crowd was collected round a party of comely young milkmaids, who were executing a lively and characteristic dance to the accompaniment of a bagpipe and fiddle. Instead of carrying pails as was their wont, these milkmaids, who were all very neatly attired, bore on their heads a pile of silver plate, borrowed for the occasion, arranged like a pyramid, and adorned with ribands and ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... by enemies 'tis said, The laurel, which adorns thy head, Must one day come in competition, By virtue of some sly petition: Yet mum for that; hope still the best, Nor let such cares disturb thy rest. Methinks I hear thee loud as trumpet, As bagpipe shrill or oyster-strumpet; Methinks I see thee, spruce and fine, With coat embroider'd richly shine, And dazzle all the idol faces, As through the hall thy worship paces; (Though this I speak but at a venture, Supposing thou hast tick with Hunter,) Methinks I see a blackguard rout ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... matters went on not intolerably; for David's musical soul supplied the deficiency in the sounds that entered his unwearied ears. And then he sang so loud himself, that he certainly could hear no one else, his voice being as monopolizing as the drone of a bagpipe—or as a violent advocate for free trade! Happy urchins when this was the case! for they were sure to be dismissed with the most flattering encomiums on their vocal powers, when, if truth must be told, the good old man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... put on their best rayment, and doo hereby take occasion to goo a gossipping. Your merry wives of Bentley will sometimes look in ye glass, chirpe a cupp merrily, yet not indecently. In the Peak they are much given to dance after the bagpipes—almost every towne hath a bagpipe in it." "The Chesterfield brank," says Mr. Llewellyn Jewitt, "is a remarkably good example, and has the additional interest of bearing a date. It is nine inches in height, and six inches and three-quarters across the hoop. It consists of a hoop of iron, hinged on either side and fastening ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... of the marriage-day, (for the ceremony is always performed in the evening, that is, the final ceremony, for they are generally betrothed, and the fatah read a year before,) is ushered in by the music of the town or tribe, consisting of a bagpipe and two small drums, serenading the bride first, and then the bridegroom, who generally walks through the streets, very finely dressed, with all the town at his heels; during which all the women assemble at the bride's house, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the extreme right, the most exposed of all, being in the air, was almost annihilated at the very first shock. lt was formed of the 75th regiment of Highlanders. The bagpipe-player in the centre dropped his melancholy eyes, filled with the reflections of the forests and the lakes, in profound inattention, while men were being exterminated around him, and seated on a drum, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... then, it's true, roused by some momentary strain, it swelled upwards in full chorus, but gradually these passing flights grew rarer, and finally all ceased, save a long, low, droning sound, like the expiring sigh of a wearied bagpipe. His fingers still continued mechanically to beat time upon the table, and still his head nodded sympathetically to the music; his eyelids closed in sleep; and as the last verse concluded, a full-drawn snore announced that Monsoon, if not in the land of dreams, was at ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Paton to that of the Scotch Highlander; and it is not without strong points of resemblance. "He is brave in battle, highly hospitable; delights in simple and plaintive music and poetry, his favourite instruments being the bagpipe and fiddle; unlike the Greek, he shows little aptitude for trade; and, unlike the Bulgarian, he is very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... disposal. This tribe of the Clan Ranald seem to have been too barbarous for even those lawless times, while by a strange contumacy in latter times, a representative of that ancient family pertinaciously continued to proclaim its infamy and downfall by the adherence to the wild strain of bagpipe music (their family pibroch called Cillechriost), at once indicative of its shame and submission. Kenneth's character and policies were of a higher order, and in the result he was everywhere the gainer by them." He was supported by Murdoch Mackenzie, II. of ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... of December, and afterwards for the nine days preceding Christmas. The same words and music serve, however, for both celebrations. The pifferari always go in couples, one playing on the zampogna, or bagpipe, the bass and treble accompaniment, and the other on the piffero, or pastoral pipe, which carries the air; and for the month before Christmas the sound of their instruments resounds through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... geese shall cackle on the poop, No more the bagpipe through the orlop sound, No more the midshipmen, a jovial group, Shall toast the girls, and push the bottle round. In death's dark road at anchor fast they stay, Till Heaven's loud signal shall in thunder roar; Then ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart |
