"Fiddler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in holiday dress with flowers in their hats, a fiddler in the lead. They carry a keg of home-brewed beer and a smaller keg of gin, both decorated with greens which are placed on the table. They help themselves to glasses and drink. Then they sing and dance a country dance to the melody of "There came two ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... afford to despise pedantry: did he meet a traveller who amused his fancy he would give him the pass-word ('the fiddler's paid,' or what not), as though the highway had not its code of morals; nor did he scruple, when it served his purpose, to rob the bunglers of his own profession. By this means, indeed, he raised the standard of the Road and warned the incompetent to embrace an easier trade. While ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... sort of word was that for him to be using, even in his mind? To-morrow she would be gone, this wandering fiddler, and all this would be forgotten in a day, for he had the new cattle to see to, and a hundred ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... Hopewell found it, and strung it himself, and used to play on it slyly, and so taught himself to be a fiddler, before his mother had any idea he knew one note from another. She was extremely deaf at the last and could not hear him playing at odd times, up ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... he began knocking on the table with his knuckles, as if there was a room full of people asking him to sing. In short, my father was drunk as a fiddler; the last brew finished him; and he began roaring away all kinds of droll songs, and telling all manner of stories as if he ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Whereto the fiddler answered, "Never was king of any land better or happier, nor his kinsmen nor vassals; know that for certain. Right glad were they when we set forth on ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... into the restaurant at that moment and began to play wildly. The shock of his strange advent momentarily silenced the quarrel; but soon it leaped up again, under the shelter of the noisy music,—the common, tedious, tippler's quarrel. It rose higher and higher. The fiddler looked askance at it over his fiddle. Chirac cautiously observed it. Instead of attending to the music, the festal company attended to the quarrel. Three waiters in a group watched it with an impartial sporting interest. The English voices ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... elders march ahead; We dance, without a fiddler, We play at cross-touch, White and Red, ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... by previous experiences not to wear perishable finery at the barn dance, and the girls all come in pretty wash-dresses that will stand a good romp. Music is furnished by an old darkey fiddler, not violinist, who plays "Money Musk," "Fisher's Hornpipe," "Ole Dan Tucker" and any number ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... sings," went on the hermit, "it lifts its two wing covers so that the edges meet like the pointed roof of a house. Then your little fiddler, Jack, rubs one ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... was up at a Terrace Garden dance we got acquainted. No music at all in his head; but in his feet—say, he just naturally has to let his toes follow the tune, and if ragtime hadn't been invented he'd have walked slow all his life. And me? Well, I ought to dance, with Father a born fiddler, and Mother brought up with castanets in her hands. We danced twelve of the fourteen numbers together that night, and I never even noticed he had red hair. I'd been dying to dance for months. Some partner, Tim was too. That began it. We joined a class and started learning ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... Fortescue, however,[86] has told us that in his youth the Duke learnt to play the violin, and that he only abandoned it, when he was about thirty years old, "because he judged it unseemly or perhaps ill-sounding for a General to be a fiddler." The Duke is not the only great soldier who has been a musical performer. Marshal St. Cyr used to play the violin "in the quiet moments of a campaign," and Sir Hope Grant was a very ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came all the young men and ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... me, Miss Trent, but I knew your father well enough, and I knew you when you was a little 'un. In those days I had the "Green Man" in the Cut; your father often enough gave us a toon on his fiddle. A rare good fiddler he was, too! Give us a song now, ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... Lusk. "That's my game! And you done your share," she cried to the fiddler. "Here's my regards, old man! ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... didn't take the thing away he would put it into the fire. He said he was sure it would only turn out a public house "touch," and informed me that it was only one in a thousand who ever got to be anything worth listening to. He endeavoured to impress upon me what a nuisance the old fiddler was on the Fair Day; and "concluded a vigorous speech" by again reminding me that if I didn't take the fiddle out of his sight he would burn it. He did give me the chance to play out of his sight; but, knowing, young as I was, that the ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... it proved. A certain Guetem, a fiddler of the Elector of Bavaria, had entered the service of Holland, had taken part in her war against France, and had become a colonel. Chatting one evening with his comrades, he laid a wager that he would carry off some one of mark between Paris and Versailles. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... on the floor when the other had abandoned it in defeat—that being the test of victory. At last, the girl from Dryhill reeled, and was caught by half-a-dozen arms. Her adversary, holding the floor undisputed, slowed down, and someone stopped the fiddler. Sally turned from the crowded wall, and began looking about for Samson. He was not there. Lescott had seen him leave the house a few moments before, and started over to intercept the girl, as she came ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... "I am a good fiddler. The white folks have taught me to do lots of different things. I have had very few advantages and I cannot ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... fiddler, and his friend who plays the tambourine, stamp upon the boarding of the small raised orchestra in which they sit, and play a lively measure. Five or six couple come upon the floor, marshalled by a lively young negro, who is the wit of the assembly, and the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... arrived; face towards the music-room, good people, and tell me how you like it. I call it "Only a fiddler", after Andersen's story. What ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... day at a house of entertainment which must have been popular, since it contained a dancing-hall, admission to which was free, any man being privileged to invite to it any woman whom he fancied and for whose diversion he was willing to disburse a penny to the fiddler. He was accompanied on this occasion by his dog, who insisted on following him into the hall and persisted in keeping at his heels while he danced,—a proof of its fidelity which created considerable amusement, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... prosperous one, and he laid by money enough to fill two pots. The one he buried in his corn-kiln, the other under the gate of his farmyard. Well, the moujik died, and never said a word about the money to any one. One day there was a festival in the village. A fiddler was on his way to the revel when, all of a sudden, he sank into the earth—sank right through and tumbled into hell, lighting exactly there where the ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... him," she said feverishly to Allan Daly. But somebody else had already asked him. The room grew very silent all at once. Outside the fiddler had stopped for a rest and there was silence there too. Afar off they heard the low moan of the gulf—the presage of a storm already on its way up the Atlantic. A girl's laugh drifted up from the rocks ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... man the capstan—off we go, As the fiddler swings us round, With a yeo heave ho, And a rum below, Hurrah ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... and have a drop of ale; the fiddler is there.' 'No, brother, I never drank a drop of ale since my aunt went (died).' 'Well, take some tobacco, brother?' 'No, no, I have not smoked since my wife fell in the water and never came out again alive.' 'Well, let's go and play at cock-shy, ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... her and her numerous votaries for their own. As the reverend brother thundered out his denunciations of the ungodly goddess he cast his eyes often in the direction of the leading dancer, and from her they would wander to the small fiddler who sat beside the tall hat in a back pew. But somehow neither Lily nor Apollo seemed in the least conscious of any personal appeal in his glance, and when finally the question of the Christmas ball was put to vote, they both rose and unequivocally voted for it. ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... caught, they were ignorance personified as far as sporting matters went. Their original incapacity will be easily credited, when I inform them that my second best man, Buctoo, had followed the sporting occupation of a village fiddler, before he entered my service, and knew as much of the capabilities of an English rifle as he did of the "Pleiades." Jye Sing was a little better informed, for he told me confidentially, one day, he had seen ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... recount these scenes there come to me soft orchestrations of the old tunes that belonged with them. I am thinking of one just now; a mere potsherd of plantation-fiddler's folk-music which I heard first—and last—in the dance at Gilmer's. Indeed no other so widely recalls to me those whole years of disaster and chaos; the daily shock of their news, crashing in upon the brain like a shell into a ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... fiddler, in Islay, who told the story of Conall, as it had been handed down by tradition from generation to generation; just as thousands of years before the story of Odysseus and Polyphemos was told by Greek bards to ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... that's nothin'. By the cut of his jib I'd rate him as a fiddler, an' I remember once, at Brindisi, I was pointed out two counts an' a ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... Sadik Allee had a dress of honour conferred upon him, and an increase of one hundred rupees a-month made to his salary; and Gholam Ruza, and his relative the fiddler, Anees-od Dowla, were seated behind his Majesty in his carriage-and-four, and paraded through the city, as in full possession of his favour. After the King had alighted from the carriage at the palace, the coachman drove the two singers to their apartments in the Mukbura, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... intelligence that there was to be a beggar's wedding in the neighborhood. He was resolved not to miss the opportunity of seeing so curious a ceremony; and that he might enjoy the whole completely, proposed to Dr. Sheridan that he should go thither disguised as a blind fiddler, with a bandage over his eyes, and he would attend him as his man to lead him. Thus accoutred, they reached the scene of action, where the blind fiddler was received with joyful shouts. They had plenty of ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... of mankind can possibly be. But they are not properly qualified for this object of their ambition. The want of a regular education, and early habits, and some lurking remains of their dignity, will never permit them to become a match for an Italian eunuch, a mountebank, a fiddler, a player, or any regular practitioner of that tribe. The Roman emperors, almost from the beginning, threw themselves into such hands; and the mischief increased every day till the decline and final ruin of the empire. It is therefore of very great importance (provided the thing is not overdone) ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... his life. He therefore employed the Highland tour in hearing all he could, that had any bearing on his now absorbing pursuit, and in collecting materials that might promote it. With this view, when on his way from Taymouth to Blair, he had turned aside to visit the famous fiddler and composer of Scotch tunes, Neil Gow, at his house, which is still pointed out, at Inver, on the Braan water, opposite the grounds of Dunkeld. This is the entry about him in Burns's diary:—"Neil Gow plays—a ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... angrily on the rock, disappeared in a flash of fire like a burst bomb. Joost was hurled twenty feet by the explosion, and lay on the ground insensible until a herdsman found him some hours later. As he suffered no harm from the contest and became a better fiddler than ever, it is supposed that the recording angel did not inscribe his feat of Sabbath breaking against him in large letters. There were a few who doubted his story, but they had nothing more to say when ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... out the instruments, and listen for their respective sounds. You would know the gulf that separates a French horn from an English horn, and you would perceive why a player of the hautboy gets higher wages than a fiddler, though the fiddle is the more difficult instrument. You would live at a promenade concert, whereas previously you had merely existed there in a state of beatific coma, like a baby gazing at ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... swaggeringly towards the taverns. Eager hands helped them to carry in their plunder. In a few minutes the gang was entering the tavern, the long, cool room with barrels round the walls, where there were benches and a table and an old blind fiddler jerking his elbow at a jig. Noisily the party ranged about the table, and sat themselves upon the benches, while the drawers, or potboys, in their shirts, drew near to take the orders. I wonder if the reader has ever heard a sailor in the like circumstance, five minutes after he has touched ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... sawing: so the fiddler in Italian is called the "village-saw" (Sega del villaggio). He is the Alnaschar of the Englished Galland and Richardson. The tale is very old. It appears as the Brahman and the Pot of Rice in the Panchatantra; and Professor Benfey believes (as usual with him) that this, with many others, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... place between them. Finding her husband was irrecoverable, she at length got tired of the hopeless pursuit, and resolved to return home, and console herself with her music and whatever other gratifications she could command. Not long after, she fell in love with a fiddler at a second-rate theatre in Milan, and carried him off to England, which he found, if not the most agreeable, the most profitable business he could engage in. The affair was singular and curious, as showing what society may be induced to ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... here," cried Hugh; "Mr. Toil will never dare to show his face where there is a fiddler, and where people are dancing ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the faint one, Harry, that you and he were acquaintances. Besides, I had seen him, the morning before, in the crowd around the prisoners, and could have sworn he was then—saving your presence, ladies—as drunk as a fiddler. If vehicle had brought him, it could not be any that had passed me on the road, or for certain I should have recognized him. Well, here was a riddle, and I had come no nearer to guessing it when ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... called to me in a pleased voice, 'to-morrow is my birthday; and we are to have a fiddler, and there's a party of boys and girls coming in a cart, and we shall dance. I invite you. Be sociable for ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... know whether I may be able to repeat the exact words that were spoken on the occasion, but some said, "We must not part with our fiddler"; and Charles Churchill threatened to send me to the shades if I attempted to quit the cutter, into which I had gone for the purpose of attending Lieutenant Bligh': and, without further trespassing on the time of the Court, he submits his case to ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... writer of story-books! What kind of a business in life, what manner of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler." ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... to the ball-room floor, and were standing directly in front of the musicians' gallery. The young fiddler, Jim Otis, leaned over ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Westminster Abbey during Dean Stanley's time, and afterwards the Temple Church, as may be gathered from his Short Study on the Templars. In Devonshire he frequented an old-fashioned church where stringed instruments were still played, and was much delighted with the remark of a fiddler which he overheard. "Who is the King of glory?" had been given out as the anthem. While the fiddles were tuning up a voice was heard to say: "Hand us up the rosin, Tom; us'it soon tell them who's ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... making the old gentleman my great-grandfather as drunk as a fiddler, on drugged potheen," says Madam O'Connor, proudly. "The butler and he did it between them; but it was as near being murder as anything you like, because they put so much of the narcotic into the whiskey that the old man didn't come to himself for three days. That's the sort of thing for ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... to move over the face of the waters, but he must remain unseen. We have always thought that the enthusiastic Dublin man in the theatre gallery was after a critic when he cried aloud at the sight of a toppling companion: "Don't waste him. Kill a fiddler with him!" It seems more in consonance with the Celtic character; besides, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... this is a wonderfully wicked world. To find out the two vagabonds would have been hopeless; unless I could have followed them to the Back of Beyond, where the mare foaled the fiddler. ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... church hall, when the sale had ended, the fiddler tuned up his instrument, and several made ready for the dance. It was truly a pleasant sight which met the eyes of a number of the older ones as they sat back near the wall. Grouped around the large room the flower and strength of the neighbourhood chatted ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... above it on the wings of some inner beauty... Once Fred Starratt would have felt some of the father's scorn for Felix Monet—the patronizing scorn most men bring to an estimate of the incomprehensible. What could one expect of a fiddler? Yes, he would have felt something worse than scorn—he would have ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Malaga, whose 'fancy' is a little tomtit of a fiddler of eighteen, cannot in conscience make such a boy marry the girl. Besides, she has no cause to do him an ill turn.—Indeed, Monsieur Cardot wants a man of thirty at least. Our notary, I feel sure, will be proud to have a famous man for his son-in-law. So just feel yourself all ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... this, the father and mother were talking at table about some new settlers who had recently moved up on the mountain and were about to be married. They had no fiddler for ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... of the vaulted room sat a fiddler and a fine-featured gipsy-girl with a zither; their instruments lay in their laps, and they seemed to be looking about them with ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... after the fiddler on the place. Uncle Jim was the fiddler. Andy Jackson, a white boy, raised him. He learned him to read and write in slavery. After slavery I went to learn from a Negro man at night. I learned a little bit. My master wouldn't cared if we had ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... in many a merry bout and pleasant felony; he had not seen the man for two years; a friendly glass was offered and accepted. Two girls were of the party, to oblige whom Robinson's old acquaintance sent for Blind Bill, the fiddler, and soon Robinson was dancing and shouting with the girls like mad—"High cut," "side cut," "heel and toe," "sailor's fling," and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... where was your sight, OEdipus? you walk with hare's eyes, do you? I'll have them glazed, rogue; an you say the word, they shall be glazed for you: come we must have you turn fiddler again, slave, get a base viol at your back, and march in a tawny coat, with one sleeve, to Goose-fair; then you'll know us, you'll see us then, you will, gulch, you will. Then, Will't please your worship to ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... kingdom; as my mother, who for many years was spouse to a marching regiment, gave me into this bad world, aboard the packet-boat, somewhere between Donaghadee and Portpatrick. By our common family, I mean, Sir, the family of the Muses. I am a fiddler and a poet; and you, I am told, play an exquisite violin, and have a standard taste in the belles lettres. The other day, a brother catgut gave me a charming Scots air of your composition. If I ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... prejudices of writers like Mr. Croker and Lord Macaulay, who, agreeing in little else, agree in denouncing "this miserable mesalliance" with one who figures in their pages sometimes as a music-master, sometimes as a fiddler, never by any accident in his real character of a professional singer and musician of established reputation, pleasing manners, ample means, and unimpeachable integrity. The repugnance of the daughters to the match was reasonable and intelligible, but to appreciate the tone taken by her ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... remained. Very heroically a young man had done nothing. Hurrah and good-bye! The calciums of curiosity turned on an obscure fiddler who, after murdering another young man, had succeeded in bilking ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... saw the white head of John Clerk, of Eldin, that country gentleman who, playing with pieces of cork on his own dining-table, invented modern naval warfare. There was that portrait of Neil Gow, to sit for which the old fiddler walked daily through the streets of Edinburgh arm in arm with the Duke of Athole. There was good Harry Erskine, with his satirical nose and upper lip, and his mouth just open for a witticism to pop out; Hutton ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mainmast of a ship had been erected, and from its summit hung wreaths and fluttering ribbons: this was called a maypole. Men and maids danced round the tree, and sang as loudly as they could, to the violin of the fiddler. There were merry doings at sundown and in the moonlight, but I took no part in them—what has a little mouse to do with a May dance? I sat in the soft moss and held my sausage-peg fast. The moon threw its beams especially upon one spot, where ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... too improbable, and the characters well individualized. Here, also, Mr. Trowbridge is most successful in his treatment of the less ambitiously designed figures. The relation between the dwarf Hercules fiddler and the heroine Marie seems to be a suggestion from Victor Hugo's Quasimodo and Esmeralda, though the treatment is original and touching. Indeed, there is a good deal of pathos in the book, marred here and there with the sentimental extract of Dickens-flowers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the simplest manner in the world. A fortnight since I happened to be sitting in the stocks, in the absurd but accursed town of Bovey Tracey in Devonshire. My companion—for the machine discommodated two—was a fiddler, convicted (like myself) of vagrancy; a bottle-nosed man, who took the situation with such phlegm as only experience can breed, and munched a sausage under the commonalty's gaze. 'Good Lord,' said I to myself, eyeing him, 'and ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... the end of the family scene previously described, a noise was heard without, the latch was lifted, and a troop of Lecour's neighbours and dependants pushed in, an old fiddler at their head, who, clattering forward in sabots, removed his blue tuque from his head, and politely ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... experiences abroad. She had not liked Europe—being quite frankly a provincial person. To Castleman County a foreigner was a strange, dark person who mixed up his consonants, and was under suspicion of being a fiddler or an opera-singer. The people she had met under her husband's charge had been socially indubitable, but still, they were foreigners, and Sylvia could never really be ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... ambergrise, a stink it lies, But well dispersed, is incense to the skies. P. Who starves by nobles, or with nobles eats? The wretch that trusts them, and the rogue that cheats. Is there a lord who knows a cheerful noon Without a fiddler, flatterer, or buffoon? Whose table, wit or modest merit share, Unelbowed by a gamester, pimp, or play'r? Who copies yours or Oxford's better part, To ease the oppressed, and raise the sinking heart? Where'er he shines, O Fortune, gild the scene, And angels guard him in the golden mean! There, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... and the rest of us following on. It give us a first-class jolt to find all the girls so quiet-looking; and they being that way braced up the whole crowd to be like a dancing-party back East. To see the boys a-bowing away to their partners, while Jose—he was the fiddler, Jose was—was a tuning up, you wouldn't a-knowed where ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... looking to the right or the left, but now the stainless man felt himself dishonored, and with morbid sensitiveness referred everything he saw and heard to his own disgrace, while the inhabitants of the little town made him feel that he had been ill-advised, when he ventured to make a fiddler's daughter ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... him the steps, which he soon learned to perform with a grace perhaps equaled by no living creature other than a fat brown bear. The ladies were at first a little shy and inclined to stand at arm's length, but Mary had set the fashion and the others soon followed. I had taken a fiddler to my room and had learned the dance from Brandon; and was able to teach it also, though I lacked practice to make my step perfect. The princess had needed no practice, but had danced beautifully from the first, her strong young limbs and supple body taking as naturally ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... for more'n twenty year, and in all that endurin' time he's stuck as close to shore as a fiddler. With all his bold talk about ships and sailin', I tell you he warn't ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... now? Why, you're as fine as a fiddler!" cried Mr. Joel Ferris, who was fast becoming familiar, on the strength ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... man so various, that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome: Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon: Then all for women, rhyming, dancing, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. Blest madman! who could every hour employ With something new to wish or to enjoy! Railing and praising were his usual themes; And both, to show ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... owner—and a most excellent business man. He had large interests in Colorado. One mine he was going to sell. An old gentleman and his daughter were just ready to buy it. The papers were all drawn, and they were to pay over their money that evening. But some horrid young man, a wandering fiddler or something, got to meddling and persuaded them not ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... Prim and his charming daughter, not to be outdone by their neighbors, cleared the front drawing-room of its heavy furniture, covered every inch of the tufted carpet with linen crash, and with old black Jones as fiddler and M. Robinette—a French exile—as instructor in the cutting of pigeon wings and the proper turning out of ankles and toes, opened the first of a series of morning soirees for the young folk of the neighborhood, to which were invited not ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... from Cambridge to the Christian Observer, very feelingly states the case of a Gypsey family, the father of which, being a travelling tinker and fiddler, intimated, he would be glad to have all his children brought up to some other mode of life, and even to embrace some other himself; but he finds a difficulty in it. Not having been brought up in husbandry, he could not ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... square was represented a marsh area divided into two parts. One of these showed breeding pools, where the immense shore crop develops. The other showed fiddler crabs and other creatures that provide a natural drainage for the meadows inhabited by them. Areas where fiddler crabs live are never mosquito breeders, and as a matter of fact only a small percentage of the entire salt, marsh country is dangerous. Illustrations ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... quarrel, as they did every evening; fowls and goats and pigs were settling down for the night with the squawks and bleats and squeals which also took place every evening; on the brown-hollowed grass-bank between Colgan's and O'Reilly's, old Morissy, the blind fiddler, was feebly scraping and twangling, according to his custom every evening, and, for that matter, all day long. Even the wisps of straw and scraps of paper blowing down the middle of the wide roadway seemed to have whirled over ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... Fiddler, play a little longer! Why this hurry, say? I'm but half-way through a measure— Yet a little play! Smiling in her wreath of flowers Is my love not fair? See us in the charmed circle, Flitting light as air! Haste thee, loved one, for the music Shall be hushed anon... (O sweet ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... came to steal something, as you say the words, sir," Bows said. "Do you mean to say that you came to pay a visit to poor old Bows, the fiddler; or to Mrs. Bolton, at the porter's lodge? O fie! Such a fine gentleman as Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, doesn't condescend to walk up to my garret, or to sit in a laundress's kitchen, but for reasons of his own. And my belief is that you came ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... conduct as yours? One moment you tell me you are going to become the greatest musician in the world, and straight you fill my house with fiddlers. Tri. I am clear out of that scrape now, sir. Old F. Then from a fiddler you are metamorphosed into a philosopher; and for the noise of drums, trumpets, and hautboys, you substitute a vile jargon, more unintelligible than was ever heard at the tower of Babel. Tri. You are right, sir, I have found out ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the frolic was at its height, an unexpected visitor announced himself. It was Uncle Jake Norris, who lived on the far side of the mountain. The fiddler waved his bow at Uncle Jake, and the boys and girls cried "Howdy," as the visitor stood beaming and smiling in the doorway. To these demonstrations Uncle Jake, "a chunk of a white man with a whole heart," as he described ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... is the fact that magnetism is by no means confined to those who have finely trained intellects or who have achieved great reputations. Some vaudeville buffoon or some gypsy fiddler may have more attractive power than the virtuoso who had spent years in developing his mind and his technic. The average virtuoso thinks far more of his "geist," his "talent" (or as Emerson would have it, "the ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... fiddler had spent the whole of one bitter winter morning playing through the dreary streets without any taking pity upon his plight. As he came to the cathedral he felt an overmastering desire to enter and pour out his distress ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... forth the horses one after the other—Kingmaker, the Fiddler, Pittapat, and the others. We spent a delightful two hours. The sun dropped; the shadows lengthened. From the fields the men began to come in. They drove the wagons and hay ricks into the spacious enclosure, and set leisurely about ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... lips to the liquor which was brought for them, Dennis drank in a loud voice the health of Lord George Gordon, President of the Great Protestant Association; which toast Hugh pledged likewise, with corresponding enthusiasm. A fiddler who was present, and who appeared to act as the appointed minstrel of the company, forthwith struck up a Scotch reel; and that in tones so invigorating, that Hugh and his friend (who had both been ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... tearful ones!" Gerald protested. "It was the tears I would have dried. Tears, idle tears, I know not whence they come; tears from the depth of some despairing fiddler." ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... the dance commenced; the old fiddler struck up some favorite tune, and over the floor they went; the flying feet of the dancers were heard, pat, pat, over the apartment till the clock warned them it was twelve at midnight, or what some call "low twelve," to distinguish it from ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... come, Johnny. There's no get out of it. Here's Jim Mason with me, and we've got orders to stun you and pack you if you show fight. The blessed fiddler from Mudgee didn't turn up. Dave Regan burst his concertina, and they're ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... a time, ever so many thowsand years ago, before there was not no Lord Mares, nor no Shirryffs, nor not ewen no Aldermen, a Gent of the name of Horfay lived in Grease. He was the werry grandest Fiddler of his time, a regler JOEY KIM. Well, he married a werry bewtiful wife, of the name of Yourridisee, and they was both werry appy, till one day, as she was a having a run in a field, a norrid serpent bit her in her heel; so she died. Well, while poor Mr. Horfay is a telling us all about ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... but professes that he does not go by his right name. He sings, plays on the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not very sensible. He is called an Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole; a somebody that married a great fortune in Mexico, and ran away with her jewels to Constantinople; a priest, a fiddler, a vast nobleman, The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity about him, but in vain. However, nothing has been made out against him -.' he is released: and, what convinces me that he is not a gentleman, stays here, and talks of his being ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... a fiddler. Ever so often he had a big dance in their parlor. I'd try to dance by myself. He had his own music by the hands on his place. He let them have dances at the quarters every now and then. Dancing was a piece of ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not very sensible. He is called an Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole; a somebody that married a great fortune in Mexico, and ran away with her jewels to Constantinople; a priest, a fiddler, a vast nobleman. The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity about him, but in vain. However, nothing has been made out against him;[1] he is released; and, what convinces me that he is not a gentleman, stays here, and talks of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... verbal literalness of translation is with Prout, but the spirit of the fiddler of Beranger glows through the free rendition ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... dismal failure. It is cold at the heart of it. It has no mirth, but is like a dance without music: like a dance of deaf mutes that I witnessed once, pretending to keep time to the inaudible scrapings of a deaf and dumb fiddler. ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... have been called Out of Paganini—founded upon that distinguished fiddler's life, although (as the Author says) "it is necessarily speculative as to ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... blessing on one and all Beneath this roof abiding! The road must be faced. To the fiddler we call: Tune up! Our cares deriding, With dance and with song We'll shorten the way so weary and long. Right ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... to say to the little yellow fiddler, after an evening's frolic at the Interpreter's, "Davids, clear away the tables and the glasses, and play fishes-hornspikes."[55] He was a kind, affectionate creature, and his devotion to "Monsieur Johns" and "Madame ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... streaming ribbons—of tune out of a fiddle. They stand, unsmiling, but not serious, in the broad sunlight opposite the fruit-shop; the pink spider of a hand beats the guitar, the little squat hand, with a brass-and-turquoise ring, forces the reluctant flute, and the fiddler's arm tries to ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... Fiddler, n. a New South Wales and Victorian name for a species of Ray, Trygonorhina fasciata, Mull. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... be nothing more beautiful,' said Claude, 'than the two first groups, the fiddler, and then the bride with ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... thunderings and pealings, of course they do! and the third fiddler, little Tweaks, of the county town, goes into fits. Ho, ho, ho, I can't bear it (mimicking); take me out! Ha, ha, ha! O what a one she is! She'll be the death of me. Ha, ha, ha, ha! That's very ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... old Collins', Quite a bunch was there before, You could hear the fiddler calling, And the scraping on the floor. Through the dingy sodhouse window Gleamed a sickly yellow light, Where I helped you from the wagon, Holding you so loving tight. Then they called out, "Choose your pardners, Numbers five, six, ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... which resembles the Danish ballad of Ribolt, was taken down from the recitation of an old fiddler in Northumberland: in one verse there is an hiatus, owing to the failure of the reciter's memory. The refrain should be repeated in ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... nothing, and while his wife calmly slept he tortured himself with questions. How came Racah the priest to be metamorphosed into Racah the pianist? Then the father plucked at the counterpane like a dying fiddler.... ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... belief that it is tracery work of wood. We ascended the rough stone steps through a winding stair to the turrets, where we had such a view of the surrounding country, as can be obtained from no other place. On the top of the centre and highest turret, is a grotesque figure of a fiddler; rather a strange looking object, we thought, to occupy the most elevated pinnacle on the house of God. All dwellings in the neighbourhood appear like so many dwarfs couching at the feet of the Minster; while its own vastness and beauty impress the observer with feelings of awe ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... Tamson is for Thompson and Dabbs for Dobbs (Robert). We have the same change of vowel in Raper, for Roper. Venner generally means hunter, Fr. veneur, but sometimes represents the West-country form of Fenner, the fen-dweller; cf. Vidler for fiddler, and ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... as some of the clear Britishers call him—" laughed Heliobas, putting on his overcoat as he spoke; "the 'Spanish fiddler,' as the crabbed musical critics define him when they want to be contemptuous, which they do pretty often. These, together with the literary 'oracles,' have their special cliques, —their little chalked out circles, in which they, like tranced ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Frederic the Ruler. But there was another Frederic, the Frederic of Rheinsberg, the fiddler and flute-player, the poetaster and metaphysician. Amidst the cares of State the King had retained his passion for music, for reading, for writing, for literary society. To these amusements he devoted all the time that he could snatch from the business of war and government; and perhaps ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... purty an' ez peart ez she kin be. Clever? W'y! she ain't no chicken, but she's good enough for me. What's her name? 'Tis kind o' common, yit I ain't ashamed to tell, She's ole "Fiddler" Filkin's daughter, an' her dad ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... of Sweden on the eve of May Day lads go about carrying each a bunch of fresh birch twigs wholly or partly in leaf. With the village fiddler at their head, they make the round of the houses singing May songs; the burden of their songs is a prayer for fine weather, a plentiful harvest, and worldly and spiritual blessings. One of them carries a basket in which he ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... masculinity of the manager. For, according to Sully, the term when applied to the feminine division of mankind has precisely an opposite meaning. The woman manager (he says) economizes, saves, oppresses her household with bargains and contrivances, and looks sourly upon any pence that are cast to the fiddler for even a single jig-step on life's arid march. Wherefore her men-folk call her blessed, and praise her; and then sneak out the backdoor to see the Gilhooly Sisters do a ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... who has to fork out—for this poor devil here will have to pay the fiddler, since it is ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... fiddler in amazement when he heard him name so large a sum. He thought that Clement believed the midget had some mysterious power and might be of service for him. He was by no means certain that the doctor would think him such a great find or would offer to ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the time of my hearing the first music I ever heard—unless you call the singing of the birds music (we had plenty of that), and the bells on the breeze from a distance, when the wind was south. The first music (so to call it) that I heard was from a blind fiddler that came to us. What brought him, I don't know—whether he lost his way, or what; but he lost his way after he left us. His dog seems to have been in fault: but he got into a pool in the middle of the wood, and there he lay drowned, with one foot up on the bank, when I went ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... a fiddler fiddle? I have. I heard a fiddler fiddle, and the hey-dey-diddle of his frolicking fiddle called back the happy days of my boyhood. The old field schoolhouse with its batten doors creaking on wooden hinges, its windows innocent of glass, and its great, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... An old fiddler and more peasants appear. The men sit down on one side of the room, the women on the other, and the former lover, Mikko, thinking himself the bridegroom-elect, cheerfully invites every one to dance. The old fiddler strikes up a merry air, and they dance the ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Hedgehog appeared in the doorway, three of the younger children, concealed in a bower of branches, commenced to sing an ode composed by Uncle Columbus for the occasion, beginning "Welcome to our honoured guest,"—while a fiddler hired for the occasion accompanied it upon the violin, ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... she was, nevertheless, a heroine of the Amazonian species. She tripped up Pat Morgan, and laid that athlete suddenly on his back, upon the grass plot before the hall door, to his eternal disgrace, when he 'offered' to kiss her, while the fiddler and tambourine-man were playing. She used to wring big boys by the ears; overawe fishwives with her voluble invective; put dangerous dogs to rout with sticks and stones, and evince, in all emergencies, an adventurous spirit ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... was placed for us, who had come off the sea, a substantial dinner, and a variety of wines. Then we had coffee and tea. I observed in the room several elegantly bound books and other marks of improved life. Soon afterwards a fiddler appeared, and a little ball began. Rasay himself danced with as much spirit as any man, and Malcolm bounded like a roe. Sandie Macleod, who has at times an excessive flow of spirits, and had it now, was, in his days of absconding, known by the name of M'Cruslick, which it seems ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... school. Then he spoke of his childish passion for the gardener's little daughter, who had subsequently run away with a lackey; of his first sermon as a young abbate, after which he found in the offertory bag, in addition to the usual collection, a number of love letters; of his doings as a fiddler in the orchestra of the San Samueli Theatre; of the pranks which he and his companions had played in the alleys, taverns, dancing halls, and gaming-houses of Venice—sometimes masked and sometimes unmasked. In telling ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... the first volume, appeared in 1836 and 1837. The value of these stories was not at first perceived, and they sold slowly. Andersen was more successful for the time being with a novel, O.T., and a volume of sketches, In Sweden; in 1837 he produced the best of his romances, Only a Fiddler. He now turned his attention, with but ephemeral success, to the theatre, but was recalled to his true genius in the charming miscellanies of 1840 and 1842, the Picture-Book without Pictures, and A Poet's Bazaar. Meanwhile ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... had watched them awhile she started up, spread her skirts in a sweeping courtesy, and began to dance a gavotte. The fiddler changed his tune, and the girls rested and watched her. Alternately swift and languid, with the changes of the movement, she saluted backward to the floor, or spun on the tips of rapid feet. I had seen her dance many times, but never with ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... don't let us waste our time on the Jew-problem ... our own little Jew-problem is enough, eh? Get rid of this little fiddler. Then I may have a look in. ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... various arts to get a doubtful cause; Or, as a dancing master in a jigg, With various steps instructs the dancing prig; Or as a doctor writes you different bills; Or as a quack prescribes you different pills; Or as a fiddler plays more tunes than one; Or as a baker bakes more bread than brown; Or as a tumbler tumbles up and down; So does our author, rummaging his brain, By various methods try to entertain; Brings a strange groupe of characters ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... "His Majesty," "is anything wanting? Tell us. Yer wish shall be gratified. Does ye wish for music? A piper an' a fiddler too are both convaynient, an', begorra, thim fellers can bate out-an'-out all the pipers an' fiddlers this side av the Bay av Biscay. They're both Irishmen, so they are, an' they're our sworn body-gyard, an' there ye have it. But, man, ye're not dhrinkin'. What 'il ye have? Here's ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... on him presently, and have him down to breakfast. If young, shall be our brother,—so long as there's anything in him. If—as I partly suspect—old, and a father, marry his daughter. But no; such a fiddler as he can't be married, unless unhappily." Mr. Helwyse runs his hands dreamily through his tangled mane, and shakes it back. If philosophical, he seems also to be romantic and imaginative, and impressionable by other personalities. It is, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... To eat the cheer, And dinner's served, my Lord." The butler bowed; And then the crowd Rushed in with one accord. The fiddler-crab Came in a cab, And played a piece in C; While on his horn, The ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... novel by the Dane Andersen, he of the 'Improvisatore,' which will reach us, it should seem, in translation, via America—she had looked over two or three proofs of the work in the press, and Chorley was anxious to know something about its character. The title, she said, was capital—'Only a Fiddler!'—and she enlarged on that word, 'Only,' and its significance, so put: and I quite agreed with her for several minutes, till first one reminiscence flitted to me, then another and at last I was obliged to stop my praises and say 'but, now I think of it, I seem to have written something ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... copper kettles and saucepans ranged along the wall. The wind raged against the shutters of the unglazed windows, and the maid-servants, distaff in hand, crowded closer to the blaze, listening to the songs of some wandering fiddler or to the stories of a ruddy-nosed Capuchin monk who was being regaled, by the steward's orders, on a supper of tripe and mulled wine. The Capuchin's tales, told in the Piedmontese jargon, and seasoned with strange allusions and boisterous laughter, were ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... agreeable, easy manners. With him I went to Indianapolis, and thence by "stages," waggons, or on horseback through a very dismal country in gloomy winter into the interior of the State. I can remember vast marshy fields with millions of fiddler crabs scuttling over them, and more mud than I had ever seen in my life. The village streets were six inches deep in soft mud up to the doors and floors of the houses. At last we reached our journey's end at a large log-house on a ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the fiddler. Nibelungen lay. Videl of days of chivalry. Bow fashioned like sword. Hagen of Tronje. Wilhelm Jordan, in "Sigfridsage." Henrietta Sontag and the coming Paganini. Wagner's Volker-Wilhelmj at Bayreuth. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... with a whoop, the man on the sled contradicted himself. "No, by Moses, to Dick Fiddler's old cabin up the draw. That's where Swiftwater would aim for till the blizzard ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... we went our ways, the harp and violin sounds growing fainter as we receded, till they were like the buzzing of bees in drying clover, and the twilight grew rosier brown. I never met Mat Woods again, though I often heard of his fame as a fiddler. Whether my Anglo-Indian friend found the fortune so vaguely predicted is to me as yet unknown. But I believe that the prediction encouraged him. That there are evils in palmistry, and sin in card-drawing, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... wife, this Jan Thoreau. They lived a good twenty miles off the north-and-south trail, on an island in the middle of Black Bear Lake. He had never seen the wife. A poor sort of woman, he made up his mind, that would marry a fiddler. Probably a half-breed; maybe an Indian. Anyway, he had no sympathy for her. Without a doubt, it was the woman who did the trapping and cut the wood. Any man who would tote a fiddle around ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... the background. To the right of the bar stands a table, back of which appears an iron door. Two disguised friars (Marten and Nils) are seated at this table drinking beer. The other tables are surrounded by German mercenaries, peasants, and sailors. The door to the street is at the right. A fiddler is seated on top of a barrel. The soldiers are throwing dice. All are drunk and noisy. Hans Windrank, a man from Smaland, a German tradesman, and a Dane are seated together at ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... harper twanged and the fiddler scraped out the tune of their Lancers. Few really knew what had happened, and the newly-made marquis had to fight his way through women who, in skin-tight dresses, danced with wantoning movements of the hips, and threw themselves ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... so various, that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome: Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.'[1] ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... entertain them, one of the midshipmen played upon the violin, and some of my people danced; at this they were so much delighted, and so impatient to show their gratitude, that one of them went over the ship's side into the canoe, and fetched up a seal-skin bag of red paint, and immediately smeared the fiddler's face all over with it: He was very desirous to pay me the same compliment, which, however, I thought fit to decline; but he made many very vigorous efforts to get the better of my modesty, and it ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... of an elderly lady, (who had a fine collection of similar wonders, wherewith she was kind enough to edify her young visitors,) containing a solemn account of the fate of a wicked dancing-party in New Jersey, whose irreverent declaration, that they would have a fiddler if they had to send to the lower regions after him, called up the fiend himself, who forthwith commenced playing, while the company danced to the music incessantly, without the power to suspend their ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... I could cry no more. However, I was determined I would not be done out of my sport after being at the expense of coming, so I went round and borrowed some pins, and pinned up my shirt tail as well as I could. I then went into the dance, and told the fiddler to play me a jig. Che, che, che, went the fiddle, when the banjo responded with a thrum, thrum, thrum, with the loud cracking of the bone player. I seized a little Sambo gal, and round and round the room we went, my money and my buttons going jingle, jingle, jingle, seemed to take ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... and Uncle Dan'l and Uncle Summer uster been fiddler. Gone all round when the white people gone to Prospect to ball and sich as that. Dem white people didn't treat you so brutish! Dem obersheer!" (Aside) "Wonder Christ sake why Lula stay out that ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... as she was, knew all this. She knew that Fico, or Signor Tagliafico, was a struggling musician and not an artist in any sense of the word. She knew he was an ordinary Italian fiddler who preferred to fiddle for food rather than to work manually for it. And yet her aunt had confided to her that she was sure he was a count, because one day Miss Husted had asked him the question, and the man, not quite understanding, ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... well. And for diversion went farther into the woods to hear a fiddler and to have him teach me the art which fled my dull fingers and the unwieldy bow. And this fiddler! His curly hair, always wet from his lustrations for the evening meal; his cud of tobacco; his racy locutions; his happy and contented spirit; and his merry wife and ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... to be a bull fiddler any more than you or you or you, and it's greatly to his credit and indicative of his iron will, consuming ambition and extraordinary musicianship that he developed, according to authoritative opinion, into the best bull fiddler ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... When the courier with a red kerchief on a wand came galloping round, the day before, from ile to ile,—for these descendants of a maritime race call their homestead groves islands,—to tell where the ball was to be, he would assert, if there was even a hope of it, that 'Thanase was to be the fiddler. ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... been accustomed. Quiet and orderly, however, as they were disposed to be, this first visit showed them to be as fond of merriment as their countrymen are usually considered; for, on Captain Lyon's ordering his fiddler up on the Hecla's deck, they danced with the men for an hour, and then returned in high glee ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... such grotesque shadows on the wall, The stripling looms a giant stout and tall, While they whose statures reach the common height Seem spectres mocking the hilarious night. From hand to hand the ripened fruit went round, And rural sports a pleased acceptance found; The youthful fiddler on his three-legged stool, Fancied himself at least an Ole Bull; Some easy bumpkin, seated on the floor, Hunted the slipper till his ribs were sore; Some chose the graceful waltz or lively reel, While deeper heads the chess battalions wheel Till some old veteran, compelled to yield, More brave than ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster |
