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verb
Moat  v. t.  To surround with a moat.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Moat" Quotes from Famous Books



... place; the house was modern, the new mansion having been built by William Chesney, but the park was full of ancient trees and there were some old buildings. A venerable keep, surrounded by a moat full of water and only reached by a boat, there being no bridge, was not far from ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould

... height of old was Wyndham Towers, Clinging to rock there, like an eagle's nest, With moat and drawbridge once, and good for siege; Four towers it had to front the diverse winds: Built God knows when, all record being lost, Locked in the memories of forgotten men. In Caesar's day, a pagan temple; next A monastery; then a feudal hold; ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... and not to animal well-being. When they crossed from the picture-gallery to the dining-room, he went down the stair between, and into the oak-parlour adjoining the great hall. There he threw himself into an easy chair which always stood for him in the great bay window, looking over the moat to the huge keep of the castle, and commanding through its western light the stone bridge which crossed it. There he lay back at his ease, and, instructed by the message Tom had committed to the serjeant of the guard, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... and after stumbling up some steps and down some others I finally flattened my nose against a door. Policeman No. 2 suddenly appeared, and turned his bull's-eye upon me. I felt that I was doomed to the deepest dungeon beneath the castle moat; I thought of the whipping-post I have read of in connection with the Palace; of the Guard Room with its pikes and instruments of torture, and I trembled. Luckily, however, the rays of the lantern fell upon the note in my hand, addressed to Francis Jeune, Q.C., and the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... ran, "were dug up in the moat of Holdernesse Hall. They are for the use of horses; but they are shaped below with a cloven foot of iron, so as to throw pursuers off the track. They are supposed to have belonged to some of the marauding Barons of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... neighbourhood made the inhabitants of the adjacent towns and hamlets believe that they had a very sufficient cause for wishing to murder all the Cagots in the Chateau de Mauvezin. But it was surrounded by a moat, and only accessible by a drawbridge; besides which, the Cagots were fierce and vigilant. Some one, however, proposed to get into their confidence; and for this purpose he pretended to fall ill close to their path, so that on returning to their ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell

... sought to wake Alexander out of that sex-lethargy which lay like a moat between the citadel of her heart and the advantage of suitors. In that he had succeeded, too well for his liking. Always Alexander held surprises in store for him, which only maddened him the more, fanning his passion into a hotter blaze. Now when ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... in a great square castle of gray stone, with a round tower at each corner. It was built about a courtyard, and was surrounded by a moat, across which was a drawbridge that could be raised or lowered. When it was raised the castle was practically a little island and very hard for ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford

... castle moat. O'Malley in the ditch standing in a picturesque attitude. The Dutch General stands on the summit of a wall three feet high, and leaning over the battlements—which tower to the height of three inches—hands O'Malley a pardon. Enter Tragic Heroine ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various

... high blank wall right from the stones over which the water trickled to the double row of little windows; while from the top corner by the water-wheel, which was fixed at the far end of the works, there was the dam of deep water, which acted the part of a moat, running off almost to a point where the stream came in, so that the place was about the shape of the annexed triangle: the works occupying the whole of the base, the rest ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... the daily dust Of moving men, I move a moat Within the sunbeam where we float, With mutual needs and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... side, although it threw out spurs, whether natural or of artificial construction, which formed a difficult and easily defensible communication with the lower land around. Its natural bastions were completed by a natural moat, for the river Ampsaga (the Waed Remel) almost encircled the town, and on the eastern side its deep and rushing waters could only be crossed by a ledge of rock, through which it bored a subterranean channel ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... table on the foot of Mr. Glowry. Mr. Glowry roared with pain in the ears of Mr. Toobad. Mr. Toobad's alarm so bewildered his senses that missing the door he threw up one of the windows, jumped out in his panic, and plunged over head and ears in the moat. Mr. Asterias and his son, who were on the watch for their mermaid, were attracted by the splashing, threw a net over him, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... here which I have never felt in any other place," said Mrs. Shiffney to Claude. "A peculiar wildness. It makes one want to cry out. The rocks seem to have life almost under one's feet. And the water in that terrible gorge, that's like a devil's moat round the city, is more alive than water in other places. It's so strange to have known you in Mullion House and to find you here. How eternally interesting ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... Troyes and will approach the fortifications, and will pretend to be spying round the town, and will measure the moat with my lance, and will get so near the town that I shall be taken prisoner. I am sure that as soon as the good bailli gets hold of me, he will condemn me to be hanged, and there is no one in the town who will take my part for they all hate me. So, early the next morning, I shall be taken out ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... clustered about the church and the Palace, and looking to both for protection. It had grown since then, had extended beyond the walls which sheltered it, had now destroyed those walls and, filling in the moat, had built thereon its circling parks. And other things had changed. No longer, he reflected gloomily, did it look to the palace, save with tolerance and occasional disloyalty. The old order was changing. And, with all his ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... wall at the back," said Morag, "you will only come to the Moat of Poisoned Water." "The Moat of Poisoned Water?" "The Moat of Poisoned Water," said Morag. "The water poisons the skin of any creature that tries ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum

... this night take I horse to find the truth, And where my quest will end yet know I not. Save that it shall not end until I find. Therefore to-night, good steed, be fierce and bold! Let nothing stay thee, though a thousand blades Deny the road! Let neither wall nor moat Forbid our flight! Look! If I touch thy flank And cry, "On, Kantaka!" let whirlwinds lag Behind thy course! Be fire and air, my horse! To stead thy lord, so shalt thou share with him The greatness of this deed ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... still 150 ft high, and that the spaces between the 250 towers of the wall of Babylon (Ctes. 417, ap. Diod. ii. 7) were broad enough to let a four-horse chariot turn (Herod. i. 179). The clay dug from the moat served to make the bricks of the wall, which had 100 gates, all of bronze, with bronze lintels and posts. The two inner enclosures were faced with enamelled tiles and represented hunting-scenes. Two other walls ran along ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... miserable horse, which are the omnibuses of certain districts of Tokiyo, were waiting outside the station, and an English brougham for me, with a running betto. The Legation stands in Kojimachi on very elevated ground above the inner moat of the historic "Castle of Yedo," but I cannot tell you anything of what I saw on my way thither, except that there were miles of dark, silent, barrack-like buildings, with highly ornamental gateways, and long rows of projecting windows ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... penetrated the wood in every direction; streams bubbling up from springs, and forming little cascades where their course was checked by granite boulders, lent an additional charm. Towards the centre of the forest these streams united to form a lake, or rather a natural moat, surrounding an island in the midst of which stood a gigantic oak. This was the only tree on the island; round it, at even distances, were placed twelve stones, beyond which a meadow glittering with varied hues ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous

... along the old fort wall are paling, The mountains in the evening light are red, The moon has dropped into the moat from heaven, A spell barbaric over all is spread. But what is that to him, a stranger lonely, In a land strange to all his faith and dim? He cares not for old splendours, he would only Hear on the air ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice

... the Chateau de Nesville to Morteyn. The French infantry had been pouring into Morteyn since late afternoon; they had entered the park when he entered, driving his tumbril with its blood-stained burden; they had turned the river into a moat, the meadow into an earthwork, the Chateau ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers

... miles from Point de Galle, on the south-west coast of the island. It has a population of almost 127,000, which has been increased at the expense of Galle, as we generally call it to economize our breath. It is located on a peninsula, with the sea on three sides of it, with a lake and moat on the land side. By the way, Mr. Woolridge, do you happen to remember the Italian name of Christopher Columbus, whose discovery of America you are to celebrate at ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... now conceive to belong to real objects are for the moat part images of sight and touch. One of the first classes of effects to be treated as secondary were naturally pleasures and pains, since it could commonly conduce very little to intelligent and successful action to conceive our pleasures and pains as resident ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... attained by means of an imitation moat over the orchestra well. Across this was a drawbridge, which was raised and dropped at fitting intervals, and the drop curtain was made to represent a massive castle door. There was a banquet chamber, with ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... have been digressing, the turtles have been dumped into the great moat that surrounds the fort, and, stretched upon the deck, the sable crew are fast asleep. The writer has been watching a large three-master moving along two or three miles beyond Loggerhead Key. Our attention is distracted for some time, and, upon looking again, we find that she has not moved, and impart ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... to the attack; and it was not until we had contrived to make a little channel all round one of our boxes upon which the skins were laid, and connected it with the little spring of water, so that our treasure was surrounded by a tiny moat, that we could ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn

... that wise foresight could suggest had been made for the defence of the Niagara Frontier. Fort George had been strengthened and revictualled. A new fort—Fort Mississauga—with star-shaped ramparts, moat and stockade, had been constructed at the mouth of the river. Its citadel is a very solid structure, with walls eight feet thick, built of the bricks of the devastated town of Niagara. A narrow ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... become narrow, and the space between the side row of trees is covered by soft turf, up which those coming to the meet love to gallop, trying the fresh metal of their horses. And the old house itself is surrounded by a moat, dry indeed now for the most part, but nevertheless an evident moat, deep and well preserved, with a bridge over it which Fancy tells us must once have been a drawbridge. It is here, in front of the bridge, that the old hounds sit upon their haunches, resting quietly round the horses of the huntsmen, ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... the bustle of preparation for her own journey, and the excitement of her arrival at the Moat House. All three cousins were there to greet her, and she was welcomed with so many kisses, and such a chorus of delight, that for the moment everything else was forgotten. Each of the cousins had his or her favourite pet, or ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... was the moat-field, the great fascination of which was in the wild hill that gave it its name. What the moat originally was I know not. I think, now, it must have been a gravel-hill, for it was full of deep gashes, of pits and quarries, run ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... and a great friendship arose between the young men, so that they spoke very freely to one another at all times, and most of all when they had drunk their wine and sat together in the evening in Prince Rudolf's chamber that looked across the moat toward the gardens; for the new chateau that now stands on the site of these gardens was not then built. And one night Monsieur de Merosailles made bold to ask the prince how it fell out that his sister the princess, a lady of such great beauty, seemed sad, and showed no ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various

... loaded with chains, and imprisoned, for an indefinite period, in the lowest dungeon beneath the castle's moat. Curtain. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various

... feudal!" exclaimed Alice. "Really we should have a moat and drawbridge to make the thing perfect. Constance and I are the best protected women in ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson

... to the nostrils. The old woman shows you a few fragments—several dark, damp, much-encumbered vaults, denominated dungeons, and an old tower staircase in good condition. There are the outlines of the old moat; there is also the outline of the old guard-room, which is now a stable; and there are other silhouettes of the undistinguishable, which I have forgotten. You need all your imagination, and even then you cannot make out that Plessis was a castle ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... and spirit vaults. The colour of the walls is a surprise until it is realized that the building is of brick. The southern entrance, by which we approach, is the most imposing part of the ruin. We enter by a wooden bridge across the moat; this replaces the drawbridge. In the recessed chamber behind the central arch a ghostly drum was sometimes heard, and the supernatural drummer was supposed to guard hidden treasure. This legend was made good use of by ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... her arms descriptively) throw down his bunch of flowers and dive despairingly into the moat. You'll stop him, just as he is going in, and say, "I beg your pardon, sir, was it Mr. DEVENISH?" And he will say, "Yes!" and you will say, "Oh, I beg your pardon, sir; this ...
— Belinda • A. A. Milne

... let byganes be byganes, and a' friends again; deil ane I bear malice at but Westburnflat, and I hae gien him baith a het skin and a cauld ane. I hadna changed three blows of the broadsword wi' him before he lap the window into the castle-moat, and swattered through it like a wild-duck. He's a clever fallow, indeed! maun kilt awa wi' ae bonny lass in the morning, and another at night, less wadna serve him! but if he disna kilt himsell out o' the country, I'se kilt him wi' a tow, for the Castleton meeting's clean ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... had, and hated, a master. Mr. Chase betrayed this when he complained that there was no "administration, in the true sense of the word;" by which he understood, "a president conferring with his cabinet and taking their united judgments." The existence of that strange moat which seems to isolate the capital and the political coteries therein gathered, and to shut out all knowledge of the feelings of the constituent people, is notorious, and certainly was never made more conspicuous than in this business of selecting the Republican candidate for ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... thirty miles from Paris, remote from any common road, and far distant from the bustling world. In the midst of a luxuriant wilderness, rising above prolific orchards and antiquated woods, appears the five towers of La Grange, tinged with the golden rays of the declining sun. The deep moat, the draw bridge; the ivied tower and arched portals, opening into a large square court, has a feudal and picturesque character; and the associations which occur, on entering the residence of a ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... said, there ran another fosse, and a third, both of the same unusual dimensions, was led between the second and the innermost inclosure. The verge, both of the outer and inner circuit of this triple moat was strongly fenced with palisades of iron, serving the purpose of what are called chevaux de frise in modern fortification, the top of each pale being divided into a cluster of sharp spikes, which seemed to render any attempt to climb over ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... the abbey of Kilwinning was sacked, went and slept at Eglinton Castle, then a stalwart square tower, environed with a wall and moat, of a rude and unknown antiquity, standing on a gentle rising ground in the midst of a bleak and moorland domain. And his Lordship having ordered my grandfather to come to him betimes in the morning with twenty ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... couple live touchingly in our memories. We were still in the broad, sun-swept valley of the Genesee, our road lying along the edge of the wide, reed-grown flats and water-meadows, bounded on the north by rolling hills. On our left hand, parallel with the road, ran a sort of willowed moat banked by a grass-grown causeway, a continuous narrow mound, somewhat higher than the surrounding country, and cut through here and there with grass-grown gullies, the whole suggesting primeval earthworks and excavations. So the old Roman roads run, grassy and haunted and ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... edge; while beyond these two points the outlook was restricted by the outer edges of the splay in which the window was built. From the same cause, also, Frobisher was unable to see the ground close enough to the wall to judge whether the fort was surrounded by a moat or a dry ditch of any description, although from the general appearance of things ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... occurring to a defenceless woman. My maternal grandmother occupied at the time of that rebellion the castle of Dungulph, in the county Wexford, the family residence. It was an old stronghold regularly fortified and surrounded by a moat, with a drawbridge; and when she left it to take refuge in the fort of Duncannon, with the other gentry of the county, it was immediately taken possession of by a force of rebels from the county Kilkenny, as a most valuable place of defence, &c. They remained in possession for about ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers

... the church tower emerged. From the deep oriel window where she sat Diana could see a projecting wing of the house itself, its mellowed red brick, its Jacobean windows and roof. She could see also a corner of the moat with its running stream, a moat much older than the building it encircled, and beneath her eyes lay a small formal garden planned in the days of John Evelyn—with its fountain and its sundial, and its beds in arabesque. The cold light of December lay upon it all; there was no special ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... friend of yours had not been a member of the Ministry, you would both have been shot in the moat at Montjuich?" ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... head of the street, on which the hotel was situated, a splendid wide avenue, planted with rows of majestic oaks, their branches meeting overhead. This extends over one mile; on one side of it is the Governor's Palace and grounds, cut off from vulgar feet by a moat, or walled ditch, and accessible by a small drawbridge from the avenue. Opposite ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... they admitted, so that no unauthorised person might enter that much-valued fortress. When at length the waggon rolled forward into the shadow of the great towered gateway on the outer side of the moat, the demand was made, who was there? Giles had always insisted, as leader of the party, on making reply to such questions, and Smallbones waited for his answer, but none was forthcoming. Therefore Kit shouted in reply, "Alderman Headley's wain and armourers. Two Journeymen, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... The Turks had made a desert of the surrounding country, and held many thousands of its inhabitants as prisoners in their camp. Step by step they gained upon the defenders. By the end of August they possessed the moat around the city walls. On the 4th of September a mine was sprung under the Burg bastion, with such force that it shook half the city like an earthquake. The bastion was rent and shattered for a width of more than thirty feet, portions of its walls ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... of the moat striking and symptomatic difficulties which faced the Allied authorities in their administration of the occupied areas of Germany during the Armistice arose out of the fact that even when they brought food into the country the inhabitants could not ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... principal streets well watered. It was filled with merchants of various descriptions, and adorned with abundance of jewels; difficult of access, filled with spacious houses, beautified with gardens, and groves of mango trees, surrounded by a deep and impassable moat, and completely furnished with arms; was ornamented with stately gates and porticoes, and constantly guarded by archers, etc. etc." Ramayana, translated by CAREY and MARSHMAN, vol. i. ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman

... the Ebroke, at the north of the Tame, was the chief seat of the Ardens at one time, but was allowed to go to ruin when the family settled at Park Hall on the south side of the river. It was all levelled except its double moat by Dugdale's time. ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes

... a time you were content to wade The waters of the "robber barons'" moat. To fetch, and carry was your humble trade, And ferry Stanford over in a boat, Well paid if he bestowed the kindly groat And spoke you fair and called you pretty maid. And when his stomach seemed a bit unsteady You got your serviceable ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... three Robsons, who are what they call good sportsmen, and go in for games; and further afield there is Honor Edgecombe of Mount Edgecombe, a charming girl, and very musical; and Grace and Schilla Trevor; and the Blounts at the Moat have a London niece, Lady Margot Blount, who pays them a long visit every year. She is staying there now, and is sure to call. She is very elegant and distinguished-looking, and we all admire her immensely. My husband ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... distance of some hundreds of yards from Charlecote Hall, and almost hidden by the trees between it and the roadside, is an old brick archway and porter's lodge. In connection with this entrance there appears to have been a wall and an ancient moat, the latter of which is still visible, a shallow, grassy scoop along the base of an embankment of the lawn. About fifty yards within the gateway stands the house, forming three sides of a square, with three gables in a row on the front, and on each ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... is prettily situated on a slight elevation above the surrounding plain; it has the fine range of the Fogaraser Mountains as a background. The old moat, where Amurad fell pierced by the well-directed arrow, has been turned into a promenade; parts of the fortifications remain in a state of picturesque ruin. Herrmannstadt is the seat of the Protestant Bishop of Transylvania, and there is a fine old church, which, ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... absolving, the Earl of Arundel for poaching (as he termed it) in Houghton Forest. The Church lost Amberley in the sixteenth century. William Rede, who succeeded Langton to both house and see, wishing to feel secure in his home, craved permission to dig a moat around it and to render it both hostile and defensive. Hence its lion-like mien; but it has known no warfare, and the castle's mouldering walls now give what assistance they can in harbouring live stock. Twentieth-century sheds lean against fourteenth-century masonry; faggots are ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... see them now, Though they sit by the side of the moat, Feet half in the water, there in a row, Long hair in the wind afloat. Therefore, said fair Yoland of the flowers, This is the tune of ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris

... sculptured by Chantrey, with its odd puffs of hair, had a discreet and smiling mien, as of one who had known enough sorrow to purge prosperity of its grossness. From the churchyard there led a little path, which skirted a wide moat of dark water, full of innumerable fish, basking in the warmth; in the centre of the moat stood a dark grove of trees, with a thick undergrowth. Suddenly, through an opening, Hugh saw the turrets of an ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... on his account; but that the all-righteous God had graciously spared him this sorrow; for his father had fallen sick from vexation, and lay a-bed all this time, and it so happened that this very morning about prayer time, the huntsman, in shooting at a wild duck in the moat, had by chance sorely wounded his father's favourite dog, called Packan, which had crept howling to his father's bedside, and had died there; whereupon the old man, who was weak, was so angered that he was presently seized with a fit and gave up the ghost too. Hereupon ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... Kung was standing before the city moat. Said he to himself: "To first buy the weapons would take a great deal of time. I would rather make magic and take some." So he blew on the ground. Then a tremendous storm-wind arose which drove sand and stones before it, and caused ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various

... at hand; indeed, we must smile, or we could not live): the prelude being something about a lonely castle in the heart of the Hartz Mountains, and a prattling golden-haired babe stretching its arms across a ruined moat in the direction of its absent father. This was in the nature of an absurd prologue, but when she finally came to the Solitary she grew serious; for she made him in the bygone days a sensitive child and a dreamy, impetuous youth, with a domineering, ill-tempered ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... elections.' This western tour had an important reaction upon public opinion in Toronto, bringing the {54} divers factions into something like harmony for a time. Thomson himself was genuinely pleased with what he had seen of that rich, heart-shaped peninsula lying behind the moat of three inland seas, with the flowing names, Huron, Erie, Ontario. He writes in justifiable superlatives. 'You can conceive nothing finer. The most magnificent soil in the world—four feet of vegetable mould—a climate certainly the best in North America—the greater part of it admirably watered. ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... barley-sugar, the cellars the village tavern, and very nice too. In the state-saloon, with a few trifling alterations, such as the introduction of a geyser and a sink, will live Mrs. Ponsonby-Smith, who will sniff a little at the Jeffries in their attic suite and the Mutts who live in the moat. But Mrs. Jeffries will have compensations, because the air is really so much more bracing, my dear, on the higher ground, and on fine days one can walk about the roof and peep through the boiling-oil holes, while as for the Mutts they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various

... picturesque cities in the occupied districts of northern France. It is located on the banks of the Meuse and contains many historic, old ruins. At one end of the town is a large stone castle, surrounded by a moat. This was made the headquarters of the General Staff after the Germans invaded this section of France. Near the railroad station there was a public park. Facing it was a French chateau, a beautiful, comfortable home. This was the Kaiser's residence. ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... brother pined, I said his mighty heart declined, He loathed and put away his food; It was not that 'twas coarse and rude, For we were used to hunter's fare, 130 And for the like had little care: The milk drawn from the mountain goat Was changed for water from the moat, Our bread was such as captives' tears Have moistened many a thousand years, Since man first pent his fellow men Like brutes within an iron den; But what were these to us or him? These wasted not his heart or ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... finding a place in Blackfriars and Whitefriars. The Strand was an ill-paved street running behind the river palaces, past the village of Charing Cross, on to the royal palace of Whitehall and to the Abbey and Hall at Westminster. The walls and surrounding moat had ceased to be of use for defense, and building constantly spread into the fields without. These fields were favorite places for recreation and served the purpose of city parks. The Elizabethans were fond of outdoor sports and spent little ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... mansions, and not unfrequently even the feudal castles, are still tenanted by the heirs, or by those who have peacefully purchased from the heirs, of their ancient lords; and the insensible gradations by which the feudal guard-room has softened down into the modern drawing-room, and the feudal moat into the flower-garden, are emblematic of the continuous and comparatively tranquil progress of English history. In France, how different! Scarcely eighty years have passed since the Chateau de Montgomeri was proud and gay; since the village idlers gathered here ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... of Knoxville, and called by them "Fort London," but named "Fort Sanders" by the Federals, in honor of the brave commander who fell in wresting it from the Confederates. The enemy had greatly strengthened it after Longstreet's advent in East Tennessee. It was surrounded by a deep and wide moat, from the bottom of which to the top of the fort was from eighteen to twenty feet. In front of the moat for several hundred yards was felled timber, which formed an almost impassable abattis, while wire netting was stretched ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... good terms with Philippe le Bon, who granted him 3000 gold florins a month, and the castle of Genappe as a residence. This castle was situated on the Dyle, midway between Brussels and Louvain, and about eight miles from either city. The river, or a deep moat, surrounded the castle on every side. There was a drawbridge which was drawn up at night, so Louis felt himself ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... the eastern empire was not strong enough to hold the whole sea, but neither was the Saracen able to gain supreme control. Thus the conditions were the same as in the earlier days of the conflict between Rome and Carthage: the Mediterranean became a moat separating the rivals, though first one and then the other had somewhat more control. The islands became alternately Saracen and Christian. Crete and Sicily were held for centuries before they were regained by a ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... year each young man and woman should take a fresh look about the world house in which all live. When Ivanhoe waked to find himself a prisoner in a strange castle he straightway explored the mansion, passing from chamber to banquet hall, and from tower to moat, and the high walls that shut him in. If, indeed, God did so dearly love this star as to use its very dust for making man in His own image, we ought to love and study well this world house, wherein is enacted the drama of man's life and death. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... the pails, accompanied by some of the officers having sjambochs or hide whips in their hands, advanced across the open space till they came to the moat which separated the slave camp from the Nest, whence they called to the sentry on the embankment to let down the drawbridge. He obeyed and they crossed. Each man with a bucket was followed by another who bore a wooden ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... heavy road soon made us remember that it was July, and we were very hot and soaking wet when we stood at the gateway of Carisbrooke Castle. Here are two flanking towers and a stout gate-house reached by a stone bridge crossing the moat; and when I saw it I remembered that 'twas here Colonel Mohune had earned the wages of his unrighteousness, and thought how many times he must have passed these gates. Elzevir knocked as one that had a right, and we were evidently expected, for a wicket in the heavy ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... "the German Athens," but here were, in this southern and unfashionable suburb, only a few modern structures, and most of the quaint and rather picturesque dwellings, overhanging the stores, dated anterior to the filling up of the town moat in 1791. ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... of the fate which invested him with the spiritual and temporal authority and emoluments of the priory of St. Victor. This was a rich little Benedictine monastery just outside the eastern gate of Geneva, on the little knoll now crowned by the observatory, surrounded with walls and moat of its own, independent of the bishop of Geneva in spiritual matters, and in temporal affairs equally independent of the city: in fact, it was a petty sovereignty by itself, and its dozen of hearty, well-provided ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... which have been enfranchised from time to time. It includes Otterbourne hill, with common land on the top and wood upon the slope, as well as various meadows and plough lands. The manor house, still bearing the name of the Moat House, was near the old church in the meadows, and entirely surrounded with its own moat. It must have been a house of some pretension in the sixteenth century, for there is a handsome double staircase, a rough fresco in ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... powers; at last flames burst forth from several parts of the works, and at one o'clock the magazine in the principal fort exploding cast destruction around. The batteries having been now silenced, the squadron stood closer in and destroyed moat of the vessels which had taken shelter behind the mole. Soon after the fleet retired from before Odessa, the Tiger, which had been stationed off the coast, ran on shore. While attempts were being made to get her off the Russians brought down a field battery, from which they opened so brisk a ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... very wide margin of disputable ground, of which I shall say no more in this place. But to return to the antique conception of the "Donna orante" or so-called Virgin Mother, I will mention here only the moat remarkable examples; for to enter fully into the subject would occupy a ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... In mediaeval times it was a stronghold for the feudal lords and in modern times it is still of importance as a fortress. The city is surrounded by a defense wall, built hundreds of years ago, and around the outside of the wall was a moat, wide and deep. In feudal days this moat was part of the defense works and it was kept filled with water. It was dry when we visited and has been so for many years, as a moat would be but as slight obstructure in modern warfare. But it made ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood

... gods thus becomes the belief in invisible, super-material beings, like, and yet superior to man. It is for this reason that Professor Tylor's definition of religion as "the belief in spiritual beings—so long as we do not use the term "spiritual" in its modern sense"—seems to me the moat satisfactory definition yet offered. It is the one point on which all religions agree, and for this reason may be regarded as ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... side of the moat, buried his face in his hands and reflected. Ten minutes after he raised his head; his resolution was made. He threw some dust over the topcoat, which he had found time to unhook from the ante-chamber and button over his ball costume, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Fancies and Images, as well as Names, were borrow'd from the Antient Hebrew Poetry and Divinity, as, were there room for't, I cou'd, I think, render more than probable, in all the most celebrated Strokes of Homer, moat of the Heathen Poetical Fables, and even in Hesiod's blind Theogonia. Their Gods or Devils, which you please, were not near as Antient as the Hebrews. The Word Satan is as ancient as Job; nor can they shew us a Pluto within a long while of him. Ashtaroth, and Astarte, are old enough to be ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley

... latest to the seventeenth, century. There is certainly nothing in its plan or in its appearance to show that the engineers who designed it were acquainted even with the art of fortification as developed in the seventeenth century by Vauban. It is simply an old feudal castle, with moat, drawbridge, and portcullis, built after the model of medieval strongholds before heavy siege-ordnance came into general use. The idea that it could have done any serious damage to Admiral Sampson's fleet seems absolutely ludicrous when one has explored ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war: This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea. Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. King Richard II., Act ii. Sc. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... carnage by the gate, Some storming, some defending. These without, In sight of parents, weeping at their fate, Roll down the moat, swept headlong by the rout, Or charge the battered doorposts with a shout. The very matrons, at their country's call, Their javelins hurl. Charr'd stakes and oak-staves stout Serve them for swords. Forth ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... moat," Francis had ordered. "'Tis barbaric! What lover would sigh beneath walls thirty feet thick! And the portcullis! Away with it! Summon my Italian painters to adorn the walls. We may yet make habitable these legacies from the savage, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... returns. But here is one who loves you as of old; With more exceeding passion than of old: Good, speak the word: my followers ring him round: He sits unarm'd; I hold a finger up; They understand: nay; I do not mean blood: Nor need ye look so scared at what I say: My malice is no deeper than a moat, No stronger than a wall: there is the keep; He shall not cross us more; speak but the word: Or speak it not; but then by him that made me The one true lover whom you ever own'd, I will make use of all the power I have. O ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... themselves, much as they do at home, with toy pails and spades; but if you take notice you will find that their sand-structures differ widely from those of children in America: you may even see a perfect model of a feudal castle grow into shape, with barbacan, gate, moat, drawbridge, towers, bastions, donjon-keep and banqueting-hall complete. A brass band—the members in full uniform of bright colors, with little rimless red-and-gold caps—is playing under the battlemented garden-wall which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... standstill before Cope's natural fortress. There was little artillery, no great number of horse. Even the bravest of the brave, Highland or Lowland, might draw back from the thought of trying to cross that marsh, of meeting the moat-like ditch under Cope's musket-fire. Sunset came amid perturbation, a sense of check, ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... thick and 350 feet high, on which were 250 towers, or, according to some writers, 316. The top of the wall was wide enough to allow six chariots to drive abreast. The materials for building the wall were dug from a vast ditch or moat, which was also walled up with brickwork and then filled with water from the River Euphrates. This moat was just outside of the walls, and surrounded the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... down the old family residence of Stankhouse, or "Tigh Dige," at Gairloch, which stood in a low, marshy, damp situation, surrounded by the moat from which it derived its name, and built the present house on an elevated plateau, surrounded by magnificent woods and towering hills, with a southern front elevation - altogether one of the most beautiful and best sheltered situations in the Highlands; and he very appropriately ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... contained an oak-roofed hall which was said to date back to the time of King John, a remnant of a former house. There was no electric light or other modern convenience at Yarleys, yet it was a place that everyone went to see because of its exceeding beauty and its historical associations. The moat by which it was surrounded, the grass court within, for it was built on three sides of a square, the mullioned windows, the towered gateway of red brick, the low-panelled rooms hung with the portraits of departed Vernons, the sloping park and the splendid oaks that stood about, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... bailies' castle of Rotzberg by one of the conspirators, who was in the habit of paying nightly visits to a servant living in the castle, by means of a rope attached to her window, and who then admitted his companions, who were lying concealed in the moat. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... float and float Along the moat Around the Bishop's garden, And the white clouds push Across a blue sky With edges that seem ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... eyes, an arrangement which dragged the point upward in the most cruel manner, but gave it an expression equally ludicrous and impertinent. A pair of small, round, black eyes, encompassed—like two little feudal fortresses, each by its moat—with a circle of yellowish white, peered out from under brows like battlements. Coarse, black hair, always cut short, and standing erect, so as to present something the appearance of a chevaux de frise, protected a hard, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... who left an undying memory in America, and many pilgrimages were made to the Chateau de la Grange, where the Marquis de Lafayette spent the last years of his life and extended a large and gracious hospitality to all his friends. It is an interesting old place, with a moat all around it and high solid stone walls, where one still sees the hole that was made in the wall by a cannon-ball sent by Marechal de Turenne as he was passing with his troops, as a friendly souvenir ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... Dorothy. The courtyard is yours as much as it is ours. Jane, will you take her through our fort? Show her the walls, the parapets, the bastions, and where the moat and drawbridge were when the place was young. It is very ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... resolution, in the language above quoted, was adopted by large majorities in both branches of Congress, and now stands an authentic, definite, and solemn proposal of the Nation to the States and people moat immediately interested in the subject-matter. To the people of those States, I now earnestly appeal. I do not argue, I beseech you to make the arguments for yourselves. You can not, if you would, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... at daybreak, I reached Roche-Mauprat. I waited in a moat until the gates were opened, and then slipped up to my room without being seen by anybody. As it was not altogether an unfailing tenderness that watched over me at Roche-Mauprat, my absence had not been noticed during the night. Meeting my Uncle John ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... British Parliament after the Union. At the beginning of the present century the estate passed into the hands of Viscount Duncan of Camperdown, and is now the property of his descendant, the Earl of Camperdown. The old castle, of solid walls, surrounded by a moat, was superseded in 1624 by the modern Place of Gleneagles, built from the ruins. Locally, the family is best remembered in one of its Presbyterian members, an ardent respecter of the Sabbath. He forbade ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... above London as above a green sea of slate. Opposite to the mansions, on the other side of the gravel crescent, was a bushy enclosure more like a steep hedge or dyke than a garden, and some way below that ran a strip of artificial water, a sort of canal, like the moat of that embowered fortress. As the car swept round the crescent it passed, at one corner, the stray stall of a man selling chestnuts; and right away at the other end of the curve, Angus could see a dim blue policeman walking slowly. These were the only human shapes ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... they met with an unexpected obstacle. Instead of finding, as they had expected, merely a shallow ditch, they found themselves at the edge of a counterscarp, the wall being fifteen feet in depth, with a regular moat filled with water between them and ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty

... door under the porter's archway was closed and locked. While standing here the singing of the wire, which for the last few minutes he had quite forgotten, again struck upon his ear, and retreating to a convenient place he observed its final course: from the poles amid the trees it leaped across the moat, over the girdling wall, and thence by a tremendous stretch towards the keep where, to judge by sound, it vanished through an arrow-slit into the interior. This fossil of feudalism, then, was the journey's-end of the wire, and not the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... alone! I shall find her more easily alone. If I do not return, avenge this for me," he said, pointing to the moat; then, turning to the Wallachian, he added sternly: "I have found beneath your girdle a gold medallion, which my grandmother wore suspended from her neck, and by which I know you to be one of her murderers, and, had I not promised to spare your life, you should now receive the punishment that ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... aloud to a friend the passage in which this charming Bishop writes that, when he slept at his paternal ch[^a]teau, he never allowed the peasants on the domain to perform their usual duty, which was to stay up all night and beat the waters of the ponds, or perhaps of the moat, around the castle, so that the seigneur and his friends might sleep peacefully. My friend was very much bored and could not see that it represented a social point of view, which showed that the Saint was much ahead of his time! It did not bring old France back to ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... hundred yards from the bank, its guns being intended to prevent any passage of the Danube, as well as to guard the city against a land attack from that side. It was a strong place but, as it was situated in a flat country, it presented no natural obstacle to an escape. It was surrounded by a broad moat, fed by a cut from the river. On the other side of the moat were two small redoubts, facing west. The fort contained ample barracks for the garrison of three hundred men who occupied it, with bomb proofs in which they could take refuge, ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... in Ypres is the wide Rue de Lille, which runs from opposite the Cloth Hall down to the Lille Gate, and over the moat water into the Lille road and on to the German lines. The Rue de Lille was especially famous for its fine old buildings. There was the Hospice Belle, for old female paupers of Ypres, built in the thirteenth century. There was the Museum, formerly ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett

... was willing to die for the common good. This is how he was cured: a message was sent to him, supposedly from the commandant, saying that the town was threatened with a siege and there was no water in the moat, and asking him to fill it to keep the enemy out. The patient was delighted to be able to save both his fatherland and himself; so he got rid of his water and of his ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg

... They are at a considerable distance from each other, and the Emperor resides in the innermost enclosure, from which he never goes out. The intervals between the enclosures are filled up with handsome houses, &c. We passed over the first moat, and rode up to the second. When we came up to the second we discovered a spectacle which was really very grand. The moat was some forty or fifty yards wide; beyond it a high bank of grass nicely kept, with trees ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... we study convenience rather than ornament. Each master of a family has a large square piece of ground, surrounded with a moat or fence, or enclosed with a wall made of red earth tempered; which, when dry, is as hard as brick. Within this are his houses to accommodate his family and slaves; which, if numerous, frequently present the appearance of a village. In the middle stands the principal building, appropriated to the ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano

... them the arms and ammunition of the whole party. An annexe was attached to one of the buildings, and it was used as a smithy; a few of the people also slept there. The whole of the buildings were enclosed by a trench or moat 15 ft. wide and 9 ft. deep, to protect the settlers from the ravages of ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole

... and not eaten one mouthful, and hunger tormented her, she thought, "Ah, if I were but inside, that I might eat of the fruit, else must I die of hunger!" Then she knelt down, called on God the Lord, and prayed. And suddenly an angel came towards her, who made a dam in the water, so that the moat became dry and she could walk through it. And now she went into the garden and the angel went with her. She saw a tree covered with beautiful pears, but they were all counted. Then she went to them, and to ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... the great story of the past, all the romance of medieval chivalry, seems to live again in that picturesque, irregular pile with the crenellated towers and dusky red-brick walls, overhanging the sleepy waters of the ancient moat. The song of Boiardo and Ariosto still lingers in the air about the ruddy pinnacles; the spacious courts and broad piazza recall the tournaments and pageants of olden time. Once more the sound of clanging trumpets or merry hunting-horn ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... the wood there was a fair castle, with a double moat, and surrounded by stout walls. Here dwelt that noble knight, Sir Richard Lee, to whom Robin Hood had lent the four hundred pounds to ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... to show you the German castle," answered Harold. "It is here on the Midway Plaisance, and is a reproduction of a castle of the middle centuries. It is viewed by most people who have read of moat-surrounded castles with great curiosity ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley

... took up with this, and said "how he would love to have a moat round our house." Sez he, "Jest let some folks that I know try to git in, wouldn't I jest hist up the drawbridge and ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... we're quite half-way round. No signs either of another opening in the reef. Fine island to annex, Sir John. It's a regular fortification, a natural stronghold with an impregnable wall round it, and a full mile-wide moat inside. A fort at the point commanding the ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... spectre like and supernatural appearance. They stood directly before the arched barbacan, which formed the entrance to the court, and appeared waiting for the warder, to lower the drawbridge over the moat, for their exit. Without expressing any astonishment at the strange scene thus presented to him, Conrad D'Amboise glided from his post, and favored by the shadows of the frowning battlements, gained a postern in an angle of the wall, and ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... Scottish officers alone, Captain Innes and Lieutenant Lumsden, succeeded in breaking their way down a side lane, and thence, rushing to the wall, leapt down into the moat, and swimming across, succeeded in making their escape, and in carrying the news of the massacre to the camp of Gustavus, where the tale filled all with indignation and fury. Among the Scotch regiments deep vows of vengeance were interchanged, and in after ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... be used on firm, level ground. Consequently, a castle would often be erected on a high cliff or hill, or on an island, or in the center of a swamp. A castle without such natural defenses would be surrounded by a deep ditch (the "moat"), usually filled with water. If the besiegers could not batter down or undermine the massive walls, they adopted the slower method of a blockade and tried to starve the garrison into surrendering. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... will have a good effect in increasing our influence for that which excels everything earthly. Everything has, by God's gracious blessing, proved more auspicious than I anticipated. We have a most warm-hearted friend in Mr. Gabriel. He acted a brother's part, and now writes me in the moat affectionate manner. I thank God for his goodness in influencing the hearts of so many to show kindness, to whom I was a total stranger. The Portuguese have all been extremely kind. In coming through the coffee plantations I was ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... know. Lots of 'em. Dinner parties. Luncheons. Less parish work, and more amusement. Always trotting over to the 'Moat'." ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... buried, and that some were thrusting me forward, and others upholding me above every ravine, it dawned upon me that they were not witches but what are called the Fairies. Without delay I found myself close to a huge castle, the finest I had ever seen, with a deep moat surrounding it, and here they began discussing my doom. "Let us take him as a gift to the castle," suggested one. "Nay, let us throw the obstinate gallows-bird into the moat, he is not worth showing to our great prince," said another. "Will he say his prayers before sleeping," asked ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... towards Orrain, and not alone, for mademoiselle was by my side. As we rode out of the pine-woods the Chateau stood before us. There was the square keep, with its pepper-box towers, and bartizans overhanging the moat. There were the grey ramparts tapestried in ivy, and the terraced gardens, where the peacocks sunned themselves. All around us were happy faces, and joyous voices welcoming us home—the home to which I had so ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... the line from "Kinkroo," a corruption of La Quinque Rue, crossing to the "Boar's Head," and of this we held the stretch opposite the two farms in No Man's Land, Fme du Bois and Fme Cour d'Avoue. The latter, surrounded by a moat, had an evil reputation, and was said to have been the death-trap of many patrols, which had gone there and never been seen since. The trenches had been dug in the summer when the country was dry, with no regard to the fact that in winter the water ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... however, that the king, by loss of blood, was not likely to exist much longer by dragging him towards their employer, and that delay might even lose them his dead body, they mounted him, and redoubled their speed. When they came to the moat, they compelled him to leap his horse across it. In the attempt the horse fell and broke its leg. They then ordered his majesty, fainting as he was, to mount another and spur it over. The conspirators had no sooner passed the ditch, and saw their king fall insensible on the neck of his horse, ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... awoke by a terrible invasion—such malodorous swarms of all sizes, from a tiny brown speck to a full-grown lentil, that they darkened his bed; and he slept on the tiled floor after making an island of himself by pouring cold water all round him as a kind of moat; and so he slept for a week of nights, until he had managed to poison off most of these invaders with poudre insecticide ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... Mount Cephalon: With four fair rooms those lodgings are contrived, Four goodly rooms in form most spherical, Closing each other like the heavenly orbs: The first whereof, of nature's substance wrought, As a strange moat the other to defend, Is trained movable by art divine, Stirring the whole compacture of the rest: The second chamber is most curiously Compos'd of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... Missolonghiots, with the exception of those whom age, exhaustion, or illness made unable to leave their homes, were drawn up in bands at the city gates, the women armed and dressed as men, the children carrying pistols. Preceded by a body of soldiers, they crossed the moat under Turkish fire. The attack of the vanguard carried everything before it, and a way was cut through the Turkish lines. But at this moment some cry of confusion was mistaken by those who were still on the bridges for an order to retreat. A ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... in this instance, belie its designation, being, in fact, a massive, gloomy-looking, castellated, stone building, with battlements, turrets, small windows, a moat, a drawbridge, and a portcullis, the lower portion of which showed in the head of the archway that gave access to the interior of the building. The drawbridge was lowered, and, from his coign of vantage, Mildmay saw the professor boldly cross it ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... hard by, yet very faint and sweet, that came and went—a small and silvery chime he could by no means account for. So crept he near and nearer, quick-eyed and with ears on the stretch till he was stayed by the broad, sluggish waters of the moat; and thus, he presently espied something that moved in the gloom high above the great gateway, something that stirred, pendulous, in the cold-breathing ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... morning by the river-bank; Francesca hemming the last of the yellow window curtains, and I making souvenir programmes for the great occasion. Salemina had gone for the day with the Colquhouns and Dr. La Touche to lunch with some people near Kavan and see Donaghmore Round Tower and the moat. ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... guided him through the secret passage under the moat; they stood at the exit, in ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... remote antiquity. According to this authority, the first Baron of Beaurepaire had pitched his tent under a fair oak-tree that stood prope rivum, near a brook. His grandson built a square tower hard by, and dug a moat that enclosed both tree and tower, and received the ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... before, and so I recognised at once the place to which Alice had directed her course. It was the Garden of the Tuileries with its old chestnut-trees, its iron railings, its fortress moat, and its brutal-looking Zouave sentinels. Passing the palace, passing the Church of St. Roche, on the steps of which the first Napoleon for the first time shed French blood, we came to a halt high over the Boulevard des Italiens, where the third Napoleon did the same thing and with the ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... called an uninteresting country, even without the poetic spirit which now breathes about the names of many of its most prominent objects, for the ground bears all the traces of having been the residence of some famous people in early days. "The deep sunk moat, the stony mound," are visible in places where modern taste would shrink at erecting a temporary cottage, much less a castellated mansion; fragments of Roman brick are readily found on ridges which still ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... road, all at once rose the towers of Cairncarque. There was a castle indeed!—something to call a castle!—with its huge square tower at every corner, and its still huger two towers in the middle of its front, its moat, and the causeway where once had been its drawbridge!—Yes! there were the spikes of the portcullis, sticking down from the top of the gateway, like the long upper teeth of a giant or ogre! That was a real castle—such as he had read of in books, such as he ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... some directions about his garden" (at Wooton Surrey), "which, he was desirous to put into some form, for which he was to remove a mountain overgrown with large trees and thickets and a moat within ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... I had once or twice walked to this high place to enjoy the fine prospect. On Sunday last I had gone there and extended my walk down the hill to a place where the road, after passing a pretty old entrance-gateway, moat, and old hall, dips very prettily down to bridge over a small stream. This bridge (Cobb's Brow Bridge) is covered with ivy, and is very picturesque. Just before the road rather abruptly descends there are, on the right hand side of it, a number of remarkably old ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... contemplation, and yet necessarie. Quhiles I stack in this claye, it pleased God to bring your Majestie hame to visit your aun Ida. Quher I hard that your Grace, in the disputes of al purposes quherwith, after the exemple of the wyse in former ages, you use to season your moat, ne quid tibi temporis sine fructu fluat, fel sundrie tymes on this subject reproving your courteoures, quha on a new conceat of finnes sum tymes spilt (as they cal it) the king's language. Quhilk thing ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume

... gramophone and cinema. Then emerges one Bo[vr]ivoj, first of that name, who stands out more distinctly against the background of misty legend, probably by reason of his having embraced Christianity; he also embraced a lady, Ludmilla, who became his wife and one of Bohemia's moat popular saints and patrons. It happened that Bo[vr]ivoj had occasion to ask his neighbour Svatopluk, Prince of Moravia, for protection, and then he became acquainted with that energetic missionary, St. Methodius. ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... may have heard, by an instance of filial piety. The town was greatly straitened for want of provisions; a youth, whose father was in the garrison, was accustomed nightly to get into the deep dry moat, climb up the glacis, and put provisions through a hole, where the father stood ready to receive them. He was perceived at length; the soldiers fired on him. He was taken prisoner, and sentenced to be hanged in sight of the besieged, in order to strike terror into those who might be ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... prospect at the other points. A bog, filled with animalculae of all forms sporting about in the water, which was black from long stagnation, surrounded three parts of the rock, leaving but one approach to it, which was the side least raised above the level of the earth. The bog, therefore, acted as a moat; and it was with that, or some similar feeling of security, we stretched ourselves at full length on the soft moss, and basked in the sun. P——, as usual, drew forth his pipe, and soothing himself with its fumes, exemplified absolute comfort and contentment in the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... raised high in air, And balconies hanging here and there, And signal lanterns and flags afloat, And eight round towers, like those that frown From some old castle, looking down Upon the drawbridge and the moat, And he said, with a smile, "Our ship, I wis, Shall be ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... with strong walls and a deep moat, or ditch, around it. There are eight gates in the wall and bridges ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw

... the morning, the remainder of the day is marked by a series of violent assaults with brief intervals of repose. In rapid succession the south-easter brings up its battalions and hurls them on the mountain. It leaps over the moat and ramparts of the "castle" with fury, roars down the cannons' throats, shrieks out at the touch-holes, and lashes about the town right and left, assaulting and violating, for the south-easter respects neither person nor place. It rattles roofs and windows, and all but overturns steeples and ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne

... ALWAR has a railway station on the Rajputana line, 98 m. from Delhi; pop. (1901) 56,771, showing a steady increase. It stands in a valley overhung by a fortress 1000 ft. above. It is surrounded by a rampart and moat, with five gates, and contains fine palaces, temples and tombs. The water-supply is brought from a lake 9 m. distant. It has a high school, affiliated to the Allahabad university; and a school for the sons of nobles, founded to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of the knight's house was in a small island encompassed with a vast moat thirty feet deep, and twenty feet wide, over which lay a drawbridge. Wherefore Jack employed two men to cut it on both sides, and then dressing himself in his Coat of darkness, putting on his Shoes of swiftness, he marched against the Giant, with his Sword ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... ground. If the eye were to be considered as a correct judge, this venerable pile, composed of hard flint-stone, intermixed with brick, would perhaps claim precedence, on the score of antiquity, over most of the castles of the middle ages. A deep moat, now dry pasture land, with a bold acclivity before you, should seem to bid defiance, even in times of old, to the foot and the spear of the invader. There are circular towers at the extremities, and ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... side, the dead being our antipodes. In the Odyssey, Ulysses reaches Hades by sailing across the ocean stream and passing the eternal night land of the Cimmerians, whereupon he comes to the edge of Acheron, the moat of Pluto's sombre house. Virgil also says, "One pole of the earth to us always points aloft; but the other is seen by black Styx and the infernal ghosts, where either dead night forever reigns or else Aurora returns thither from us and brings them ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... "Fill up the moat," Francis had ordered. "'Tis barbaric! What lover would sigh beneath walls thirty feet thick! And the portcullis! Away with it! Summon my Italian painters to adorn the walls. We may yet make habitable these legacies from the ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... of Him awhile That, with a coffin for a boat, Rows daily o'er the Stygian moat, And for our table choose a tomb: There's dark enough in any skull To charge with black a raven plume; And for the saddest funeral thoughts A winding-sheet hath ample room, Where Death, with his keen-pointed style, Hath writ ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a moat, in the dull solitude of your chamber, you awake with your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, the wave, the star, the clock, of everything that flies, sobs, rolls, sings, talks, what is the hour? and the wind, the wave, the star, the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... often more or less fully rationalized it; transforming, for instance, the black river of Death which the original heroes often had to cross on journeys to the Celtic Other World into a rude and forbidding moat about the hostile castle into which the romancers degraded the Other World itself. Countless magic details, however, still remained recalcitrant to such treatment; and they evidently troubled Malory, whose devotion ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... they would be completely flooded. Our city is nine miles in circumference, while canals of various sizes intersect it in every direction, and divide it into ninety islands, which are connected by means of nearly three hundred bridges. A broad moat, or canal, also runs almost completely round it, a portion of which is flanked with avenues of elms, which have a handsome and picturesque appearance. Our houses are constructed on foundations of piles, and as some of these give ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston

... put off, and row with speed, For now 's the time, and the hour of need! To oars, to oars, and trim the bark, Nor Scotland's queen be a warder's mark! Yon light that plays round the castle's moat Is only the warder's random shot! Put off, put off, and row with speed, For now is the time, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... defence to the city, by order of Charles V., between 1369 and 1382, but used as a place of imprisonment from the first; a square structure, with towers and dungeons for the incarceration of the prisoners, the whole surrounded by a moat, and accessible only by drawbridges; "tyranny's stronghold"; attacked by a mob on 14th July 1789; taken chiefly by noise; overturned, as "the city of Jericho, by miraculous sound"; demolished, and the key of it sent to Washington; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... you, my children, are of course familiar with, for you were all born here. At that date the great central tower alone stood erect amid the universal destruction. A black wolf's head reared itself high above the portcullis. The moat was filled with drift of crumbling years, and the walls, fallen in many places, ran hither and thither in aimless curves and angles, much as they ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... that gothic chamber in which I had been permitted to establish my unsocial study, heralding the advent of majestic folios, and heaping libraries round the unworthy work. Again, pausing from my labour, I look through that castle casement, and beyond that feudal moat, over the broad landscapes which, if I err not, took their name from the proud brother of the Conqueror himself; or when, in those winter nights, the grim old tapestry waved in the dim recesses, I hear again the Saxon thegn winding his horn at the turret door, and demanding ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Brimont. And here, also, commanding the road, stood a ruined fortress of an obsolete last-century pattern. Shellfire had battered it into a gruel of shattered red masonry; but German officers were camped within its more habitable parts, and light guns were mounted in the moat. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb



Words linked to "Moat" :   fosse, trench



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