"Peasantry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... longer form which was preserved among the Israelites as well as among the Phoenicians, the original inhabitants of the sea-coast. Coins of Laodicea, on the Orontes, bear the inscription, "Laodicea a metropolis in Canaan," and St. Augustine states that in his time the Carthaginian peasantry of Northern Africa, if questioned as to their descent, still answered that they were "Canaanites." (Exp. Epist. ad ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... Sewel, in the Introduction to his Dutch Dictionary, 1691, gives henketsjer, and Voltaire, forty years later, hankercher, as the received pronunciation. Sewel tells us also that the significant l was still sounded in would and should, as it still is by the peasantry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... dingily and curiously hung about with dirty rags of housecloth and scarlet flannel, sacking, curtain serge, and patches of old carpet, and went either bare-footed or on rude wooden sandals. These people, the reader must understand, were an urban population sunken back to the state of a barbaric peasantry, and so without any of the simple arts a barbaric peasantry would possess. In many ways they were curiously degenerate and incompetent. They had lost any idea of making textiles, they could hardly make up clothes when they had material, and they were forced to plunder the continually dwindling ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... for the army, attended the clubs regularly, corresponded with the authorities of his department, and was loud in his denunciations of the aristocrats in the neighborhood. But owing, perhaps, to the German origin of the peasantry, and their quiet and rustic lives, the revolutionary fury which prevailed in the cities had hardly reached the country people. The occasional visit of a commissary from Paris or Strasburg served to keep the flame alive, and to remind ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... began to scheme for Pan-Slavism, had no sympathy with Big Byzantium, and was aware that when you have an ignorant peasantry to deal with, a National Church is one of the best means for producing acute Nationalism. Under pressure from Russia, who was supported by other Powers—some of whom really believed they were aiding the ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... caricatured in Paris, they had three-fourths of the population as fast bound to them as bigotry and their daily bread could bind. Three months ago, they might have marched to Paris with their crucifixes in front, and three millions of stout peasantry in their rear, have captured the capital, and fricaseed the foolish legislature. And now, they have archbishops learning to live on a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... characteristic stamp of face. The Arles women are said to be, believe themselves to be, and show to everyone that they believe themselves to be, the handsomest women in France. Their type is quite distinct from that of the inhabitants of Nimes, Marseilles, Aix, and even of the peasantry outside the gates of Arles. What is the more singular is that this peculiarity of type is not noticeable among the men. Among the women it is quite unmistakable. Their straight brows and noses are sometimes Greek, but the Roman arch appears as frequently as ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... most of the countries round it, France stood high. Its government was less oppressive, its general wealth was larger and more evenly diffused, there was a better administration of justice, and greater security for public order. Poor as its peasantry seemed to English eyes, they were far above the peasants of Germany or Spain. Its middle class was the quickest and most intelligent in Europe. Under Lewis the Fifteenth opinion was practically free, and a literary class had sprung up which devoted itself with ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... of England the peasantry formerly asserted that, on the anniversary of the Nativity, oxen knelt in their stalls at midnight,—the supposed hour of Christ's birth; while in other localities bees were said to sing in their hives and subterranean bells to ...
— Myths and Legends of Christmastide • Bertha F. Herrick
... peculiarities under the trustee regime were gone but not forgotten. The rigidity of paternalism, well meant though it had been, was a lesson against future submission to outward control in any form; and their failure as a peasantry in competition with planters across the river persuaded the Georgians and their neighbors that slave labor was ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... enough to free my lungs and change my position, so that I did not get tired. That evening he talked of the present state of things in England, giving light, witty sketches of the men of the day, fanatics and others, and some sweet, homely stories he told of things he had known of the Scotch peasantry. Of you he spoke with hearty kindness; and he told with beautiful feeling a story of some poor farmer or artizan in the country, who on Sunday lays aside the cark and care of that dirty English world, and sits reading the "Essays" and looking ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... perhaps unavoidable. But those who resisted the change should remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship. There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States. Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson
... natural health, or the frosty weather, gave to the complexions of the peasantry, particularly the females and children, a beautiful rosy bloom. Through all the villages there was the appearance of great comfort and neatness,—a neatness, however, very different from ours. Their nicely thatched cottages bore all the marks of great antiquity, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... repulsed with the following answer: "We want neither salt nor herrings under the reign of the King of Denmark, and another King could not give us more: besides, if we take arms against so great a Prince, we shall unavoidably perish." The Swedish peasantry, however, soon felt that the cruelty and tyranny of Christiern were something more than a ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... shall presently see that in England itself there was strong ground for discontent with the prevailing social order and the relations between the peasantry and the landed classes: but in Germany matters were very much worse. In England there had always been a tendency for the religious reformers to associate their movements with demands for social reform; and so it was now to an exaggerated ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... with the country gentry was very generally the same as with the peasantry, though hitherto they had openly expressed no opposition to the ruling Government. They had, however, been always elected to those situations which the leaders of the revolution had wished the people to fill exclusively with ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... are rather unconscious. For one thing, a man with so rugged a loyalty to land could not be Americanised in New York; but it is not so certain that he could not be Americanised in America. We might almost say that a peasantry is hidden in the heart of America. So far as our impressions go, it is a secret. It is rather an open secret; covering only some thousand square miles of open prairie. But for most of our countrymen it is something invisible, ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... benefit of the learned members of a university. As the author himself has informed us they were all preached at Golden Grove, to the family and domestics of his patron and perhaps in addition to these, to a few of their neighbours and as many of the peasantry on the estate as could understand English.(63) The common people in England were so much accustomed in those days to hear Latin spoken in the pulpit, that they were sometimes led to undervalue a preacher who did not make some use of it. When Dr. Pollock, the celebrated orientalist, was presented ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... mounds, which are from ten to twenty feet in height, are now supposed to have been the burial places of the ancient Celts. The peasantry can with difficulty be persuaded to open any of them, on account of a prevalent superstition that it will bring ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... commence his return till the end of the month, when the same enthusiastic spirit accompanied his progress. "Every town and village was crowded. The sacred emblem of the arch, with flowers and branches of trees, with happy devices, prevailed everywhere. The peasantry all well dressed." Subsequently, a curious incident occurred. "Some hundreds of miners from the mountains came to serenade their king. They are a particular race of Saxon origin, and for centuries have preserved their customs, language, and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... not so romantically inclined, the homesteaders were the peasantry of America. Through the early homesteading days folk who "picked up and set themselves down to grub on a piece of land" were not of the world or important to it. But the stream of immigration to the land was ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... requires that, for a time, we leave princes, knights, and tournaments, and notice humbler personages, and more homely amusements. At a distance from the pavilion, the tourneyings, the music, the plays, and other exhibitions, was a crowd composed of some seven or eight hundred peasantry engaged in and witnessing the athletic games of the Borders. Near these were a number of humbler booths, in which the spectators and competitors might regale themselves with the spirits and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... submit quietly to this extinguishment of their national independence. Under the inspiration and lead of the famous Sir William Wallace, an outlaw knight, all the Lowlands were soon in determined revolt. It was chiefly from the peasantry that the patriot hero drew his followers. Wallace gained some successes, but at length was betrayed into Edward's hands. He was condemned to death as a traitor, and his head, garlanded with a crown of laurel, was exposed on London Bridge (1305). The romantic life of Wallace, his patriotic service, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... French nation never desired war—to hear them, one would suppose that the Rhine had never been called the national frontier of France, and that the war had been entered into by Badinguet, as they style the late Emperor, against the wishes of the army, the peasantry, and the bourgeoisie. Poor old Badinguet has enough to answer for already, but even sensible Frenchmen have persuaded themselves that he, and he alone, is responsible for the war. He is absolutely loathed here. I sometimes suggest to some Gaul that ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... sometimes forests of pines or cedars covering an extent of a hundred versts. It was no longer the wide steppe with limitless horizon; but the rich country was empty. Everywhere they came upon deserted villages. The Siberian peasantry had vanished. It was a desert, but a desert by ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... confused memories of our fantastic journeyings. Stretches of long white road and blazing sun. Laughing valleys and corn fields and white farmsteads among the trees. Now and then a village fete or wedding at which we played to the enthusiasm of the sober vested peasantry. Nights passed in barns, deserted byres, on the floor of cottages and infinitesimal cafes. Hours of idleness by the wayside after the midday meal, when the four of us sat round the fare provided by Blanquette, black bread, cheese, charcuterie and the eternal ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... him, and made many original observations. He said, for instance, that he saw why the soil of England was so rich, and that of Germany (I think it was) so poor, and he thought of writing to some of the crowned heads about it. It was because in England the peasantry live on the soil which they cultivate, but in Germany they are gathered into villages, at night. It is a pity that he did not make a book of ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... he saw the great roses in his garden, pink and white and cream and yellow, clambering over the walls and up to the very roof of his picturesque and peaceful home—the white doves nesting in the warm sun—the ripe apples hanging on the gnarled boughs, the simple peasantry walking up his garden paths, coming to him with their little histories of pain and disappointment and sorrow; which were as great to them as any of the wider miseries of sufferers more beset with anguish than themselves. He thought of it all sorrowfully and tenderly,—his habit was ever to think ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Smith, of the 4th Regiment. On our way to La Genolliere, we came across the man who had served as guide the day before, and a short conversation respecting the glaciere ensued. He had only seen it once, many years before, and he held stoutly to the usual belief of the peasantry, that the ice is formed in summer, and melts in winter; a belief which everything I had then seen contradicted. His last words as we parted were, 'Plus il fait chaud, plus ca gele;' and, paradoxical as it ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... the Gascon patois was peculiarly expressive and heart-touching, and in the South it was held in universal honour. Jasmin, he continued, is what Burns was to the Scottish peasantry; only he received his honours in his lifetime. The comparison with Burns, however, was not appropriate. Burns had more pith, vigour, variety, and passion, than Jasmin who was more of a descriptive writer. In some respects ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... carver and gilder in the trade. Besides, he had always an eye open for new business. At that time, when the war was raging with France, gold was at a premium. The guinea was worth about twenty-six or twenty-seven shillings. Bianconi therefore began to buy up the hoarded-up guineas of the peasantry. The loyalists became alarmed at his proceedings, and began to circulate the report that Bianconi, the foreigner, was buying up bullion to send secretly to Bonaparte! The country people, however, parted with their guineas readily; for they had ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... solitudes, the more the monks loved it. They cut down trees in the heart of the wilderness, and transformed a soil bristling with woods and thickets into rich pastures and ploughed fields. They stimulated the peasantry to labor, and taught them many useful lessons in agriculture. Thus, they became an industrial, as well as a ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... would be called over the border, living on their own land, and owning no allegiance to any feudal lord. Their rank is inferior to that of the Samurai, or men of the military class, between whom and the peasantry they hold a middle place. Like the Samurai, they wear two swords, and are in many cases prosperous and wealthy men claiming a descent more ancient than that of many of the feudal Princes. A large number of them are ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... haunt the scenes of bygone splendour in deserted palace and castle, old-world garden and desolate mansion; such has been the delightful labour which has gone to the telling of the true history of the Graevenitz. The Land-despoiler the downtrodden peasantry and indignant burghers named her, for they hated her as their sort must ever hate the beautiful, elegant, haughty woman of the great world. They called her sinner, which she was; and she called them canaille, which they ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... official position or material power, for the nobles had stripped the Church of the vast endowments which had lured their sons and the royal bastards within the pale of its ministry. The ministers of the new communion were drawn from the burghers and peasantry or at best from the smaller gentry; and nothing in their social position aided them in withstanding the nobles or the Crown. Their strength lay simply in the popular sympathy behind them, in their capacity of rousing national opinion ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... "peons" to a state of slavery. The bloody battles of all the recent warfare have been fought by these peons in a blind groping for freedom. They have disgraced their cause by excesses as barbarous as those perpetrated by the French peasantry; but they have also fought for their ideal with a heroism unsurpassed by that of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... is in the contrast of the mighty but conquered Douvres and the comparatively insignificant rocklet—there are hundreds like it on every granite coast—where Death the Consoler sets on Gilliatt's head the only crown possible for his impossible feat, and where the dislike of the ignorant peasantry, the brute resistance of machinery and material, the violence of the storm, the devilish ambush of the pieuvre, and all other evils are terminated and evaded and sanctified by the embrace and the euthanasia of the sea. Perhaps it is poetry rather than novel or even romance—in substance ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... their own unaided resources, millions of these people, especially in Russia, Poland, Austria, and sections of the late Turkish Empire, will perish. They cannot feed themselves. The land remains, but large tracts of it have been untilled; large numbers of the peasantry have fallen in the war, or are wandering as disbanded soldiers, far from home; the women and the aged and the children, underfed and broken in health and spirit, are utterly unequal to the task of growing the food for their livelihood. The factories and workshops are ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson
... transit duties; the vast majority of the population suffered extreme hardships when there was even a partial failure of crops in small tracts, owing to the great difficulty and cost of obtaining supplies of grain from more favoured regions; the peasantry and even possessors of considerable landed property, when not holding office under Government themselves, were cowering before the pettiest Government officer and submitting to tortures and degrading personal ill-treatment inflicted on the slightest pretext; persons ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... belief more at heart than political freedom. But political rights also were soon demanded, and demanded with such violence, that during his own life-time Luther had to repress the excesses of enthusiastic theorists and of a violent peasantry. Luther's great influence on the literature of Germany, and the gradual adoption of his dialect as the literary language, were owing in a great measure to this, that whatever there was of literature during the sixteenth century, was chiefly in the hands of one class ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... on visiting the scene of the occurrence in company with Psyekoff, found the following: Near the wing in which Klausoff had lived was gathered a dense crowd. The news of the murder had sped swift as lightning through the neighborhood, and the peasantry, thanks to the fact that the day was a holiday, had hurried together from all the neighboring villages. There was much commotion and talk. Here and there, pale, tear-stained faces were seen. The door of Klausoff's bedroom was found locked. The key ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... of Spanish laws, the cupidity of the corregidores and the tormenting system of the missionaries often restricted their liberty, that state of vexatious oppression was far different from personal slavery like that of the slavery of the blacks, or of the vassalage of the peasantry in the Sclavonian part of Europe. It is the small number of blacks, it is the liberty of the aboriginal race, of which America has preserved more than eight millions and a half without mixture of foreign blood, that characterizes the ancient ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... The Kreutzer Sonata. (Poor Beethoven. Why did not Tolstoy select Tristan and Isolde if he wished some fleshly music, some sensualistic caterwauling, as Huxley phrased it? But a melodious violin and piano sonata!) Tolstoy may go barefoot, dig for potatoes, wear his blouse hanging outside, but the peasantry will never accept him as one of their own. He has written volumes about "going to the people," and the people do not want him, do not comprehend him. And that is Tolstoy's tragedy, as it was ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... piquant loveliness, worthy to wear a duchess' coronet, earned nevertheless only thirty francs a year. She kept company with Jean-Louis Tonsard without letting her master once suspect it; ambition had prompted this young woman to flatter her employer as a means of hoodwinking this lynx. [The Peasantry.] ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... still wandering round their native haunts, none daring to make them afraid. The owners had declined to sell; and our ever hungry men had honourably refrained from laying unpermitted hands on these greatly enjoyable dainties. Such honesty in a hostile land, in relation to the property of a hostile peasantry, made me marvel; and still more when maintained in places where unmistakable treachery had been practised as in this ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... then in Nidaros, whose peasantry, called Troenders, were said to be celebrating in secret the old pagan festivals and offering sacrifices to Odin and Frey for bountiful crops. When King Olaf came among them they took arms against him, but afterwards agreed ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... Lorraine, and the memory of its heroine is revered by the peasantry as highly as that ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... courage for herself—and me. We went to and fro seeking an outlet, over a country all commandeered and ransacked by the gathering hosts of war. Always we went on foot. At first there were other fugitives, but we did not mingle with them. Some escaped northward, some were caught in the torrent of peasantry that swept along the main roads; many gave themselves into the hands of the soldiery and were sent northward. Many of the men were impressed. But we kept away from these things; we had brought no money to bribe a passage north, and I feared for my lady at the hands of these conscript ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... than the fathers of the Church, held that the world was pervaded with spirits; side by side with the belief in witchcraft, we can trace through the middle ages the survival of primitive animistic views; and in our own day even these beliefs subsist in unsuspected vigour among the peasantry of the more uneducated European countries. In fact the ready acceptance of spiritualism testifies to the force with which the primitive animistic way of looking at things appealed to the white races in the middle of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... commodities like iron and salt; for the rest, it drew on itself and its own resources. This produced at once a great uniformity and a great isolation. There was a great uniformity, because most men lived the same grey, quiet life of agriculture. The peasantry of Europe, in these days when most men were peasants, lived in the same way, under the same custom of the manor, from Berwick to Carcassonne, and from Carcassonne to Magdeburg. But there was also a great isolation. Men were tied to their manors; and the men of ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... in a cart. One of the staff-officers instantly appropriated the keg, and proceeded to share his prize most generously. Never had I tasted anything so refreshing and delicious, but as the wine was the ordinary sour stuff drunk by the peasantry of northern France, my appreciation must be ascribed to my famished condition rather than to any virtues ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... was taken drunkenness vanished in Russia. The results are seen at once in the peasantry; already they are beginning to look like a different race. The marks of suffering, the pinched looks of illness and improper nourishment have gone from their faces. There has been also a remarkable change in the appearance of their clothes. Their clothes are cleaner, and both the men ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... repays dry cultivation. The result is that the area watered fluctuates largely. But in the six years ending the interest earned averaged 7 p.c., and the power of expansion in a bad year is a great boon to the peasantry. ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... but to obtain this vernacular literature was not the work of mere compilation. The editor's task was not performed in the closet, but in a sort of literary pilgrimage through a land of song, story, and romance. The farmers and peasantry from whose recitation the ballads were to be set down, were a primitive race; and the country among which oral traditions, anecdotes, and legends were to be collected for notes illustrative of the ballads, was of the most romantic character. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... won a victory, But tempered is our exultation; We have lost a host of peasantry And all the best knights ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise
... organizing and consolidating among Jews and Gentiles alike. At the time when Abraham Lincoln was proclaiming his famous "United we stand, divided we fall," Julius Slovacki in Poland pleaded the cause of the peasantry of his country, and the Alliance Israelite Universelle issued a call to the entire house of Israel "to defend the honor of the Jewish name wherever it is attacked; to encourage, by all means at our disposal, the pursuit of useful handicrafts; to combat, where necessary, ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... If we happen to be irreligious, we do not believe in ghosts. If we are profoundly religious, we think of the dead as removed from us by judgment,—as absolutely separated from us during the period of our lives. It is true that among the peasantry of Roman Catholic countries there still exists a belief that the dead are permitted to return to earth once a year,—on the night of All Souls. But even according to this belief they are not considered as ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... in the neighbourhood of Kilkargan, and, so far as I know, everywhere the feeling is as bitter as ever, among those who have been dispossessed, and also among the tenants and peasantry, who have found themselves handed over to the mercies of Dutchmen, or other followers of William. At Kilkargan there was not that grievance; but, although they had still one of the old family as their master, they could not forgive him for deserting ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... the funds of the parish," answered my mother, "he becomes what is called a pauper, and among the English peasantry of the better sort, there is the greatest possible aversion to be ranked with this degraded class. Consequently, the inmates of the workhouses are either those whose infirmities prevent their earning a subsistence, or the idle and the dissolute, who feel ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... their followers to become Christians. On the contrary, they ordered them to renounce the new faith, under threat of punishment. Their harshness resulted in rebellion, so new a thing among the peasantry of Japan that the authorities felt sure that they had been secretly instigated to it by the missionaries. The wrath of the shogun aroused, he sent soldiers against the rebels, putting down each outbreak with bloodshed, and in 1606 ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... season, and are there in numbers in spawning-time. So that for several years during the late period, the gentry, finding no advantage from preserving the spawning fish, neglected the matter altogether in a kind of dudgeon, and the peasantry laid them waste at their will. As the property is very valuable, the proprietors down the country agreed to afford some additional passage for fish when the river is open, providing they will protect the spawning fish during ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... to his attack in July, and had not really left it alone, so that the civilians had made a rather hurried departure. A few had elected to remain, and were to be seen walking furtively about the streets with that curious strained look that the war-driven peasantry of France and Belgium always wore. Here we met the 2nd battalion of the Manchesters, and were glad of the opportunity to make their acquaintance. A 7th officer, then Capt. L. Taylor, was amongst them and ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... are very numerous, and are attributed by the peasantry to different saints. Mr. and Mrs. S.C. Hall, in their account of Ireland, refer to several curious examples which are regarded by the people with superstitious reverence, and are the occasions of religious ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... of a Greek chorus—the comment of an idealised spectator, assuming that the hearer has the drama unfolding before his eyes. Recent researches have supplemented and modified our knowledge. It is no longer possible to accept the more revolting representations of the misery[161] of the French peasantry as true of the whole of France, for France before the Revolution was an assemblage of many provinces of varying social conditions, subjected to varying administrative laws. Nor can we accept Carlyle's portraiture of Robespierre as history, after Louis Blanc's great work. ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... with all the loveliness of cultivated rurality merging into the wild beauties of unadorned nature." If these was not exactly her words, they express the ideas she roused in my mind. She said the place was far enough away from railways and the stream of travel, and among the simple peasantry, and that in the society of the resident gentry we would see English country life as it is, uncontaminated by the tourist ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... nothing to us. So far as western Europe went, it was only a small and ignorant section of the lower classes who regarded the comet as a portent of the end of the world. Abroad, where there were peasantries, it was different, but in England the peasantry had already disappeared. Every one read. The newspaper, in the quiet days before our swift quarrel with Germany rushed to its climax, had absolutely dispelled all possibilities of a panic in this ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... be a difficult matter to decide whether the superstitions and odd fancies entertained by the Gipsies in England are derived from the English peasantry, were brought from India, or picked up on the way. This must be left for ethnologists more industrious and better informed than myself to decide. In any case, the possible common Aryan source will tend to obscure the truth, just as it often does ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... terrible in their fearless enthusiasm, thrilling with pride at their morning's success, commanded by a man whom they obeyed with confidence and love. The doomed and devoted Montcalm had what Wolfe had called but "five weak French battalions," of less than two thousand men, "mingled with disorderly peasantry," formed on commanding ground. The French had three little pieces of artillery; the English, one or two. The two armies cannonaded each other for nearly an hour; when Montcalm, having summoned De Bougainville to his aid, and dispatched messenger after messenger for ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... neglected, and all kind of industry is so foreign to them, that the Jews have possessed themselves of the entire trade, and make the peasants sell them for a quantity of brandy the whole harvest of the approaching year. The distance between the nobility and the peasantry is so immense, the contrast between the luxury of the one, and the frightful misery of the other is so shocking, that it is probable the Austrians have given them better laws than those which previously ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... rough weather, however, the steamers go outside, which lengthens the passage considerably. A large West Indiaman, with a cargo of rum, &c., was lost a few years ago on a rock near Porthcawl, called the Tusca, which disappears at high-water; and a dreadful scene of riot occurred amongst the peasantry along shore in consequence. The coast near Porthcawl appears at Swansea to be the eastern extremity of the bay; but the bluff point called the Nass, about eight miles farther, is so in reality. The coast onwards past the Nass point is almost perpendicular, the limestone lying in horizontal ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... the midst of the grassplot near which he was stood a great white cow, one of those splendid creatures that are only seen on Dutch pastures. A fine-looking maid, dressed in the national costume of the Dutch peasantry, with the gold-edged cap over the full, luxuriant hair that fell in long braids down her back, sat on a stool beside the cow, and was busied in milking. In melodious, regular cadence the steaming milk flowed over her ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... not to rustic life in general, or to the absence of artificial cultivation. On the contrary the mountaineers, whose manners have been so often eulogized, are in general better educated and greater readers than men of equal rank elsewhere. But where this is not the case, as among the peasantry of North Wales, the ancient mountains, with all their terrors and all their glories, are pictures to the blind, and music to ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... is his full name, became the artist of peasantry. He never made any other boast. His character was of the highest. He had a firm faith in God. He believed in the Bible as the Word of God. He looked upon his use of the brush as preaching upon canvas the purity and truth ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... is a subject of curious contemplation. A rich planter of Attica, finding, one day, a goat devouring his grapes, killed it, and invited the peasantry to come and feast upon it. He gave them abundance of wine to drink, intoxicated with which they daubed their faces with the lees, ornamented their heads with chaplets made of the vine branches, and then danced, singing ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... church on the backs of the peasants, who knelt down in the mud to allow her to pass over them without soiling her shoes. She could also remember, though less partial to the recollection, a rising of the peasantry, when nothing but the kindness with which her mother had generally treated them saved her from the cruel death which many of ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House of Usher"—an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... nations. For her to sink would be a loss to all the world. There are certain lessons of brilliance and of generous gallantry that she can teach better than any of her sister nations. When the French peasantry sang of Malbrook, it was to tell how the soul of this warrior-foe took flight upward through the laurels he had won. Nearly seven centuries ago, Froissart, writing of a time of dire disaster, said that the realm of France was never so stricken that there were not left men ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... are a mixture of real and conventional rusticity, but the former tends to prevail. They represent the mode of thought of a well-meaning village clergyman, not without a certain leaning to liberal ideas. As Carmelite monk, the writer may have had occasion to mix freely with the peasantry. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Mr. Balfour when he was Chief Secretary, and which culminated in the Wyndham Purchase Act, have created a new Ireland. Mr. Redmond, speaking a year or two ago, said that Ireland "was studded with the beautiful and happy homes of an emancipated peasantry." It is a true picture, but it is a picture of the result of Unionist policy in Ireland, a policy which Mr. Redmond and his friends, including the present Government, have done their best to hamper. The driving power of the agitation for Home Rule has always been ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... of August was always a day of rejoicing that was looked forward to all the year by every one in Svartsjoe and in Bro, not only by the gentry, who participated in all the festivities, but also by the young folk of the peasantry, who came in crowds to Loevdala to look at the smartly dressed people and to listen to the singing ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... the same among the Lithuanian peasantry. A dragon walks on two legs, talks, flirts with a lady, and marries her. He retains his evil disposition, but has sloughed off his ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... and close to Gensano we went to look at the Lake of Nemi, which is very pretty, but not so grand as Albano. The peasantry are a fine race in these parts, and we met many men driving carts or riding asses who would not disgrace the most romantic group of banditti. The people were all working in the open air, and seemed very gay. There were few beggars, and not ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Government wished to know "whether a modified form of agricultural implement could not, tentatively and as a temporary measure, be introduced among the agricultural population without needlessly or unduly exasperating the existing religious sentiments of the peasantry." ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... And then—what else can one offer to these Abruzzi mountain-folk? Their life is one of miserable, revolting destitution. They have no games or sports, no local racing, clubs, cattle-shows, fox-hunting, politics, rat-catching, or any of those other joys that diversify the lives of our peasantry. No touch of humanity reaches them, no kindly dames send them jellies or blankets, no cheery doctor enquires for their children; they read no newspapers or books, and lack even the mild excitements of church versus chapel, or the vicar's daughter's love-affair, or the squire's latest row ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... following century, while Protestant ascendancy was still maintained, the Catholics had greater scope. Away back in the days of Queen Elizabeth, Campion found Latin widely spoken among the peasantry, and Father Mooney met country lads familiar with Virgil and Homer. In 1670, Petty had a similar story to tell, in spite of all the savageries of Cromwell and the ruin which necessarily followed. And in the eighteenth century the schoolmaster, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... the Walton side, from our favorite bridge (Old Camden tells us so), is the spot where Caesar crossed the Thames. Were the peasantry as imaginative as their brethren of Killarney, what legends would have grown out of this tradition; how often would the "noblest Roman of them all" have been seen by the pale moonlight leading his steed over the waters of the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... peasant tale was no new thing in European literature, for the names of Auerbach and George Sand, to say nothing of many others, at once come to the mind. In Scandinavian literature, its chief representative had been the Danish novelist, Blicher, who had written with insight and charm of the peasantry of Jutland. But in the treatment of peasant life by most of Bjoernson's predecessors there had been too much of the de haut en bas attitude; the peasant had been drawn from the outside, viewed philosophically, and invested with artificial sentiment. Bjoernson was too near to his own country ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... wild-eyed and wild-winged creatures which dwell in them alone, their life hid in Nature, and their cries of rude praise going up continually to Nature's God? And yet the Highlands of Scotland have not hitherto produced one great rural poet, except Macpherson, who did belong to the peasantry. And so of the seafaring class; only, so far as we remember, have expressed, the one in verse, and the other in prose, the 'poetry' of their calling,—namely, Cooper and Falconer, both of whose descriptions of sea storms and scenery have been equalled, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... anything he had ever dreamed of. He found himself suddenly made a wealthy man. The gratitude of the people was boundless; and the simple-hearted man scarcely knew what to do with all the money that poured in upon him. So he caused a considerable portion of it to be distributed among the poor peasantry in the vicinity of the castle. He felt a great sense of sorrow as he looked upon the many faces that he had learned to love. But all was ready and ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... a favourite spot for an afternoon siesta, for there is a bit of green sward under the tree, and all along the side of the road. But as the shades of evening gather in, the lane is usually deserted, shunned by the neighbouring peasantry on account of its eerie loneliness, so different to the former bustle which used to reign around the park gates when M. le Marquis and his family were still in residence. Nor does the lane lead anywhere, for it is a mere loop which gives on the main road ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... but one compassionate horseman as he rode along threw the core of an apple to one, on which she subsisted for three days. Wonderful is it to state that three groups of firs sprung up miraculously from the graves of the three maids. Thus their memories have been perpetuated. The peasantry of Winchester and its neighbourhood for the most part accredit the story, and I see no reason for disbelieving the first part of it myself. Does any one know of a like punishment being awarded in olden times, when the tender mercies of the law ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... motive in devoting himself to law was the same that had led him to the ministry,—his desire to be a blessing to his fellow-beings. He saw the peasantry cheated and imposed upon because of their ignorance, and determined to become their champion. Kruesi thinks that his study of the law must "have produced negative results by showing him the insufficiency of human legislation to do away with abuses, unless supported by principles ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... in many parts of the country, but all these will do the President good, and strengthen his hands, for even the people who have been treated with indignity will pardon him if their chateaux are saved from an infuriated and brutal peasantry. The President told Normanby last night that the accounts of the cruelties and attacks in parts of the country were very serious, but he hoped they would ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... the Government's desire to build no schools, the higher clergy for the most part acquiesced. It surely is a function of a Government to occupy itself with education and to turn away from the great landlords who are frightened that a peasantry more educated will be troublesome. But those who have to bear a good part of the criticism are the village clergy; it is human not to criticize them half so much for what they left undone as for some aspects of their private ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay. Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,— A breath can make them, as a breath has made;[396-1] But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... adaptation to the vine and other fruits, none flourish in the neighborhood of Munich. The whole country suffers from deficiency of nourishing and stimulating food. They may not themselves know it, but this is true of the peasants who are best to do in the world. Of the peasantry of Upper Bavaria, some have meat five times in the year, on their chief holidays,—namely, Shrove Tuesday, Easter, Whitsuntide, Church-Consecration, and Christmas; some have it on but two of these days, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... well-regulated. But the rural labourers regard even the misery of towns as preferable to the worse misery of the rural districts; and year by year they crowd into the seats of manufacturing industry in search of homes and employment. This speaks volumes as to the actual state of our "boasted peasantry, their country's pride." ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... they did not realize the dire distress that prevailed in Ireland. However that may have been, Fergus prospered in his trading, and bought grain, and wine, and fat oxen and sheep, so that he loaded many ships with full freights of provisions, enough to carry the starving peasantry through the famine year till the next harvest. At last all his money was spent, all his ships were laden, everything was ready, and the little fleet lay in harbour, only awaiting a fair wind, which, ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... embarked for Genoa, died of the maladies contracted during their long bivouac in the marshes of Minturnae. The rest recrossed the Alps into France, too desperate to heed their master's prohibition. Those who took their way by land suffered still more severely from the Italian peasantry, who retaliated in full measure the barbarities they had so long endured from the French. They were seen wandering like spectres along the high roads and principal cities on the route, pining with cold and ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... some years—until it was decided, indeed, that they should move to Monksland—there was little of startling interest in the diary. It recorded descriptions of the wild moorland scenery, of birds, and ferns, and flowers. Also there were sketches of the peasantry and of the gentlefolk with whom the writer came in contact; very shrewd and clever, some of them, but with this peculiarity—that they were absolutely free from unkindness of thought or words, though sometimes their author allowed herself the license of a mitigated satire. ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... d'Elite, mounted grenadiers, chasseurs, hussars and dragoons, had easily attained a position in front of the van of the army commanded by Marmont, which had rested a few hours at St. Prix, where the road crossed the Petit Morin on a bridge. His requisition on the peasantry had been honored, and great numbers of fresh, vigorous draft horses had been brought in from all sides. There was not much speed to be got out of these farm animals, to be sure, but they were of prodigious strength. The ordinary gun teams ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... whole. At least half of the confiscated church property was to be given back, two abbeys at least were to remain in each county. But this movement owed its peculiar character to yet another motive. The enclosures of the arable land for purposes of pasture, of which the peasantry had been long complaining, did not merely continue; the nobility, which took part in the secularisation of the church-lands in an increasing degree, extended its grasp also to the newly-gained estates. So it came to pass that ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... disguise of Danes. He then told the count that Edmund intended to reconnoitre the place alone, and that he hoped he and his people would attack the town, while the Saxons in their galley made an assault from the sea. The count replied that the peasantry could not be induced to take such ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... as a force in society longer in the West than in the East, not merely among the peasantry, but among the higher classes. This was partly due to the conservatism of the aristocratic classes and the superior form in which the religious philosophy of Neo-Platonism had been presented to the West. This presentation was due, in no small part, to the work of such ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... farming are not the best, and an acre of land produces scarcely one-third as much as the same area is made to yield in other states. The farming class, or peasantry, was in a condition of serfdom until within a few years. Poverty unfits them to compete with farmers of western Europe; moreover, the laws of land ownership and tenure ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... Welsh salmon river, which is remarkable chiefly (at least, till this last year) for containing no salmon, as they have been all poached out by the enlightened peasantry, to prevent the Cythrawl Sassenach (which means you, my little dear, your kith and kin, and signifies much the same as the Chinese Fan Quei) from coming bothering into Wales, with good tackle, and ready money, and civilisation, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... perhaps, or relatives of stockholders in the London Company, attracted to Virginia because of the newness of the adventure and the spice of danger; sons of professional men and men of business, intrigued by a new business life and opportunity; men from the laboring classes and the peasantry of rural sections. But it is extremely doubtful that the Jamestown settlement, after its tragic first years, continued very long to be attractive to young men seeking adventure only. Many of the families of today who boast of their generations of ancestry ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... severely. The savage ferocity with which, in spite of repeated proclamations and orders, the invading army treated the people, had exasperated the peasantry almost to madness, and taking up arms, they cut down every straggler, annihilated small parties, attacked baggage trains, and repeated in Russia the terrible retaliation dealt by the Spanish ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... George, then a subaltern, made a report to his commanding officer, and it went wider than routine. He offered a frank account of the events attending the tithe-collecting, including the attitude of the peasantry, and the lessons that occurred to himself. These, the commanding officer did not desire, and he returned the report to the writer, desiring it to be made formal. 'Sir,' was the subaltern's reply, 'I have stated just what happened, and ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... the attention they received and the indifference which fell to the lot of the children. Besides, the then distressing condition of the laboring population in Ireland made the luxuries and silly affectations of the rich doubly noticeable. Mary saw for herself the poverty of the peasantry. Margaret was allowed to visit the poor, and she accompanied her on her charitable rounds. The almost bestial squalor in which these people lived was another cruel contrast to the pampered existence led by the dogs at the castle. She had none of Strap's veneration for the epithet of ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Mysz the Dobrzynskis alone fought with the Muscovites, who were led by the Russian general Voynilovich, and that scoundrel, his friend, Pan Wolk of Logomowicze. You remember how we took Wolk captive, and how we were going to hang him to a beam in the barn, because he was a tyrant to the peasantry and a servant of the Muscovites; but the stupid peasants took pity on him! (I must roast him some time on this penknife.) I will not mention countless other great forays, from which we always emerged ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... was a handful of journeymen or hired artisans, who in that year associated to aid each other, and prevent themselves from becoming burdensome to strangers—an interesting fact, as evincing in a remote period the predominance of that spirit of independence for which the modern Scottish peasantry has been famed, and which even yet survives in some degree of vigour, notwithstanding the fatally counteractive influence of poor-laws. The funds contributed by these worthy men were put into a box, and kept there—for in those days ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... and happily was far away when Tibur opened its gates to the Goth. For more than half a year he and Venantius were busy in maintaining the Gothic rule throughout Lucania and Apulia, where certain Roman nobles endeavoured to raise an army of the peasantry in aid of the Greek invasion constantly expected upon the Adriatic shore. When at length he was recalled, the siege of Rome had begun. The Gothic ladies now resided at Tibur, where a garrison was established; there Basil and Veranilda ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... of the Bible, of the Word of God, Luther at first incited the German peasantry to revolt against their rulers, and then, frightened at his own work, he persuaded the princes to massacre the peasants. John of Leyden found, in his studies of the Bible, that he should marry eleven women at once. ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... Dublin, sure, there is no doubtin', Beats every city upon the say. 'Tis there you'll see O'Connell spouting, And Lady Morgan making "tay." For 'tis the capital of the greatest nation With finest peasantry on a fruitful sod, Fighting like devils for conciliation, And hating each other for ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... (then Governor-General) made great sacrifices in their favour, levying only a small tribute in proportion to their often great revenues, in the hope that they would be induced to devote their energies, and some of their means, to the improvement of the condition of the peasantry. This expectation was not realized: the younger Zemindars especially, subject to no restraint (except from aggressions on their neighbours), fell into slothful habits, and the collecting of the revenue became a trading speculation, entrusted to "middle men." ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... too many kinds of food at a meal is a common fault which is often a cause of disease of the digestive-organs. Those nations are the most hardy and enduring whose dietary is most simple. The Scotch peasantry live chiefly upon oatmeal, the Irish upon potatoes, milk, and oatmeal, the Italian upon peas, beans, macaroni, and chestnuts; yet all these are noted for remarkable health and endurance. The natives of the Canary Islands, an exceedingly well-developed and vigorous race, subsist almost chiefly ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... a Country Town A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Modeste Mignon Another Study of Woman The Secrets of a Princess A Daughter of Eve The Peasantry ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... low peasantry would then be gleaned From the true seed of honour?] The meaning is, How much meanness would be found among the great, and how much greatness among the mean. But since men are always said to glean corn though they may pick chaff, the sentence had been more agreeable ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... for every occasion, and a great many changes for church on Sundays. In Catholic Germany a procession on a saint's day seems to have stepped down from a stained-glass window, the women's gowns are so vivid and their bodies so stiff and angular. But to see the German peasantry in full dress you must go to a Kirchweih, a dance, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... political tendencies—the idea of coalition. The election law of the Duma provided for the representation of all group interests of the community, and representation by an actual member of the group, by a bona fide peasant in the case of the peasantry. The seats in the assembly were distributed specifically to landlords, manufacturers, the smaller bourgeoisie, workmen, and peasants. The election law of the local government bodies made similar provision for group representation. ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... in vain, and the Portuguese peasantry stands to-day at the very lowest step of European civilization—far beneath all others. The number of agricultural workers in Portugal is about eight hundred and seventy-five thousand. Of this number, some seven hundred thousand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... The houses are also architecturally different from those of the country-folk of the north-east; their high thatched roofs are curiously decorated with bundles of straw fastened to a pole of bamboo parallel with the roof-ridge, and elevated about a foot above it. The complexion of the peasantry is darker than in the north-east; and I see no more of those charming rosy faces one observes among the women of the Tokyo districts. And the peasants wear different hats, hats pointed like the straw roofs of those little wayside ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... incessant drilling. This childish passion, not for war, but for mere militarism, achieved a desirable result. The Polish army, in its equipment, in its armament, and in its battle-field efficiency, as then understood, became, by the end of the year 1830, a first-rate tactical instrument. Polish peasantry (not serfs) served in the ranks by enlistment, and the officers belonged mainly to the smaller nobility. Mr. Nicholas B., with his Napoleonic record, had no difficulty in obtaining a lieutenancy, but the promotion in the Polish army was slow, because, being a separate organization, it took no ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... not a great many of those whom you consider to be included among the second class come from the village-communities—the peasantry of the country?" ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... of each week that I always devote to my poor. Would you like to drive around with me in the pony chaise and make acquaintance with the peasantry of Scotland? You will find them a very intelligent, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... secure our liabilities and to lighten our taxation, and in all cases of land granted to freedmen no title should vest till a fair price had been paid,—a principle no less essential to their true interests than our own. That these people, who are to be the peasantry of the future Southern States, should be made landholders, is the main condition of a healthy regeneration of that part of the country, and the one warranty of our rightful repossession of it. The ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... was the cheerfulness of the peasantry. At the little roadside stations the people crowded around the trains and ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... this regard will for the future be exercised as they have been in the past. For the Turkish armies, in so far as they have consisted of Turks, have been chiefly, if not wholly, recruited from the peasantry of Anatolia, who, when not summoned to their country's colours, or ordered to maltreat and massacre, are quiet, rather indolent folk, content to plough their lands and reap an exiguous but sufficient harvest. And for their ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... only to aggrandizement through her. The priesthood, which alone possessed a knowledge of letters, prostituted their learning to the basest uses; the nobility spent their lives in warring upon each other; the peasantry were the sport and victim by turns of priest and noble, while woman was the prey of all; her person and her rights possessing no consideration only as they could be made to advance the interest or serve the pleasure of noble, husband, father, or priest—some ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... sons and daughters of Africa, and witness the blessed fruits of the pious life, Christian integrity, and triumphant death of John Wesley! Come over to East Tennessee, Governor, and enter the log-cabins of the virtuous, happy peasantry of the "hill country," and ask them whether they believe Mr. Wesley or your Catholic authorities, touching the temporal power of the ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... sleeps in an unknown grave, his very name forgotten; but still the sad ending of the maidens is remembered, and even unto this day the cavern is denominated the "Cave of the Seven Sisters." Such is the above legend as it still exists amongst the peasantry, and any of your contributors would extremely oblige by informing me of the name ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... who live in small houses and rack your bones with toil. I am one of you, although I am racking my brain instead of my bones in our common interest. There are so many who would crowd us down we must stand together and be watchful or we shall be reduced to an overburdened, slavish peasantry, pitied and despised. Our danger will increase as wealth accumulates and the cities grow. I am for the average man—like myself. They've lifted me out of the crowd to an elevation which I do not deserve. I have more reputation than I dare promise ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... unfortunate comparison, for you have already delivered them out of the house of bondage without any petition on their part, but many from their task-masters to a contrary effect; and for myself, when I consider this, I pity the Catholic peasantry for not having the good fortune to be born black. But the Catholics are contented, or at least ought to be, as we are told; I shall, therefore, proceed to touch on a few of those circumstances which so marvellously contribute to their exceeding contentment. They are not allowed the free ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... strong-minded, and patriotic Netherland burghers and peasantry Reformation doctrines and principles readily spread and gained acceptance; yet they were met by the most determined and harsh opposition from the government which now held the Netherlands in the hollow of its hand. In 1521 Charles V. issued from Worms an edict dooming to loss ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... the Saeed: the new taxes and the new levies of soldiers are driving the people to despair and many are running away from the land, which will no longer feed them after paying all exactions, to join the Bedaween in the desert, which is just as if our peasantry turned gipsies. A man from Dishne visited me: the people there want me to settle in their village and offer me a voluntary corvee if I will buy land, so many men to work for me two days a month each, I haven't a conception ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... idea of the Street is that all stocks and all securities belong, not to the public, but to itself. Of course the money capital of the country belongs to the Street. And if, with the consent of public authority, the stocks of the country also can be held by the Street, then a humble peasantry, paying perennial rents and compound interest, can be created and kept under forever throughout the domains of the great Republic. It may ultimately require arsenals to do it, but ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... consists of narrative poems, as a rule dramatic in structure. These have come down to us in MSS. written in Scotland from the end of the fifteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century, in Ireland from the sixteenth down to the middle of the nineteenth century. The Gaelic-speaking peasantry, alike in Ireland and Scotland, have preserved orally a large number of these ballads, as also a great mass of prose narratives, the heroes of which are ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... that Jesus shared the inheritance, the education, and the beliefs of the Galilean peasantry of his time. The force in him which winnowed the ideas of his people, selecting and sublimating the higher elements, was an exceptional moral and spiritual insight. This insight guided him far upward in ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... eyes got accustomed to the dim hazy light, when we espied a woman in a corner making cakes, formed of two layers of meal buttered and placed at the bottom of a huge cauldron, such as is used by the Irish peasantry for boiling potatoes. These cakes served ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... citizen-class. Before the fall of the Prussian monarchy in 1807, the noble families—for the most part hereditary knights (Herrn von)—almost entirely monopolized the governmental and higher municipal posts, and a considerable portion of the peasantry were under servitude to them as feudal superiors. The numbers of the lesser nobility—in consequence of the right of every nobleman's son, of whatever grade, to bear his father's title—were so great, and since the introduction by the great Elector,[A] and his royal successors, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... This immunity covered not only the sons of aged parents who were dependent on them for support, but privileged persons of all sorts, from apothecaries to advocates, gentlemen and their servants and game-keepers. The burden was thus thrown entirely on the poorer peasantry.[Footnote: Broc, i. 117; ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... ever attempted to contradict the fact that the condition of the Bengal peasantry is almost as wretched and degraded as it is possible to conceive—living in the most miserable hovels, scarcely fit for a dog-kennel, covered with tattered rags, and unable, in too many instances, to procure more than a single meal a-day for himself ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... and social development. Women work in the field in Switzerland, the freest country of Europe; and we may look with pride on the triumphs of this generation, when the American negroes become the peers of the Swiss peasantry. Better a woman with the hoe than without it, when she is not yet fitted for the needle or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... were police, rather than soldiers, there was no force permanently kept up. Every man was expected to know something of military duty, and all were able to build stockades. From the fact that the flesh of wild fowl formed one of the principal articles of food, the peasantry throughout the country were all accustomed to the use of the gun, ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... than as a native language; it was so strange to find another language the people's actual and earnest medium of thought within so short a distance of England. But English is scarcely more known to the body of the Welsh people than to the peasantry of France. However, they sometimes pretend to ignorance, when they ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the country; that there are men who would fain persuade the ignorant that all above them are drones who live on the proceeds of their labour—as if indeed every man, however high in rank, had not his share of labour and care—I fear, then, that if there should be a rising of the peasantry we may have such scenes as those that took place during the Jacquerie in France, and that many who would, were things different, be in favour of giving more extended rights to the people, will be forced to take ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... sat in the railway carriage he recalled his native village—he could see it and its lake, and then the fields one by one, and the roads. He could see a large piece of rocky land—some three or four hundred acres of headland stretching out into the winding lake. Upon this headland the peasantry had been given permission to build their cabins by former owners of the Georgian house standing on the pleasant green hill. The present owners considered the village a disgrace, but the villagers paid ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... to me, in my mood at that time, a revolting exhibition. The irony of Orlov and his friends knew no bounds, and spared no one and nothing. If they spoke of religion, it was with irony; they spoke of philosophy, of the significance and object of life—irony again, if any one began about the peasantry, it ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... general invitation carried thus from house to house throughout the parish, good-breeding, which is extremely conservative among the peasantry, requires that only two persons in each family should take advantage of it,—one of the heads of the family to represent the household, one of their children to represent ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... of troops into one column. Peasantry run up with buckets of sour wine and a single glass; NAPOLEON takes his turn with the rank and file in drinking from it. He bids the whole column follow him to Grenoble and Paris. Exeunt soldiers headed by NAPOLEON. The ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... fishermen and labourers among whom Christ found his first disciples. They had the large simplicity of speech, the cadence, the accent. But let me turn to Ireland, where, though not directly derived from our English Bible, a similar scriptural accent survives among the peasantry and is, I hope, ineradicable. I choose two sentences from a book of 'Memories' recently written by the survivor of the two ladies who together wrote the incomparable 'Irish R.M.' The first was uttered by a small cultivator who was asked why ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... were chosen. Dick found, indeed, that at distances up to a hundred yards, they were quite equal to the English rifle he had brought out. The silver mountings were taken off, and then the pieces differed in no way, in appearance, from those in general use among the peasantry. ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... Truthfulness in manners gives distinction and dignity in all classes of society; truthfulness gives that simplicity of manners which is one of the special graces of royalty, and also of an unspoiled and especially a Catholic peasantry. Vulgarity has an element of restless unreality and pretentious striving, an affectation or assumption of ways which do not belong to it, and in particular an unwillingness to serve, and a dread of owning any ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... gateway, we saw what looked a rough village street, betwixt old houses built ponderously of stone, but having far more the aspect of huts than of castle-hails. They were evidently the dwellings of peasantry, and people engaged in rustic labor; and no doubt they have burrowed into the primitive structures of the castle, and, as they found convenient, have taken their crumbling materials to build barns and farm-houses. There was space ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... passed Percha, a small group of peaceful houses and a church, contrasting forcibly with the wild, tumultuous scenes which it must have witnessed when the enthusiast Von Kolb and his companions convulsed the peasantry;—and passed over the upland plains where the ten thousand peasants had been repulsed and scattered—a corn-giving land, affluent with myriad golden shocks, like a perpetual ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... memories. The Dalmatian Croats, as the most virile and stubborn element in the race, have always formed the vanguard of political thought, but it is to Agram that they have always turned for the necessary backing, and it is the peasantry of Croatia who have always borne the brunt of every attempt at repression. Latterly the Dalmatians have been the soul of the student movement, which plays so vital a ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... arrangements of their conspiracy against the existing government, but that network of organization, delicate as lace for ladies, and strong as the harness of artillery horses, which now enmeshed almost every province of Ireland, knitting the strength of her peasantry into unity and disposable divisions. This, it seems, was completed in 1795. In a complete history of these times, no one chapter would deserve so ample an investigation as this subtile web of association, rising upon a large base, expanding in proportion to the extent of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of resorting to the wine shops, they assembled in one another's homes to read God's word and join in prayer and praise. A great change was soon manifest in these communities. Though belonging to the humblest class, an unlearned and hard-working peasantry, the reforming, uplifting power of divine grace was seen in their lives. Humble, loving, and holy, they stood as witnesses to what the gospel will accomplish for those who receive it ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... in Switzerland, I am informed, homosexual relationships are not uncommon before marriage, and such relationships are lightly spoken of as "Dummheiten". No doubt, similar traits might be found in the peasantry of other parts ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... marriages. As to their moral advantages, Mr. Wm. E. H. Lecky, in his "History of European Morals," writes of the Irish people in particular: "The nearly universal custom of early marriages among the Irish peasantry has alone rendered possible that high standard of female chastity, that intense and jealous sensitiveness respecting female honor, for which, among many failings and some vices, the Irish race have long been pre-eminent in ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... the characters of the great Epics. The almost illiterate oil-manufacturer or confectioner of Bengal spells out some modern translation of the Maha-bharata to while away his leisure hour. The tall and stalwart peasantry of the North-West know of the five Pandav brothers, and of their friend the righteous Krishna. The people of Bombay and Madras cherish with equal ardour the story of the righteous war. And even the traditions and ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... at this green stage that our young gentry have a just sense of the immense distance between them and their ragged play-fellows. It takes a few dashes into the world, to give the young great man that proper, decent, unnoticing disregard for the poor, insignificant, stupid devils, the mechanics and peasantry around him, who were, perhaps, born in the same village. My young superiors never insulted the clouterly appearance of my plough-boy carcase, the two extremes of which were often exposed to all the inclemencies of all the seasons. They would give me stray volumes of books; among them, even ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... remark on the singular hazard of bringing untried troops against the proverbial discipline of a German army, and the probability that the age of the wild armies of peasantry in Europe would be renewed, by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various |
