"Blackthorn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... northern province. The majority were from Connaught. They generally landed at the Clarence Dock, Liverpool, a wiry, hardy-looking lot, with frieze coats, corduroy breeches, clean white shirts with high collars, and blackthorn sticks. I have seen them filling the breadth of Prescot Street, as they left the town, marching up like an army on foot to the various parts of England they were bound for. This was before special cheap ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... quietly asleep in his kennel after having hunted him, as I thought, from one end of the garden to the other! Now for the cherries and the children—bless us! where are the children? And the cherries? Why, the tree is as bare as a blackthorn in February! The starlings have been at it, after all. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... sleep in the moonlight.' And I will give you yet another, if I may, for, indeed, I would have you know that the words I spoke yonder were true when I said that you should be glad that you freed me, and that I have tried to serve you. That may be known by the token of the blackthorn spine and the ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... the fact,' said Rollo, 'that Wych Hazel could not conveniently personate a pine tree or Primrose a blackthorn.' ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... Blackthorn,' said Harold; 'and he's the queerest chap I ever came across. Why, he knew no more what to do with a prong than the farmer's old sow till I ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blackthorn bloomed anew, and the long grass Was starred with flowers that once Griselda prized, But plucked not. She, poor wench, from moon to moon Waxed pale and paler: of no known disease, The village-leech averred, with lips pursed out And cane at chin; some inward fire, ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... hill, towards the village, was a spring[186] on the margin of which gooseberry bushes intertwined their branches of greyish green. It was called the Gooseberry Spring or the Blackthorn Spring.[187] If, as was thought by a graduate of the University of Paris,[188] Jeanne described it as La Fontaine-aux-Bonnes-Fees-Notre-Seigneur, it must have been because the village people called it by that name. By making use of such a term it ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... leaves, are in many cases preserved. Among the shrubs are many evergreens, as Andromeda, and two extinct genera, Daphnogene and M'Clintockia, with fine leathery leaves, together with hazel, blackthorn, holly, logwood, and hawthorn. A species of Zamia (Zimites) grew in the swamps, with Potamogeton, Sparganium, and Menyanthes; while ivy and villes twined around the forest-trees, and broad-leaved ferns grew beneath their shade. Even ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... while I was speaking to the chauffeur, and he asked if he might be allowed to go with me. I agreed, and when I came out to start he was sitting in a corner of the car, with his Glengarry pulled down over his shaggy eyebrows, and his knotty hands leaning on a thick blackthorn that had a head as big ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... less sacredly part of the universal process than the wheeling of suns and planets: a Greek vase is to her as intimately concerned with Nature as the growing corn—with that Nature who formed the swan and the peacock for decorative delight, and who puts ivory and ebony cunningly together on the blackthorn every patterned Spring. ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... the last words he ever spoke. He was answered by a blow from the blackthorn. A contest ensued, which ended in Scatcherd keeping his word—at any rate, as regarded the worst offender. How the fatal blow on the temple was struck was never exactly determined: one medical man said it might have been ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... yew; They told me my intent was to root up That well-grown yew, and plant i' the stead of it A wither'd blackthorn; and for that they vow'd To bury me alive. My husband straight With pickaxe 'gan to dig, and your fell duchess With shovel, like a fury, voided out The earth and scatter'd bones: Lord, how methought I ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... From all that I hear, it is a Paradise indeed. What a haven in such weather as the present! Now, Captain Anerley, I entreat you to consider whether it is wise to take the thorn so from the rose. If I had so sweet a place, I would plant brambles, briers, blackthorn, furze, crataegus, every kind of spinous growth, inside my gates, and never let anybody lop them. Captain, you ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... new leather trunk that I recklessly purchased for the shocking price such commodities command in America. At the end of a successfully costly day I registered myself, the trunk, with its brilliant identification label, a new silver-topped blackthorn, and the best bull terrier I could get in New York, at the new monster hotel I had never before entered, with a strange feeling of an identity as new as my overcoat. This terrier, by the way, marked my definite division from ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... used to it, sor. But just a frindly wurrud. I'd be civil, for they've an ugly way of handling things here, being savage-like. There isn't a wan among 'em as knows the vartue of a bit o' blackthorn, but they handle their shpears dangerously, and ivery man's got his nasty ugly skewer in his belt—you know, his kris—and it's out wid it, and ructions before ye ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... all day among the flowers, Taking no thought of any other thing But their own hearts, for out of them they sing: Their songs are kindred to the blossom heads, Faint as the petals which the blackthorn sheds, And like the earth—not alien songs as ours. To them this greenness and this island peace Are life and death and happiness in one; Nor are they separate from the white sun, Or those warm winds which nightly wash the deep Or starlight in the valleys, or new sleep; And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... and there were studded over the fields either single trees or small groups of mountain ash, a tree still more beautiful than the former. The small dells about the farm were closely covered with blackthorn and holly, with an occasional oak shooting up from some little cliff, and towering sturdily over its lowly companions. Here grew a thick interwoven mass of dog-tree, and upon a wild hedgerow, leaning like a beautiful wife upon ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... much earlier than ours in New England and New York, yet an exceptionally early April with us must be nearly, if not quite, abreast with April as it usually appears in England. The blackthorn sometimes blooms in Britain in February, but the swallow does not appear till about the 20th of April, nor the anemone bloom ordinarily till that date. The nightingale comes about the same time, and the cuckoo follows close. Our cuckoo does not come till near June; but the water-thrush, which ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... bird told her all his story,—how he had tried to fly to the warm countries, and how he had torn his wing on a blackthorn bush and fallen to the ground. But he could not tell her how he had come to the ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... May Day is nearly a fortnight earlier than before the New Style was introduced, which is the reason why old traditions of May Day merry-makings appear unseasonable; and probably the promoters of summer time have not heard of "blackthorn winter" and "whitethorn winter," which, in the country, we experience regularly every year in April ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... brings the crescent To the general, Prince Eugene, Who then claps him on the shoulder: "Well done, my Imperial captain!" From the battle-field his dreaming Flies back to the days of childhood, And his nurse sings in the garden: "Squirrel climbs up on the blackthorn, Squirrel goes up to the tree-top, Squirrel falls into his grave. Had he not so high ascended, Then his fall had been less heavy, Had not ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... of chestnut trees stand dreamily, dreamily; In myriad jewels of glad young green, smooth black are the broad beech boles; The fragrant foam of the cherry trees hangs creamily, creamily, And the purpling lilacs and the blackthorn brakes are singing with all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... like a coward," answered the stranger, "for thou standest there with a good yew bow to shoot at my heart, while I have nought in my hand but a plain blackthorn staff wherewith to ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... meeting drew nearer, the little Princess, as her travelling carriage toiled up the Apennine valleys, did not feel some terror of the future and the unknown. The spring comes late to those regions; in the middle of April the blackthorn is scarcely budding on the rocks, the violets are still plentiful underneath the leafless roadside hedges; scarcely a faint yellow, more like autumn that spring, is beginning to tinge the scraggy outlines of the poplars, which ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... there was called Fleecefold, and his wife's name was Rough Ruddy. They lived in a snug cottage with their son Blackthorn and their daughter Brownberry, and were thought great people, because they kept the king's sheep. Moreover, Fleecefold's family were known to be ancient; and Rough Ruddy boasted that she had the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... notice that all the crowd was made up of old men, and that the leaders of it were Paddy Bruen, Michael Gill and Paddy Doe, and there was not one in the crowd but had in his hand an ash stick or a blackthorn. As soon as they caught sight of him, the sticks began to wave hither and thither like branches in a storm, and ...
— Stories of Red Hanrahan • W. B. Yeats
... preserved, even long after the War of Independence, the habits of their rural ancestry. The massive stone farm-houses, the walled gardens, the bountiful orchards, and, more than all, the well-trimmed hedges of hawthorn and blackthorn dividing their fields, or bordering their roads with the living wall, over which the clematis and wild-ivy love to clamber, made the region beautiful to their eyes. Although the large original grants, mostly given by the hand of William Penn, had been ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... fruits of this formation are called drupes, as those of the apple and pear form are called pomes, and those of the bramble, and some other tribes, berries. Our woods supply us with two sorts of plum, both edible—the sloe, or blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), and the wild bullace (P. institia.) Every one knows the sloe, at least every one who has spent any part of his youth amidst woodland scenes; but as there are some who, having been 'all their life in populous cities pent,' know ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... shutting a clasp-knife with which he had been stripping the bark from a blackthorn stake, "you came upon me so still and sudden, that I thought you was an evil spirit. I've come across through the fields, and come in here at the gate agen the moat, and I was taking a rest before I came up to the house to ask ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... He did not believe that Goddard would really attack him at all, certainly not that he would dare to attack him in broad daylight. But the knowledge of the threat the fellow had uttered made him watchful. He glanced to the right and left as he walked and gripped his heavy blackthorn stick firmly in his hand. He wished that if the man were to appear he would come quickly—it might be hard to hold Stamboul back if ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... a little. Leave it to chance indeed! Had she not caused me to grow stronger and larger by every word she uttered? And had not the conversation revealed to me Mr. Blackthorn's one vulnerable part? I knew well enough that I should be able to dominate his thoughts as I had done hers. Finding me burdensome, she had passed me on to somebody else with additions that vastly increased my working powers, and then she talked of ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... with this idea, Andy was on the watch how he could possess himself of the trumpet, for could he get one blast on it, he would be happy: a chance at last opened to him; after some time, the lively owner of the treasure laid down his instrument to handle a handsome blackthorn which one of the retainers was displaying, and he made some flourishes with the weapon to show that music was not his only accomplishment. Andy seized the opportunity and the trumpet, and made off to one of the sheds where they had been regaling; ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... republican and indiscriminate order. This farmhouse and garden are within a hundred yards of the stile of which I spoke, leading from the large pasture field into a smaller one, divided by a hedge of hawthorn and blackthorn; and near this stile, on the further side, there runs a tale that primroses may often be found, and occasionally the blue sweet violet ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Hesdin, in time for the first beautiful effect of spring-tide flower and foliage. The blackthorn and pear trees were already in full blossom, and the elm, poplar and chestnut just bursting into leaf. Everything was very advanced, and around the one-storeyed, white-washed cottages the lilacs showed masses of bloom, field and garden being a month ahead ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... time it was the gray waistcoat, the well-ironed shirt and collar, English scarf, and the blackthorn stick which he carried balanced in the hollow of his arm. If he had been in overalls she would not have hesitated an instant, but she saw that this man was not of her class, nor of any other class about her. "I don't know whether ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the settle by the hearth, and sparkled against a silver and crystal lantern hanging in the chimney. And between the cracks on the walls Young Gerard had stuck wands of gold and silver palm and branches of snowy blackthorn, and on the floor was a dish full of celandine and daisies, and a broken jar of small wild daffodils. And the child knew that all these things were the ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... and went into the porch. There he sat on a bench and whittled a blackthorn stick. The sun was sinking over the head of the Eel Crag; the valley lay deep in a purple haze; the bald top of Cat Bells stood out bright in the glory of the passing day. A gentle breeze came up from the south, and the young corn chattered ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Rafferty's aunt, but in fact so related to his father, sitting with her short black dudeen by the delicate pink and white embers, for the evening was warm and the fire low. Ody himself was leaning against the wall, critically examining Brian Kilfoyle's blackthorn, and forming a poor opinion of it with considerable satisfaction. Not that he bore Brian any ill-will, but because this is his method of attaining to contentment with ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... was a cross road, and she did not know which way to take. There stood a Blackthorn Bush, with not a leaf nor a blossom upon it; for it was in the cold winter time, and icicles ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... to tell you the story, which was about a poor boy who received from a fairy to whom he had shown some kindness the gift of a marvelous wand, in the shape of a common blackthorn walking-stick, which nobody could suspect of possessing such wonderful virtue. By means of it, he was able to do anything he wished, without the least trouble; and so, upon a trial of skill, appointed by a certain ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... jaw. They have been assailed for thousands of years, until they look upon being ostracised and trodden upon as one of the things they must expect, and they don't kick half as much as they ought to. If they had the enthusiasm and the fighting qualities of the Irish, they would take blackthorn clubs and mow a swath through France wide enough for an army to march over. Why don't you fellows wait until the Jews map out a plan of campaign, and then follow them? It is no dead sure thing that if the ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck |
