"Gaelic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Life Member Gaelic Society of Glasgow, and Clan MacLean Association of Glasgow; Corresponding Member Davenport Academy of Sciences, and Western Reserve Historical Society; Author of History of Clan MacLean, Antiquity of Man, The Mound Builders, Mastodon, Mammoth ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... alone, To do his ghostly battling, With curdling groan and dismal moan, And lots of chains a-rattling! But no—the chiel's stout Gaelic stuff Withstood all ghostly harrying; His fingers closed upon the snuff ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... MARY. Born in Chicago, 1881. Educated at St. Jarlath's School, West Division High School, and University of Chicago. In newspaper work since 1900. Chosen by Gaelic League in 1912 to write for American newspapers a series of articles on the Irish situation. First story, "The Boy Who Went Back to the Bush," Scribner's Magazine, November, 1909. For three years secretary of the Woman's Auxiliary of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Lowland Scotch is so nearly descended from the Old Northumbrian that the latter was invariably called "Ingliss" by the writers who employed it; and they reserved the name of "Scottish" to designate Gaelic or Erse, the tongue of the original "Scots," who gave their name to the country. Barbour (Bruce, IV 253) calls his own language "Ynglis." Andro of Wyntown does the same, near the beginning of the Prologue to his Cronykil. The most striking case is that of Harry the Minstrel, who was ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... medial consonants, so marked in these Marquesan instances, is no less common both in Gaelic and the Lowland Scots. Stranger still, that prevalent Polynesian sound, the so-called catch, written with an apostrophe, and often or always the gravestone of a perished consonant, is to be heard in Scotland to this day. When a Scot pronounces ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was familiar ground to the Phoenician colonists of ages ago. I am sure you know that! The Gaelic tongue is the genuine dialect of the ancient Phoenician Celtic, and when I speak the original language to a Highlander who only knows his native Gaelic he ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... in front of my mouth to stop the first outcry. Through his spread fingers I saw Don Quixote light the lantern and raise it for a good look at me. And with that in a flash my wits came back, and with them the one bit of Gaelic known to me. ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... across Jocelyn Thew's face as he listened, and the tears stood in his eyes. The man was reciting Gaelic verses, verses familiar to him from childhood. The whole desolate picture seemed to envisage thoughts which he had never been able to drive from his mind, seemed in the person of this old man to breathe such incomparable, unalterable ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this was built; and it is possible that it preserves one more suggestion of the connection between Rouen and Spain, and means "amiable," as in the phrase, "Bien o mal carado." For the root of the word is evidently in the Greek [Greek: charis], and is found in the Gaelic "cara" (the friend or ally), and the Breton "Caradoc," who was ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... constitute the greater part of the English language, many other tongues have furnished their quota. Of these the Celtic is perhaps the oldest. The Britons at Caesar's invasion, were a part of the Celtic family. The Celtic idiom is still spoken in two dialects, the Welsh in Wales, and the Gaelic in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. The Celtic words in English, are comparatively few; cart, dock, wire, rail, rug, cradle, babe, grown, griddle, lad, lass, are some in most ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... en Francaise, my true character," smiled Berthe. "I never could sacrifice my Gaelic taste to the hideous color mixtures and utilitarian ugliness of the English machine-made toilette. An Englishwoman can only be trusted with a blue serge, a plain gray traveling dress, or in the easy safety of black or white. They are not ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... however, are not written by the Editor, as he has often explained, 'out of his own head.' The stories are taken from those told by grannies to grandchildren in many countries and in many languages—French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Gaelic, Icelandic, Cherokee, African, Indian, Australian, Slavonic, Eskimo, and what not. The stories are not literal, or word by word translations, but have been altered in many ways to make them suitable for children. Much has been left out in places, and the narrative has been ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... stop at old McTaggart's. He's the head-keeper and a real friend. McTaggart "has the Gaelic." But he hasn't much else, so perhaps you'd prefer ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... advantage in the full light of day. Yet we question whether we could have been more deeply sensible of the beauty and grandeur of the scene than we were under the unusual circumstances we have described. The boatmen sang a Gaelic joram or boat-song in the cave, striking their oars very violently in time with the music, which resounded finely through the vault, and was echoed back by roof and pillar. One of them, also, fired a gun, with the view of producing a still stronger effect of the same kind. When ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... guidance of Captain Cargill, an old soldier, who had been chosen as leader of the new settlement. At the head of a fine harbour, which they called Port Chalmers, they laid the foundations of a town, to which they gave the patriotic name of Dunedin, Gaelic for Edinburgh. It was in a fine district, troubled by few natives, and it steadily grew. Less than a year later, it had 745 inhabitants, who could boast of a good jetty, and a newspaper. The life of pioneers cannot be very easy, but these were of the right sort and prospered, and more would have ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... Ale or Alne Water (a tributary of the Teviot), Roxburghshire, Scotland, 2 m. W. of Jedfoot Bridge station on the Roxburgh-Jedburgh branch of the North British railway. Pop. (1901) 973. The earlier forms of the name, "Alnecrumba,'' "Ankrom'' and "Alnecrom,'' indicate its Gaelic derivation from crom, "crooked''—"the crook or bend of the Alne.'' The village is of considerable antiquity, and was formerly held by the see of Glasgow. Its cross, said to date from the time of David I., is one of the best preserved crosses ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... must complete the Gaelic story, which here becomes like the Soaring Lark, and the Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon, and ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... meaning himself,—"hersel' may go to ta deevil if he wull; ta little lassie sall be a lady." (Jamie's Scotch always grew more Gaelic as he got excited.) It was evident that he regarded religion as a sort of ornament of superior breeding, that Mercedes must have, though he could do without it. And Mr. James Bowdoin looked in Jamie's eye, and held his peace. In those days ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... unmistakably to have been endowed with what I suppose one has to call "psychic" powers—though the word has been "soiled with all ignoble use"—and to be the possessor in a considerable degree of that mysterious "sight" or sixth sense attributed to men and women of Gaelic blood. Mrs. Sharp tells a curious story of his mood immediately preceding that flight to the Isles of which I have been writing. He had been haunted the night before by the sound of the sea. It seemed to him that he heard it splashing in the night against the walls ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... right! I sold both of those pistols at about the same time; a gentleman in Chicago got the Murdoch. The Strahan had a star-pierced lobe on the hammer. Did you ever get anybody to translate the Gaelic inscription on the barrel?" ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... James Macpherson published the first installment of what professed to be a translation of the poems of Ossian, a Gaelic bard, whom tradition placed in the 3d century. Macpherson said that he made his version—including two complete epics, Fingal and Temora, from Gaelic MSS., which he had collected in the Scottish Highlands. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the monument of a Gaelic poet broods above the heather. The tyranny of the table-d'hote ceases not even at sea. Every ship bears these monster meals in its belly—from salami to pineapple—whether it walk the Boreal waters, or ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... scarce in those days; and our journey was made in a smack. At last, when I was in a stage of despare and exostion, as reely to phansy myself at Death's doar, we got to the end of our journey. Late in the evening we hailed the Gaelic shoars, and hankered in the arbor of ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... also a voteen, as the peasants say, for there was a rosary hanging from a nail on the rim of the barrel, and I saw I shuddered, and I did not know why I shuddered. We had passed him a few yards when I heard him cry in Gaelic, 'Idolaters, idolaters, go down to Hell with your witches and your devils; go down to Hell that the herrings may come again into the bay'; and for some moments I could hear him half screaming and half muttering behind ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... Monterey, charged with tender greetings. Pray you, take him in. He comes from a house where (even as in your own) there are gathered together some of the waifs of our company at Oakland: a house - for all its outlandish Gaelic name and distant station - ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the time he had done shouting the coronach or cry of help, the Highlanders speaking Erse or Gaelic gathered about him.] ...
— English Satires • Various
... stones—so called from the Gaelic word tanaiste, a chief, or the next heir to an estate—have been frequently found. These stones were used in connection with the coronation of a king or the inauguration of a chief. The custom dates from the remotest antiquity. We see traces of it in the Bible,—as when it is mentioned that "Abimelech ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Emmets, faced with a demand for the return of the instruments, confessed that they had lent them to the Martyred Archbishops' branch of the Gaelic League. They, in turn, had lent them to the Manchester Martyrs' Gaelic Football Association. These athletes would, no doubt, have returned the instruments honestly; but unfortunately their association had ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... shouted out, and then fell on my knees on the rock and prayed to them. They were near enough to hear—I could even see the colour of their hair—and there was no doubt but they observed me, for they cried out in the Gaelic tongue, and laughed. But the boat never turned aside, and flew right on, before my eyes, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... it out. Back of those men's time the English are just simply foreigners, nothing more, nothing less; they talk Danish, German, Norman French, and sometimes a mixture of all three; back of THEM, they talk Latin, and ancient British, Irish, and Gaelic; and then back of these come billions and billions of pure savages that talk a gibberish that Satan himself couldn't understand. The fact is, where you strike one man in the English settlements that you can ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... with delight, for his memory was stored with a never-ending stock of stories, many of which were wonderfully like those I have since heard while sitting by the African evening fires. Our grandmother, too, used to sing Gaelic songs, some of which, as she believed, had been composed by captive islanders languishing ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... old man was counting his sheep, using the ancient Gaelic numerals from one to ten, which had been handed down from one shepherd to another from time immemorial. And as he called out the numbers his hand fumbled among the bed-clothes as though he were searching for the ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... doubted by many Welshmen. These hold that it cramps and dwarfs the national genius; but in the mean time in Ireland the national genius, long enlarged to our universal English, offers the strange spectacle of an endeavor to climb back into its Gaelic shell. ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... to express a mild regret that our native school, though by no means excluded, does not make so good a show as its energy and talents would seem to warrant. Our native composers are especially noticeable for their wide range of themes, for the Celtic and Gaelic glamour which they infuse into their treatment of them, and for their realistic titles. We have drawn up a list of instrumental works which illustrate these characteristics, but which are unfortunately conspicuous by their absence from Sir HENRY WOOD'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... guardian, she was amazed at the things I was familiar with, but she abhorred the dark, frowning castle and the loneliness of the place and would not stay. In fact, no governess would stay, and so Angus became my tutor and taught me old Gaelic and Latin and Greek, and we read together and studied the ancient books in the library. It was a strange education for a girl, and no doubt made me more than ever unlike others. But my life was the ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... turns to rubbish is commonly given by the Devil to the witches; and the name Robin is almost a generic name for the Devil, either as a man or as his substitute the familiar. The other name for the fairy Robin Goodfellow is Puck, which derives through the Gaelic Bouca from the Slavic ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... the animal from which they claim descent. "The chief of the family which holds the chief rank in the stock is called 'The Great Man of the Crocodile'. Precisely in the same way the Duchess of Sutherland is styled in Gaelic 'The Great Lady of the Cat,'" though totemism is probably not the origin ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... the holy renowned bishop, head of justice and faith in the Gaelic island came into Ireland, i.e. Patrick sent by Celestinus, the Pope. Aongus Mac Nathfrich went to meet him soon as he heard the account of his coming. He conducted him (Patrick) with reverence and great honour to his own royal city—to Cashel. Then Patrick baptised ...
— The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore • Anonymous
... years the Grammar of the Gaelic language by the Rev. Dr Stewart of Moulin has been out of print. This has been a source of regret to scholars and students of that tongue. Not but that there are other Grammars of real value, which it ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... Poland, Prussia, Italy, Silesia, and Staffordshire, was really lurking in a fashionable Parisian convent. Better had he been 'where the wind blows over seven glens, and seven Bens, and seven mountain moors,' like the Prince in the Gaelic fairy stories. ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... Gaelic Chapel, on 'I know that my Redeemer liveth,' with more seeming power on the people than for a while. I never remember of compelling souls to come in to Christ so ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... refuge in distress. He looked upon the building of churches at the front as an act of such piety that it would guarantee to him at any time the certain admission into heaven. He attributed his piety to the claim which his clan made to be the descendants of St. Paul. Apparently in Gaelic, Macphail means "the son of Paul." The Colonel was always fond of insisting upon his high lineage. He came to see me once when I was ill at Bruay, and after stating the historical claims of his ancestors, asked me if I had not observed some traits in his character which ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... Robin Oig, "that will never do neither—it would be next thing to running the country. For shame, Muhme—give me the dirk. You cannot tell by the colour the difference betwixt the blood of a black bullock and a white one, and you speak of knowing Saxon from Gaelic blood. All men have their blood from Adam, Muhme. Give me my skenedhu, and let me go on my road. I should have been half way to Stirling brig by this time—Give me my dirk, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... the kingdom unexplored. But, when we examine his narrative, we find that he had never ventured beyond the extreme skirts of the Celtic region. He tells us that even from the people who lived close to the passes he could learn little or nothing about the Gaelic population. Few Englishmen, he says, had ever seen Inverary. All beyond Inverary was chaos, [320] In the reign of George the First, a work was published which professed to give a most exact account of Scotland; and in this work, consisting of more than three hundred pages, two contemptuous ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... formed into a company and drilled for the defence, under Lieut. Neil Morison and Captain James Wright, whose house was the headquarters of General De Watteville and a frequent scene of the council of officers. He was a tall and stern man, a Highlander, his name of "Wright" being a translation of his Gaelic one, "MacIntheoir." His Chateauguay sword is said to have long hung on the wall in the house of ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall
... helped to people the Back Country. The Highlanders, whose loyalty to their oath made them fight on the King's side in the Revolutionary War, have been somewhat overlooked in history. Tradition, handed down among the transplanted clans—who, for the most part, spoke only Gaelic for a generation and wrote nothing—and latterly recorded by one or two of their descendants, supplies us with all we are now able to learn of the early coming of the Gaels to Carolina. It would seem that their first immigration ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... that has come out of Ireland itself (compare the fantastic Irish account of the Battle of Clontarf with the sober Norse account) is the unbroken character of Irish genius. In modern days this genius has delighted in mischievous extravagance, like that of the Gaelic poet's curse upon his children, 'There are three things that I hate, the devil that is waiting for my soul, the worms that are waiting for my body, my children, who are waiting for my wealth and care neither for my body nor my soul: Oh, Christ hang all in the same noose!' I think those words ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... years from now, with her own Government, with her own language back again—Gaelic—an' what language in the wurrld yields greater music than the old Gaelic?—with Ireland united and Ireland's land in the care of IRISHMEN: with Ireland's people self-respectin' an' sober an' healthy an' educated: with Irishmen employed on Irish ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... Mallow said, "The Gaelic clubs all over the country are in a high state of organisation, and a perfect state of drill. The splendid force of constabulary which are now for you would be against you. The Irish Legislature, from the first, would have ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... sea-gull's feather being precisely the costume she ought to wear. When she got into the Uxbridge road she breathed more freely, and in the lightness of her heart she continued her conversation with Bras, giving that attentive animal a vast amount of information, partly in English, partly in Gaelic, which he answered only by a low whine or a shake of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... celebrities already named, Extreme Carelessness, Michael, Brickbat, Poppy II., Moya Doolan, Straight Tip, and Gaelic have taken their places in the records of the breed, while yet more recent Irish Terriers who have achieved fame have been Mrs. Butcher's Bawn Boy and Bawn Beauty, Mr. Wallace's Treasurer, Mr. S. Wilson's Bolton Woods ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... dialect mainly Celtic, and differing only slightly from the ancient Scottish Gaelic. I have heard my father say that when he was a boy in Ramsey, sixty years ago, a Scotch ship came ashore on the Carrick, and next morning after the wreck a long, lank, bony creature, with bare legs, and in short petticoats, came into the marketplace and played a tune on a little ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... question at rest: "It is quite certain," says E. Curry, "that the Irish Druids and poets had written books before the coming of St. Patrick in 432; since we find THAT VERY STATEMENT in the ancient Gaelic Tripartite life of the Saint, as well as in the "Annotations of Tirechan" preserved in the Book of Armagh, which were taken by him (Tirechan) from the lips and books of his tutor, St. Mochta, who was the pupil and disciple of St. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... They are, however, so far determined by the fragments of Gaelic originals, since published by Scottish antiquaries, that the amplifications ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... in Gaelic,[44] in Welsh,[45] and in Irish,[46] have been published. The works of American authors are included in Allibone's Dictionary, referred to under English literature, but special books have also been ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... rustic villages, where creature comforts yet abound, and nowhere is the dolce far niente so easily induced. Why should we be at the trouble of undertaking a hot, dusty railway journey in search of Gaelic tombs, Gothic churches, or Merovingian remains when we have the essence of deliciousness at our very door?—waving fields of ripe corn, amid which the reapers in twos and threes are at work—picturesque ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... roadway and more than 1,000 bridges, by which the population of the Highlands was suddenly placed within reach of civilisation. The Highlanders had hitherto been chiefly poachers and smugglers; they now became farmers and hand-workers. And, though Gaelic schools were organised for the purpose of maintaining the Gaelic language, yet Gaelic- Celtic customs and speech are rapidly vanishing before the approach of English civilisation. So, too, in Ireland; between the counties ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... eyeing the bottle, and added with a brutal laugh that "he could weather the roughest gale that ever wind did blow." A whole Gaelic society, he said, wouldn't fizz ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... himself regaining all his strength as if by a miracle. The gaunt look had left his face. Almost it seemed that its contour was already fuller. There is a beautiful old Gaelic legend of a Fairy who wooed a Prince, came again and again to him, and, herself invisible to all but the Prince, hovered in the air, sang loving songs to draw him away from the crowd of his indignant nobles, who heard her voice and summoned magicians to rout her by all spells ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of a Gaelic song in these pages that brought a sorrow on me. That very sweet language will be gone soon, if not gone already, and no book learning will revive the suppleness of idiom, that haunting misty loveliness.... It is a very pathetic thing to see a ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... she will do to you whatever, if you cannot keep off that crapeau yonder a little better," said Big Mack, reaching for a Frenchman who kept dodging in upon him with annoying persistence. Then Mack began to swear Gaelic oaths. ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... property at Lochshiel, Mr. Hope-Scott personally acquainted himself with his smaller tenantry, and entered into all their history, going about with a keeper known by the name of 'Black John,' who acted as his Gaelic interpreter. His frank and kindly manners quite won their hearts. Sometimes he would ask his guests to accompany him on such visits, and make them observe the peculiarities of the Celtic character. On one of these occasions he and the late Duke of Norfolk went to visit an ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... cycles of Gaelic literature. The first treats of the gods; the second of the Red Branch Knights of Ulster and their contemporaries; the third is the so-called Ossianic. Of the Ossianic, Finn is the chief character; of the Red Branch cycle, Cuculain, the hero ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... men might be seated or lying in the fore part of the canoe John could not tell, being unable to turn his head. Once or twice a guttural voice there growled a word of comfort to the dying lad, in Gaelic or in broken English. And always the bowman sang high and clear, setting the chorus for the attendant boats, and from the chorus passing without a break into the solo. "En roulant ma boule" followed "Fringue sur l'aviron "; and ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... belonging to the Celtic group are the Gallic, spoken in ancient Gaul; the Breton, still spoken in the modern French province of Brittany; the Irish, which is still extensively spoken in Ireland among the common people, the Welsh; and the Gaelic of the Scotch Highlanders. ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... night so long ago, when Dan and I kneeled on the stone-flagged floor beside one another and listened to my uncle pray and pray and pray in Gaelic, ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... Macnab didna like what ye said. He had a laddie killed in Gallypoly, and he's no lookin' for peace this side the grave. He's my best friend in Glasgow. He's an elder in the Gaelic kirk in the Cowcaddens, and I'm what ye call a free-thinker, but we're wonderful agreed on the fundamentals. Ye spoke your bit verra well, I must admit. Gresson will hear tell of ye as a ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... laid in the Barony of Kilmacowen in the county of Sligo, and the time is the end of Eighteenth Century. The characters are supposed to speak in Gaelic. ...
— The Land Of Heart's Desire (Little Blue Book#335) • W.B. Yeats
... creatures was of composite sound—now a word of Spanish, then of German, then of French, then of Gaelic, at times of Basque. It was either a patois or a slang. They appeared to be of all nations, and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the Prince Edward Island farm where Donald was born; and still more generations of them in old Scotland. Pure Scotch on both sides of the house for hundreds of years were the Mackintoshes, and the Gaelic tongue was to-day freer spoken in their ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the corn-land reaper, And plaided mountaineer,— To the cottage and the castle The piper's song is dear; Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch O'er mountain, glen, and glade, But the sweetest of all music The pipes at ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... The whilom apprentice, Cleary, now raised to the dignity of third officer, grinned a welcome to me from among the disordered raffle of the fo'c's'le head, while that excellent artificer, Maclean, oil-can and spanner in hand, greeted me affectionately in Gaelic from the entrance to the engine-room. The skipper was ashore, so I seated myself on the steps leading to the hurricane deck, and felt ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... fellow Gibbie Mackerrach, one of the band of gipsies who are staying here just now,' he said. 'Go away, Gibbie,' he added in Gaelic, shaking his head, since it was unlikely that the gipsy would be able to hear distinctly where ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... viii., pp. 5. 111.)—A slight knowledge of Gaelic enables me to supply the meaning of some of the words that have puzzled your Irish correspondents. Molchan (Gaelic, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... language which is, at present, spoken throughout Great Britain, is neither the ancient primitive speech of the island, nor derived from it; but is altogether of foreign origin. The language of the first inhabitants of our island, beyond doubt, was the Celtic, or Gaelic, common to them with Gaul; from which country, it appears, by many circumstances, that Great Britain was peopled. This Celtic tongue, which is said to be very expressive and copious, and is, probably, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Considine, the Irish poet of New Zealand, stout, bearded, crowned with a chaplet of sweet gardenias, and quoting verses in Maori, Gaelic, and English. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... some Flemish count—I don't know who—and that the combat took place in this square. Now, my dear fellow, here is the prison, which ought to give you some idea of human vicissitudes. Gil Blas didn't change his condition more often than this monument its purposes. Before Caesar it was a Gaelic temple; Caesar converted it into a Roman fortress; an unknown architect transformed it into a military work during the Middle Ages; the Knights of Baye, following Caesar's example, re-made it into a fortress; the princes of Savoy used it for a residence; the aunt ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... tenement. I believe the auld women wad hae agreed, for Luckie MacPhail sent down the lass to tell my friend Mrs. Crombie that she had made the gardyloo out of the wrang window, out of respect for twa Highlandmen that were speaking Gaelic in the close below the right ane. But luckily for Mrs. Crombie, I just chanced to come in in time to break aff the communing, for it's a pity the point suldna be tried. We had Mrs. MacPhail into the Ten-Mark Court—The Hieland limmer ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Exactly how much Gaelic, Irish, or Welsh Mr Arnold knew at first-hand, I cannot say: he frankly enough confesses that his knowledge was very closely limited. But what is really surprising, is that he does not seem to have taken much trouble to extend it at second-hand. A very few Welsh triads and scraps of Irish are all ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... hospitality. From Loch Goil we took the coach for Inverary, a beautiful drive of about two hours. We had seats on the outside, and the driver John, like some of the White Mountain guides, was full of song and story, and local tradition. He spoke Scotch and Gaelic, recited ballads, and sung songs with great gusto. Mary and the girls stopped in a little inn at St. Catherine's, on the shores of Loch Fine, while Henry and I took steamboat for Inverary, where we found the duchess waiting in a carriage ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... These indicate that the family was dark complexioned, which would also accord with a pre-Celtic origin. The Celts were fair, their predecessors dark. One of the sisters was called Pata, with an initial P. This is impossible in a Gaelic name. ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... when the first swarms of the Aryan migration reached Britain is quite unknown.[11] But they undoubtedly belonged to the Celtic branch of that family, and to the Gaelic (Gadhelic or Goidelic) section of the branch, which still holds the Highlands of Scotland and forms the bulk of the population of Ireland. By the 4th century B.C. this section was already beginning to ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... friend who is alluded to as having furnished him with some information as to Eastern matters, was Colonel James Ferguson of Huntly Burn, one of the sons of the venerable historian and philosopher of that name—which name he took the liberty of concealing under its Gaelic form of Mac-Erries. ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... Butler Yeats published his Wanderings of Oisin; in the same year Douglas Hyde, the scholar and folk-lorist, brought out his Book of Gaelic Stories. ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... Herries turned away from Mr. Foxley somewhat impatiently, saying with emphasis, 'I give you my word of honour, that you have not the slightest reason to apprehend anything on his account.' He then took up the tankard, and saying aloud in Gaelic, 'SLAINT AN REY,' [The King's health.] just tasted the liquor, and handed the tankard to Justice Foxley, who, to avoid the dilemma of pledging him to what might be the Pretender's health, drank to Mr. Herries's ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... and won immense though momentary fame, by a series of literary forgeries. Macpherson was a Scotch schoolmaster, an educated man, but evidently not over-tender of conscience, whose imagination had been stirred by certain old poems which he may have heard in Gaelic among the Highlanders. In 1760 he published his Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands, and alleged that his work was but a translation of Gaelic manuscripts. Whether the work of itself would ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... but never lived at Dhrum. He only came there once in a while to visit the tenants who'd hired the castle from him, if they happened to be people he knew, and would 'do' him well. He and his daughter were mostly in London, where they had a flat, and prided themselves on knowing no Gaelic. They took pains to show that they considered the crofter's son a common brat, and resented the meenister's' expecting them to do anything for his future, just because his name happened to be MacDonald, and he lived in a ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Great Lady of the Cat, is the Gaelic title of the Countess-Duchess of Sutherland. The county of Sutherland itself is in that dialect Cattey, and in the English name of the neighbouring one, Caithness, we have another trace of the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... not think I shall require to know the Gaelic; few things are written in that language, or ever were; if you come to that, the number of those who could write, or even read it, through almost all my period, must, by all accounts, have been incredibly small. Of course, until the book is done, I must live as much as possible ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... played, Donald," said he, in the Gaelic; "and I will tell you that the Skye College in the old times never turned out a better pupil. And will you take a glass of whiskey now, or a glass of claret? And it is a great pity your hair is red, or they would call you Donull Dubh, and people would say ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... (1810-1886).—A Belfast barrister and, save Edward Walsh, the most Gaelic of Irish poets in the English language. Ferguson took a leading part in the Protestant Repeal Association in 1848 and afterwards became one of the first of Irish archaeologists. In ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... and sufferings begin when you reach the Cruach-na-spiel-bo, which sounds like Gaelic, and will serve us as a name for the river. It is, of course, extremely probable that you pay a large rent for the right to gaze at a series of red and raging floods, or at a pale and attenuated trickle of water, murmuring peevishly through a drought. But suppose, for the sake of argument, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... after time, possessed several of these dogs, verified as being derived from the best stock on the island, from which their parents—who understood no language but Gaelic—were brought direct, I have noted some of their odd, whimsical ways, a few of which I will illustrate, taking for my exponent one very remarkable little fellow who was a genuine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... F. Campbell: "This story of a stupid boy has a parallel in a Gaelic tale in my collection, where the boy dated an event which was true by a fall of pancakes or something of the kind which was not true, and was not believed though he told the truth." [At p. 385, vol. II. of the Tales of the West Highlands a "half booby" is inveigled by his mother ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... days the Prince's boat had been so constantly pursued that it was impossible for the crew to land. They ran short of food, and were reduced to eating oatmeal mixed with salt water, a nauseous mixture called in Gaelic, Drammach. At last they ran into a lonely bay in Benbecula, where they were free from pursuit. It is characteristic of the Prince's irrepressible boyishness that he and the boatmen here went lobster-hunting with great enjoyment ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... couldn't attract attention by spending money. He said he tried to get into public notice one time by planting a little public square on the east side with garlic for free use of the poor; but Carnegie heard of it, and covered it over at once with a library in the Gaelic language. Three times he had jumped in the way of automobiles; but the only result was five broken ribs and a notice in the papers that an unknown man, five feet ten, with four amalgam-filled teeth, supposed to be the last of the ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... and Simeon, thus linked to each other by Martyn, find another pleasant and fruitful tie in the Rev. Alexander Stewart, D.D., Gaelic scholar and Scottish preacher. It was soon after Carey went out to India that Simeon, travelling in the Highlands, spent a Sunday in the manse of Moulin, where his personal intercourse and his evening sermon after a season of Communion were blessed to the ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... and other cases frequently the Samnite and Umbrian used -p where the Roman used -q, as -pis- for -quis-; just as languages otherwise closely related are found to differ; for instance, -p is peculiar to the Celtic in Brittany and Wales, -k to the Gaelic and Erse. Among the vowel sounds the diphthongs in Latin, and in the northern dialects generally, appear very much destroyed, whereas in the southern Italian dialects they have suffered little; and connected with this is the fact, that in composition ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... is welcome you will be to Elmbrook. Eh, and we would not be expecting such a fine-looking one. Indeed, no! And it would be a fine Scottish name, too, oh, a fine name indeed, Allen. And—you would not be hafing the Gaelic, I suppose?" His eyes gleamed wistfully from between the hat ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... On his head was the highland bonnet called a glengarry. His profile was remarkable—hardly less than grand, with a certain aquiline expression, although the nose was not roman. His eyes appeared very dark, but in the daylight were greenish hazel. Usually he talked with the girl in Gaelic, but was now speaking English, a far purer English than that of most English people, though with something of the character of book-English as distinguished from conversation-English, and ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... having the Gaelic, was somewhat taken aback by the cryptic utterance; but an anxious-looking younger son of an embarrassed peer, who for a considerable consideration was bear-leading the millionaire through the social labyrinth, hurriedly interpreted it to him ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... of Blue Beard which has so often made our young blood run cold. Sister Anne is represented, and so are the rescuing brothers, the latter in the person of the heroine's old friend and playmate, Toennis the goose-herd. Several very curious Gaelic versions of the story are given by Mr. Campbell ("Tales of the West Highlands," No. 41, ii. 265-275). Two of the three daughters of a poor widow look into a forbidden chamber, find it "full of dead gentlewomen," get stained knee-deep in blood, and refuse to give a ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... man, slack in the twist but limber in the joints—distinguished by a constant lowering of the eye and a spasmodic twitching of the corners of the mouth. He was active and nimble, and in moments of excitement much given to spitting Gaelic oaths like a wild-cat. But, spite his half-century of life, he was still the best and the most daring man of a company who had taken daring ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the leader of the rebellion was executed (1283). Thus Wales was joined to England; and the king gave to his son the title of "Prince of Wales," which the eldest son of the sovereign of England has since worn. Edward was for many years at war with Scotland, which now included the Gaelic-speaking people of the Highlands, and the English-speaking people of the Lowlands. The king of England had some claim to be their suzerain, a claim which the Scots were slow to acknowledge. The old line of Scottish princes of the Celtic race died out. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... exclaim in Gaelic, "This is a fatal lamb for me." As her son lived several miles from Uig, and was a fisherman, realisation seemed to my father very unlikely, but one month afterwards the realisation occurred only too true. Unknown to his ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... composed of elements as motley as ever met under any commander. On the Paris and Rouen Railway eleven languages were spoken— English, Erse, Gaelic, Welsh, French, German, Belgian (Flemish), Dutch, Piedmontese, Spanish, and Polish. A common lingo naturally sprang up like the Pigeon English of China. But in the end it seems many of the navvies learnt to speak French pretty well. We are told that at first the mode in which ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... vivid pictures of people and things, but it is not full of beauty and of tender imagination like many of the Gaelic stories. Among the most beautiful and best known of these are perhaps the Three Sorrows of Story-Telling. These three stories are called: The Tragedy of the Children of Lir; The Tragedy of the Children of Tuireann; and Deirdre and the Sons of Usnach. Of the three the last ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... of their own. They used their claymores, their dirks, their scythes fastened upon poles, against the horses, then, springing up, put long arms about the horsemen and, regardless of sword or pistol, dragged them down. They shouted their Gaelic slogans; their costume, themselves, seemed out of a fiercer, earlier world. A strangeness overclouded the senses; mist wreaths were everywhere, and an uncertainty as to the numbers of demons.... The cavalry broke. Officers tried to save the situation, ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... of the lake is a large rock, called "Bull's Rock," having a door in the side, with a stairway cut through the interior to a pulpit on the top, from which the pastor at Arroquhar preaches a monthly discourse. The Gaelic legend of the rock is, that it once stood near the summit of the mountain above, and was very nearly balanced on the edge of a precipice. Two wild bulls, fighting violently, dashed with great force against the rock, which, being thrown from its balance, was tumbled ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... the minister coming, for he was busy with a lamb that had lost its way and hurt itself. Carmichael marked with a growing tenderness at his heart how gently the old man washed and bound up the wounded leg, all the time crooning to the frightened creature in the sweet Gaelic speech, and also how he must needs give the lamb a drink of warm milk before ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... a common precaution among the fur traders when mingling with the natives. This, however, looked like preparation. Then several of the partners and clerks and some of the men, being Scotsmen, were acquainted with the Gaelic, and held long conversations together in that language. These conversations were considered by the captain of a "mysterious and unwarranted nature," and related, no doubt, to some foul conspiracy that was brewing among them. He frankly avows ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... flood and dishearten the world, that they are so uncandid in their relation of those emotional episodes in life—episodes which have to do with what we know for some curious reason as "the softer passions." Caesar's Gaelic wars, his bridges, his trouble with the impedimenta, his fights with the Helvetians—who cares for them? Who cares greatly for Napoleon's expedition against the Allies? Of what human interest is Grant's tale of the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... and neither expostulations, pulls, cracks of the whip, or even kicks, I am sorry to say, seemed to produce the slightest effect upon their determination to remain stretched at full length on the ground. What were we to do? The driver vociferated in Gaelic, but the poor brutes did not mind, and they would have been cruelly maltreated if we had not interfered to protect them. Gilbert said to the man: "You see well enough that they have no strength to work, therefore allow them to rest till they are able to go back. I ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Gaelic in appearance, is situated on the west side of the strait, between Lakes St. Clare and Erie, and is within sight of Malden in Canada, with the shores of which province a constant trade or communication is ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... been, to some extent, intermingled, and this mixture of blood renders necessary some account of the racial relationship. It has been a favourite theme of the English historians of the nineteenth century that the portions of Scotland where the Gaelic tongue has ceased to be spoken are not really Scottish, but English. "The Scots who resisted Edward", wrote Mr. Freeman, "were the English of Lothian. The true Scots, out of hatred to the 'Saxons' nearest to them, leagued with the 'Saxons' farther off."[2] Mr. Green, writing of the time ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... from executing his friendly purpose by a sort of crowd which came rushing down the alley, the centre of which was occupied by Captain MacTurk, in the very act of bullying two pseudo Highlanders, for having presumed to lay aside their breeches before they had acquired the Gaelic language. The sounds of contempt and insult with which the genuine Celt was overwhelming the unfortunate impostors, were not, indeed, intelligible otherwise than from the tone and manner of the speaker; but these intimated so much displeasure, that the plaided forms whose ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Lavender, he could not help confessing to a sense of lightness and vivacity that the young man seemed to bring with him and shed around him. Nor was this matter of the sketches the only thing that had particularly recommended Lavender to the old man. Mackenzie had a most distinct dislike to Gaelic songs. He could not bear the monotonous melancholy of them. When Sheila, sitting by herself, would sing these strange old ballads of an evening, he would suddenly enter the room, probably find her eyes filled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... AIRD. A British or Gaelic term for a rocky eminence, or rocks on a wash: hence the word hard, in present use. It is also ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... was not the primitive and original tongue of any of the British Islands, nor yet of any portion of them. Indeed, of the whole of Great Britain it is not the language at the present moment. Welsh is spoken in Wales, Manks in the Isle of Man, and Scotch Gaelic in the Highlands of Scotland; besides which there is the ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... certain air of being Norse. But the story of Scottish nomenclature is confounded by a continual process of translation and half-translation from the Gaelic which in olden days may have been sometimes reversed. Roy becomes Reid; Gow, Smith. A great Highland clan uses the name of Robertson; a sept in Appin that of Livingstone; Maclean in Glencoe answers to Johnstone at Lockerby. And we find such hybrids as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... roof with its in- terstices filled up with its yellow lutings; the same precision of outline in the prismatic angles, sharp as though chiseled by a sculptor's hand; the same sonorous vibration of the air across the basaltic rocks, of which the Gaelic poets have feigned that the harps of the Fingal minstrelsy were made. But whereas at Staffa the floor of the cave is always covered with a sheet of water, here the grotto was beyond the reach of all but the highest ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... already introduced into the part of the country in which I at this time resided, on the richer and more level lands; but many a Gaelic-speaking cottar and small tenant still lived on the neighbouring moors and hill-sides. Though Highland in their surnames and language, they bore a character considerably different from that of the simpler Highlanders ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... a foot of the door. Arctic to freeze the boldest bud of liberty! I'd like a French chanson from ye, Pat, to put us in tune, with a right revolutionary hurling chorus, that pitches Kings' heads into the basket like autumn apples. Or one of your hymns in Gaelic sung ferociously to sound as horrid to the Saxon, the wretch. His reign 's not for ever; he can't enter here. You're in the stronghold defying him. And now cigars, boys, pipes; there are the boxes, there are the bowls. I can't smoke till I have done steaming. I'll ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 1610 possessed, and was still more hopelessly discredited by its association with the persecution of the Covenanting remnant; but even under these disadvantages it was yielding not inconsiderable benefits to the religious life of Scotland. Under it our Gaelic-speaking highlanders first received the entire Bible in their native tongue; the Episcopate was adorned by the piety of Leighton and the wisdom of Patrick Scougal; while Henry Scougal in his Life of God in the Soul of Man produced a ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... it took," went on Drysdale. "I thought old Murdock would have wept on his neck. As it was, he scattered snuff enough to fill a pint pot over him out of his mull, and began talking Gaelic. And Blake had the cheek to jabber a lot of gibberish back to him, as if ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... called in Gaelic Beal-tene—i.e., the fire of Bel.... Like the other public worship of the Druids, the Beltane feast seems to have been performed on hills or eminences. They thought it degrading to him whose temple is the universe, to suppose that he would dwell in any house made with hands. Their ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... legend with merely a little compression; but in others a certain amount of reshaping has seemed desirable. The object in all cases has been the same, to bring out as clearly as possible for modern readers the beauty and interest which are either manifest or implicit in the Gaelic original. ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... town have always been a matter of conjecture. There seems reason to believe that it refers to the time when the site, or a portion of it, formed an island, as sea-sand is the subsoil even of the oldest quarters. Another derivation is from Gaelic words meaning "the island beyond the bend." With Dysart, Kinghorn and Kirkcaldy, it unites in returning one ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... hunter, either from the engrossing nature of his exertions, or from his unwillingness to alarm the boys, spoke not a word at the commencement of the conflict—his son within the cave, finding the light excluded from above, asked in Gaelic, and in an abrupt tone, "Father, what is keeping the light from us?"—"If the root of the tail break," replied he, "you will soon know that." Before long, however, the man contrived to get hold of his hunting-knife, and stabbed ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... and without a thought of his relations, he read the legends of Meath on his way out; he often sat considering his adventures, the circus, the mining camp, and his sympathy with the Cubans in their revolt against Spain; these convinced him of his Gaelic inheritance and that something might be done with Ireland. England's power was great, but Spain's power had been great too, and when Spain thought herself most powerful the worm had begun. Everything has its day, and as England decayed, Ireland would revive. ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... the love-songs of our coast and island people, they seem to be for the most part a little artificial in method, a little strained in metaphor perhaps so giving rise to the Scotch Gaelic saying: 'as loveless as an Irishman.' Love of country, tir-gradh, is I think the real passion; and bound up with it are love of home, of family, love of God. Constancy and affection in marriage are the rule; yet marriage 'for love' is all but unknown; marriage is a ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others |
