"Minstrel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Morians' land See worshipped Nilus bland, Taking the silver road he gave the world, To wet his ancient shrine With waters held divine, And touch his temple steps with wavelets curled, And list, ere darkness change to gray, Old minstrel-throated Memnon ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... Tucker. Metaphysics: Reid. Theological and Religious Writers: Campbell, Paley, Watson, Newton, Hannah More, and Wilberforce. Poetry: Comedies of Goldsmith and Sheridan; Minor Poets; Later Poems; Beattie's Minstrel; Cowper and Burns. 5. The Nineteenth Century. The Poets: Campbell, Southey, Scott, Byron; Coleridge and Wordsworth; Wilson, Shelley, Keats; Crabbe, Moore, and others; Tennyson, Browning, Procter, and others. Fiction: the Waverley and other Novels; Dickens, Thackeray, and others. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... such fascinating things, those new booklets, and the man had such marvelous tales to tell, that Eddie forgot trifles like supper and waiting mothers. There were pictures taken on board ship, showing frolics, and ball games, and minstrel shows and glee clubs, and the men at mess, and each sailor sleeping snug as a bug in his hammock. There were other pictures showing foreign scenes and strange ports. Eddie's tea grew cold, and his apple pie and cheese ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... with some general observations on the scenery of that now noted district of the south of Scotland, blended with the graceful expression of those melancholy remembrances, we doubt not deeply felt, which must ever cast a dark shadow over the minds of the surviving associates of the Great Minstrel. Alas! where can we turn ourselves without being reminded of the transitory nature of this our low estate, of its dissevered ties, its buried hopes, and lost affections! How many bitter endurances, reflected from the bosom of the past, are ever mingling with all those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... swine or the cows had. Looking after the fowls or the geese, hunting for the hen's nest in the furze brake, and digging out a fox or a badger, gave them an hour's excitement or interest now and again. Now and then a wandering minstrel came by, playing upon his rude instrument, and now and then somebody would come out from Lynn, or Yarmouth, or Norwich, with some new batch of songs for the most part scurrilous and coarse, and listened to much less for the sake ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... verses of every description on every possible topic, with paragraphs long and short, are, so to speak, the hors d'oeuvres of his contribution. Many series of poems and papers are his, of which the best-known is that of the "Lays of a Lazy Minstrel" (begun August 28th, 1880), with their riverside idylls and love-carols; but to his hand also are to be credited "Simple Stories for Little Gentlefolk," "Holiday Haunts, by Jingle Junior on the Jaunt," "Club Carols," ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... this second volume of "THE MODERN SCOTTISH MINSTREL," as a sincere token of my estimation of your long continued and most disinterested friendship, and of the anxiety you have so frequently evinced respecting the promotion of my ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... 'Antiquary,' under the eye of Jonathan Oldbuck, who was himself once in love but has come to see that he was a fool for his pains. Certainly, somehow or other, they are apt to be terribly wooden. Cranstoun in the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' Graeme in the 'Lady of the Lake,' or Wilton in 'Marmion,' are all unspeakable bores. Waverley himself, and Lovel in the 'Antiquary,' and Vanbeest Brown in 'Guy Mannering,' and Harry Morton in 'Old Mortality,' and, in short, the whole series of Scott's pattern young men, are all chips ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the hall the din of voices and the sound of song; the instruments also were brought out and Hrothgar's minstrel sang a ballad for the delight of the warriors. Waltheow too came forth, bearing in her train presents for Beowulf—a cup, two armlets, raiment and rings, and the largest and richest collar that could be found in all ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... which the golden epoch would begin for him and for Rome. At one time he called for blood; at another he declared that he would be satisfied with governing in Egypt. He recalled the prediction which promised him lordship in Jerusalem, and he was moved by the thought that as a wandering minstrel he would earn his daily bread,—that cities and countries would honor in him, not Caesar, the lord of the earth, but a poet whose like the world had not produced before. And so he struggled, raged, played, sang, changed his plan, changed his quotations, changed his life and the world into ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... whose French stanzas on "The Birth of Love" Wordsworth translated into English, was in the same year—1789—third Wrangler, second Smith's prizeman, and first Chancellor's medallist; while Robert Greenwood, "the Minstrel of the Troop," who "blew his flute, alone upon the rock" in Windermere,—also one of the characters referred to in the second book of 'The Prelude',—was sixteenth Wrangler in Wordsworth's year, viz. 1791. William Raincock was at St. John's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... the minstrel, With womanish hair and ring, Yet heavy was his hand on sword, Though light ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... to this earliest form of the Mirror which is attributed to an eminent writer, is the "Edward IV" of Skelton, and this is one of the most tuneless of all. It reminds the ear of a whining ballad snuffled out in the street at night by some unhappy minstrel that has got no work to do. As Baldwin professes to quote it from memory, Skelton being then dead, perhaps its versification suffered ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... southern clouds" The phrase occurs in a translation of Salomon Gessner, as well as in an 1817 text (Pennie, "The Royal Minstrel"). Both passages are descriptions ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... dreamed of "holding up" a Cunard liner, and had ridden on the Strand in a hansom with William Ewart Gladstone. But the one thing of which he was proud, the one picture of his life he most delighted to recall, was himself as manager of a negro minstrel troupe, in a hired drum-major's uniform, marching down the streets of Sacramento at the head of the brass band in burnt cork ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... other parties?" says I, when I'd sized up the inside of the Adeline. There was room enough for a minstrel troupe. ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... ceased the fair form of May MacLeod appeared at the casement overhead, she waved a fond farewell to her mountain minstrel and closed the window; but the light deprived of her fair face had no charm for him—he gazed once more at the pane through which it beamed like a solitary star, amid the masses of foliage, and was turning away when he found a heavy ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... inspiration is the antique spirit. M. Dubois, is, like all academic French sculptors, except Chapu indeed, absolutely and integrally a romanticist, completely enamoured of the Renaissance. The two are so distinct as to be contradictory. The moment M. Dubois gives us the type in a "Florentine Minstrel," to the exclusion of the personal and the particular, he fails in imaginativeness and falls back on the conventional. The type of a "Florentine Minstrel" is infallibly a convention. M. Dubois, ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... well, and rides the whole day. Probably the extent of their large pasture farms, and the necessity of surveying them rapidly, first introduced this custom; or a very zealous antiquary might derive it from the times of the Lay o the Last Minstrel, when twenty thousand horsemen assembled at the light of the beacon-fires. [*It would be affectation to alter this reference. But the reader will understand it was inserted to keep up the author's incognito, as he was not likely to be suspected of quoting his own works. This explanation is ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... a minstrel out in the crowd, and pretty soon he struck up his fiddle and his lay, and he did not exactly sing the virtues of Billy Bayhone. Evidently some partisan thought he ought, for he smote him on the thigh with the toe of his boot and raised such a stir as a rude stranger might had he smitten a ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... tome that bears my name Hast thou, though veiled thy own from public eyes, Won from my muse that willing sacrifice Which worth and talents such as thine should claim: And I should close my minstrel task with shame, Could I forget the indissoluble ties Which every grateful thought of thee supplies To one who deems thy friendship more than fame. Accept then, thus imperfectly, once more, The homage of thy poet and thy friend; And should thy ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Handel is almost a contemporary. Paintings and busts of this great minstrel are scattered everywhere throughout the land. He lies in Westminster Abbey among the great poets, warriors, and statesmen, a giant memory in his noble art. A few hours after death the sculptor Roubiliac took a cast of his face, which he wrought into imperishable marble; ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... of his sarcasm, the glow of his enthusiasm, the coruscations of his fancy, and the flashing of his wit, seem to be as well understood in the new world as the old; and the support which his pen has given to civil and religious liberty throughout the world, entitled the Minstrel of Erin ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... feet are wiser than all desire, Our song is better than faith or fame; To whom it is given no ill e'er came, Who has it not grows chill! Who has it not grows laggard and lame, Nor knows that the world is a Minstrel's lyre, Smitten and never still!... Last night on the ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... "seems they hitched a kind of nigger minstrel show right on to it—banjos and thingumajigs in front of the curtain while they was changin' scenes, and they hitched the second act right on to that. Nobody come out of the theatre at all. Funny notion, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hired to sing and play the harp at the feast of the installation of an abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury (1309). When the bishop of Winchester visited the cathedral priory of St. Swithin or Old Minster, a minstrel was hired to sing the song of Colbrond the Danish giant—a legend connected with Winchester—and the tale of Queen Emma delivered from the ploughshares (1338). Payments to minstrels were commonly made by monks: at Bicester Priory, for example (1431), ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... and medieval Europe the wandering poet or minstrel went from place to place repeating his wondrous narratives, adding new verses to his tales, changing his episodes to suit locality or occasion, and always skilfully shaping his fascinating romances. In court and cottage he was listened to with breathless attention. He might be compared to a living ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... as diverse in kind, as comprehensive in scope, as those of the most versatile negro minstrel. He cuts as many capers in a lifetime as there are stars in heaven or grains of sand in a barrel of sugar. Everything is fish that comes to his net. If a discovery in science is announced, he will execute you an antic upon it before it gets fairly ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... have made a fortune with his great inventions in 1876, what might he not accomplish by the same means in 1598! He pictured to himself the delight of the ancient worthies when they heard the rag-time airs and minstrel jokes produced by ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... appears to have belonged to a sort of Christy Minstrel Company over here) cracked jokes all the time with a gentleman amongst the audience in a good-natured but flippant and very unspiritual manner, and even the ladies joined in the undignified punning and "play upon words" that went ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... doeskin, and the latchets were of gold. So he came into the hall, and seeing him thus gaily attired with all his harness off, much did all marvel at his knightly prowess. For in truth he looked more like some tender minstrel than a gallant warrior. Then up ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... the transfigured chronicle many tell-tale incidents and remarks which, like atrophied organs in an animal body, reveal its gradual formation. Art and a deliberate pursuit of unction or beauty would have thrown over this baggage. The automatic and pious minstrel carries it with him to ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... door, and called out angrily to know what "that infernal noise" meant. The Count instantly got up from the piano. "Ah! if Percival is coming," he said, "harmony and melody are both at an end. The Muse of Music, Miss Halcombe, deserts us in dismay, and I, the fat old minstrel, exhale the rest of my enthusiasm in the open air!" He stalked out into the verandah, put his hands in his pockets, and resumed the Recitativo of Moses, sotto ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... black. Christy minstrel men are, I know, for nurse told me so when I was frightened of them. And pigs couldn't paint themselves black. But oh, Max," she broke off, "do look how they're running and jumping now. They're all over the field. One, two, three, ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... of the shabby minstrel with pitiably childish expression of amusement, a half-imbecile morio leaned upon the table. His huge form, for he was a giant among stalwart men, and his great moon-shaped head made him at once an object hideous and miserable to contemplate. But the poor ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... in Notes on the Months, p.418, the Song "Bryng us in good ale," copied from the MS. song-book of an Ipswich Minstrel of the 15th century, read by Mr Thomas Wright before the British Archological Association, August, 1864, and afterwards published in The Gentleman's Magazine. P.S.—The song was first printed complete in Mr Wright's edition of Songs & Carols for the Percy Society, 1847, p.63. He ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... "I took a chaise for Melrose; and on the way stopped at the gate of Abbotsford, and sent in my letter of introduction, with a request to know whether it would be agreeable for Mr. Scott to receive a visit from me in the course of the day. The glorious old minstrel himself came limping to the gate, and took me by the hand in a way that made me feel as if we were old friends; in a moment I was seated at his hospitable board among his charming little family, and here I have been ever since.... I cannot tell you how truly I have enjoyed ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... who morn and evening listed to the minstrel's song, In their ear the loathsome jackal doth his doleful ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... me more than justice," replied the Baron; "the spot was selected by my nephew, who hath a fancy like a minstrel. Myself am but slow ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... large collection of Anglo-Saxon poems on very different subjects. To give some idea of their variety, it may be mentioned that, amongst other poems of an entirely distinct character, there are religious pieces, many riddles, the legends of two saints, the Scald's or Ancient Minstrel's tale of his travels, and a poem on the 'Various Fortunes ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... with proper continence, and rise the better and more chivalrous from the society of the other. Wine well used is a good familiar creature—kindles, soothes, and inspirits: the cup of wine warmed by the smile of woman gives courage to the soldier and genius to the minstrel. With Burns—and he was no ordinary seer—I hold that the sweetest hours that e'er we spend are spent among the lasses. I will go farther and say the most profitable hours. And some sweet and profitable hours 'twas mine to spend ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... there a word or a line. In determining which stanzas or lines to choose, when choice was possible, he was guided by his antiquarian knowledge and by the general principle of selecting the most poetic rendering among those at his command. This was his way of showing his respect for the minstrel bards of whom he was fond of ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... And their warm tears: but all hath suffered change; For surely now our household hearths are cold: Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange: And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy. Or else the island-princes over-bold Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings Before them of the ten-years' war in Troy, And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things. Is there confusion in the little isle? Let what is broken so remain. The gods are hard to reconcile: 'Tis hard to settle order once again. There is confusion worse than death, Trouble on trouble, pain ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... chair, for the room had grown cold and his body ached with all the strain and exertion it had so recently undergone. Slowly he moved off towards his own sleeping apartment, in case the Queen, when she awoke, should send to inquire after him. And on his way, as a short cut, he crossed the minstrel gallery, which divided one from the other the two state drawing-rooms,—a broad half-story colonnade, with central opening ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... meetings, where the audience beguile the waiting time with demanding "What is the matter?" with this or that favorite demagogue. In the sixties, it patly answered any problem. At the presidential election-time of Lincoln's success, a negro minstrel, Unsworth, was a "star" at "444" Broadway, dressing up the daily news drolly under this title—that is, ending ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... was a minstrel show. It was worse than a minstrel show; it was profoundly corrupt. Lobbyists openly paid legislators, black and white, for their votes. And what is more, the money was parceled out to each one on the very floor of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... "ioculatores, qui cantant gesta principum et vitam sanctorum";[63] Robert of Brunne complains that those who sing or say the geste of Sir Tristram do not repeat the story exactly as Thomas made it.[64] Even though one must recognize the probability that sometimes the immediate oral source of the minstrel's tale may have been English, one cannot ignore the possibility that occasionally a "translated" saint's life or romance may have been the result of hearing a French or Latin narrative read or recited. A convincing example of reproduction from ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... in mid Aegean, the sailors rose against him. As I was swimming alongside, I heard all that went on. 'Since your minds are made up,' says Arion, 'at least let me get my mantle on, and sing my own dirge; and then I will throw myself into the sea of my own accord.'—The sailors agreed. He threw his minstrel's cloak about him, and sang a most sweet melody; and then he let himself drop into the water, never doubting but that his last moment had come. But I caught him up on my back, and swam to shore with ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... wherefore all this wormy circumstance? Why linger at the yawning tomb so long? Oh for the gentleness of old Romance, The simple plaining of a minstrel's song! Fair reader, at the old tale take a glance, For here in truth it doth not well belong To speak:—O, turn thee to the very tale, And taste the ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... after all the trouble I've taken. I've worked and slaved from morning till night, made him get his lessons and be careful of his clothes, and kept him out of bad company; and now I'm not allowed to say a word, but just stand by while you let him go to ruin. The next thing we'll have him in a nigger minstrel band, or playing on ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... their hay" at Lammastide. In Scotland the hay harvest is often much later. But if the English ballad be NORTHUMBRIAN, little can be made out of that proof of Scottish origin. If the English version be a southern version (for the minstrel is a professional), then Lammastide for hay-making is ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... There, now, is a man, moping about, the very picture of stolidity; observe how his heavy head hangs down until his chin rests upon his breastbone, his mouth open and almost dribbling. That man, sir, so unpoetical and idiotic in appearance, imagines himself the author of Beattie's 'Minstrel' He is a Scotchman, and I shall call ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... peg from which much unprofitable speculation was suspended. The argument most plausible was that he went home, while one romantic youth suggested a girl. The accusation was never repeated. What? The "Lord" a ladies' man? Tut! One would as soon expect a statue to drill a minstrel show. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Duchess of Monmouth. This lady was Anne Scott, the daughter and heiress of the Duke of Buccleuch, and widow of the well-known and hapless Duke of Monmouth, who had been beheaded in 1685. She plays a prominent part in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and of her a far greater poet than her secretary ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... over these matters, a minstrel began to play in one of the cottages of the village; the sound of the harp added another charm to the peaceful surroundings, and filled the poet's ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... name which has heretofore been associated in the public mind with the Negro Minstrel business. Certain weird barbaric melodies, which defy all laws of musical composition, but which haunt one like a dream of a lonely night on some wild African river, are said to have been written by "OLD ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... the banquet, the minstrel strung his ancient harp, and soon the company tripped lightly on the oaken floor, till the rafters rang with the merry sounds of their midnight revelry. For three days and nights the hunt and the feast continued, and as, at last, the revelries drew to a close, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... feet the forest carpet springs, We march through gloomy valleys, where the vesper sparrow sings. The little minstrel heeds us not, nor stays his plaintive song, As with our brave coureurs de bois we swiftly ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... then expected to respond, though this by no means was the rule. The host might wish first to call out more of his own intellectual treasures. This he would do by having other occupants of the castle speak further words of welcome, or would call upon a minstrel to sing a song or relate some ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... table, blackened by age and hard usage to the color of the beams above, dented and nicked by the pounding of huge drinking horns and heavy swords when wild and lusty brawlers had been moved to applause by the lay of some wandering minstrel, or the sterner call of their mighty chieftains for the ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... In the Diurnal of Occurrents, the writer noticing his slaughter, calls him "ane valzeand guid Knycht," (p. 51.) Knox simply styles him "a bloody man."—(See Douglas and Wood's Peerage, vol. i. p. 240; and Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel.) ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... of Shelley, twenty-four at that of Keats; and he outlived all of them except Wordsworth. His genius blossomed early. "The Ancient Mariner," his greatest poem, was published some years before Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality" was written, or Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel." He was in the prime of life, or what should have been the prime of life—forty years old—when Byron burst into sudden fame with the first two cantos of "Childe Harold" in 1812; he was forty-six when ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... men sprang to horse. The banner was unfurled by Folker, the minstrel knight. He rode before the host, and they all made them ready for battle. They numbered not more than a thousand men, and thereto the twelve strangers. The dust rose from their path, and they rode through the land, their ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... of genius will be apt to retire from the active sports of his mates. BEATTIE paints himself in his own Minstrel: ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... pride of Mizriam's heart, With pyramids that speak thy wealth and art, Why is it that no minstrel comes, who sings Of all the glory of thy shepherd kings? Tyre, why are thy walls in ruins thus? Why is thy name so seldom spoke by us? Sidon, among the nations thou art fled, Thy joy departed and thy glory dead; Far gone ere all thy generations, Fallen ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... Harry Hotspur to rouse his namesake from his folly. There was, alas! no such noble rival to excite David of Scotland to emulation, and no such happy turning-point before him. No one, not even a minstrel or romancer, has remembered it in his favour that he once defied the English host for the love of his country and the old never-abandoned cause of Scottish independence. Already it would seem a prodigal who was a Stewart had ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... minstrel heavenly gifted, 2125 To one whom fiends enthral, this voice to me; Scarce did I wish her veil to be uplifted, I was so calm and joyous.—I could see The platform where we stood, the statues three Which kept their marble watch on that high shrine, 2130 The multitudes, the mountains, and the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... The minstrel's heart in sadness Was wrestling with his fate; "Am I the sport of madness," He sighed, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Danes. Growing bolder from the general success of these sallies, he at length determined upon more decisive measures; but before making the attempt, it was expedient to learn the actual condition of his enemy. With this view he assumed the costume of a Saxon minstrel, and ventured into the Danish camp at Chippenham, about thirty miles distant from his stronghold among the marshes. In this disguise he went from tent to tent, and, as some of the chroniclers tell us, was admitted into the tent of Guthrum himself, the Danish ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... a spiritual excitation of this dormant faculty. Hence you will observe that the Hebrew seers sometimes seem to have required music, as in the instance of Elisha before Jehoram:—"But now bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him." [2] Every thing in nature has a tendency to move in cycles; and it would be a miracle if, out of such myriads of cycles moving concurrently, some coincidences did not ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... from all corners of Europe to cut the trees; to build and launch boats; to sail them, finally, across the strip of water to that England he was to meet at last, to grapple with, and overthrow, even as the English huscarles in their turn bore down on that gay Minstrel Taillefer, who rode so insolently forth to meet them, with a song in his throat, tossing his sword in English eyes, still chanting the song of Roland as he fell. None of the inn features were in the least informed with this great, impressive picture of its past. Yet does William seem ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... I want to dance as I had never yet danced: beyond all heavens did I want to dance. Then did ye seduce my favourite minstrel. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Or are the birds all wrong That play on flute and viol, A thousand strong, In minstrel galleries Of the long deep wood, Epiphanies Of ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... health and length of days; Others with surest words would add Some boon to make their spirit glad. In such degree of honour then That song was held by holy men: That living song which life can give, By which shall many a minstrel live. In seat of kings, in crowded hall, They sang the poem, praised of all. And Rama chanced to hear their lay, While he the votive steed(60) would slay, And sent fit messengers to bring The minstrel pair before the king. They came, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... in full swing when I approached. Only six of the men were dancers. Of the others, one was the 'minstrel,' the other the 'dysard.' The minstrel was playing a flute; and the dysard I knew by the wand and leathern bladder which he brandished as he walked around, keeping a space for the dancers, and chasing and buffeting merrily any man or child who ventured too near. He, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... am a minstrel with a harp, For love of her my songs are sweet, And yet I dare not lift the voice That lies so ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... become, professionally, a creature of the night. He was abroad at the, same hours as the burglars and garroters, and other owls and weasels of society. Fink & Co. (Bog was the Co.) had secured the bill posting for three theatres and one negro-minstrel hall. This they called their heavy business. Carrying the huge damp placards, had already given to Bog's shoulders a manifest tendency to roundness, which he was constantly trying to overcome by straightening up. Fink, who was the veteran bill poster of the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... houses of earth all memories must die, yet as there sometimes clings to a prisoner's feet some dust of the fields wherein he was captured, so sometimes fragments of remembrance cling to a man's soul after it hath been taken to earth. Then a great minstrel arises, and, weaving together the shreds of his memories, maketh some melody such as the hand of Shimono Kani smites out of his harp; and they that pass by say: 'Hath there not been some such melody before?' and pass on sad at heart for ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... you. I didn't know that the others were going to be stolen too, and I thought you would have enough left. You have any number of regular pearl cuff-links, anyhow, that can be worn to society functions, and not as if you were an end-man in a minstrel show, which is all that those big, glaring diamond things are fit for! Mr. Holmes told me he had replaced all the shoes that disappeared last night, as he took them for the purpose of finding out where the stolen cuff-buttons were by his peculiar hocus-pocus methods, so you can't ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... loveliness? The fatal duel in the Dowie Dens of Yarrow and the lamented drowning of Willie there have given the stream its 'pastoral melancholy,' and engaged Wordsworth in the renown of the water. For the poetry of Tweed we have chiefly, after Scott, to thank Mr. Stoddart, its loyal minstrel. "Dearer than all these to me," he says about our other valleys, "is ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... my lad!" he urged with rough kindliness,—"Thou hast a face fairer than that of the King's own minstrel, and why wouldst thou die for sake of an extra cup of wine? If Lysia is to blame for this scattering of thy wits, take heed thou do not venture near her more—it is ill jesting with the Serpent's sting! Get thee hence ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... financial successes of the stage today are built upon music and dancing. We find these two essential elements in opera, revue, musical comedy, pantomime and vaudeville, while the place of the dance in moving pictures may well be recognized. Should the old-time minstrel show come back, as it is certain to do, there will be added another name to the list of active entertainments that call for a union of music and dancing to insure ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... stands on a marble stair, Blown by the bright wind, debonair; Below lies the sea, a sapphire floor, Above on the terrace a turret door Frames a lady, listless and wan, But fair for the eye to rest upon. The minstrel plucks at his silver strings, And looking up to the lady, sings: — Down the road to Avignon, The long, long road to Avignon, Across the bridge to Avignon, One morning in ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... Nearer the castle, and bending their way towards it, marched a party of falconers with their well-trained birds, whose skill they had been approving upon their fists, their jesses ringing as they moved along, while nearer still, and almost at the foot of the terrace wall, was a minstrel playing on a rebec, to which a keeper, in a dress of Lincoln green, with a bow over his shoulder, a quiver of arrows at his back, and a comely damsel under his arm, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... self-control. His sharp comical yapping was unbearable, like stabs through one's brain, and Fyne's deeply modulated remonstrances abashed the vivacious animal no more than the deep, patient murmur of the sea abashes a nigger minstrel on a popular beach. Fyne was beginning to swear at him in low, sepulchral tones when I appeared. The dog became at once wildly demonstrative, half strangling himself in his collar, his eyes and tongue hanging out in the excess of his incomprehensible affection ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... number on the same bill reads: "The African Wonder, Carlo Alberto, will sing several new and popular Negro melodies." Collectors of minstrel ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... wandering minstrel or pondering Poet her castle gate closes: Ever her kindly cheer—ever her praise sincere Falls like the dew on faint roses. And when her Pennillions rhyming She mates to her triple harp's chiming, In her green Gorsedd ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... David, 1 Samuel xvii. 56, whereas in the preceding chapter David is not only present at his court, but has already won the monarch's love, xvi. 21. The David of the one chapter is quite unlike the David of the other; in xvi. 18 he is a mature man, a skilled and versatile minstrel-warrior, and the armour-bearer of the king; in xvii. 38, 39, he is a young shepherd boy who cannot wield a sword, and who cuts a sorry figure in a coat of mail. Many of these undoubted difficulties are removed by the Septuagint[1] which omits xvii. 12-31 ,41, 50, 55-xviii. ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... minstrel's lay; [2] When two hearts meet, And true hearts greet, And all is morn and ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... of penthouses and sheds behind the main building. Here lived Charles the page, Peter the old falconer, Red Swire who had followed Nigel's grandfather to the Scottish wars, Weathercote the broken minstrel, John the cook, and other survivors of more prosperous days, who still clung to the old house as the barnacles to ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... critics heap their honours on its brave old Simplicity: our national literary flag, which signalizes us while we float, subsequently to flap above the shallows. One may sigh for it. An ill-fortuned minstrel who has by fateful direction been brought to see with distinctness, that man is not as much comprised in external features as the monkey, will be devoted to the task of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... perversion of mind and soul of the age, and in general the blased existence of the young men of the day, of whom he had met many types at Cambridge, and on his first launch into society. The second is the minstrel who tells ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... necessity of making detours to avoid fruit-stalls and bathing-saloons. Fortunately the fine sands around Newquay have not yet become a mart for sweetmeats and cocoanuts, nor are they the happy hunting ground of the negro minstrel and other troupes of ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... and saw the world he left When to that visionary realm of song His spirit fled from bonds of flesh bereft; And on the vision he lay musing long, As o'er his soul rude minstrel-echoes throng, Old measures half-disused; and grasp'd his pen, And drew his cottage-Christ for ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... servile position. Pottery was manufactured of excellent but simple patterns. Metal work was, of course, thoroughly understood, and the Anglo-Saxon swords and knives discovered in barrows are of good construction. Every chief had also his minstrel, who sang the short and jerky Anglo-Saxon songs to the accompaniment of a harp. The dead were burnt and their ashes placed in tumuli in the north: the southern tribes buried their warriors in full military dress, and from their tombs much ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... for me to do in the way of making ready. The whole trip, of course, would be a military one. I might be setting out as a minstrel for France, but every detail of my arrangements had to be made in accordance with military rules, and once I reached France I would be under the orders of the army in every movement I might make. All that was carefully explained ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... of the North! that mouldering long hast hung On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung, Till envious ivy did around thee cling, Muffling with verdant ringlet every string,— O Minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep? Mid rustling leaves and fountains murmuring, Still must thy sweeter sounds their silence keep, Nor bid a warrior smile, nor ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... when we will," as the Commentator [*Averroes or Ibn Roshd, 1120-1198] says (De Anima iii). But a man cannot make use of prophecy when he will, as appears in the case of Eliseus (4 Kings 3:15), "who on Josaphat inquiring of him concerning the future, and the spirit of prophecy failing him, caused a minstrel to be brought to him, that the spirit of prophecy might come down upon him through the praise of psalmody, and fill his mind with things to come," as Gregory observes (Hom. i super Ezech.). Therefore prophecy ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... describe it in terms of Drew's experience and my own. We came to the front feeling deeply sorry for ourselves, and for all airmen of whatever nationality, whose lives were to be snuffed out in their promising beginnings. I used to play "The Minstrel Boy to the War Has Gone" on a tin flute, and Drew wrote poetry. While we were waiting for our first machine, he composed "The Airman's Rendezvous," written in the ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... songster, songstress, minstrel, chanter, cantatrice, cantor, prima donna, precentor, bard, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... armour. She could not see Hugh, but even as she stood in her own doorway, looking across the hall, she heard his voice, singing, as he worked, snatches of the latest song of Blondel, the King's Minstrel. ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Ted was lifting a cup of chocolate to his mouth, a chunk of snow fell right into the cup, splashing the chocolate all over the lad. Luckily it was not hot, though after the splashing was over Ted looked as if he had colored himself to take part in a minstrel show. ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... than he, or any living songster, was our ill-fated fellow-craftsman Tannahill. Poor weaver chiel! what we owe to you!— your "Braes of Balquidder," and "Yon Burnside," and "Gloomy Winter," and the "Minstrel's" wailing ditty, and the noble "Gleneiffer." Oh! how they did ring above the rattle of a thousand shuttles! Let me again proclaim the debt which we owe to these song spirits, as they walked in melody from loom to loom, ministering to the low-hearted; ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... well served by his spies in Ferrara, received news of what was going on and immediately informed his brother Alfonso. This was in July, 1506. The conspirators sought safety in flight, but only Giulio and the minstrel Guasconi succeeded in escaping, the former to Mantua and the latter to Rome. Count Boschetti was captured in the vicinity of Ferrara. Don Ferrante apparently made no effort to escape. When he was brought before the duke he threw himself at his feet and begged ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... lyceum-audience to suppose that it can have a strong and permanent interest in a trifler; and it is a gross injustice to every respectable lecturer in the field to introduce into his guild men who have no better motive and no higher mission than the stage-clown and the negro-minstrel. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... found pleasure in reciting the heroic ballads of Lachlin, the Raid of Dermid, the Battle of the Boyne, and in singing "My Pretty, Pretty Maid," or woodmen's "Come all ye's." His voice was unusually good, except at the breaking time; and any one who knew the part the minstrel played in Viking days would have thought the bygone times come back to see him among ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Scott's poems is not great but the human and emotional content in them is great. A great minstrel of the border speaks in them. The best that Emerson could say of Scott was that "he is the delight of generous boys," but the spirit of romance offers as legitimate a field for the poet as does the spirit of transcendentalism, though yielding, of ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... street, Phil felt that he must make up for lost time. Now six o'clock is not a very favorable time for street music; citizens who do business downtown have mostly gone home to dinner. Those who have not started are in haste, and little disposed to heed the appeal of the young minstrel. Later the saloons will be well frequented, and not seldom the young fiddlers may pick up a few, sometimes a considerable number of pennies, by playing at the doors of these places, or within, if they should be invited to enter; ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... staccatos, accellerandos, quasi-innocents, cadenzas, symphones, cavatinas, arias, counter-points, fiorituras, tonics, sub-medicants, allegrissimos, chromatics, concertos, andantes, etudes, larghettos, adagios, and every variety of turilural and dingus known to the minstrel art. The audience was paralyzed. When she finally struck up high F sharp in the descending fourth of D in alt, one gentleman from the South Side who had hired a dress-coat for the occasion broke forth in a hearty "Brava!" This encouraged a resident ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... grace! I took a few lessons of a wandering minstrel, out home, but I don't know the technique of it, as you and that ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... blessed calm,— Deep dying melodies of even,— Those Nyack Bells; like some sweet psalm, They float along the fields of heaven. Now laden with a nameless balm, Now musical with song thou art, I tune thee by an inward charm And make thee minstrel of my heart. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... the memory of what it has been, and trades upon relics of its former fame. What it would have been without Albrecht Durer, and Adam Kraft the stone-mason, and Peter Vischer the bronze-worker, and Viet Stoss who carved in wood, and Hans Sachs the shoemaker and poet-minstrel, it is difficult to say. Their statues are set up in the streets; their works still live in the churches and city buildings,—pictures, and groups in stone and wood; and their statues, in all sorts of carving, are reproduced, big and little, in all the shop-windows, for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... burst from the Norman lines their battle-cry of 'God aid us!' and the vast army began to move across the plain. At the head rode a minstrel-knight, singing an old battle-song, and whirling up his sword in the air and catching it again as ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... a time came when minstrels wandered from town to town, from castle to castle, singing their lays. And the minstrel who had a good tale to tell was ever sure of a welcome, and for his pains he was rewarded with money, jewels, and even land. That was the true listening time ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... burglar's tool or two here and there to mark its operations, and, with the aged and infirm General Scott at the head of a little army, and no encouragement except from the Abolitionists, many of whom had never seen a colored man outside of a minstrel performance, the President stole incog. into Washington, like a man who had ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... line of defense against the Oriental deluge is endangered. The Slav individually and in his primitive culture is altogether charming. He is a son of the soil, picturesque in life and creative; he is minstrel and poet, seer. But so far he is the carrier of a low civilization, the prophet, priest, and king of autocracy and absolutism. Never has there been a time in history when the higher civilization was not in a savage struggle for existence. It is almost the first time in three centuries that the highest ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... representation of the ancient minstrel, we were shortly given a touch of the modern usurper of the name. A gentleman was present who in the many turns of Fortune's wheel had once found himself a follower of the burnt-cork persuasion. He gave us a negro melody with a lively accompaniment on the guitar. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... it was not the royal minstrel who composed the songs, but that they came from the hand of Ronald who was now as skilled with his sword as with his harp, and who had become a great favourite of the emperor. He was a powerful warrior, and had already overthrown many ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... whose visionary brain Holds o'er the past its undivided reign. For him in vain the envious seasons roll Who bears eternal summer in his soul. If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay, Spring with her birds, or children with their play, Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart, - Turn to the record ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... yet, when he came home to his kingdom, he found all changed, his friends dead, his family dethroned, and not a man who knew his face; until at last, driven hither and thither like a beggar, a poor minstrel had taken compassion of his sufferings and given him all he could give—a song, the song of the prowess of a hero dead for hundreds of years, the Paladin Ogier ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... magnetic influence." Chopin's place among the great pianists of the second quarter of this century has been felicitously characterised by an anonymous contemporary: Thalberg, he said, is a king, Liszt a prophet, Chopin a poet, Herz an advocate, Kalkbrenner a minstrel, Madame Pleyel a ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... butchers might establish a government,—but never troubadours: and though a good knight held his education to be imperfect unless he could write a sonnet and sing it, he did not esteem his castle to be at the mercy of the "editor" of a manuscript. He might indeed owe his life to the fidelity of a minstrel, or be guided in his policy by the wit of a clown; but he was not the slave of sensual music, or vulgar literature, and never allowed his Saturday reviewer to appear at table without ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin |
