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Peasantry   /pˈɛzəntri/   Listen
Peasantry

noun
1.
The class of peasants.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Peasantry" Quotes from Famous Books



... Under such circumstances the only hope for the weak was to combine, and most of the early triumphs of freedom were won by combinations of commons against some noble, or of nobles against a king. Organization is difficult for a peasantry, but easy for burghers, and from the outset these seem to have united for their common defense against the neighboring barons; and thus was born the ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... part of the valley to meet them, the Douglas Dale farmer wrapped closer around him the grey plaid, which, from an early period, has been used by the shepherds of the south of Scotland, and the appearance of which gives a romantic air to the peasantry and middle classes; and which, although less brilliant and gaudy in its colours, is as picturesque in its arrangement as the more military tartan mantle of the Highlands. When they approached near to each other, the lady might observe that this friend of her guide was a stout athletic ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... different matter from the local insurrection made by FitzOsbert. Two centuries had passed, and in those centuries the beginnings of representative government had been set up and some recognition of the rights of the peasantry had been admitted ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... of all the belligerents to destroy their labouring element is wonderfully ludicrous in its extravagance. We are led to infer that those best of friends, der Kaiser and his cousins George and Nicholas, are merely pretending hostility in order to rid themselves of a troublesome peasantry! We do not know what Mr. Shufelt has been reading lately, but we hope that time may modify his ideas to such a degree that he will turn his dignified style and pure English to some object worthy ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... stand by the old ways of doing things," said the Justice solemnly. "Those were good times when the tablets with the lists of imposts and taxes of the peasantry used to hang in the church. In those days everything was fixed, and there were never any disagreements, as there are nowadays all too often. Afterwards it was said that the tablets with the hens and eggs and bushels and pecks of grain. interfered with devotion, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... Rameses introduced the new to the disadvantage of the priests; we warned him against fresh wars, and the king again and again has taken the field; we had the ancient sacred documents which exempted our peasantry from military service, and, as you know, he outrageously defies them. From the most ancient times no one has been permitted to raise temples in this land to strange Gods, and Rameses favors the son of the stranger, and, not only in the north country, but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... had given the peasantry permission to cut peat in the bog, but the present proprietor had discontinued this industry, because it completely defiled the place: the ditches caused by the old diggings became swampy morasses, so that neither man nor beast could pass among them ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... monster-like throughout unhappy France, my liege!" said the noble Hellitysplit. "The ranks of the P.Q.R.'s are daily swelling, and the G.R.J.A.'s are constantly on the increase. Already the peasantry scout at cat-fish, and demand pickled salmon for their noonday repasts. But, my liege," and the brave Hellitysplit eyes flashed fire, "myself and ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne

... fairy stories; and his tales, although he would declare they were true ones and was always careful to point them with an excellent moral, dealt largely with the old Scottish fairy folk, and with the many superstitions handed down from generation to generation amongst the peasantry. ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... in the war zone among a strange peasantry there are many spy scares, and maybe some of the things we were suspicious of were quite innocent; but it was strange that whenever a gray horse appeared near a battery that battery was shelled, and when they painted all the gray horses green their positions were not so frequently ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... 4th Regiment. On our way to La Genolliere, we came across the man who had served as guide the day before, and a short conversation respecting the glaciere ensued. He had only seen it once, many years before, and he held stoutly to the usual belief of the peasantry, that the ice is formed in summer, and melts in winter; a belief which everything I had then seen contradicted. His last words as we parted were, 'Plus il fait chaud, plus ca gele;' and, paradoxical as it may appear, I believe that some truth was concealed ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... fiction maintained by Henry, that he was marching in a friendly country; plunder was strictly forbidden, and everything was to be paid for; but unfortunately, the peasantry on his way never realized this, and the soldiery often took care they should not. Therefore, when the advanced guard came to the village that had been marked out for their halt, instead of finding ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... linen and wool used as skirtings by the British peasantry. The name is from the components ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... officers succeeded in seizing contraband goods they were again taken from them by main force. On the 2d of July a serious contest took place at Brinskham between the custom-house officers and a party of peasantry, in which the latter remained masters of eighteen wagons laden with English goods: many were ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... is produced in Glasgow a manufacture little known beyond the sphere of those immediately engaged in the business, the importance of which, however, as a means of employment to the poorer Scotch and Irish peasantry, renders it deserving of more attention than it has hitherto received. Sewed muslins include all those articles which are composed of muslin with a pattern embroidered on it by the hand—such as collars, sleeves, chemisettes, &c. together with the long strips of embroidery used, like laces, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various

... that the berlin should have been met, just before reaching Varennes, by the detachment commanded by M. de Goguelat. This detachment was punctually stationed upon the spot fixed on, with orders to wait there for the arrival of certain treasure, which it was to escort; but the peasantry of the neighbourhood, alarmed at the sight of this body of troops, came armed with staves, and asked several questions, which manifested their anxiety. M. de Goguelat, fearful of causing a riot, and not finding the carriage arrive as he expected, divided ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... count that Edmund intended to reconnoitre the place alone, and that he hoped he and his people would attack the town, while the Saxons in their galley made an assault from the sea. The count replied that the peasantry could not be induced to ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... the peasantry pronounce the word witness "wetness." At Derry Assizes a man said he had brought his "wetness" with him to corroborate his evidence. "Bless me," said the judge, "about what age are you?"—"Forty-two my last birthday, my lord," replied the witness. "Do you mean to tell ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... our clothes. My hands, I found, had first led her to discover that I was the lady. I had, of course, my quantum of reverences; for the politeness of the north seems to partake of the coldness of the climate and the rigidity of its iron-sinewed rocks. Amongst the peasantry there is, however, so much of the simplicity of the golden age in this land of flint—so much overflowing of heart and fellow-feeling, that only benevolence and the honest sympathy of nature diffused smiles over my countenance when they kept me standing, regardless ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... Duke, having got money out of Russia, came home again from Dantzig; to notable increase of the Anarchies in Mecklenburg, though without other result for himself. The irrational Duke proved more contumacious than ever, fell into deeper trouble than ever;—at length (1733) he made Proclamation to the Peasantry to rise and fight for him; who did turn out, with their bill-hooks and bludgeons, under Captains named by him, "to the amount of 18,000 Peasants,"—with such riot as may be fancied, but without ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... hands touched me and caressed me—lad, I feel them now. I put her on the boat, and the money he sent relieved the suffering around me, and I gave thanks with a sore heart. It was for them, our own peasantry, and for her, I parted with her then, but as soon as I could I sold my little holding near my grandfather's house to an Englishman who had long wanted it, and when it was parted with, I took the money and delayed not ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... Shylock except the point of him, or the point of his knife. How in the politics of Palestine at this moment this first question is in every sense the primary question. Palestine has hardly as yet a patriotism to be betrayed; but it certainly has a peasantry to be oppressed, and especially to be oppressed as so many peasantries have been with usury and forestalling. The Syrians and Arabs and all the agricultural and pastoral populations of Palestine are, rightly or wrongly, alarmed and angered ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... to be remembered, and that is—the enormous and the tragical influence of habit in dulling the mirror of our souls, on which our deeds are reflected in their true image. There are places in Europe where the peasantry have become so accustomed to minute and constantly repeated doses of arsenic that it is actually a minister of health to them, and what would poison you is food for them. We all know that we may sit in a hall like this, packed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... of Kiushiu, in a few cases, actually took up arms against their new rulers and oppressors, though it was a new thing under the Japanese sun for peasantry to oppose not only civil servants of the law, but veterans in armor. Iyeyas[)u], now having time to give his attention wholly to matters of government and to examine the new forces that had entered Japanese life, followed Hideyoshi in the suspicion that, under the cover of the western ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... was gone, Maltravers left Cleveland alone to write letters (Cleveland was an exemplary and voluminous correspondent) and strolled with his dogs into the village. The effect which the presence of Maltravers produced among his peasantry was one that seldom failed to refresh and soothe his more bitter and disturbed thoughts. They had gradually (for the poor are quick-sighted) become sensible of his justice,—a finer quality than many that seem more amiable. They felt that his real object was to make them better and happier; ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Maurice's Squadrons d'Elite, mounted grenadiers, chasseurs, hussars and dragoons, had easily attained a position in front of the van of the army commanded by Marmont, which had rested a few hours at St. Prix, where the road crossed the Petit Morin on a bridge. His requisition on the peasantry had been honored, and great numbers of fresh, vigorous draft horses had been brought in from all sides. There was not much speed to be got out of these farm animals, to be sure, but they were of prodigious strength. The ordinary ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... says in his work "Lehrbuch der politischen Oekonomie von Rau": "Small private holdings in land constitute an economic basis, that can be substituted by no other institution for a most important part of the population—an independent, self-sustaining peasantry, together with its peculiar socio-political position and function." Where, for the sake of his conservative friends, the author does not enthuse a tout prix for the small farmer, he is bound to regard this class as one ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... glass and leaning forward, "I really supposed it must be the result of some of those logging bees that we hear of in these back settlements. I quite long to witness something of the kind; it must be gratifying, Judge, to see your peasantry enjoy themselves on these ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... the current superstitions of our peasantry and of the Highlanders, it is much more rational to consider them, as Dr. Robert Chambers did, as 'springing from a disposition of the human mind to account for actual appearances by some imagined history which the appearances suggest,' than as relics of the old-world ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... the years he spent in this monotonous place, without any society worth speaking of, with only the shabbiest collection of books, with hardly any interest in life except the sky, and the hills, and the peasantry?' ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... amongst the unwitting perpetrators of this Pagan rite. In many places cattle are driven through the fire; and this ceremony is firmly believed to have a powerful effect in preserving them from various harms. I need not say, that amongst the peasantry the fires are now lighted ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various

... by Mr. Balfour when he was Chief Secretary, and which culminated in the Wyndham Purchase Act, have created a new Ireland. Mr. Redmond, speaking a year or two ago, said that Ireland "was studded with the beautiful and happy homes of an emancipated peasantry." It is a true picture, but it is a picture of the result of Unionist policy in Ireland, a policy which Mr. Redmond and his friends, including the present Government, have done their best to hamper. The driving power of ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... Wearing a "white merino frock-coat, nankeen trowsers, a large-brimmed straw hat, and white shoes," he must have been a fairly conspicuous object in the landscape. That hat alone will have alarmed the peasantry who to this day and hour wear nothing but felt on their heads. And note the predominance of the colour white in his attire; it was popular, at that period, with English travellers. Such men, however, were unknown in most of the regions which Ramage explored. ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... except the province of Servia, feudal lords, and tax collectors, the whole Turkish population consists of peasants, who till the soil on an equality of wretchedness. Yet it is to these same suffering peasants, the bone and sinew of the land, that reformers must look for support. It was the peasantry of Servia, headed by George the Black, that in 1800-1812, rose in rebellion, and whose success infused life and vigor into the more passive provinces. They, too, were peasants—those brave and resolute men who expelled from the provinces ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... preparing the evening meal over little charcoal fires. A certain quantity of meat had been served out to each family, and they were therefore doing better than in their own houses, for meat was a luxury seldom touched by the French peasantry. ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty

... the peasantry and fishermen, attracted by curiosity and encouraged by the peaceable demeanour of the debarkers, drew nearer, and mingled ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... assimilated with the peasantry, as I suppose Mrs. Carroll calls them, ever since they ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton

... between our ancestors and ourselves. If we happen to be irreligious, we do not believe in ghosts. If we are profoundly religious, we think of the dead as removed from us by judgment,—as absolutely separated from us during the period of our lives. It is true that among the peasantry of Roman Catholic countries there still exists a belief that the dead are permitted to return to earth once a year,—on the night of All Souls. But even according to this belief they are not considered as related to the living by any stronger bond than memory; and they are thought ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... on the Continent, manage much better. Oatmeal porridge (Nos. 205 and 572) and milk, constitute the breakfast and supper of those patterns of industry, frugality, and temperance, the Scottish peasantry. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... believed that the barking of a fox was ominous of ill. (Ibid., p. 225). The peasantry of Western Europe have the same belief as to ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... birth. They bewail the unmerited fate of Strafford. They execrate the lawless violence of the army. They laugh at the scriptural names of the preachers. Major-generals fleecing their districts; soldiers reveling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry; upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of the old gentry; boys smashing the beautiful windows of cathedrals; Quakers riding ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... brought more tears into Ulrika's eyes than had ever been forced there by her devotional exercises,—and the miserable Valdemar, already broken-hearted by his master's death, turned away and sobbingly cursed his gods for this new and undeserved affliction. As the Italian peasantry fall to abusing their saints in time of trouble, even so will the few remaining believers in Norse legendary lore, upbraid their fierce divinities with the most reckless hardihood when things go wrong. There were times when Valdemar Svensen secretly quailed at the mere thought of the ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... James resolved to build a chapel, and to devote himself to its service. He erected also a hermitage hard by, where he and his faithful Pedrillo, who would not quit him, took up their abode as hermits. Then the peasantry from far and near came to visit them. Much good advice Saint James could give them, and many things he taught them, while numberless were the strange stories he could tell of the wonderful things he had seen and ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston

... married, he ate very irregularly, and often completely forgot his meals. When he could not get meat and wine, he contented himself with bread and water. . . . Melanchthon tells us that Luther loved the coarse food as he did the coarse speech of the peasantry, and even of that food ate little, so little that Melanchthon marveled how Luther could maintain strength upon such a diet.—It is further a noteworthy fact that, when we read the sermons of the day, we find nobody who so frequently and so earnestly attacks the prevailing vice of ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... flannel, sacking, curtain serge, and patches of old carpet, and went either bare-footed or on rude wooden sandals. These people, the reader must understand, were an urban population sunken back to the state of a barbaric peasantry, and so without any of the simple arts a barbaric peasantry would possess. In many ways they were curiously degenerate and incompetent. They had lost any idea of making textiles, they could hardly make up clothes when they had material, and they were forced ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... son-in- law that had, indeed, ever kept him to his colours. Lord Henry would not listen to statistics, dietary tables, Commissioners' rides, Sub- commissioners' reports. He went far higher than his father; far deeper than his brother-in-law. He represented to the Duke that the order of the peasantry was as ancient, legal, and recognised an order as the order of the nobility; that it had distinct rights and privileges, though for centuries they had been invaded and violated, and permitted to fall into desuetude. He impressed ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... conceive what people at the North mean by speaking of the negroes as a bestial or brutal race. Except in some insensibility to animal pain, I never knew of an act in my regiment which I should call brutal. In reading Kay's "Condition of the English Peasantry" I was constantly struck with the unlikeness of my men to those therein described. This could not proceed from my prejudices as an abolitionist, for they would have led me the other way, and indeed I had once written a ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... afterward became Pope Pius II., and was therefore a very competent and impartial writer, has left us a graphic account of a journey he made to the British Islands, about 1430. He describes the houses of the peasantry as constructed of stones put together without mortar; the roofs were of turf, a stiffened bull's-hide served for a door. The food consisted of coarse vegetable products, such as peas, and even the bark of trees. In some places they were ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... provisions. That they were expecting the assistance which was presently to come to them from the Germans seems obvious from the fact that they did not destroy the railroad or its tunnels or bridges as they retired; they apparently felt certain of returning. The peasantry, on the other hand, burned their houses and crops in those sections where the population is Magyar, then fled toward Budapest, which was beginning to fill with refugees. In those sections where the Rumanians were numerous the people, according to the Rumanian ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... person has recently been killed in a poaching affray. This insane system is the cause of a fearful loss of life; it tends to the ruin of your tenantry, and is the fruitful cause of the demoralization of the peasantry. But you are caring for the rights of property; for its most obvious duties you have no concern. With such a policy, what can you expect but that which is ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... internal commerce and agricultural advantages which composed their peculiar prosperity. They found a consumption for the produce of their well-cultivated lands, at high prices, in the neighboring provinces of France. The webs woven by the Belgian peasantry, and generally all the manufactures of the country, met no rivalry from those of England, which were strictly prohibited; and being commonly superior to those of France, the sale was ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... immense sums paid to the French king had together with sums spent on war drained the public resources and lowered the credit of the Republic. And now famine was threatened, for the people in the rural districts were pinched with hunger. The starving peasantry began to flock in great numbers into the city, so that the misery increased. Terror was occasioned by a few cases of death from plague. Florence was at war with Pisa, but without success, for many of her mercenary soldiers were deserting ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... of content is indeed the bane of industry. But instances of a different sort may be found, in various of the Irish peasantry. Amongst them we may behold men struggling with adversity with all the strongest powers of mind and body; and supporting irremediable evils with a degree of cheerful fortitude which must excite at once ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... "quarters," and even from other plantations in the vicinity. The owner of the plantation always supplies an abundance of provisions—a sheep or beef, flour and meal—for the feast that celebrates the general housing of the crops, which is to the laborers what the harvest-supper is to the peasantry of England. The year, with its varied labors and large results, lies behind them, the wheat, tobacco, and corn have all been gathered in, their hard work is done, and though in a few weeks the old routine will begin again, they are now oblivious of it all. Hour after hour they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... Crescit Roma Albae ruinis. "The bulk of the people," said Stone, the Primate, "are not regularly either lodged, clothed, or fed; and those things which in England are called necessaries of life, are to us only accidents, and we can, and in many places do, subsist without them." On the other hand, the peasantry had gradually taken heart to resent their spoliation and attempted extirpation, and in 1761 their misery under the exactions of landlords and a church which tried to spread Christianity by the brotherly ...
— Burke • John Morley

... and the ties of blood. The most perfect equality always marks their intercourse, and the superior in education is separated by no barrier of manners, or pride, or distinct interests, from the singularly ignorant peasantry by which he is surrounded. He combines, therefore, the influences of superior knowledge, and social equality, and wields a power over the mass, which I do not believe that the educated class of any other portion of ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... by his pen, and be conspicuous among the saviours of Ireland. Patrick's head was not quite turned by this; and he lamented, in his letters to me, the plans proposed and the language held by the common run of O'Connell's followers. Those were the days when the Catholic peasantry believed that "Repale" would make every man the owner of the land he lived on, or of that which he wished to live on; and the great Dan did not disabuse them. Those were the days when poor men believed that "Repale" would release every one from the debts he owed; and Dan ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... a ruinous sacrifice. His land was bought by capitalists, who turned many small fields into vast sheep pastures and cattle ranches. Gangs of slaves, laboring under the lash, gradually took the place of the old Roman peasantry, the very strength of the state. Not unjust was the famous remark, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... currents of thought, drunk with their power over dolts, crazed by their immunity to challenge by their betters, they carry over into the professional class of the country the spirit of the most stupid peasantry, and degrade religion to the estate of an idiotic phobia. There is not a village in America in which some such preposterous jackass is not in eruption. Worse, he is commonly the leader of its opinion—its pattern in reason, morals and good taste. Yet worse, he is ruler as well as ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... there, but rather tend the other way, for a certain place is said to be paved with "good" ones, and surely "bad" ones would not lead us upwards. Then the phrase of a man "slapping the gates of Heaven in his own face," is one of those wild poetic figures of speech in which the Irish peasantry often indulge. The phrase "slapping the door" is every-day and common; but when applied to "the gates of Heaven," and "in a man's own face," the common phrase becomes fine. But how often the commonest things become poetry by the fitness of their application, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... churchyard by a short cut, and in violation of one of their strongest prejudices, actually threw the coffin over the wall, lest time should be lost in making their entrance through the gate. Innumerable instances of the same kind might be quoted, all tending to show how strongly, among the peasantry of the south, this superstition is entertained. However, I shall not detain the reader further, by any prefatory remarks, but shall proceed to lay before ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... were William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, the bastard great-uncle of the little king, and William, the young marshal, the eldest son of the Earl of Pembroke. The regent wandered from town to town in Sussex, receiving the submission of the peasantry, and venturing to approach as near London as Dorking. The victorious Wilkin was made Warden of the Seven Hundreds of the Weald. The greatest of the magnates of Sussex and Surrey, William, Earl Warenne, followed the example of his tenantry, and made his peace with ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... political life. And when political opinion is not manufactured solely in the reverberating furnace of a city, fickleness ceases to characterise democracy; and, in fact, is not found in Switzerland, or the United States, nor in France so far as politics, depend upon the peasantry. ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... position as a Protestant, and she would have, long before, made her way with her daughter to Dublin, had it not been that she thought that, so long as she continued in the house, it might be respected by the Catholic peasantry, while, were she to desert it, it would probably be plundered, perhaps burned to the ground. Still, the position was a very trying one, especially since the Jacobite army began to ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty

... these Abruzzi mountain-folk? Their life is one of miserable, revolting destitution. They have no games or sports, no local racing, clubs, cattle-shows, fox-hunting, politics, rat-catching, or any of those other joys that diversify the lives of our peasantry. No touch of humanity reaches them, no kindly dames send them jellies or blankets, no cheery doctor enquires for their children; they read no newspapers or books, and lack even the mild excitements of church versus chapel, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... Turin and its neighbourhood, on a visit to her aunt, a Roman Catholic lady. As Miss Procter had herself professed the Roman Catholic Faith two years before, she entered with the greater ardour on the study of the Piedmontese dialect, and the observation of the habits and manners of the peasantry. In the former, she soon became a proficient. On the latter head, I extract from her familiar letters written home to England at the time, two ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... were pouring over the bridge of St. Charles, and gathering in heavy masses under the western ramparts of the town. Could numbers give assurance of success, their triumph would have been secure, for five French battalions and the armed colonial peasantry amounted in all to more than seven thousand five hundred men. Full in sight before stretched the long, thin lines of the British forces—the Highlanders, the steady soldiery of England, and the hardy levies of the provinces—less than five ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... affording pasturage for their herds of cattle, on which, and the produce of the chase, they chiefly depend for subsistence. They are, however, not destitute of money, which they obtain by various means, but principally by curing diseases amongst the cattle of the mujiks or peasantry, and by telling fortunes, and not unfrequently by ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... ship's surgeon managed to escape, and, after killing the owner of a fishing-smack, returned to Tortuga, where he immediately commenced preparations for another invasion of Puerto Rico. When he came back he was so well received by the armed peasantry (jibaros) that ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... and most exquisite fruits that grew spontaneously in the garden of the world. No sooner had he erected his standard, than the native strength of the Lombard was multiplied by the adventurous youth of Germany and Scythia. The robust peasantry of Noricum and Pannonia had resumed the manners of Barbarians; and the names of the Gepidae, Bulgarians, Sarmatians, and Bavarians, may be distinctly traced in the provinces of Italy. [13] Of the Saxons, the old allies of the Lombards, twenty thousand warriors, with their wives and children, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... points of character that were rare amongst the peasantry. He baffled the cleverest police-spies employed against him, without knowing their real character. To the leading minds of the magistracy his guilt seemed caused by the influence of passion, and not by necessity or greed, ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... The Danish peasantry of the present day relate many wonderful things of an ancient hero whom they name Holger Danske, i.e. Danish Holger, and to whom they ascribe ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various

... of Earl Hakon the increase was good in the land, & peace was there within it among the peasantry. Well-beloved, too, was the Earl among them for the greater part of his life, but as his years waxed old it happened that his intercourse with women became unseemly, and to such a pass came this that the Earl would cause the daughters of powerful men to be ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson

... they would have been convinced, if they had felt inclined to believe otherwise, that they were living in the present. But, even here, amid all the hissing of steam, and creaking of carriages, and whirr of moving machinery, the queer old-world costumes of the peasantry, with their quaint hats and mantles, which more resembled the stage properties of a Christmas pantomime than the known dress of any people of the period, all spoke of the past—a past when the great Barbarossa reigned in Central Europe, and when there were "Robbers of the Rhine," ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... been the position of one of the richest brotherhoods of Spain. But its opulence had been unluckily displayed in rather too ostentatious a style in the eyes of a French brigade; who, in consequence, packed up the plate in their baggage, and, in the course of a tumult which followed with the peasantry, burned the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... his Dutch Dictionary, 1691, gives henketsjer, and Voltaire, forty years later, hankercher, as the received pronunciation. Sewel tells us also that the significant l was still sounded in would and should, as it still is by the peasantry in many ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... hniga, to bend or incline. In Bunyan's time, these ancient words were well understood by the peasantry. To have the neck turned, so as to bend the back of the head towards the back of the body, would be as absurd as for faith to look to its own works for justification. This would indeed be bowing backward, instead of bending before, and looking to Jesus ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... different from those of the country-folk of the north-east; their high thatched roofs are curiously decorated with bundles of straw fastened to a pole of bamboo parallel with the roof-ridge, and elevated about a foot above it. The complexion of the peasantry is darker than in the north-east; and I see no more of those charming rosy faces one observes among the women of the Tokyo districts. And the peasants wear different hats, hats pointed like the straw roofs of ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... the same story; and what with the Black Death sweeping over the land, and these terrible English ravaging at will, France sank into an abyss of misery worse even than that which had engulfed the empire. The unhappy peasantry, driven by starvation into frenzied revolt, avenged their agony upon the nobility by hideous plunderings and burnings of the rich chateaux.[21] A partial peace with England was patched up in 1360; but the "free companies" of mercenary soldiers, who had previously been ravaging Italy, had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... absurdly lax police never attempt to suppress; and yet, without the slightest approach to an improperly harsh interference with the pleasures of the people, the Roulette and E.O. tables, which plunder the peasantry at these places for the benefit of travelling sharpers (certainly equally respectable with some bipeds of prey who drive coroneted cabs near St James's), might be put down by any ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... a sign of voluntary homage. He would then have them led home by his men in the middle of the night, all dead drunk, torches in hand, and making the forest resound with ribald songs. Libertinism completed the demoralization of the peasantry. In every family the Mauprats soon had their mistresses. This was tolerated, partly because it was profitable, and partly (alas! that it should have to be said) because it gratified vanity. The very isolation of ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... themselves to be, and show to everyone that they believe themselves to be, the handsomest women in France. Their type is quite distinct from that of the inhabitants of Nimes, Marseilles, Aix, and even of the peasantry outside the gates of Arles. What is the more singular is that this peculiarity of type is not noticeable among the men. Among the women it is quite unmistakable. Their straight brows and noses are sometimes Greek, but the Roman arch appears as frequently as the straight nose; ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... the Waldstein family was then staying. The air was sharp and bracing; the two Russian horses flew like the wind; I was whirled along in an unfamiliar darkness, through a strange country, black with coal mines, through dark pine woods, where a wild peasantry dwelt in little mining towns. Here and there, a few men and women passed us on the road, in their Sunday finery; then a long space of silence, and we were in the open country, galloping between broad fields; and always in a haze ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... cared not for cards, even if I possessed them and could find people disposed to play with them. However, I made the most of circumstances, and roamed about the desolate fields and bogs in the neighbourhood, sometimes entering the cabins of the peasantry, with a 'God's blessing upon you, good people!' where I would take my seat on the 'stranger's stone' at the corner of the hearth, and, looking them full in the face, would listen to the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... the candid avowal of his tastes inspired confidence. Mrs. Lackstraw fished for some account of his home. He was open to flow on the subject; he dashed a few sketches of mother and sisters, dowerless girls, fresh as trout in the stream, and of his own poor estate, and the peasantry, with whom he was on friendly terms. He was an absentee for his education. Sweet water, pure milk, potatoes and bread, were the things he coveted in plenty for his people and himself, he said, calling forth an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... present; but in showing us the past as it is really still present. His knights and crusaders and feudal nobles are after all unreal, and the best critics felt even in his own day that his greatest triumphs were in describing the Scottish peasantry of his time. Dandie Dinmont and Jeanie Deans and their like are better than many Front de Boeufs and Robin Hoods. It is in dealing with his own contemporaries that he really shows the imaginative insight which entitles ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... after the Conquest, there is no doubt that the peasantry were liable to be bought and sold as slaves. Even in Magna Charta, there is a prohibition that a guardian shall not 'waste the men or cattle' in the estate of the ward: there is here no consideration for the men who might be 'wasted;' it is all for the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various

... without its broken heads (a habit that, according to Sir Walter Scott, no mean authority, lasted into the nineteenth century)—and much oppression, the great lords reigning like absolute tyrants in the midst of subjects without resource or protection; but the case of the peasantry notwithstanding all these evils does not seem to have been a bad one. A certain vigorous capacity of revival, which history shows us continually as existing on the broad level of the soil, must have brought them back to rough ease and ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... statements characteristic of this country of contradictions. But, whether thirty or two hundred and fifty years old, the fort is now one in name only, and is at present occupied by a garrison of peaceful peasantry. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... the hill-top—or, finally, as on one occasion, a few remote shots, which I at first fancied might have been fired off by my friends to direct me homewards, but afterwards ascribed, more correctly, perhaps, to poachers in the woods. The manner in which the peasantry live here—in separate villages, built occasionally a good deal apart, and not in cottages scattered everywhere over the country, as with us—sufficiently ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... a fine kind of virile peasantry in the willing hands, white enough, but occasionally broken at the nails from eight hours of this box in and that box out ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... stave is an improvised responsive song. It is an ancient pastime in Norway, and is kept up until this day, especially among the peasantry. The students, also, at their social gatherings, throw improvised rhymes to each other across the table, and the rest of the ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... more serious avocations may have stood in the way of her doing justice to her uncommon abilities, of which, however, there is abundant evidence in her drawings and groups of modeled figures, and in the five volumes of charming stories called "Tales of a Chaperon," and "Tales of the Peerage and the Peasantry," which were not published with her name but simply as edited by Lady Dacre, to whom their authorship was, I think, generally attributed. The mental gifts of Lady Dacre appear to be heirlooms, for they have been inherited ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... of this order of things alike detrimental to the well-being of society. First there does not exist, at least in the agricultural districts, any middle class of society at all, which is everywhere divided into two orders,—the gentry and the peasantry. In cities and large towns the case is, of course, different; for there the cultivation of letters and of trade has its influence on the human mind; and professions hold something like the rank which ought of right to belong to them when ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... side to the picture. Of the 106,000,000 inhabitants of European Russia 10,000,000 belong to a cultured, progressive class, quite the equal of any people in Europe. But the remainder are principally a low grade of peasantry, not long removed from slavery. The principal occupation of these peasantry is farming. But their farms are small, not more than ten acres apiece, and the total revenue they get from them does not average ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various

... the disease would be annihilated in our country, or could only reappear in consequence of the importation of some infected animal. Such a course of proceeding, however, could never be enforced either in the sporting world or among the peasantry. Other measures, however, might be resorted to in order to lessen the devastations of this malady; and that which first presents itself to the mind as a powerful cause of rabies is the number of useless and dangerous dogs that are kept in the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... services, and it is much to be doubted whether his qualities in this regard will for the future be exercised as they have been in the past. For the Turkish armies, in so far as they have consisted of Turks, have been chiefly, if not wholly, recruited from the peasantry of Anatolia, who, when not summoned to their country's colours, or ordered to maltreat and massacre, are quiet, rather indolent folk, content to plough their lands and reap an exiguous but sufficient harvest. And for their lords and governors, who, until Prussia assumed command of the ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson

... the simple means of translating the words already thought out and provided in the white man's language. In so far, then, as we attempt to measure the mentality of the Natives by their language we find that they cannot be relegated to a lower plane than that occupied by the uneducated peasantry of Europe of ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... in the coarse cloth of the country, made in the style common among the peasantry of Bergen; but the delicacy of his limbs, the smallness of his head, the easy elegance of his poise, and the natural gracefulness of his movements and attitudes, all seemed to denote ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne

... forefinger as you look at it. It suggests race, and noblesse oblige, and a long line of soldier ancestors, and that sort of thing, such as you used to say survived visibly among the English aristocracy and English peasantry (not in the mixed-up middle classes) more markedly than anywhere else. That must mean some correspondence in character, mustn't it? Or can it be a mask, handed down by noble ancestry to cover up moral defects ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... that you must inform him something of what you intend. I would strongly advise you to do so.' He spoke as if rather perplexed as to the probable custom of the English peasantry in such matters, and added, 'However, it is for you to decide. I know nothing of the circumstances. As to getting to the ball, the plan I have arranged is this. The direction to Lord Toneborough's ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy

... of the castle recount his wonderful and warlike exploits; his numerous amours; and his rigid penitence by which he hoped to appease the wrath of offended Heaven. The moans of his victims are said to resound in the Northern subterranean caverns; the peasantry also believe that the spirit of Robert is condemned to haunt the ruins of his castle, and the tombs of his "Ladies Fair." In justice to his memory be it remembered, that his acts of cruelty were alone aimed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various

... be taken as two great instances of the danger of foreign speculation. The capital of the mining companies was squandered with no other effect than that of providing employment, for a certain number of years, to the lowest of the Mexican peasantry; whereas the same amount, applied to a similar purpose in this country, would not only have produced a handsome return to the invester, but would have afforded work and wages to a considerable portion of the community. There is a reciprocity between labour and capital which never ought ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... had to contend with the still wilder wanderers of Scandinavia in fierce combats that he was too little skilful to record, and which appears so obscure and remote to his descendants, presents a phase comparatively near, and an outline proportionally sharp and well-defined to the intelligent peasantry of Iceland. Their Barbours and Blind Harries came a few ages sooner than ours, and the fog, in consequence, rose earlier; and so, while Scotch antiquaries of no mean standing can say almost nothing about the expedition ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... fellow aboard this ship. It's quite likely you have read about his sister. She is a year older than Jack, very beautiful, cultured, everything that a grande dame should be, yet she has given away her huge estate to the peasantry, and works with them in the fields, living as they do, and faring as they do. There was an article about her in one of the French reviews not long ago. She is ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... others in the race. The moral basis of character was the true foundation of the greatness of ancient Rome, and when that foundation was sapped the period of her decadence began. The solid, parsimonious, and industrious qualities of the French peasantry have given their country the recuperative force which has enabled its greatness to survive the countless follies and extravagances of ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... really occurred; and hence, in the absence of more positive proof, we are disposed to take Mr. Roby's view of the case, and treat it as one of the thousand and one pleasant stories which "rumour with her hundred tongues" ever circulates amongst the peasantry of a district where some royal visit, or {332} other unexpected memorable ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various

... fantastic world in which Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Malvolio might feel at home; but with Dame Chat, Gammer Gurton and Hodge we feel the solid earth beneath our feet and around us the strong air which nourished the peasantry and yeomen ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... inconvenience to provide me with a bedstead, and this was their modest charge. Nor did they make it with any expectation that we would give more. It is the universal custom amongst the Mestizo peasantry to entertain travellers; to give them the best they have and to charge for the bare value of the provisions, and nothing for the lodging. We could so depend upon the hospitality of the lower classes that every day we travelled on without any settled place to pass ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... Country Town A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Another Study of Woman The Secrets of a Princess A Daughter of Eve The Firm of Nucingen The Peasantry ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... each booth and inspecting the wares, and each time that I made as if to do so, the obsequious peasantry fell away before me, making way invitingly. But Messer Arcolano urged me along, saying that we had far to go, and that in Piacenza there were better shops and that I should have more ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... other ways, too, of using the nuts, which you would not like any better. One of these is to make them into oil, as the people do in the South of Europe; this oil is used to burn in their lamps and as an article of food. 'In Piedmont, among the light-hearted peasantry, cracking the walnuts and taking them from the shell is a holiday proceeding. The peasants, with their wives and children, assemble in the evening, after their day's work is over, in the kitchen of some chateau where the walnuts have been gathered, and where their services are required. ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church

... and a country villa near his native Busseto, a house of quaint artistic architecture, approached by a venerable, moss-grown stone bridge, at the foot of which are a large park and artificial lake. When he takes his evening walks, the peasantry, who are devotedly attached to him, unite in singing ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... for the benefit of the learned members of a university. As the author himself has informed us they were all preached at Golden Grove, to the family and domestics of his patron and perhaps in addition to these, to a few of their neighbours and as many of the peasantry on the estate as could understand English.(63) The common people in England were so much accustomed in those days to hear Latin spoken in the pulpit, that they were sometimes led to undervalue a preacher who did ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... was born—you who live in small houses and rack your bones with toil. I am one of you, although I am racking my brain instead of my bones in our common interest. There are so many who would crowd us down we must stand together and be watchful or we shall be reduced to an overburdened, slavish peasantry, pitied and despised. Our danger will increase as wealth accumulates and the cities grow. I am for the average man—like myself. They've lifted me out of the crowd to an elevation which I do not deserve. I have more reputation than I dare promise to keep. It frightens ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... 1865, the son of John B. Yeats, the Irish artist, the greater part of William Butler Yeats' childhood was spent in Sligo. Here he became imbued with the power and richness of native folk-lore; he drank in the racy quality through the quaint fairy stories and old wives' tales of the Irish peasantry. (Later he published a collection ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... still more darkly, that if you could only speak the devil fair enough, he might save you the cost of the doctor. Such strange lingering echoes of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent listener among the grey-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity. A shadowy conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been pressed ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... dangerous pangs of labour. All the skill of the physicians who had been summoned proved futile; the lady was at the point of death; at last, in sheer despair, they summoned a midwife of great repute among the peasantry, but whose practice did not include the gentry. From the first treatment of this woman, who appeared modest and diffident to a degree, the pains ceased as if by enchantment; the patient fell into an indefinable calm languor, and after some hours was delivered of a beautiful infant; but after this ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... one for which he was prepared to furnish due and proper reasons. In the first place he traced it to the horrible hold Industrialism had in the last hundred years laid on the nation, draining the peasantry from 'the Land'; and in the second place to the influence of a narrow and insidious Officialism, sapping the independence of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... crowds;' &c. Substantives which imply plurality in the singular number, and consequently have no other plural, generally require a plural verb. They are cattle, cavalry, clergy, commonalty, gentry, laity, mankind, nobility, peasantry people, populace, public, rabble, &c. [;] as, 'The public are informed.' Collective nouns which form a regular plural, such as, number, numbers; multitude, multitudes; have, like all other substantives, a singular verb, when they are in the singular number; and a plural verb, when they ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... sleep, but the atmosphere in the carriage, of smoke, babies, stale clothes, and the peculiar smell of the Russian peasantry which no one who has known it can forget, made sleep impossible. But I travelled fairly comfortably, resolutely shutting my ears to the talk, thinking of fishing in England, and shifting from one bone to another as ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome

... dit Robin was, of course, very great among the habitans, as he travelled from parish to parish and from seigniory to seigniory, drawing bills and hypothecations, marriage contracts and last wills and testaments, for the peasantry, who had a genuine Norman predilection for law and chicanery, and a respect amounting to veneration for written documents, red tape, and sealing-wax. Master Pothier's acuteness in picking holes in the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... agitators have aroused in the hearts of the people. If the Land Question could be settled, there would be an end of the clamour for independence and of the insensate shrieking against British rule. With a definite stake in the country the peasantry upon whom the Nationalist agitation mainly relies would cease to place their faith in the impecunious and blatant scoundrelism which fattens upon the discord and misery which it provokes in the name of Patriotism. Our Commissioner believes that the priests, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... is a desire to get the Irish Church out of the way of many social reforms, and to have it done with as already done for. I do not in the least believe myself that agrarian Ireland is to be pacified by any such means, or can have it got out of its mistaken head that the land is of right the peasantry's, and that every man who owns land has stolen it and is therefore to be shot. But that is ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens

... here are larger, and not so fortified as those about Cabul. Balabagh stands on a high bank of conglomerate, overhanging the Soorkhab, and is in danger of being cut away by the river. The peasantry are civil, and unarmed. Ravens, quails, minas, sparrows, and a beautiful swallow were seen about the Soorkhab river; the latter, with metallic blue on the back of the head, crown of head tawny, tail short, two exterior feathers elongated into beautiful almost setaceous bodies, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... is added at a later period, under the influence of stronger light; such plants, when young, are tender and agreeable; nay, even very poisonous plants, when very young, are wholesome and pleasant, which, at a more advanced season, are virose and disagreeable. Thus, the peasantry of France and Piedmont eat the young crowfoots (ranunculus) and poppies, after boiling them, and find them safe and nourishing. The same result follows exclusion of light, as in the process of blanching, by which means celery, ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various

... attack in July, and had not really left it alone, so that the civilians had made a rather hurried departure. A few had elected to remain, and were to be seen walking furtively about the streets with that curious strained look that the war-driven peasantry of France and Belgium always wore. Here we met the 2nd battalion of the Manchesters, and were glad of the opportunity to make their acquaintance. A 7th officer, then Capt. L. Taylor, was amongst them and it may be mentioned ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson

... right enhance the vast space of sky over the orchard, the best sky in all the eight paintings. The colors are those of the rich fruits, the autumn flowers, and the garish costumes of Brangwyn's peasantry. The companion picture represents a vintage, with great purple grapes hanging among the bronzing leaves on a trellis, and yellow pumpkins and flowers underfoot. The color is in these, and in the same Southern costumes seen ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... south of Dublin is Donnybrook, the place where a famous annual fair is held. We happened to be in the city at the time of this, and one pleasant afternoon we drove out to see this great gathering of the Irish peasantry. The fair-ground presented a busy, gay, and curious scene. A large enclosed space was covered with booths and tents—horse-markets—cattle-markets—buyers, sellers, and crowds of spectators. There was almost every thing one ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... general, and Conan, lord of Miniadoc or Denbigh-land, in Wales. The name of the country was changed to Brittany, or Lesser Britain; and so completely was it possessed by the British colonists, that the language became assimilated to that spoken in Wales, and it is said that to this day the peasantry of the two countries can understand each other when speaking their ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... domestic institution itself, was characterized in language which Southern politicians of later times would have denounced as "fanatical" and "incendiary." Pinckney wished the slaves to be represented equally with the whites, since they were the Southern peasantry. Gouverneur Morris declared that as they were only property they ought not to be represented at all. Both the present and the future balance of power in national legislation, as resulting from slaves already in, and hereafter to be imported into, old and new States, were debated ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... leaders of reconstruction were to have their way? Something better than a serf, something less than a citizen—a second degree citizen, perhaps, with legal rights about equal to those of white women and children. Governor Marvin hoped to make of the race a good agricultural peasantry; his successor was anxious that the blacks should be preferred to European immigrants; others agreed with Memminger that after training and education he might ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... is no doubtin', Beats every city upon the say. 'Tis there you'll see O'Connell spouting, And Lady Morgan making "tay." For 'tis the capital of the greatest nation With finest peasantry on a fruitful sod, Fighting like devils for conciliation, And hating each other for ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever

... The Siege of Roxburgh), The Three Perils of Woman, The Shepherd's Calendar and numerous other uncollected tales exhibit for the most part very much the same characteristics. Hogg knew the Scottish peasantry well, he had abundant stores of unpublished folklore, he could invent more when wanted, he was not destitute of the true poetic knowledge of human nature, and at his best he could write strikingly and picturesquely. But he simply did not know what self-criticism was, he had no notion of the conduct ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... Moscow. Out of his army which was split asunder at Kazan he formed 100 battalions, and with a small number of these crossed the Volga. Immediately he appeared on the opposite banks of the river, and the entire province was enkindled: the peasantry rose in revolt against the aristocracy. Within a district of 100 miles every castle was destroyed, and one town after the other opened its gates to the mock Czar. The further he advanced the more ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various

... of things. Another fancy of his, an artist's superstition merely, may be mentioned. The Caros, like some other local families, suggested a Roman lineage, more or less grafted on the stock of the Slingers. Their features recalled those of the Italian peasantry to any one as familiar as he was with them; and there were evidences that the Roman colonists had been populous and long-abiding in and near this corner of Britain. Tradition urged that a temple to Venus once stood at the top of the Roman road leading up into the isle; and possibly one to ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... the manner of that deportation could not be justified. The separation of families, many of them never reunited, was a crime against humanity; the conversion of an honest, industrious and thrifty peasantry into a host of penniless vagrants, scattered like Ishmaelites through hostile colonies, was a wrong as cruel as it was unnecessary. Colonized in South Carolina or Georgia, the Acadians could hardly have been a menace ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... must have grown out of the same stock of ideas. By a curious transference the Prophet Elias has in south-eastern Europe inherited the attributes of the thunder god and is even now in the imagination of the peasantry a jovial and riotous being who, like Indra, drives a noisy chariot ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... gendarmerie. Yet it was defied by the troops of smugglers and brigands known as faux saulniers, unauthorized salt-sellers, and gangs of poachers haunted the king's preserves round Paris. The salt monopoly and the excessive preservation of the game were so oppressive that the peasantry were provoked to violent resistance and to brigandage. They were constantly suppressed, but as the cause of the disorder survived, so its effects were continually renewed. The offenders enjoyed a large measure ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... of this part of the Tariyani, which I had an opportunity of seeing, are quite the same in their circumstances, language, dress, persons, and customs, with the Hindus of the northern part of Behar. The peasantry are extremely nasty, and apparently indigent. Their huts are small, dirty, and very ill calculated to keep out the cold winds of the winter season, for a great many of them have no other walls but a few reeds supported by sticks in a perpendicular direction. Their clothing ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... the corner of every room hangs the ikon, how the gold or blue-domed basilica strikes you in every street, the long-haired priests chanting in their deep bass, the passer-by ceaselessly crossing himself, the peasantry crushed and down-trodden, and the middle and upper classes lapped in luxury and esteeming good manners more highly than morals. Such is Russia of to-day—Russia in the age of my employer Rasputin, the era of the downfall of the Imperial ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux

... beating, to crush and break the prickles with which it is covered. As the plant thrives best on poor soils, which might otherwise lie useless, the saving of this labour will be a great benefit to the French peasantry; and the more so, as it appears the plant will grow in its new state from seed. M. Naudin believes, that the condition of other vegetable productions may be varied at pleasure, and promises to lay his views shortly before the Academie. M. Lecoq, director of the Botanical Garden at Claremont, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various

... belonging to a neighbour of the writer's grandfather. He was hanged at the now demolished Ivel-chester or Ilchester jail above mentioned—that building formerly of so many sinister associations in the minds of the local peasantry, and the continual haunt of fever, which at last led to its condemnation. Its site is now ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... fairies from Lady Wilde's "Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland" and "Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland," and I have gained not a little from the books of William Carleton, especially his "Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry," but from none of these have I taken any considerable part of a story. Indeed I have found help, greater or less, in more books than I ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost

... —— upstart of a cotton-spinner, coming down here, buying the lands over our heads, and pretends to show us how to manage our estates; old families that have been in the county this four hundred years, with the finest peasantry in the world ready to die for them, sir, till these new revolutionary doctrines came in—Pride and purse-proud conceit, just to show off his money! What do they want with better cottages than their fathers had? Only put notions into their heads, raise 'em above their station; more they ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... free-thinkers was still hovering like an evil spirit. During the next hour he gave us a long and exhaustive exposition of the changes wrought by ces messieurs qui nient le bon Dieu. Among their crimes was to be numbered that of having disintegrated the morale of the peasantry. They—the peasants—no longer believed in miracles, and as for sorcery, for the good old superstitions, bah: they were looked upon as old wives' tales. Even here, in the heart of this rural country, you ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... pity. A denouement of great skill is not wanting to stir the calm surface of the story by the wind of surprise; the curtain falls over a group of innocent, guileless, and happy hearts, and as we gaze at them we breathe the prayer, that Scotland's peerage and Scotland's peasantry may always thus be blended into one bond of mutual esteem, endearment, and excellence. Well might Campbell say—'Like the poetry of Tasso and Ariosto, that of the "Gentle Shepherd" is engraven on the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... tradition of Latona having been subjected to such cruel treatment from some country clowns; or, which is more probable, it may have been originally invented as a satire on the rude manners and uncouth conduct of the peasantry of ancient times. The story may also have been framed, to account, in a poetical manner, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso



Words linked to "Peasantry" :   stratum, class, socio-economic class, peasant, social class



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