"Ayrshire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this country. Indeed, where the forms of the feast have all but disappeared, the superstitious auguries connected with it survive. Burns particularises very fully the formulae of Hallowe'en, as practised in Ayrshire in his day, and as this poem is well known, it would be superfluous to follow it in detail here; but I cannot refrain from drawing attention to the suggestions which one of the practices which he mentions affords in favour of the supposition that it is a relic of an ancient ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... extinct quadrupeds of these islands. Naturalists will be recording that in the days of Robert Burns it must have been not at all uncommon, and not rare in those of Hugh Miller, since low dram-shops kept them for the entertainment of their guests. The Ayrshire bard makes the Newfoundland dog, Caesar, say to his comrade Luath, the collie, when, speaking of most of ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... market-garden, in the neighboring parish of Alloway; and there near the Brig o' Doon built with his own hands the clay cottage now known to literary pilgrims as the birthplace of Burns. His wife, Agnes Brown, the daughter of an Ayrshire farmer, bore him, besides Robert, three sons and three daughters. In order to keep his sons at home instead of sending them out as farm-laborers, the elder Burnes rented in 1766 the farm of Mount Oliphant, and stocked it on borrowed money. The ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... not yet in full bloom, and both he and Marie were much discontented at their tardiness. However, the weather grew suddenly hot, with sharp showers in the afternoons, and both the carnations and the Ayrshire roses flowered out by scores every morning, until even Marie was satisfied there would be enough. There was no tint of Ayrshire rose which could not be found in Father Antoine's garden,—white, pink, deep ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... born in the village of Dalry, Ayrshire, on the 28th March 1781. His father was owner of several houses in the place, and was employed in business as a haberdasher. Young Stirrat was educated at the village school; in his 17th year, he composed ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the matter, 'I am monarch of all I survey.' [Picture: Distant View of 'Rosamond's Bower' from the adjoining Meadow] The first lawn of the garden rejoices in two very remarkable trees, one a standard Ayrshire rose, rising ten feet in height from a stem ten inches in circumference, and from which, during sunny June, 'every breeze, of red rose leaves brings down a crimson rain.' {160} The other a weeping ash of singularly beautiful proportions. It has been trained, or rather restrained, ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... in the space of a few short months, Phebe Fortune was married to her own cousin, the son of Lord and Lady D——, her kind protectors. The old couple are still alive; but their children, with a numerous offspring, live upon one of their estates in Ayrshire, and exhibit to all around them the blessings which a humane and generous aristocracy may disseminate amidst neighbours and dependents. The brother of Phebe, Lord L——, still remains a bachelor; but has proved to his mother's relatives, as well as to the parties who befriended ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... to John Knox, recounts a singular course of oppression practised on one of those titulars abbots, by the Earl of Cassilis in Ayrshire, whose extent of feudal influence was so wide that he was usually termed the King of Carrick. We give the fact as it occurs in Bannatyne's Journal, only premising that the Journalist held his master's opinions, both with respect to the Earl of Cassilis as an opposer ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Eighty-eighth Indiana, whom I supposed to be a full-blooded Hoosier, tells me he is a Scotchman, and was born in Ayrshire, in the same house in which Robert Burns had birth. His grandfather, James Humphreys, was the neighbor and companion of the poet. It was of him he wrote this epitaph, at an ale-house, in the way ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... second marriage. I had placed my affections, with due consideration, on Miss Lizy Kibbock, the well brought-up daughter of Mr Joseph Kibbock of the Gorbyholm, who was the first that made a speculation in the farming way in Ayrshire, and whose cheese were of such an excellent quality, that they have, under the name of Delap-cheese, spread far and wide over the civilized world. Miss Lizy and me were married on the 29th day of April, with some ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... The Mr. Gilbert Craster who had been travelling on secret business in Nithsdale and the Ayrshire moorlands had not been revealed in the change-house of Newbigging. There he had passed by the name, long since disused, of Gabriel Lovel, which happened to be his true one. It was a needful precaution, for the times were crooked. Even in a Border hamlet the name of Craster ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... was fought by Alexander III, on the 1st of August, 1263, against Acho, King of Norway. That monarch invaded Scotland with a large army, and drew up his forces before Largs, a town in Ayrshire. He met with a great defeat, and, covered with disgrace, retired to his own country. Wallace's father ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... rather than a conscious aim; his style has all the delicate charm of chance. We have already pointed out his affinity to Blake, but with Burns also he may be said to have a spiritual kinship, and in the songs of the Northumbrian miner we meet with something of the Ayrshire peasant's wild gaiety and mad humour. He gives himself up freely to his impressions, and there is a fine, careless rapture in his laughter. The whole book deserves to be read, and much of it deserves ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... eye, and he would stop farmers in the field and interrogate them as to their success in cattle-breeding. When told that his love for Ayrshire cattle was only a prejudice on account of his love for Robert Burns, who was born at Ayr, he would say, "A mon's a mon for ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... the proprietors of Colzean, in Ayrshire (ancestors of the Marquis of Ailsa), were known in that country by the title of Lairds o' Co', a name bestowed on Colzean from some co's (or coves) in the rock ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... House, a seat of the Forbes's. Ker recurs in the long and more or less literary ballad of The Battle of Balrinnes. In variants the localities are much altered, and, in one version, the scene is transferred to Ayrshire, and Loudoun Castle. All the ballads of fire-raising, a very usual practice, have points in ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... Robert Burns—now, if I mistake not, in his eighty-seventh year—happens to be making a visit to London, as if on purpose to afford me an opportunity of grasping him by the hand. For upwards of twenty years past he has hardly left his quiet cottage in Ayrshire for a single night, and has only been drawn hither now by the irresistible persuasions of all the distinguished men in England. They wish to celebrate the patriarch's birthday by a festival. It will be the ...
— P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... be," they said, "Both cows of high and low degree, Suffolk and Devon, brown, black, red, The Ayrshire and the Alderney. Content yourself with these." "No, no," He cried, "Not these! Not these! For how Can common kine bring comfort? Oh! I ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... in Ayrshire for the jougs was "bregan." In the accounts of the parish of Mauchline is ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... fast. In Ayrshire, Clydesdale, Nithisdale, Annandale, every parish was visited by these turbulent zealots. About two hundred curates—so the episcopal parish priests were called—were expelled. The graver Covenanters, while they applauded the fervour of their riotous brethren, were apprehensive ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Tougaloo having burned down in January, 1882, he graduated in the spring of that year, from our elementary normal course, in the new barn, Ayrshire Hall. He has since passed through our higher normal and college preparatory course, and is pursuing further studies in another institution, in the intervals teaching, and going from place to place with the great desire in his heart of bringing ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... have been so frank about the variety of the chrysanthemum," said Eshley, "I don't mind telling you that this is an Ayrshire ox." ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... luncheon four carters came in—long-limbed, muscular Ayrshire Scots, with lean, intelligent faces. Four quarts of stout were ordered; they kept filling the tumbler with the other hand as they drank; and in less time than it takes me to write these words the four quarts were finished—another round was proposed, discussed, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... home, as we have seen, in Sicily, Holland, Germany, and Denmark, the identical legend is also domiciled in Scotland and England. Thus Robert Chambers, in his "Popular Rhymes of Scotland," ed. 1826, p. 56, speaking of Dundonald Castle, in Ayrshire, the ancient seat of King Robert II., ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Publius Ovidius Nuso an ancestor of yours? Talking of ancestors, why do the Ayrshire folks speak of theirs as four bears (forbears), it sounds very ursine. But to our muttons, as my old French master used to call it. Do you do anything in the classico-historical line, for the Charivaresque enlightenment ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... which should do something to atone for any neglect and injustice that had befallen their father. The festival was not altogether successful, as such festivals rarely are, but it excited considerable enthusiasm in the poet's native country, especially in his county of Ayrshire. And when the lord of the Castle of Montgomery presided over the tribute to the sons of the ploughman who had "shorn the harvest" with his Highland Mary on the Eglinton "lea-riggs," and Christopher North made the speech of the day, the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... summer moonlight fell upon the Ayrshire mosses and deans, but did not silver, as far as we are concerned, the Carrick Castle of Bruce, nor Cameron's lair amidst the heather, nor landward Tintock, nor even seagirt Ailsa Craig, but only the rolling waves of the Atlantic and ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... mighty dry year here, so, between irrigating and tending the largest herd of Ayrshire cattle in the prairie provinces, I have been busy. The town of Brooks is probably the only town in Canada on straight Ayrshire milk; and the change in Brooks from a box-car on a siding years ago to the Brooks of today, with its hundreds of healthy children now on the streets, is the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... over-lords. There is no reason to believe, however, that this introduction of the English tongue and English manners was connected with any considerable immigration of Teutonic settlers into the Anglicised tracts. The population of Ayrshire, of Fife, of Perthshire, and of Aberdeen, still shows every sign of Celtic descent, alike in physique, in temperament, and in habit of thought. The change was, in all probability, exactly analogous to that which we ourselves have seen taking place in ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... local, he pays his tribute to two sets of originals, talks with equal reverence of names known to us like Pope and Gray and Shenstone and names unknown which belonged to local "bards," as he would have called them, who wrote their poems for an Ayrshire public. If he came upon England as an innovator it was simply because he brought with him the highly individualized style of Scottish local vernacular verse; to his own people he was no innovator but ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Jersey bull, whose mellow bellowings drew Judith's eyes to the clean line of his perfect back, over which, with pawing hoofs, he was throwing much trampled earth; in a more distant pen, accepting the trumpeted challenge and challenging back, a beautiful specimen of careful breeding in Ayrshire. ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... resting again during the day. About sunrise on the fourth morning, they were entering some village near Kirby Lonsdale, in Westmoreland. They must have designedly quitted the direct line of route; for their object was Ayrshire, of which county they were natives; and the regular road would have led them through Shap, Penrith, Carlisle. Probably they were seeking to elude the persecution of the stage-coaches, which, for the last thirty ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... in the employment of Dr. Roebuck as an engine-wright at his colliery near Boroughstoness. He was next employed in a like capacity by Mr. Beaumont, the mineral-manager of the collieries of Mrs. Cunningham of Lainshaw, near Irvine in Ayrshire; after which he was appointed engine-wright at Ayr, and subsequently at the Govan Coal Works near Glasgow, where he remained until his death. It was while working at the Irvine Works that he first became acquainted with his future wife, Marion Smith, the daughter of a Renfrewshire bleacher, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... appearance of these "Papers on Health," the need was felt for some establishment where the treatment expounded here could be given by trained attendants under Dr. Kirk's personal supervision. The site was fixed on the Ayrshire coast, in the parish of West Kilbride. This region was chosen because special advantages of soil, climate, and scenery recommended it. The soil along the shore is almost pure sand, and dries rapidly after rain. The climate is extremely mild, high hills sheltering the whole region ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... of Minstrelsy, "The Harp of Renfrewshire," published in 1820, under the editorship of Motherwell, and "The Contemporaries of Burns," containing interesting biographical sketches and specimens of the Ayrshire bards, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Stewart with difficulty prevailed on him to yield. He took charge of his enemy's property, protected his person, and finally obtained him liberty on his parole. The officer proved to be Colonel Whitefoord, an Ayrshire gentleman of high character and influence, and warmly attached to the House of Hanover; yet such was the confidence existing between these two honourable men, though of different political principles, that, while the civil war was raging, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of your new breeds, nephew," said the old man, "yet I can say that she's a gentle, likely young crittur, and better worth forty dollars than many a one that's cried up for Ayrshire or Durham; and you shall be ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... like his mature hand, as the shy, lustrous-eyed boy was to his after-self in his manly years, and sitting by the bedside while the rest were out and shouting, playing at hide-and-seek round the little church, with the winds from Benlomond or the wild uplands of Ayrshire blowing through their hair. He played seldom, but when he did run out, he jumped higher and farther, and ran faster than any of them. His peculiar beauty must have come from his mother. He used at rare times, and with a sort of shudder, to tell of her ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Lisburn, Derry*, Magherafelt, Moyle, Newry and Mourne, Newtownabbey, North Down, Omagh, Strabane; Scotland - 32 council areas; Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, The Scottish Borders, Clackmannanshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Dundee City, East Ayrshire, East Dunbartonshire, East Lothian, East Renfrewshire, City of Edinburgh, Falkirk, Fife, Glasgow City, Highland, Inverclyde, Midlothian, Moray, North Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire, Orkney Islands, Perth ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... An Ayrshire plowman! What was he in after life, in the estimation of his countrymen, and the world? ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... my heart," said I; and in ten minutes we were standing across the Frith with a fine steady breeze. We were close over to the Ayrshire coast, when a sudden puff of wind capsized the boat, and we were both thrown into the water. When I rose to the surface again, after my plunge, I looked around in vain for Douglas, who had disappeared. He had on a heavy pea-jacket, and I was at first afraid the weight and encumbrance of it must ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... the doctor, "lived for many generations in Ayrshire, Scotland, neighbors to the family of Robert Burns. And, like the poet's people, they were very poor. No wonder! The poor man has no chance in the old country. Years ago an ancestor of mine leased a tract of worthless swamp land for forty-nine ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... such characteristically milking breeds as the Ayrshire, Jersey and Guernsey have no place here. Provision is made, however, for all the well-known breeds of sheep and swine. In the cattle classes, aged beasts of huge size and of considerably over a ton in weight used to be common, but in recent years the tendency ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... "'Glenamon,' in Ayrshire, and 'Glenalmond,' in Perthshire, are both from the corrupted spelling of the word 'Avon,' which derives from its being very nearly the pronunciation of the Gaelic word for 'a river.' These names are from 'Gleann-abhuinn,' that ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... the poet, was suddenly transferred from his plough in Ayrshire to the polished circles of Edinburg, his ease of manner, and nice observance of the rules of good-breeding, excited much surprise, and became the theme of frequent conversation. The same thing has ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... gloomy day when we left Ayr over the fine highway leading to Glasgow, but before we had gone very far it began to rain steadily. We passed through Kilmarnock, the largest city in Ayrshire. Here a splendid memorial to Burns has been erected, and connected with it is a museum of relics associated with the poet, as well as copies of various editions of his works. This reminds one that ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... Backwardness of agriculture Idleness of the people Andrew Flecher's description of Scotland Slavery of colliers and salters Improvements in agriculture opposed Low wages of the labouring population State of the Lothians and Ayrshire Wretched states of the roads Difficulty of communication between districts Coach started between Edinburgh and Glasgow Carrier's perils between Edinburgh and Selkirk Dangers of travelling in Galloway Lawlessness ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... particulars regarding some of our Scottish saints have been irrevocably lost. This is the case with the holy man before us. All that we know of him may be told in a few words. He lived in the Cunningham district of Ayrshire, where he was revered during life and venerated after death for his great sanctity. On his deathbed we are told he kept continually repeating those words of the 83rd Psalm, "My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... Caldon, the labours of Old Mortality, in the course of time, spread over nearly all the Lowlands of Scotland. There are few churchyards in Ayrshire, Galloway, or Dumfries-shire, where the work of his chisel is not yet to be seen. It is easily distinguished from the work of any other artist by the primitive rudeness of the emblems of death, and of the inscriptions which adorn ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a covered boat if you will. That life-car, sir, was invented by Captain Douglass Ottinger, and this is the first one ever used. It was sent out to the ship Ayrshire, and more than two hundred souls were saved by it when there was no other way of giving them human help. There she is, sir." He laid his hand with a good deal of feeling on the queer shell ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... the Cassandra, and the boldness and ability he displayed in his dealings with the pirates, brought him into prominent notice. The son of a poor Ayrshire cottager, he had worked himself up, from before the mast, to the command of a ship. Soon after his return to England, the Directors appointed him to be their supervisor on the west coast of Sumatra, ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... latest scandal, the newest story, the straightest tip and the last word from Washington. He knew all about stocks, grain, races, theaters, society, clubs, athletics. He could advise you about ocean steamers, table d'hote places, country hotels, Berlin pensions, young ladies' schools, where to buy Ayrshire bacon and who had a yacht to sell. And he acquired this vast and useful assortment of knowledge simply by spending his afternoons, from noon to three, at ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... Italian, did affect it.'[98] If a writer finds an effective and picturesque word in an old author or in a homely dialect it is but pedantry that opposes its use, and it matters little moreover from what quarter of the land it may hail, as Stevenson knew when he claimed the right of mingling Ayrshire with his Lothian verse. Even such archaisms as 'deemen' and 'thinken,' such colloquialisms as the pronominal possessive, need not be too severely criticized. What goes far towards justifying Jonson's ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... who had never seen their ancestral home, spoke and lived and thought as though they had just come from the heathery hills. They were sprung from the loins of heroes, the stalwart pioneers from Roxburghshire and Ayrshire and Dumfries, and many another noble spot whose noblest sons had gone forth to earth's remotest bound, flaming with love of liberty and God. Seventy years before they had settled about New Jedboro, thinking of the well-loved Scottish town whose name ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... the end of education than mental storage. For these primitive folk-songs which have done so much to educate the poetic sense in the fine peasantry of Scotland,—that peasantry which has produced an Ettrick Shepherd and an Ayrshire Ploughman,—are assuredly, ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... that in years to come he was to be remembered as our greatest song writer. Robert was the son of a small farmer. The Burns had been farmer folk for generations, but William Burns had fallen on evil days. From his northern home he drifted to Ayrshire, and settled down in the village of Alloway as a gardener. Here with his own hands he built himself a mud cottage. It consisted only of a "room" and a kitchen, whitewashed within and without. In the kitchen there was a fireplace, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... to France before—in 1916, during the Battle of the Somme—but not as an officer; in 1916 I was a private in the Royal Fusiliers, and I had received orders to return to "Blighty" in order to proceed to an officer cadet battalion at Gailes, in Ayrshire, before I had been able to see what a front-line trench was like. So this, then, was my first experience of war—my "baptism of fire." I had seen and heard those magnificent bombardments up the line in 1916, and had gazed with awestruck admiration upon the strange ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... collapse of Hamilton's army at Uttoxeter in August 1648, a body of Covenanters assembled at Mauchline, in Ayrshire, to protest against the leniency with which the Engagement had been treated in the Estates, where, indeed, a considerable minority had been inclined openly to countenance it. Their leader was at first ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... New Testament at Montrose. After spending some years at the University of Cambridge in England he had returned to Scotland in 1544, and had preached the Reformed doctrines with great earnestness and success in Montrose, Dundee, Ayrshire, and Haddington. In the last-named place he had among his followers John Knox, who was then a young man, and who afterwards became the great leader of the Scottish Reformation. Before going to Haddington he had paid a second visit to Dundee, where the plague was raging at ...
— Evangelists of Art - Picture-Sermons for Children • James Patrick
... was the daughter of a respectable shoemaker, who gained a comfortable living by his trade in a small town of Ayrshire. Her father, like herself, was an only child, and followed the same vocation, and wrought under the same roof that his father had done before him. The elder Burns had met with many reverses, and now, helpless and blind, was entirely dependent upon the charity ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... prominent place, not on account of the quantity of milk which it yields, but on account of the excellent quality of the cream and butter which are produced from it. Its docility is marvellous, and in appearance it greatly resembles the Ayrshire breed of Scotland, the excellence of which is supposed to be, in some degree, derived from a mixture of the Alderney blood with that breed. The distinction between them, however, lies both in the quantity and quality of the milk which they severally produce; that of the Alderney being ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... greatest poet of Scotland, was born in Ayrshire, two miles from the town of Ayr, in 1759. The only education he received from his father was the schooling of a few months; but the family were fond of reading, and Robert was the most enthusiastic reader of them all. Every spare moment he could find— and they were not many— ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... port; and the boatmen are carefully watched with telescopes from the shore. The wiser Spaniards have made Santa Cruz, Tenerife, a free port. The health-officer presently gives us pratique, and we welcome the good 'monopolist,' Mr. William Reid, and his son. The former, an Ayrshire man, has made himself proprietor of the four chief hostelries. Yates's or Hollway's in the Entrada da Cidade, or short avenue running north from the landing-place, has become a quasi-ruinous telegraph-station. Reid's has blossomed ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... the son of a Scotch physician, was born in Ayrshire and educated at Irvine. When he came to Australia, he settled first in the New England district of New South Wales, and thence removed to Queensland. In 1856, his interest in discovery and a desire to find new country led him ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... toward the new bridge and looked over into the garden, I saw a couple of persons executing a cake-walk, and an old man with one leg off was in the cemetery that surrounds the ruined church, reciting selections from Burns. Such is the picture I beheld when I visited this Ayrshire monument, raised in memory of the sympathetic but unfortunate Scottish poet, whose "spark o' nature's fire" has touched so many hearts that his birth-place has more visitors per annum ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... 'In 1263, Haco, King of Norway, came into the Frith of Clyde with a powerful armament, and made a descent at Largs, in Ayrshire. Here he was encountered and defeated, on the 2nd October, by Alexander III. Haco retreated to Orkney, where he died soon after this disgrace to his arms. There are still existing, near the place of battle, many barrows, some of which, having been opened, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... Yorkshire, and of Northumberland. In Scotland, it needs but a slight intercourse with the peasantry to distinguish various dialects—the Aberdonian and Fifeshire, for instance, how easily distinguished, even by an English alien, from the western dialects of Ayrshire, &c.! And I have heard it said, by Scottish purists in this matter, that even Sir Walter Scott is chargeable with considerable licentiousness in the management of his colloquial Scotch. Yet, generally ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... is mottled all over like some marbles, or like that Mediterranean soap which is made of wood-ash and of olive oil. There is your Gloucester cheese called the Double Gloucester, and I have read in a book of Dunlop cheese, which is made in Ayrshire: they could tell you more about it in Kilmarnock. Then Suffolk makes a cheese, but does not give it any name; and talking of that reminds me how going to Le Quesnoy to pass the people there the time of day, and to see what was left of that famous but forgotten fortress, a ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... writers in dialect. Specimens: Scottish (Aberdeen, Ayrshire, Edinburgh). Northern England (Westmorland). Midland (Lincoln, S.E. Lancashire, Sheffield, Cheshire). Eastern (N. Essex, Norfolk). Western (S.W. Shropshire). Southern (Wiltshire, Isle ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... more than a mile in circuit, is over a thousand feet high, eight miles from the Ayrshire shore. There stands the cove, lonely as a foundling, proud as Cheops. But, like the battered brains surmounting the Giant of Gath, its haughty summit is crowned by a desolate castle, in and out of whose arches the aerial mists ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... opportunity of writing to you. Yesterday, my uncle (a city of Michigan, U.S.) and his daughter (a city of Italy) came to see us. Two slight accidents marred their visit: to begin with, my cousin fell upon the (an Ayrshire village), and afterwards, while we were out driving, a (town in Staffordshire) caused the horse to slip. We were then obliged to walk, but the way was rough, and presently a stream barred all progress. However, we ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... "it's you! It's you! In the month before I went away I had to endure God only knows what bitterness because of you! And on my return last night I hear at the club that ye've been off in Ayrshire visiting Robert Burns! Did ye have a pleasant time?" he asked, glowering down at her from his great height, handsome and angrier than I had ever seen ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Buchanan, poet, novelist, and playwright, was born on Aug. 18, 1841, at Caverswall, Staffordshire, England, the son of a poor journeyman tailor from Ayrshire, in Scotland, who wrote poetry, and wandered about the country preaching socialism of the Owen type, afterwards editing a Glasgow journal. Owing, perhaps, in part to his very unconventional training, Robert Buchanan entered ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... The Doctor has been talking there for a hundred years, and there will he talk for many a hundred more. And we of another generation, and with other things to think about, can enter any night we please, and hear what is going on. Then we have the swarthy ploughman from Ayrshire sitting at Lord Monboddo's with Dr. Blair, Dugald Stewart, Henry Mackenzie, and the rest. These went into the presence of the wonderful rustic thoughtlessly enough, and now they cannot return even if they would. They are defrauded of oblivion. Not yet have they tasted forgetfulness and ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... first rate, of different breeds, the judges all protest Both are so super-excellent, they know not which is best. Fair[1] could he see this Ayrshire, would with jealousy be riled; That hairy one's a Welshman, and was ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... born on the 21st of August, 1754, at Bellow Mill, in the parish of Auchinleck, Ayrshire. His father, John, was a miller and millwright, as well as a farmer. His mother's maiden name was Bruce, and she used to boast of being descended from Robert Bruce, the deliverer of Scotland. The Murdocks, or Murdochs—for the name was spelt in either way—were numerous in the neighbourhood, ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... November, 1576, Elizabeth or Bessie Dunlop, spouse to Andro Jak, in Lyne, in the Barony of Dalry, Ayrshire, was accused of sorcery and witchcraft and abuse of the people. Her answers to the interrogatories of the judges or prosecutors ran thus: It being required of her by what art she could tell of lost goods or prophesy the event of illness, she replied that of herself ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... leant his head against certain volumes, because they were weighty and would not yield. Next day he noticed that one of them was a Latin Calvin that had travelled over Europe in learned company, and the other a battered copy of Jonathan Edwards that had come from the house of an Ayrshire farmer. ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... curious to hear some account of the appearance and origin of the Ayrshire Irish Yew. And now for the main object of my letter: it is to ask whether you would just run your eye over the proof of my Galapagos chapter (19/4. In the second edition of the "Naturalist's Voyage."), where ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... and coal fires of infancy blazing up again, and heard the voices of our mothers crooning and caressing those marvelous lines, and behind them their mothers crooning and wailing the same back in the unbroken line to Ayrshire and the Pentland Hills. And all life was just a look into yesterday and the troubles and the struggles of manhood fell right off as garments and left us boys again. That's what's in Burns, the singing poet. That is, when ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... William Burness or Burnes, for so he spelt his name, was a native not of Ayrshire, but of Kincardineshire, where he had been reared on a farm belonging to the forfeited estate of the noble (p. 003) but attainted house of Keith-Marischal. Forced to migrate thence at the age of nineteen, he had travelled to Edinburgh, and finally settled in Ayrshire, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... to Ayrshire, I married 'my Jean'. This was not in consequence of the attachment of romance perhaps; but I had a long and much-loved fellow creature's happiness or misery in my determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a deposit. Nor have I any cause to repent ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... them; another had been deceived by a friend and bought them; a third had taken over two shares for a bad debt. A minister thought that he must have been summoned by mistake, for he was simply a trustee on an estate which had shares, but he was plainly nervous about his position. An Ayrshire Bailie had only had his shares for six months, and he put it, to his circle, with municipal eloquence, whether he could be held responsible for frauds of years' standing. No one argued with him, and indeed you might say anything you pleased, ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... will invest it with a distinctively fresh and exhilarating character. For full and further particulars of the enterprise, which have been carefully thought out, apply, by letter, to "IN NUBIBUS," Uppingham Lodge, Mount-Rising, Ayrshire. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... maun face mair risk, God help him. Here have I come this length, trusting the godly Earl of Murray would be on his march to the Borders, for he was to have guestened with the Baron of Avenel; and instead of that comes news that he has gone westlandways about some tuilzie in Ayrshire. And what to do I wot not; for if I go to the south without a safeguard, the next bonny rider I meet might ease me of sack and pack, and maybe of my life to boot; and then, if I try to strike across ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... read by C. M. Winslow, Brandon, Vt., before the Ayrshire Breeders, at their annual meeting, in Boston, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... deposit of till, at Woodhill Quarry, near Kilmaurs, in Ayrshire (Scotland), the remains of mammoths and reindeer and certain marine shells have several times been detected during the quarrying operations. . . . Two elephant-tasks were got at a depth of seventeen and a half feet from the surface. . . . The mammalian remains, obtained from this ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... to the drainings from the manure-heap, which, in place of being returned to it, are allowed to flow away, and collected in tanks, from which they are distributed by a watering-cart, or according to the method recently introduced in Ayrshire, and since adopted in other places, by pipes laid under-ground in the fields, and through which the manure is either pumped by steam-power, or, where the necessary inclination can be obtained, is distributed by gravitation. ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... they that bridle kings who strike innocent men in their rage." The Queen was forced to look on while nearly fifty Catholics, some of them high ecclesiastics, were indicted and sent to prison for celebrating mass in Paisley and Ayrshire. ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... born in Ayrshire, on the banks of "bonny Doon," in a clay biggin not far from "Alloway's auld haunted kirk," the scene of the witch dance in Tam O'Shanter. His father was a hard-headed, God-fearing tenant farmer, whose life and that ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... rich idiomatic Scottish dialogue in the novels might be possibly disparaged (like Ben Jonson) as 'mere humours and observation.' Novelists of lower rank than Scott—Galt in The Ayrshire Legatees and Annals of the Parish and The Entail—have nearly rivalled Scott in reporting conversation. But the Bailie at any rate has his part to play in the story of Rob Roy—and so has Andrew Fairservice. Scott never did anything more ingenious than ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... as it now shines through the magic of the Master's poetry. But it yields to many other parts of Scotland, some of which Burns indeed afterwards saw, although his matured genius was not much profited by the sight. Ayrshire—even with the peaks of Arran bounding the view seaward—cannot vie with the scenery around Edinburgh; with Stirling—its links and blue mountains; with "Gowrie's Carse, beloved of Ceres, and Clydesdale ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... states that dun in its original and restricted sense means "Enclosure or fortress, being closely related to A.S. tun, Eng. town.... The diminutive, or noun plural, yields innumerable names, like Dinnans and Dinnance, in Ayrshire and Galloway; Duning and Dinnings in Dumfriesshire; and Downan, near Ballantrae." Ought not Sir Herbert to have added Dunnin ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... into Lulcaster or Lulchester. The real facts are these. Cumberland, as its name imports, was long a land of the Cymry—a northern Welsh principality, dependent upon the great kingdom of Strathclyde, which held out for ages against the Northumbrian English invaders among the braes and fells of Ayrshire and the Lake District. These Cumbrian Welshmen called their chief town Caer Luel, or something of the sort; and there is some reason for believing that it was the capital of the historical Arthur, if any Arthur ever existed, though later ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... her at Stirling on May 24th. On their part the insurgents strengthened the defences of Perth—according to Buchanan, the only walled town in Scotland—and addressed themselves to their brethren in Ayrshire for instant succor. As they were now engaged in what might be construed as rebellion, they took steps to justify themselves in the eyes of the world. In three manifestoes, probably the work of Knox, they addressed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... near Ayr, Scotland, 25th of January, 1759. He was the son of William Burnes, or Burness, at the time of the poet's birth a nurseryman on the banks of the Doon in Ayrshire. His father, though always extremely poor, attempted to give his children a fair education, and Robert, who was the eldest, went to school for three years in a neighboring village, and later, for shorter periods, to three other schools ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... this year Knox went to Ayrshire, accompanied with several of the leading Protestants of that county, and preached openly in the town of Ayr, and in other parts of the country. He was summoned to appear before a Convention of the Popish Clergy, on the 15th of May, at Edinburgh. About the same ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... time, Sweet minstrel of the joyous present, Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme, The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant, Good-bye! Good-bye!—Our hearts and hands, Our lips in honest Saxon phrases, Cry, God be with him, till he stands His feet among the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... workers were, however, mainly Lowland Scotchmen from the mining districts of Ayrshire. The dominie had set himself positively against the introduction of a popish element and an alien people; and in this position he had been warmly upheld by Farquharson and the neighboring proprietors. As it was, there was an antagonism likely to give him full employment. The Gael of ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... appears to have been but an ill-cemented confederacy. When the force despatched by Edward to quell the revolt presented itself before the Scottish army posted near Irvine, in Ayrshire, the leaders of the latter, throwing off the authority of their nominal chief, could no more agree what to do than whom to obey: and the result was that Bruce, the Steward, Douglas, and others of them, availing themselves of the diplomatic talents of the Bishop of Glasgow, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Richard III., 1594, came to light as recently as 1881. Several of the works of Nicholas Breton and Samuel Rowlands survive in isolated copies. Upwards of a century has elapsed since a medical man picked up in Ayrshire in 1788 an assemblage of quarto tracts belonging to the ancient vernacular literature of Scotland and to the parent press of Edinburgh; and not a whisper has been raised to suggest the existence of a second copy of any of them, which is to be regretted so far, as some are imperfect. During ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... warmly attached, not only to republican principles, but to the form of a commonwealth. Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree had fled his country on account of the transactions of 1683. His property and connections were considerable, and he was supposed to possess extensive influence in Ayrshire and the adjacent counties. ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... evening fell, we were ploughing the outer reaches of the Frith, with the ridgy table-land of Ayrshire stretching away, green, on the one side, and the serrated peaks of Arran rising dark and high on the other. At sunrise next morning our boat lay, unloading a portion of her cargo, in one of the ports of Islay, and we could see the Irish coast resting on the horizon to the south and west, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the thought of all who peruse these lines—"How thankful to God we ought to be for the use of our faculties, and especially for this precious blessing of sight!" This blind deaf mute is Mr. Daniel Hunter Ardrossan, one of the members of the Ayrshire ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... Stevensons owned at this date the barony of Dolphingston in Haddingtonshire, Montgrennan in Ayrshire, and several ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Continent which preceded the period of submergence have been lost; but a few patches of estuarine and fresh- water formations escaped denudation by submergence. To these belong the peaty clay from which several mammoths' tusks and horns of reindeer were obtained at Kilmaurs, in Ayrshire as long ago as 1816. Mr. Bryce in 1865 ascertained that the fresh-water formation containing these fossils rests on carboniferous sandstone, and is covered, first by a bed of marine sand with arctic shells, and then with a great mass of till ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... pious and attached friend, Mrs. Major Brown, had accompanied her husband to Scotland, and they now resided on their estate in Ayrshire. Mr. Peter Reid, a kind friend when in Antigua, was now a merchant in London. This gentleman advised her to invest the little money she had brought home—and which she had still preserved—in muslins; which she could ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... of dairy cattle the Exposition offers awards, as follows: Jersey, Ayrshire, Guernsey, Holstein-Friesian, Dutch-Belted, Dairy Shorthorn, Brown Swiss, French-Canadian, Simmenthal, Kerry and Dexter, and Grade-Dairy Herd. This last is a recognition on the part of the Exposition of the great utility value of the grade-dairy ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... strawberries and cream near by at a gardener's. All this I had forgotten; only my grandfather remembered and once reminded me. I have forgotten, too, how we grew up, and took orders, and went to our first Ayrshire parish, and fell in love with and married a daughter of Burns's Dr. Smith—"Smith opens out his cauld harangues." I have forgotten, but I was there all the same, and heard stories of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was Colin, had no Arcadian simplicity, nothing which could please the classic taste of Forester, or which could recall to his mind the Eclogues of Virgil, or the golden age; the Gentle Shepherd, or the Ayrshire Ploughman. Colin's favourite holiday's diversion was playing at goff; this game, which is played with a bat loaded with lead, and with a ball, which is harder than a cricket-ball, requires much strength and dexterity. Forester used, sometimes, to accompany the gardener's son to the Links,[7] ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... sent me, from personal knowledge, an admirable pendant to stones of Scottish child acuteness and shrewd observation. A young lady friend of his, resident in a part of Ayrshire rather remote from any very satisfactory administration of the gospel, is in the habit of collecting the children of the neighbourhood on Sundays at the "big hoose," for religious instruction. On one occasion the class had repeated the paraphrase of the ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... recorded in a Latin eulogy on his northern correspondent, which he subsequently transmitted to him. A poetical epistle addressed by Mr Skinner to Robert Burns, in commendation of his talents, was characterized by the Ayrshire Bard as "the best poetical compliment he had ever received." It led to a regular correspondence, which was carried on with much satisfaction to both parties. The letters, which chiefly relate to the preparation of Johnson's Musical Museum, then ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various |
