"Bagpipe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... board of my Highland host there was much "upon the plain highway of talk" I will not soon forget. And then, with the gathering shadows in the ancestral hall, with the rude weapons of past generations hanging upon every wall, and the stirring strains of the bagpipe coming from the distance, it was worth while to listen to the Highland legends that had been handed down from sire ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... though by enemies 'tis said, The laurel, which adorns thy head, Must one day come in competition, By virtue of some sly petition: Yet mum for that; hope still the best, Nor let such cares disturb thy rest. Methinks I hear thee loud as trumpet, As bagpipe shrill or oyster-strumpet; Methinks I see thee, spruce and fine, With coat embroider'd richly shine, And dazzle all the idol faces, As through the hall thy worship paces; (Though this I speak but ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... perhaps, to two hundred square miles of land. He has first studied at Aberdeen, and afterwards gone to Hertfordshire, to learn agriculture, being much impressed with desire of improvement; he, likewise, has the notions of a chief, and keeps a piper. At Macleod's the bagpipe always ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... louder and louder, and the dance of the white moon-fires more and more rapid. Gradually they began to be aware of a sound of distant music. It was the sound of a bagpipe, and they rode towards it with great joy. It came from the bottom of a deep, cup-like hollow. In the midst of the hollow was an old man with a red cap and withered face. He sat beside a fire of sticks, and had a burning torch thrust into the ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... dignified, sat on her haunches, her chin tucked into the forget-me-nots, immovably bland. She was evidently competent for her new role; she might have been ecclesiastically connected all her life. The one-eyed cat was beside her, blue-ribboned, purring her best, which was like a broken bagpipe on account of her ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... the timbrel and the harp, And delight in the sound of the bagpipe; They while away their days in bliss, And in a twinkling go down ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... matters went on not intolerably; for David's musical soul supplied the deficiency in the sounds that entered his unwearied ears. And then he sang so loud himself, that he certainly could hear no one else, his voice being as monopolizing as the drone of a bagpipe—or as a violent advocate for free trade! Happy urchins when this was the case! for they were sure to be dismissed with the most flattering encomiums on their vocal powers, when, if truth must be told, the good old man had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Guard did some fancy quick-step singing on stage: "God Bless America"; "Over there"; and "The Soldiers Are Coming", to the tune of "The Campbells Are Coming", complete with bagpipe brigade. ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... Doctoris Marmorei, de capreolis cum artichoketa comedendis, tempore Papali ab Ecclesia interdicto. The Invention of the Holy Cross, personated by six wily Priests. The Spectacles of Pilgrims bound for Rome. Majoris de modo faciendi puddinos. The Bagpipe of the Prelates. Beda de optimitate triparum. The Complaint of the Barristers upon the Reformation of Comfits. The Furred Cat of the Solicitors and Attorneys. Of Peas and Bacon, cum Commento. The Small Vales or Drinking Money of the Indulgences. Praeclarissimi ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the Caledonian booth regaled their listeners with quaint dancing of reels and strathspeys. The Walter Scott booth, with bagpipe accompaniment, was an acquisition to the various representations. The rustic harbor in the Italian booth was complete and a pleasant retreat. The music and tableaux in this booth were worthy of the immense audience which crowded the space each night. ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... maidens a sweet Cymric cadence She leads, just to lighten their sewing; Now at the farm, her food basket on arm, She has set all the cock'rels a-crowing. The turkey-cock strutting and strumming, His bagpipe puts by at her humming, And even the old gander, The fowl-yard's commander, He winks his sly eye ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... through the fields and orchards armed with torches, setting fire to bundles of straw, and thus it is believed driving out such vermin as are likely to damage the crops. III Italy among other Advent celebrations is the entry into Rome in the last days of Advent of the Calabrian pifferari or bagpipe players, who play before the shrines of the Holy Mother. The Italian tradition is that the shepherds played on these pipes when they came to the manger at Bethlehem to do homage ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe. ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... so much alone, the shepherd and his daughter were anxious to hear all that the boys could tell them of the great world from which they lived aloof. Later in the evening, the shepherd, whose name, by the way, was Andrew Campbell, said, "Now, let us have a little music. Lucy, bring me the bagpipe." ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... reddening ripples of the broad face heralded it, it began with a contagious cackle, it deepened into a flabby guffaw, and after all the others roundabout had finished their cachinnatory tribute it wound up with what was between a roar and the lazy drone of a bagpipe. ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... Gripe too 230 Had lent a guttural Music to your voice, A sort of bagpipe Buz, that suited well ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Massey, contemptuously; "I've heard enough o' the Scotch tunes to last me while I live. They're fit for nothing but to frighten the birds with—that's to say, the English birds, for the Scotch birds may sing Scotch for what I know. Give the lads a bagpipe instead of a rattle, and I'll answer for it the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the hangman with his cart came to the prison, and hardly had he arrived than there came the Bailly with his sergeants, and a great crowd of people to accompany them, and the poor fellow was laid, bound, on the cart, and still holding the bagpipe he was accustomed to play. Thus he was led to the gibbet, accompanied by a larger crowd than most have at their hanging, so much was he hated in ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... Joceline," said the Independent, "but where was the edification of all this?—what use of doctrine could be derived from a pipe and tabor? or was there ever aught like wisdom in a bagpipe?" ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... sleep out of the question. At midnight the sudden boom of a cannon reminded us that we were in the midst of the Turkish Ramadan. The sound of tramping feet, the beating of a bass drum, and the whining tones of a Turkish bagpipe, came over the midnight air. Nearer it came, and louder grew the sound, till it reached the inn door, where it remained for some time. The fast of Ramadan commemorates the revelation of the Koran to the prophet Mohammed. It lasts through the four phases of the moon. From ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... acquired habit they could suffer pandemonium to reign all over the house, and yet lie ranked in the kitchen like Egyptian mummies, only that the sound of their snoring rose and fell ceaselessly like the drone of a bagpipe. Here the Six-Footers invaded them—in their citadel, so to speak; counted the bunks and the sleepers; proposed to put me in bed to one of the lasses, proposed to have one of the lasses out to make room for me, fell over chairs, and made noise enough to waken the dead: the whole illuminated by ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... full of those curious details in which his soul delighted. His son, for example, writes from Prague that 'in the mines at Brunswick is reported to be a spirit; and another at the tin mine at Stackenwald, in the shape of a monke, which strikes the miners, playeth on the bagpipe, and many such tricks.' They correspond, however, on more legitimate inquiries, and especially on the points to be noticed in the son's medical lectures. Sir Thomas takes a keen interest in the fate of an unlucky ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... partiality for the bagpipe on the ground that your true Briton "loves a grumbling noise," and he favours organs and the popular oratorios. But his "top talent ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... advance, who sent back one of the file who formed it, to tell the Captain that the path in front was occupied by Highlanders, stationed on a commanding point of particular difficulty. Almost at the same instant a soldier from the rear came to say, that they heard the sound of a bagpipe in the woods through which we had just passed. Captain Thornton, a man of conduct as well as courage, instantly resolved to force the pass in front, without waiting till he was assailed from the rear; and, assuring his soldiers ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... being the first person on the stage to play "Mendelssohn's Wedding March," "Oh Promise Me," "Star-Spangled Banner," etc., in syncopated rhythm or "Ragtime." He was also the first on the stage to do imitations of the harp, bagpipe, mandolin, banjo, etc., on the piano. His act was much ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... to give out the nasal whine of the bagpipe, or the throat of a nightingale to emit the caw of a raven, the aesthetic sense would not be more startled and offended than to hear from feminine lips, rosily wreathed by beauty and youth, issue the words, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... in a charade is to try and puzzle your audience as much as you can. You must choose a word of two or more syllables, such as "Bagpipe." First you must act the word "Bag," and be sure that the word is mentioned, though you must be careful to bring it in in such a way that the audience shall not guess it is the word you ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... novice again. The last proofs were now tried upon him, called the "five senses." For that of hearing he was made to listen to a jewsharp, which he calmly proclaimed to be the bagpipe; for that of touch, he was made to feel by turns a live fish, a hot iron and a little stuffed hedgehog. The last he took for a pack of toothpicks, and announced gravely, "It sticks me." The laughs broke out from all sides, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... scale is shown in the construction of the ancient Greek scale, the modern Japanese, and the aboriginal Australian scale, and the phonographed tunes of some of the Red Indians of North America. Here a reference must be made to the scale of the Scotch bagpipe, a highly artificial product, without historical materials available to assist in unravelling its development. It comprises a whole diatonic series of notes, and modes may ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... simply do not believe it. Then too there is lack of unanimity in the matter of the essential facts. One authority, describing the machol, says it is a stringed instrument resembling a modern viola; another describes it as a wind instrument somewhat like a bagpipe; still another says it is a metal ring with a bell attachment like an Egyptian sistrum; and finally an equally respected authority claims that the machol was not an instrument at all, but a dance. Similarly the maanim has been described ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... man of forty, and under the Commonwealth he had been famous in Dryden's contemptuous phrase as "the loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train"; but he was no sooner a minister of Charles than he flung himself into the debauchery of the Court with an ardour which surprised even his master. "You are the wickedest dog in England!" laughed the king at some unscrupulous jest of his counsellor's. "Of a ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... fear—he even ostentatiously displayed and seemed to revel in—the shrillness of the instrument; but in fire, speed, precision, evenness, and fluency; in linked agility of jimmy—a technical expression, by your leave, answering to warblers on the bagpipe; and perhaps, above all, in that inspiring side-glance of the eye, with which he followed the effect and (as by a human appeal) eked out the insufficiency of his performance: in these, the fellow stood without a rival. Harker listened: "The girl I left behind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... squire, sighed in despondency; and Malcolm, who hated crowds, and knew himself a mark for the rude observations of a free-spoken populace, shrank up to him, when Sir James, nodding in time to the tones of a bagpipe that was playing at the hostel door, flung his bridle to Brewster the groom, laughed at his glum and contemptuous looks, merrily hailed the gudewife with her brown face and big silver ear-rings, seated ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be a sign of bad luck. I wiggled around kind of careless to see if there was any more of him. There was. Nine more. Here was Saunders Colorado and Colin Hiccup Grunt, fortified by—say six, drops of Scotch whiskey, a Scotch sword and a Scotch bagpipe, up against ten Tontos armed with rifles. I would have traded my life interest in this world for an imitation dead yaller dog. "Oh, they won't do a thing to us, thing to us, thing to us!" sings I to myself, hoppin' ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... arcade of two lancet apertures, supported by four columns of serpentine. Within the vestry is a two-light lancet window; and let into the eastern wall is a small slab, having four grotesque figures, one blowing a kind of bagpipe, the others dancing. This is said to have been a portion of a "minstrel pillar," it is apparently Saxon, and is probably a relic from the original fabric. The chancel arch is of red and black bricks, in alternate bands, the capitals nicely carved in stone, supported ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... will be prizes for archery, and there will be the knight's ale, and the foresters' venison, and there will be Kit Scrapesqueak with his fiddle, and little Tom Whistlerap with his fife and tabor, and Sam Trumtwang with his harp, and Peter Muggledrone with his bagpipe, and how I shall dance with Will Whitethorn!" added the girl, clapping her hands as she spoke, and bounding from the ground with the pleasure ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... "lana," or words pertaining to woolen clothing. Hippocrates says that a certain Nicanor had the greatest horror of the sound of the flute at night, although it delighted him in the daytime. Rousseau reports a Gascon in whom incontinence of urine was produced by the sound of a bagpipe. Frisch, Managetta, and Rousse speak of a man in whom the same effect was produced by the sound of a hurdy-gurdy. Even Shakespeare alludes to the effects of the sound of bagpipes. Tissot mentions a case in which music caused epileptic convulsions, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the maypole new, with glee and merriment, While as the bagpipe tooted it, Thyrsis and Chloris fine together footed it: And to the joyous instrument Still they went to and fro, and finely flaunted it, And then both met again and thus ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... was carried to the gallows, Jack played a fine tune of his own composing on the bagpipe, which retains the name of Macpherson's tune to this day.—History ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the British Museum and other cognate sources we get a fair insight of the amusement afforded by these dancers and joculators. In the illustration (fig. 35) we get A and C tumblers, male and female; D, a woman and bear dance; and E, a dance of fools to the organ and bagpipe. It will be observed that they have bells on their caps, and it must have required much skill and practice to sound their various toned bells to the music as they danced. This dance of fools may have suggested or became eventually merged into the "Morris Dance" ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... where the Prince's monument now stands. Charles, with a small body of Macdonalds, was the first to arrive, early in the morning. He and his men rowed up the long narrow Loch Sheil. The valley was solitary—not a far-off bagpipe broke the silence, not a figure appeared against the skyline of the hills. With sickening anxiety the small party waited, while the minutes dragged out their weary length. At last, when suspense was ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... really a camel? No. It was something infinitely worse, and within a few feet of my ears. I sprang out of bed. There, at the very window, stood a youth extracting unearthly noises out of the Basilicata bagpipe. To be sure! I remembered expressing an interest in this rare instrument to one of my hosts who, with subtle delicacy, must have ordered the boy to give me a taste of his quality—to perform a ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... to give him, and could only weep with him. At last he said, 'Dear Antonio, I see there is no remedy. You say your master is below, beg him, I pray, to stay till to-morrow, and we will send for the maidens of the neighbourhood, and for a violin and a bagpipe, and we will dance and cast away care for a moment.' And then he said something in old Greek, which I scarcely understood, but which I think was equivalent to, 'Let us eat, drink, and be merry, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... drum and a species of clarionet. The next one evidently has the remnants of a harp in his raised hands. The third or central figure is supposed merely to have held a hawk upon his wrist; whilst the fourth seeks to extract harmony from a dilapidated bagpipe; and the fifth, with crossed legs, strums complacently away upon the fiddle. The ground floor of the quaint old tenement is to-day an oil and colour shop, the front of which is covered with chequers in all the tints ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... instruments. The two eastern and two western bays are intended to be severally grouped together, forming distinct series of eight figures. The instruments in the hands of the figures over the transepts are the psaltery and cithern, the regale, tabret, lute, violin, bagpipe and trumpet, (illustrating the 150th Psalm.) Below this range of figures are smaller panels, simply ornamented with the sacred monogram, the cross and the crown, resting on a fine and richly carved cornice, which ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... bagpipe, fife and drum brought them all out of Haddo's Hole into High Street. It was the hour of the morning drill, and the soldiers were marching out of the Castle. From the front of St. Giles, that jutted into the steep thoroughfare, they could look up to where the street widened ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... to perfection, fighting his battles over again—even charging the Turks—whilst the young Scot was so enchanted by the great Sir Sydney's condescension, that he wanted to fetch the pipers of his regiment, and pipe to the great Sir Sydney, who had never enjoyed the agonizing strains of the bagpipe. Upon this the party broke up, and Sir James carried the Highlander off, lest he should find out his mistake, and cut his throat from shame and vexation. One may readily conceive Sydney Smith's enjoying this joke, for his spirits were those of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... curved sack something like a bagpipe or a badly made boot, with a tiny canal at the toe connecting it with the small intestine. There were the heart ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... that one of us would be gettin' it. And she was pleased as anything, me lad, and now it's up to us to rig up some sort of a dacint sate, and tag a woman along half the time. You thick-tongued descindint of a bagpipe baboon, what did you sind me ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... decay. - There will come an immediate decree In thy mind for the opposite party's decease, If he bends not an instant knee. Expunge it: extinguishing counts poor gain. And accept a mild word of police:- Be mannerly, measured; refrain From the puffings of him of the bagpipe cheeks. Our political, even as the merchant main, A temperate gale requires For the ship that haven seeks; Neither God of the winds nor his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... off in our coach-houses—there was dinner in one, dancing in the other. The splendor was such as you may imagine; three tallow candle-ends by way of illumination, lots of home-made wine for refreshment; the orchestra consisting of a bagpipe and a hurdy-gurdy, the noisiest and, therefore, the best appreciated in the country side. We invited some friends over from La Chatre, and made fools of ourselves in a hundred thousand ways; as, for instance, dressing up as peasants in the evening and ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... and chac-chac, if music it can be called. Some power over the emotions it must have; for the Negroes are said to be gradually maddened by it; and white people have told me that its very monotony, if listened to long, is strangely exciting, like the monotony of a bagpipe drone, or of a drum. What more went on at the dance we could not see; and if we had tried, we should probably not have been allowed to see. The Negro is chary of admitting white men to his amusements; and no wonder. ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... narrated the particulars of that ill-advised, but brave attempt, I could not refrain from tears. There is a certain association of ideas in my mind upon that subject, by which I am strongly affected. The very Highland names, or the sound of a bagpipe; will stir my blood, and fill me with a mixture of melancholy and respect for courage; with pity for an unfortunate and superstitious regard for antiquity, and thoughtless inclination for war; in short, with a crowd of sensations with which sober ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... and Finsbury Fields, with its gardens, dog-houses, and windmills, on the left. At the end of Bishopgate-Street-Without a considerable crowd was collected round a party of comely young milkmaids, who were executing a lively and characteristic dance to the accompaniment of a bagpipe and fiddle. Instead of carrying pails as was their wont, these milkmaids, who were all very neatly attired, bore on their heads a pile of silver plate, borrowed for the occasion, arranged like a pyramid, and adorned with ribands ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... circumambulating the well or lake on their bare knees, with all the marks of penitence and contrition strongly impressed upon their faces; whilst again, after an hour or two, the same individuals may be found in a tent dancing with ecstatic vehemence to the music of the bagpipe or fiddle. ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... he was surprised and entertained through the ribs and arches of an old Gothic window which still faces the highway, to see a dance of witches, merrily footing it round their old sooty blackguard master, who was keeping them all alive with the power of his bagpipe. The farmer, stopping his horse to observe them a little, could plainly descry the faces of many old women of his acquaintance and neighbourhood. How the gentleman was dressed tradition does not say, but that the ladies were all in their smocks; ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... among the rights of our ancient kings. But music was the Irish amusement par excellence; and it is one of the few arts for which they are credited. The principal Irish instruments were the harp, the trumpet, and the bagpipe. The harp in the Museum of Trinity College, Dublin, usually known as Brian Boroimhe's harp, is supposed, by Dr. Petrie, to be the oldest instrument of the kind now remaining in Europe. It had but one row of strings, thirty in number; the upright ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... this song, methinks, it was as if nightingale, owl, and echo had combined in song, and if ever I had been able to hear the morning star, or to try to imitate the melody on my bagpipe, I should have slipt away out of the hut to join in the melody, so beautiful it seemed; but I ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... we realize how true are these lines of Lowell. The frog chorus is dying down, though now and then we catch sight of a big fellow blowing out his big balloon throat and filling the air with a hoarse bass, while another across the creek has a bagpipe apparently as big but pitched in a higher key. Two months ago one could not get near enough to see this queer inflation, but now the frogs do not seem so shy. Garter snakes wiggle through the grass ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... strains of his lyre, in the Amsterdam Museum. Here we see that the master had also studied wild animals. He is most successful in the bear. In the same gallery is another chef-d'oeuvre of the same year—a hilly landscape with a shepherdess singing to her child, a shepherd playing on the bagpipe, and oxen, sheep, ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... their individual skill and dexterity, united in two bodies, and exhibited a sort of mock encounter, in which the charge, the rally, the flight, the pursuit, and all the current of a heady fight, were exhibited to the sound of the great war bagpipe. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Mr. Punch's sharp contemporary, the Lancet, the effect of bagpipe-playing upon the teeth is to blunt them; in fact, in course of time, to wear them away. To the auditor the music has a contrary effect. Mr. Punch is able to say, from experience, that he has never listened to the National instrument of Grand Old Scotland ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... on the Erechtheum, with its Pandrosean Vestries, its upright tiles, and all the subordinate details of Athenian architecture. We met here the subject of many an ancient bas relief done into flesh and blood—a dozen men and boys tripping along the road to the music of a bagpipe, one old Silenus leading the jocund throng, and the whole of them, as the music, such as it was, inspired, leaping about and gesticulating with incredible activity. It was a bacchanalian subject, which we had seen on many a sarcophagus, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... instrument reminded one of the zither of Tyrol, while the strange airs bore some similarity to the bagpipe music of Scotland, at least in time, which, like the piper, the old man beat with his foot. His blue eyes were fixed on the wall opposite, with a strange, weird, far-off look, and never for one moment did he relax his gaze. He seemed absolutely absorbed by his music, and as the queer old ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... out of two, and under the seditious pretext that the length of the Office of incensing was too long to be filled up entirely by singing, M. Widor, seated at his desk, rolled forth stale fragments of music splashed about above, imitating the human voice and the flute, the bagpipe and the bassoon, or indeed, tired of affectations, he blew furiously on the keys, ending by imitating the roll of locomotives over iron bridges, letting all the ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... fire he saw a pale weazen-faced fellow in a long Flannel gown and a tall white night-cap with a tassel to it, who sat by the fire, with a bellows under his arm by way of bagpipe, from which he forced the asthmatical music that had bothered my grandfather. As he played, too, he kept twitching about with a thousand queer contortions; nodding his head and bobbing about his ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... himself, who performs very well on the violin, has an invincible antipathy to the sound of the Highland bagpipe, which sings in the nose with a most alarming twang, and, indeed, is quite intolerable to ears of common sensibility, when aggravated by the echo of a vaulted hall — He therefore begged the piper would have some mercy upon him, and dispense with this part of the morning service — A consultation ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... standing where two streets met, and singing without looking at each other. In the narrow ancient streets the notes sounded quite in character with the surroundings and with the quaint dresses of the singers. Modrich says that they use the svirala, a kind of bagpipe with two canes, one with four and the other with three holes, and suggests that the long-drawn terminating notes of the songs are in imitation of its sound; but we neither saw nor heard this instrument, all the singing being unaccompanied. The principal ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... general, and a Life of Wallace, the great Scottish hero; this last being lent him by the blacksmith. These books excited little Robert so much that if ever a recruiting sergeant came to his village, he would strut up and down in raptures after the drum and bagpipe, and long to be tall enough to be a soldier. The story of Wallace, too, awoke in his heart a love of Scotland and all things Scottish, which remained with him his whole life through. At times he would steal away ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... conclusion there was a moresca in which was simulated the agricultural work of the peasants. The fields were prepared, the seed sown, the grain cut and threshed, and the harvest feast followed. Finally a native dance to the accompaniment of the bagpipe was executed. ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... slackened diligence which is the unavoidable consequence of a village festival. I was seated under the large kitchen chimney, when the firing of pistols, the barking of dogs, and the squeaking sounds of the bagpipe, announced the approach of the betrothed couple. Presently after, old Maurice and his wife, with Germain and Marie, followed by Jacques and his wife, the chief respective kinsfolk, and the godfathers and godmothers of the betrothed, made ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... the rough chivalry of an unwritten law. These hurdy-gurdy girls, who tiptoed to the concertina, the fiddle, and the hand-organ, were German; and if we may believe the poet of Cariboo, they were something like the Glasgow girls described by Wolfe as 'cold to everything but a bagpipe—I wrong them—there is not one that does not melt away {90} at the sound of money.' Sings the ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... extra days required for the more or less laborious digestion attending the moral and physical intoxication that follows such a festivity.—I was sitting under the huge mantel-piece of an old-fashioned kitchen fire-place, when pistol-shots, the howling of dogs, and the shrill notes of the bagpipe announced the approach of the fiances. Soon Pere and Mere Maurice, Germain, and little Marie, followed by Jacques and his wife, the nearest relations of the bride and groom, and their godfathers and godmothers, entered ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... dainty ear a fiddle charms, A bagpipe's her delight, But for the crooning o' her wheel She disna care a mite. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Colin Cloute, 225 Care now his idle bagpipe up to raise, Ne tell his sorrow to the listning rout Of shepherd groomes, which wont his songs to praise: Praise who so list, yet I will him dispraise, Untill he quite* him of this guiltie blame. 230 Wake, shepheards boy, at length awake for shame! ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... your slave," cried the Scot, dropping to the pavement a true Highland knee. Whereon forth shrieked a bagpipe, and Dolfin's minstrel sang, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... other psalm-tune. On the introduction, however, of a second tune into the parish church that repeated the line at the end of the stanza, even this poor fragment of ability deserted me; and to this day—though I rather like the strains of the bagpipe in general, and have no objection to drums in particular—doubts do occasionally come across me whether there be in reality any such thing as tune. My friend William Ross was, on the contrary, a born musician. When a little boy, he had constructed for himself a fife and clarionet ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... left Halifax I was awakened by the roll of the British drum and the stirring strains of the Highland bagpipe. Ready equipped for the tedious journey before us, from Halifax to Pictou in the north of the colony, I was at the inn-door at six, watching the fruitless attempts of the men to pile our mountain of luggage ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... for oak boughs and white roses. The weather was pleasant, the company of the best, the roads very noble after our Highland sheep tracks. Together with our English friends, and enlivened by much good claret and by music of bagpipe and drum, we strolled on through a fine, populous country until we came to a town called Preston, where we thought we would tarry for a day or two. However, circumstances arose which detained us somewhat longer. ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Eunuch, Capon, Dastard, fast and loose, Thou weathercocke of mutabilitie, White-livered Paisant, wilt thou vowe and sweare, Face and make semblance with thy bagpipe othes Of that thou never meanst to execute? Pure cowardice, for feare to cracke thy necke With the huge Caos of thy bodies waight, Hath sure begot this true contrition. Then fast and pray, and see if thou canst winne, A goodlie pardon ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... Talma. We read the play in the morning, an excellent precaution, otherwise the novelty of the French mode of declamation would have set my comprehension at defiance. There was a ranting Hermione, who had a string too tight round her waist, which made her bosom heave like the bellows of a bagpipe whenever she worked with her clasped hands against her heart to pump out something like passion. There was also a wretched Pyrrhus, and an old Phoenix, whose gray wig I expected every moment to ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... his candences ridiculous. His soul was so overlaid with brawn and dignity that, though it heaved, panted, and struggled, it could never once get vent. Speaking through his apoplectic organs, I could not understand myself: it was a mumbling hubbub, the drone of a bagpipe, and the tantalizing strum strum of a hurdy-gurdy! Never was hearer more impatient to have it begin; never was hearer better pleased to have it over! Every sentence did but increase the fever of my mind. Enoch himself perceived it, though he could not discover the cause. The orator indeed produced ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... afflict this world, and some Are bores of magnitude that-come and—no, They're always coming, but they never go— Like funeral pageants, as they drone and hum Their lurid nonsense like a muffled drum, Or bagpipe's dread unnecessary flow. But one superb tormentor I can show— Prince Fiddlefaddle, Duc de Feefawfum. He the johndonkey is who, when I pen Amorous verses in an idle mood To nobody, or of her, reads them through And, smirking, says he knows the lady; then Calls me sly dog. I wish he understood ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... or two there was no sound but the wind, which had found a loose chimney cowl on the roof and screwed out of it an odd sound like the drone of a bagpipe. Dickson, unable to remain any longer in one place, moved into the centre of the hall, believing that Leon had gone to the smoking-room. It was a dangerous thing to do, for suddenly a match was lit a yard from him. He had the sense to drop low, ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... the drone of a bagpipe, and a good supply of wind is required to fill it. Proverbially applied to those who undertake more than they are ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... jumping around like a huge broken-legged grasshopper upon his elbows and the ends of his toes! This extraordinary feat brought down the house in the wildest enthusiasm, and the uproar of shouting and singing drowned all the instruments except the comb, which still droned away like a Scottish bagpipe in its last agonies! Such singing, such dancing, and such excitement, I had never before witnessed. It swept away my self-possession like the blast of a trumpet sounding a charge. At last, the man, after dancing successively with all the ladies ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... Mrs. Delano wrote, she could not help smiling at her ideas of quietude. Sometimes rapid thumps on the tambourine might be heard, indicating that the saltarello was again in rehearsal. If a piffero strolled through the street, the monotonous drone of his bagpipe was reproduced in most comical imitation; and anon there was a gush of bird-songs, as if a whole aviary were in the vicinity. Indeed, no half-hour passed without audible indication that the little recluse was ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... almost every foreign army in Europe was represented among the regiments forming or in transit. The 79th Highlanders, it is true, discarded kilt and bagpipe on the eve of departure, marching in blouse and cap and breeks of army blue; but the 14th. Brooklyn departed in red cap and red breeches, the 1st and 2d Fire Zouaves discarded the Turkish fez only; the ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Another one calls a man so when he lies on the floor and holds himself on by the carpet. So,—as to soundness, some persons can not see that a horse is unsound, unless he works his flanks like the drone of a bagpipe, or blows and roars like a blacksmith's bellows; while some are so fastidious as to consider a horse as next to valueless because he may have a corn that he never feels, or a thrush for which he is not, nor likely to be, one dollar ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... would rehearse it carefully with her at her lodgings. He was only too glad, as might be supposed. She found he had a lovely voice, but little physical culture. He read correctly, but did not even know the nature of the vocal instrument and its construction, which is that of a bagpipe. She taught him how to keep his lungs full in singing, yet not to gasp, and by this simple means enabled him to sing with more than twice the power he had ever exercised yet. She also taught him the swell, a figure of music he ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Dozin, torpid. Draigl't, draggled. Drant, prosing. Drap, drop. Draunting, tedious. Dree, endure, suffer. Dreigh, v. dreight. Dribble, drizzle. Driddle, to toddle. Dreigh, tedious, dull. Droddum, the breech. Drone, part of the bagpipe. Droop-rumpl't, short-rumped. Drouk, to wet, to drench. Droukit, wetted. Drouth, thirst. Drouthy, thirsty. Druken, drucken, drunken. Drumlie, muddy, turbid. Drummock, raw meal and cold water. Drunt, the huff. Dry, thirsty. Dub, puddle, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... They advanced in three divisions—the regulars in the centre, commanded by the gallant Lord Howe, and a blue column of provincials on either flank. To the martial music of their bands or the shrill notes of the bagpipe they gaily marched through the midsummer woods, the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... master, if you did but hear the pedlar at the door, you would never dance again after a tabor and pipe; no, the bagpipe could not move you: he sings several tunes faster than you'll tell money: he utters them as he had eaten ballads, and all men's ears grew ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... female voices, which cried the coronach, or lament for the dead, with clapping of hands and loud exclamations; while the melancholy note of a lament, appropriate to the clan Cameron, played on the bagpipe, was heard from time ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... a fiddle charms, A bagpipe 's her delight, But for the crooning o' her wheel She disna care a mite. The ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... airs of their several chiefs; the horns flourished their defiances, with the beating of innumerable drums and metal instruments, and then yielded for a while to the soft harmonious breathings of their long flutes, with which a pleasing instrument, like a bagpipe without the drone, was happily blended. At least a hundred large umbrellas or canopies, which could shelter thirty persons, were sprung up and down by the bearers with brilliant effect, being made of scarlet, yellow, and the most ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... stretched out in every direction like white ribbons. One block away the girls could see a regiment of Scotch soldiers, the famous Highland Regiment called "The Ladies From Hell," marching up to the front that night, and singing bravely as they marched, their skirling Scotch songs accompanied by a bagpipe. And even as they listened with bated breath and straining eyes the airplane dipped and dropped another bomb right into the midst of the brave men, killing thirty of them, and slid up and away before it could be stopped. These were the scenes to which ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... be heralded by the arrival, ten days before the end of Advent, of the Calabrian minstrels or pifferari with their sylvan pipes (zampogne), resembling the Scottish bagpipe, but less harsh in sound. These minstrels were to be seen in every street in Rome, playing their wild plaintive music before the shrines of the Madonna, under the traditional notion of charming away her labour-pains. Often they would stop at a carpenter's shop "per politezza al messer ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first sight. So had the child's family, which was only natural. But the doctor's case was what struck me. He was the usual cut-and-dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong Edinburgh accent, and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir, he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that Sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him. I knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing being ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... can be dignified by so large a title. He was accustomed to make the rounds of the hotels and cottages on alternate days, one day mounted on the dromedary and strumming an Oriental lute, on the others playing a Basque bagpipe while his bear danced, or proceeding with hand-organ and monkeys. He had been a soldier in the Italian colony of Massowah on the Red Sea, where he had acquired the dromedary—which was the most gigantic one I have ever seen—and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... "A bagpipe with bronchitis nothing to it," says FARQUHARSON, curling himself up with delight as he hears sounds that remind him of his mountain home. HUNTER has relentlessly pursued the unhappy LORD-ADVOCATE, and CALDWELL has thoroughly enjoyed himself. His life, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... our fathers' land, Valley and fountain! Farewell, old Scotland's strand, Forest and mountain! Then hush the drum and hush the flute, And be the stirring bagpipe mute— Such sounds may not with sorrow suit— And ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Leastways—" Billy opened his bag of provender, selected a crust, and began to munch it very deliberately. "There's a saying," he went on between mouthfuls, "about somebody or other axin' more questions in one breath than a wise man can answer in a week; and likewise, there's another saying that even a bagpipe won't speak till his belly be full. Well, now, as for coming alone, in the first place and in round numbers I didn't; and as for coming to tell you this, partly it was and partly it wasn't; and as for your going back with me, that's for you ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... upon nightfall to the fair palace, where having with the coolest of wines and confections done away the fatigues of the little journey, they presently fell to dancing about the fair fountain, carolling[363] now to the sound of Tindaro's bagpipe and anon to that of other instruments. But, after awhile, the queen bade Filomena sing a song, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... day in a manner not unpleasant to him; and I really am persuaded he has a conscience that would gild the inside of a dungeon. The feats of our bare-legged warriors in the late War [BERG-SCHOTTEN, among whom I was a Colonel], accompanied by a PIBRACH [elegiac bagpipe droning MORE SUO] in his outer room, have an effect on the old Don, which would delight you." [Keith, i. 129; "Dresden, 25th February, 1770:" to his ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Dean's Yard, Westminster, a small King's Scholar, waving his gown and yelling, collided with an old gentleman hobbling round the corner, and sat down suddenly in the gutter with a squeal, as a bagpipe collapses. The old gentleman rotated on one leg like a dervish, made an ineffectual stoop to clutch his gouty toe and wound up by bringing his rattan cane smartly down on the ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with book; (2) angel with shield bearing date 1489; (3) lion versus griffin; (4) griffin devouring human leg; (5) owl; (6) mermaid with mirror and hair-brush; (7) two pigs dancing to bagpipe played by a third; (8) Jonah thrown to the whale; (9) man wheeling another who holds a reed and a bag; (10) fox caught carrying off goose by dog and by woman with distaff; (11) winged animal; (12) hart, gorged and chained; (13) pelican feeding young; (14) Jonah emerging from ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... people; and if a woman be ever so great with child, her will they kill, burning the houses and corn, and ransacking the poor cots; then will they drive away all the kine and plough-horses, with all the other cattle. Then must they have a bagpipe blowing before them, and if any of the cattle fortune to wax weary or faint they will kill them rather than it should do the owner good; and if they go by any house of friars, or religious house, they will give them two or three beeves, and they will take them and pray for them, yea, and ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... charmer who was asleep in one corner of the tent on a pile of rugs. The man took in the situation at a glance, and came to Billy's rescue, making the snake uncoil itself by playing on a kind of bagpipe, a queer, weird, monotonous piece of music. This charmed the snake and it uncoiled itself from Billy and, swaying its body, ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... Thunder-and-Lightning told her; but on her way back with the instruments she opened the box, and lo and behold! they all flew out and about—here a flute, there a flageolet, here a pipe, there a bagpipe, making a thousand different sounds in the air, whilst Parmetella stood looking on and ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... of persons who "when the Bagpipe sings in the nose cannot contain their urine for affection," but Mr. L. carries it a step further than Shakespeare's diuretic amateurs, being notorious at school and college for his inability to contain—anything. We do not know to what "Pipe" ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... light streaming through the gothic window of Alloway kirk, and on riding near, beheld a batch of the district witches dancing merrily round their master, the devil, who kept them "louping and flinging" to the sound of a bagpipe. He knew several of the old crones, and smiled at their gambols, for they were dancing in their smocks: but one of them, and she happened to be young and rosy, had on a smock shorter than those of her companions by two spans at least, which so moved the farmer that he exclaimed, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... country," says Newte, who travelled through the district in 1791, "venerating the memory of the bard, rose with one consent, and with bagpipe music carried the sacred dust away by force, and buried it on the top of Dunmore, in the centre of his father's fort." Burns visited Ossian's grave. Writing to his brother, on his return to Edinburgh from the North, he ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... less,—now and then, it's true, roused by some momentary strain, it swelled upwards in full chorus, but gradually these passing flights grew rarer, and finally all ceased, save a long, low, droning sound, like the expiring sigh of a wearied bagpipe. His fingers still continued mechanically to beat time upon the table, and still his head nodded sympathetically to the music; his eyelids closed in sleep; and as the last verse concluded, a full-drawn snore announced that Monsoon, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... pe'brok). This is a wild, irregular species of music, peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland. It is performed on a bagpipe, and adapted to excite or assuage passion, and particularly to rouse a martial spirit among troops ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... brave attempt, I could not refrain from tears. There is a certain association of ideas in my mind upon that subject, by which I am strongly affected. The very Highland names, or the sound of a bagpipe, will stir my blood, and fill me with a mixture of melancholy and respect for courage; with pity for an unfortunate and superstitious regard for antiquity, and thoughtless inclination for war; in short, with a crowd of sensations with which sober rationality ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... plaited, and partly flowing, all of golden hue, rivalling the sun itself, and covered with garlands of jessamine, roses and woodbine. They were led up by a venerable old man and an ancient matron, to whom the occasion had given more agility than might have been expected from their years. A Zamora bagpipe regulated their motions, which being no less sprightly and graceful than their looks were modest and maidenly, more lovely dancers were never ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... rest to the industrious peasant, when the moon shall light her bright lamp in the star-spangled heavens, and shed her silvery rays across the plain, the hunter may lead forth the village belle, and foot it merrily on the mossy greensward, to the sound of the bagpipe and the rustic flute, by fountains which never cease their monotonous but soothing plaint, and under the long shadows of the ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... of the Guard alone, off to the right, seems untouched, and on it comes. Suddenly the sound of a bagpipe is heard. The Scots are awake. From the trenches an avalanche rushes forward ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... days,—first, for nine days previous to the Festa of the Madonna, which occurs on the 8th of December, and afterwards for the nine days preceding Christmas. The same words and music serve, however, for both celebrations. The pifferari always go in couples, one playing on the zampogna, or bagpipe, the bass and treble accompaniment, and the other on the piffero, or pastoral pipe, which carries the air; and for the month before Christmas the sound of their instruments resounds through the streets of Rome, wherever there is a shrine,—whether at the corners of the streets, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... on the extreme right, the most exposed of all, being in the air, was almost annihilated at the very first shock. lt was formed of the 75th regiment of Highlanders. The bagpipe-player in the centre dropped his melancholy eyes, filled with the reflections of the forests and the lakes, in profound inattention, while men were being exterminated around him, and seated on a drum, with his pibroch under his arm, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... we cautiously follow up the call (it seems to speak out of every tree-trunk!) and find the piper clinging to a twig, no salamander at all, but a tiny wood-frog. Pickering's hyla, his little bagpipe blown almost to bursting as he tries to rally the scattered summer by his tiny, mighty "skirl." Take him nose and toes, he is surely as much as an inch long; not very large to pipe against this north wind that has been turned loose in ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... they be a beastly sort, In sweate and labour hauing most chiefe comfort, On the holy day assoone as morne is past, When all men resteth while all the day doth last, They drinke, they banket, they reuell and they iest They leape, they daunce, despising ease and rest. If they once heare a bagpipe or a drone, Anone to the elme or oke they be gone. There vse they to daunce, to gambolde and to rage Such is the custome and vse of the village. When the ground resteth from rake, plough and wheles, Then moste they it trouble ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... frequently it is a mere reed from the marshes of the Terek or the Kuban. It is usually about two feet in length; has three holes for the fingers near its lower extremity, and a short mouth-piece open at the sides. With something of the monotony of the bagpipe its notes are shrill; and when on the march among the hills the war-song is executed upon it, sometimes accompanied by the lyre, no "gathering" played to the pibroch ever more stirred the mountaineer heart in ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... some friends," etc., etc. It concludes with five stanzas on himself, "the last and youngest of a noble line." There is a good deal also about his maternal ancestors, in a poem on Lachin-y-gair, a mountain where he spent part of his youth, and might have learnt that a pibroch is not a bagpipe, any more than a duet means ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... himself, "the last and youngest of a noble line." There is a good deal also about his maternal ancestors, in a poem on Lachin y Gair, a mountain where he spent part of his youth, and might have learnt that pibroch is not a bagpipe, any more than ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... where a good shower of rain has fallen, the stridulous piercing notes of the cicadae are perfectly deafening; a drab-colored cricket joins the chorus with a sharp sound, which has as little modulation as the drone of a Scottish bagpipe. I could not conceive how so small a thing could raise such a sound; it seemed to make the ground over it thrill. When cicadae, crickets, and frogs unite, their music may be heard at the distance of a ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... a flourish on that delightful sonorous instrument, the bagpipe, then loquitor, "Tak tent a' ye land louping hallions, the meickle deil tamn ye, tat are within the bounds. If any o' ye be foond fishing in ma Lort Preadalpine's gruns, he'll be first headit, and syne hangit, and syne droom't; an' if ta loon's bauld enough to come ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... or four others came to torment them with drums, whistles, and horns, and began and ended the evening's serenade to their own infinite delight and satisfaction. The native drum answers the purpose of a tambourine, and bagpipe as well, and is of peculiar formation. Its top is encircled with little brass bells, and is played upon with one hand, whilst the fingers of the other were employed at the same time in tapping on its surface. The instrument itself was held under the left arm, but instead of an outer wooden ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... and water ... and lodged in a garret exposed to the north wind.... However, this usage ... gave her a hardy constitution.... Peg had, indeed, some odd humors and comical antipathies,... she would faint at the sound of an organ, and yet dance and frisk at the noise of a bagpipe.—Dr. Arbuthnot, History of John Bull, ii. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... every lad is wondrous trim, And no man minds his labor; Our lasses have provided them A bagpipe and a tabor; Young men and maids, and girls and boys, Give life to one another's joys; And you anon shall by their noise ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... gong with a melodious sound; a clarionet played by an old and accomplished musician, rivalling in its strains that beautiful instrument the bagpipe; a man bearing a wooden painted slab on a pole, on this was an inscription; a banner looking like a composition of rags; a white flaglet; fifteen matchlockmen; fifteen bowmen; the Dompa of Roongdong; five horses and ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... guard were asleep on wooden benches, and on the platform amongst the branches, where a little baboon-looking old man, in the dress of a drummer, had perched himself, and sat playing a Biscayan air on a sort of bagpipe; others were gathered round the fire cooking their food, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... of such human creature is rapidly bleeding out of him. Depend upon it, Beelzebub, Satan, or however you may name the too authentic Genius of Eternal Death, has got that human creature in his claws. By and by you will have a dead parliamentary bagpipe, and your living man fled ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... even ostentatiously displayed and seemed to revel in he shrillness of the instrument; but in fire, speed, precision, evenness, and fluency; in linked agility of jimmy—a technical expression, by your leave, answering to warblers on the bagpipe; and perhaps, above all, in that inspiring side-glance of the eye, with which he followed the effect and (as by a human appeal) eked out the insufficiency of his performance: in these, the fellow stood without a rival. Harker listened: 'The girl I left behind ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Plagiary: Nor is it less unbecoming the Dignity and Fidelity of your Undertaking, to supply the Want of Application and Diligence, by filling up your lifeless Pages with Musical Punctations, as vile and unrelishing as ever echo'd from your own natural Bagpipe. Therefore, that you may the better be enabled these Indecencies equally to avoid, I send you the following Collectanea Nasutula: If you honour them, I shall honour your next Performance; if not, Non ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... Bagpipe comes! fall back! Soap-bubble's name he owneth. How the Schnecke-schnicke-schnack Through his snub-nose droneth! Spirit that is just shaping itself. Spider-foot, toad's-belly, too, Give the child, and winglet! 'Tis no animalcule, true, ...
— Faust • Goethe
... anti-Jacobins; every Calvinist, which seems reasonable; but then also, which is intolerable, every Arminian. Is philosophy able to account for this morbid affection, and particularly when it takes the restricted form (as sometimes it does, in the bagpipe case) of seeking furiously to kick the piper, instead of paying him? In this case, my brother was urgent with me to mount en croupe behind himself. But weak as I usually was, this proposal I resisted as an immediate suggestion of the fiend; for I had heard, and have since known proofs of it, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... ceremony used at funerals: the evening after the death of any person, the relations and friends of the deceased meet at the house, attended by bagpipe or fiddle; the nearest of kin, be it wife, son, or daughter, opens a melancholy ball, dancing and greeting; i.e. crying violently at the same time; and this continues till daylight; but with such gambols and frolicks, among the younger part of the company, that the loss ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... plays so nimbly on the kettle-drum, that he has reduced that noisy instrument to an object of sight; for, if you don't see the tricks with his hands, it is no better than ordinary: another plays on a violin and trumpet together: another mimics a bagpipe with a German flute, and makes it full as disagreeable. There is an admired dulcimer, a favourite salt-box, and a really curious jew's-harp. Two or three men intend to persuade you that they play on a broomstick, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... of Colin's bagpipe, and who, together with the Graces and their sovereign lady, vanish at the knight's approach, it is surely not fanciful to see the gracious shadows of the idyllic poet's vision trooping reluctantly away at the call of a more lofty ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... everything is just lovely for me. I have a very, very comfortable situation and Mr. Stewart is absolutely no trouble, for as soon as he has his meals he retires to his room and plays on his bagpipe, only he calls it his "bugpeep." It is "The Campbells are Coming," without variations, at intervals all day long and from seven till eleven at night. Sometimes I wish they would make ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... I have had Charles Keene (who has not been well) staying with me here for ten days. He is a very good Guest, inasmuch as he entertains himself with Books, and Birds'-nests, and an ancient Viol which he has brought down here: as also a Bagpipe (his favourite instrument), only leaving the 'Bag' behind: he having to supply its functions from his own lungs. But he will leave me to-morrow or next day; and with June will come my two Nieces from Lowestoft: ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... A bagpipe behind the curtain now began to play a familiar air, whereupon the little monster first touched his finger to his hat, then slapped his thighs with both hands, and lifted first one foot, ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... Thus, the use of the minor seventh instead of the major seventh (as in "Wha'll be King but Charlie?"), and the sudden modulation from the minor key to the major key, a whole tone below, are in exact accord with the bagpipe, and are more certain in the strathspeys, reels and dances which are universally played on that instrument; the intervals ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... was the same as the Egyptian. They had no other instrumental music but by percussion, of which the greatest boast was made of the psaltery,—a small triangular harp, or lyre, with wire strings, and struck with an iron needle or stick. Their sackbut was something like a bagpipe; the timbrel was a tambourine; and the dulcimer, a horizontal harp with wire strings, and struck with a stick like ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... she doesn't have a servant, and all the time she has a mother-in-law, who is pie crust, and Miss Lou Barbee, who's a bagpipe, and with the doors locked and windows shut so no one can see, she has worked herself to death. What I want done is to have an invitation sent her from an old friend to be the guest of the hospital here for a month, and you will be the friend and she will never know it. ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... leafless trees, on whose summits swayed the cawing rooks, until servitude seemed intolerable, and he prayed for the voice of the bearward that summoned him to Southwark. And when the chained bear, the familiar monkey on his back, followed the shrill bagpipe along the curious street, Briscoe felt that blood, not ink, coursed in his veins, forgot the tiresome impediment of the law, and joined the throng, hungry for this sport of kings. Nor was he the patron of an enterprise wherein he dared take no ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... black hair. They are simple but proud, impetuous, merry, and hospitable. The women are beautiful, skilful in performing men's work, and remarkable for their vivacity and grace. The Basques are much attached to dancing, and are very fond of the music of the bagpipe." ("New ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... a cry, not of wrath, as Kant said, nor a shout of joy, as Schwartz thought, but a snuffling, and then a long, thin, tearless a-a, with the timbre of a Scotch bagpipe, purely automatic, but of discomfort. With this monotonous and dismal cry, with its red, shriveled, parboiled skin (for the child commonly loses weight the first few days), squinting, cross-eyed, pot-bellied, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park |
