"Bairn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as if I had really been standing in the cellar of our old house. And see here, my dream has come true, and no mistake about it. A little mountain-troll dressed, in grey stood before me in my dream, and said, "Let your son, Conrad Schmidt, dig here in this corner of the cellar. He is a Sunday's bairn and will have ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... he was 'cross the foord, Whare in the snaw the chapman smoor'd; And past the birks and meikle stane, Whare drucken Charlie brak's neck bane; And thro' the whins, and by the cairn, Whare hunters fand the murder'd bairn; And near the thorn, aboon the well, Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel.— Before him Doon pours all his floods! The doubling storm roars thro' the woods; The lightnings flash from pole to pole; Near and more near the thunders roll; When glimmering thro' ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... 'Oh, such a grand bairn!' she panted out. 'The finest lad that ever breathed! But the doctor says missis must go: he says she's been in a consumption these many months. I heard him tell Mr. Hindley: and now she has nothing to keep her, and she'll be dead before winter. You ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... dryly, and said no more; for it is a characteristic of the awfu' bairn to be mute where fluency is required, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... unwilling for her son to come under Christian influence, and now she was not only present, but actually sat beside two twin-mothers. Akom's face was transfigured. Jean's adopted child, Dan, was also baptized on the occasion, and it was a great and solemn joy to Mary to see her oldest bairn give him to God, and promise to bring him up in ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... when she left that stern old man for love of Walter Home, I went, too, for love of her. Ah, dear heart! she had sore need of me in the weary wanderings which ended only when she lay down by her dead husband's side and left her bairn to me. Then I came here to cherish her among kind souls where I was born; and here she has grown up, an innocent young thing, safe from the wicked world, the comfort of my life, and the one thing I grieve at leaving when the time that is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... king and a queen. They were long married and had no bairns; but at last the queen had a bairn, when the king was away in far countries. The queen would not christen the bairn till the king came back, and she said, 'We will just call him Nicht Nought Nothing until his father comes home.' But it was long before he came home, and the boy had grown a nice little laddie. At length the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... how I made my start? Are ye thinkin', maybe, that I'd a faither to send me to college and gie me masters to teach me to sing my songs, and to play the piano? Man, ye'd be wrong, an' ye thought so! My faither deed, puir man, when I was but a bairn of eleven—he was but thirty-twa himself. And my mither was left with me and six other bairns to care for. 'Twas but little schoolin' ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... wrang, Weelum," broke in Marget, Whinnie's wife, a tall, silent woman, with a speaking face; "it's naither the ae thing nor the ither, but something I've been prayin' for since Geordie was a wee bairn. Clean yirsel and meet Domsie on the road, for nae man deserves more honour in Drumtochty, naither ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... "Ah, my bairn," replied the old woman; "I fear I'm no your friend, meikle as I love you. We speak owre, owre often o' the lost; for our foolish hearts find mair pleasure in that than in anything else; but ill does it fit us for being alone. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... was called in, and expressed herself willing to take her share—no small one—in the responsibility of this plan, if the minister would see to her "ain bairn;" that was, if the minister really thought the scheme a ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... like of a moment's illness. And for my gudesire, though he departed in fullness of life, yet there was my father, a yauld man of forty-five, fell down betwixt the stilts of his pleugh, and rase never again, and left nae bairn but me, a puir sightless, fatherless, motherless creature, could neither work nor want. Things gaed weel aneugh at first; for Sir Redwald Redgauntlet, the only son of Sir John, and the oye of auld Sir Robert, and, waes me! the last of the honourable ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... acquainted with his companion. This was Abel Sampson, commonly called, from his occupation as a pedagogue, Dominie Sampson. He was of low birth, but having evinced, even from his cradle, an uncommon seriousness of disposition, the poor parents were encouraged to hope that their bairn, as they expressed it, "might wag his pow [* ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... ammunition wagons came galloping up, the driver telling us that in passing Hell's Corner they were given an exceptionally heavy dose by Fritz. "His aim the nicht was damn puir, however," said one of the Scotch drivers; "he never gave us a scratch; but I noticed on the road a woman wi' a little bairn, a wee thing, hardly higher than your knee, and as we were racing by them, a shell exploded on the side of the road, right alongside o' them, blawin' the puir ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... James, giving way. And then she rocked backward and forward, as if to make it sleep, hushing it, and wasting on it her infinite fondness. "Wae's me, doctor! I declare she's thinkin' it's that bairn." "What bairn?" "The only bairn we ever had; our wee Mysie, and she's in the Kingdom forty years and mair." It was plainly true: the pain in the breast, telling its urgent story to a bewildered, ruined brain, was misread and mistaken; it suggested ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.
... she would lie down an' fill her forward deck green, an' snore away into a twenty-knot gale forty-five to the minute, three an' a half knots an hour, the engines runnin' sweet an' true as a bairn breathin' in its sleep. Bell was skipper; an' forbye there's no love lost between crews an' owners, we were fond o' the auld Blind Deevil an' his dog, an' I'm thinkin' he liked us. He was worth the windy ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... before him," said Janet Mackay. "They used to live around the corner from me in Aberdeen. I can remember Charlie as a bairn, and even then he was always into mischief. He's no whit ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... knees, wept violently as she returned thanks for such a wonderful deliverance; but her thoughts were bewildered, and, fancying that her child was lost, she struck her hands together, and leaping again on her feet, screamed out, "Oh! where's my bairn—my wee bairn?" ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... gaed weel till their bairn was born, And syne she cudna sleep; She wud rise at midnicht, and wan'er till morn, Hark-harkin ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... a bairn a brute; there's but ae brute here, an' it's no you, Jamie, nor me—is it, ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... man started and moved towards her, eagerly, his keen eyes breaking through the film that at times obscured them. "'Merrikan! tha baist 'Merrikan? Then tha knaws ma son John, 'ee war nowt but a bairn when brether Dick took un to 'Merriky! Naw! Now! that wor fifty years sen!—niver wroate to his old feyther—niver coomed back, 'Ee wor tall-loike, an' thea said 'e feavored mea." He stopped, threw up his head, and with his skinny fingers drew back his long, straggling locks from his sunken ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... Give me a little time, miss. Oh, please, my wee bairn. I have an old handloom of my grandfather's; and I can go and hurry and fetch all the stuff up here somehow and I'll work as fast as I can. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... taen and hangit, mither, a brittling o' my deer, Ye'll no leave your bairn to the corbie craws, to dangle in the air; But ye'll send up my twa douce brethren, and ye'll steal me frae the tree, And bury me up on the brown brown muirs, where I aye ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... notion that he will be the more or the less likely to do so when he learns that there's a French gentleman of your make in the country-side, and a friend of Doom's, too, which means a Jacobite? A daft errand, if I may say it; seeking a needle in a haystack was bairn's play compared ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... [out of her senses]. What for wad I be sleepin' in the afternune? An' me wi' the care o' yer gran'faither—sic a handling, him nae better nor a bairn, an' you a bit feckless hempie wi' yer hair fleeing like the tail o' a twa- year-auld cowt! [colt]. Sleepin' indeed! ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... the fire, or at times a sleep between the blankets. But once, when he was going back in the dawn, two of the English soldiers got a glimpse of him as he was slipping into the wood and banged off a gun at him. I was out on them like a hawk, crying if they wanted to murder a poor woman's innocent bairn! Whereupon they swore down my throat that they had seen 'the auld rebel himself,' as they called the Baron. But my Davie, that some folk take for a simpleton, being in the wood, caught up the old grey cloak that his Honour had ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... na wise-like. But after a' ye're ony a bairn. Here, Tam, ye'd better gang up by the Stank burn an' keep a look-oot ower the hills, an' ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... oot o' the way," cried ancient Nanny, now as wide-awake as ever; "Master Robin Cockscroft gie ma t' bairn, an' nawbody sall hev him but ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... her gray-headed faither, "She's less o' a bride than a bairn; She's ta'en like a cout frae the heather, Wi' sense and discretion to learn. Half husband, I trow, and half daddy, As humor inconstantly leans, The chiel maun be patient and steady That yokes wi' a mate ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Beowulf, bairn of the Scyldings, Beloved land-prince, for long-lasting season Was famed mid the folk (his father departed, The prince from his dwelling), till afterward sprang 5 Great-minded Healfdene; the Danes in his lifetime He graciously ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... what you was greeting at—at your ain ignorance, nae doubt—'tis very great! Weel, I will na fash you with reproaches, but even enlighten ye, since you seem a decent man's bairn, and you speir a civil question. Yon river is called the Tweed; and yonder, over the brig, is Scotland. Did ye never hear of the Tweed, my ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... that he's sae far awa', and canna do't himsel. My bonnie bairn! Ye're come into the warld without a ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... it; you don't understand, my bairn; and I don't rightly understand it myself. It's their house—something about a mortgage—now the poor Laird's gone, and they only waited until he was under the ground to come tearing up from London ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... shocked, but the thought of any one trying to rule you, Kit, tickles me immensely. I have had the reins since you were a bairn, and you have been a handful. You were a 'smatchit' at six years old, and a 'trimmie' at twelve, and you are qualifying for the ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... ready to go, but he turned round at the door, and says he, "Is Poppy awake?" "No, the bairn was fast asleep when I came down," says I. He put down his breakfast-tin by the door, and he crept upstairs, and I could hear his steps in the room overhead, and then, Poppy, I listened at the foot of the stairs, and I heard him give you a kiss. ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... speeak, an' t' Colonel's Laady set more store by him than if he hed been a Christian. She hed bairns of her awn, but they was i' England, and Rip seemed to get all t' coodlin' and pettin' as belonged to a bairn by good right. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... a woeful way," mourned Janet. "To think of your father's only bairn leaving her ain house so! The master's half daft with his troubles, for they've scattered and lost the bit ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... follower, "except that I met ane very honest, fair-spoken, weel-put-on gentleman, or rather burgher, as I think, that was in the whigmaleery man's back-shop; and when he learned wha I was, behold he was a kindly Scot himsell, and, what is more, a town's-bairn o' the gude town, and he behoved to compel me to take this Portugal piece, to drink, forsooth—my certie, thought I, we ken better, for we will eat it—and he spoke of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... very well like the look o' the bairn," she said, surveying him carefully. "It strikes me you won't find it an easy matter to get him dressed. Here, Duncan, are you ready for something to eat now?" she cried, bending over him, ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... quiet. I'm no a bairn, to be hectored o'er in this way. Say what I must do and I'll do it—anything in reason—only Helen. I'll no hae her leave the Keep; that's as sure as deathe. Sit down, Helen. Send a' the wine and dainties you like to, but don't you stir a foot ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and the men came back well drenched by their second trip. The whole thing was done with perfect simplicity; and the fishermen would not accept even a glass of ale from the boy's father. They said "they were glad to see the bairn so pleased," and they tease the said "bairn" about his skill in navigation even to this day. When we see kindness like this we may be content to do without ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... some one nearer him in years long syne," said she. "You forget I was but a bairn when we romped in the hay-dash." And we buckled to the crack again, I more keen on it than ever. She was a most marvellous fine girl, and I thought her (well I mind me now) like the blue harebell that nods ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Jen, "that was for the boy bairn. He has not been brought up like the rest of us, and he does not like warm ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... naething kept frae ye; if ye hadna been a perfect bairn in a'thing, ye wad hae seen through a'thing. That was why a' the folks—yer grand freen's, I mean—were sae angry because ye had Liz here. But I believed in her mysel' up till she ran awa'. Although a lassie's led awa' she's no' aye lost; but I doot, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... ye's gang," said the elder dame, laughing and holding him fast, with a freedom which belonged to their old acquaintance; "wha kens what ill it may bring to the bairn, if ye owerlook it in ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the sergeant exclaimed; "you will be coming and telling me next that you are going to marry a princess of the blood. Did one ever hear of such things! However, Hector, lad, I congratulate you with all my heart, and I am as glad as if it had been a bairn of my own that had had your good fortune. Now, in what can I help you about the four men? What sort ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... artless heart o'erflows wi' joy, But blate[15] and laithfu',[16] scarce can weel behave; The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy What makes the youth sae bashfu' an' sae grave; Weel pleased to think her bairn's respected like ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... and is in the African trade. I may say that they are all honest, pious men, without wishing to be martyrs for honesty and piety, which, indeed, in these days is mercifully not called for. As for Neil, he's our last bairn; and his mother and I would fain keep him near us. Katherine would be a welcome daughter to our auld age, and weel loved, and much made o'; and I hope baith Madam Van Heemskirk and yoursel' ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... might lull the bairn to sleep, And tell the meaning in a mother's eyes; Might counsel love, and teach their eyes to weep Who, o'er their dead, question unanswering skies, More worth than legions in the dust of strife, Time, looking back at last, ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... and said far worse than that; a perfect guller of clarty language came pouring out of her. He had heard women curse many a time without turning a hair, but he felt wae when she did it, for she just spoke it like a bairn that had been in ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... I wished myself younger, for she was not long beyond her teens, and walking beside her I would be feeling musty and old, though I was not really old, as my picture there above the chimneypiece will show. I was not old, in heart—it pattered like a bairn's steps to every glimpse and sentence of her. I lost six months at this game, my corps calling me, but I could not drag myself away. Once I spoke of going, and she sang 'The Rover'—by God! it scaled me to her footsteps. I stayed for very pity of myself, seeing myself a rover indeed if I went, ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... went towards her gingerly, being surprised and irresolute, so that to a spectator her beckoning finger seemed to be pulling him across the floor with a gut-line. When he had got up to her, "Hold the child," said she, in a fine hearty voice; and in a moment she plumped the bairn into Gerard's arms. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... there was whose presence and whose playful ways never seemed to vex him, and that was his pet bairn, Nannie, his wee lammie, as he often ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... Ay, take your travellers, travellers indeed! Give me my bonny Scot, that travels from the Tweed. Where are the chiels? Ah! Ah, I well discern The smiling looks of each bewitching bairn. 40 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... faring fine and free, There's the little lad I laid by the holly tree, Dreaming: There's my nameless bairn laughing at her knee. ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... sir—our ain bairn,' answered the old lady. 'For many a weary week have we been looking for him, and never have our eyes rested on his bonnie face since the black day, near five long years ago, when he was carried away from us. Ah! it was a ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... came not like the Baptist; He came eating and drinking; yea, He went unto the marriage of Cana in Galilee, and He blessed little children and said, 'For of such is the Kingdom of God.' Thou knowest, Lord, that I have loved Thy children, and when a bairn has smiled in my face as I baptized it into Thy name, that I have longed for one that would call me father. When I have seen a man and his wife together by the fireside, and I have gone out to my hiding-place on the moor, like a wild beast to its den, I confess, oh, Lord, I have watched that square ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... elected president, and went to New York to live. The Scotch maid who took care of little Washington Irving made up her mind to introduce the boy to his great namesake. So one day she followed the general into a shop, and, pointing to the lad, said, "Please, your honor, here's a bairn was named after you." Washington turned around, smiled, and placing his hand on the boy's head, gave him his blessing. Little did General Washington suspect that in later years this boy, grown to manhood and become famous, would ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... loe the maist O' ony, sin' wi' eager haste I smacket bairn-lips ower the taste O' hinnied sang, I hail thee, though a ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... you ever hear the likes! Hungry! And the bairn swallowing down turkey until I expected every second he ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... off my face as I ran; but I ran on crying to think how my poor little darling must be perished and frightened. I was within sight of the holly-trees, when I saw a shepherd coming down the hill, bearing something in his arms wrapped in his maud. He shouted to me, and asked me if I had lost a bairn; and, when I could not speak for crying, he bore towards me, and I saw my wee bairnie, lying still, and white, and stiff in his arms, as if she had been dead. He told me he had been up the Fells to gather in his sheep, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... as well, rode forth with their friends to where they had hope of joys. Later it sped them all to their great harm. They left Siegfried's little child, Kriemhild's son, at home. That must needs be. Great grief befell him through their journey to the court. The bairn never saw his father and his mother more. With them, too, there rode Lord Siegmund. Had he known aright how he would fare at the feasting, no whit of it would he have seen. No greater woe might ever hap to him in ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... wonder," came a voice from below; "'tis not a day fit for man or dog to be out a minute longer than necessary. Bring the bairn in, Charley." The invitation came from a kindly and portly dame, the hostess, who had come to the door to welcome such passengers as might be disposed to put up for the night ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... big ones, and it came right through the wire on top of him." The gruff voice was soft. "Poor bairn!" ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... add one more item from the novel, as it aptly shows what advantage is sometimes to be gained by tracing the Poet in his reading. In the play, the Shepherd on finding the babe is made to exclaim, "What have we here? Mercy on 's, a bairn; a very pretty bairn! a boy, or a child, I wonder?" For some hundred years, editorial ingenuity has been strained to the utmost to explain why child should be thus used in opposition to boy; and nothing would ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the weak little body, lying stark and still under an overhanging rock, and half buried in the heather. Moss was clutched in her clenched hand, and shreds of moss were on her cold lips; the poor little bairn had hungered for food, and had seized that which first came to hand to satisfy her craving. She was ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... but the never a word more was said for ten minutes, they were so intent on getting the bairn all right—for ye ken, sir, it was a new-born babe they were busy with: they were as silent as the grave; and indeed everything was so still, that I heard their breathing like a rushing of wind, though they breathed just as they were wont to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... mischievously crushed his companion against the wall in mock virtuous indignation. "Eh, sir," he whispered, with an accent that broadened with his feelings. "Eh, but look at the puir wee lassie! Will ye no be ashamed o' yerself for putting the tricks of a Circe on sic a honest gentle bairn? Why, man, you'll be seein' the sign of a limb of Satan in a bit thing with the mother's milk not yet out of her! She a flirt, speerin' at men, with that modest downcast air? I'm ashamed of ye, Mister Raymond. She's only ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... can die easy if thou'lt take charge of him. But he's hardly like other folk; he tries father at times, though I think father'll be tender of him when I'm gone, for my sake. And, Susan, there's one thing more. I never spoke on it for fear of the bairn being called a tell-tale, but I just comforted him up. He vexes Michael at times, and Michael has struck him before now. I did not want to make a stir; but he's not strong, and a word from thee, Susan, will go ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... says ye're sure of it," replied her mother. "He says ye've the best school a'ready in all his circuit. I don't know how ever ye come to't so quick, child." And Isabella McDonald smiled wistfully, spite of all her pride in her clever bairn. ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... child. I dunna know as she can get in along of her weakness." But Carry was not so tired as that. She had been in and out of that window scores of times; and now, when she heard that the permission was accorded to her, she was not long before she was in her mother's arms. "My own Carry, my own bairn;—my girl, my darling." And the poor mother satisfied the longings of her heart ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... aye leal and true, Jean; Your task's ended noo, Jean, And I'll welcome you To the land o' the leal. Our bonnie bairn 's there, Jean, She was baith guid and fair, Jean: O, we grudged her right sair To ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... the middle, his plight drawing from him of course his favourite ejaculation of amazement. By the assistance of some women the luckless Dominie was extracted from his position, justifying the remark of one of his assistants, that "the laird might as weel trust the care of his bairn to a potato-bogle." Which was the most helpless of the two men—the Laird of Dumbiedikes, or the illustrious Dominie—it would be difficult to say; both these most original characters took a powerful hold on the artist's imagination, and as a natural consequence the ideas of Scott ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... a woman yet; she's just a wee bit bairn; but as soon as she begins to sigh for joes and bawbees she'll be just like the rest. They're all of them elemental things," he said with conviction, "and ye can't change their natures any more than ye ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... "Thou! thou her bairn! God bless you, lad," said an old woman, pushing through the crowd. "It was but last night she kept my child quiet with singing psalms the night through. Low and sweet, low and sweet, they tell me—till many poor ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that it would not be natural for two children who had been rendered orphans by the same dreadful calamity to be separated. The poor creature's face was streaming with tears when she at last consented. 'It's no for the sake o' the money I pairt wi' the bairn. It's little he costs me, an' my own children will be sore at heart for many a lang day after he goes!'.. But she recognised that it would be wrong of her to refuse—and so the matter ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... bairn!" cried she, and the poor little fellow smiled, and tried to raise himself ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... at rest. Master Tommy Murphy (such was his name) soon stopped crying, and allowed me to take him up and carry him; and the mechanic and I trudged away along Princes Street to find his parents. I was soon so tired that I had to ask the mechanic to carry the bairn; and you should have seen the puzzled contempt with which he looked at me, for knocking in so soon. He was a good fellow, however, although very impracticable and sentimental; and he soon bethought him that Master Murphy might catch cold after his excitement, so we wrapped him up in my greatcoat. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... service she was but a bairn, and had never even heard of ghosts; nor did the other servants apprise her of the hauntings, having received strict injunctions not to do so from ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... was gie'n To reach my bairn's abode, But heaven micht blast a mither's een And her feet wad ...
— Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus • Violet Jacob
... inheritance all in the future, I trust?" said my old friend. "There's crumbs to be gotten even now from that feast; ye didn't go starving, my bairn?" ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... you're peevish. Here, Fraser, give him your hanger. Do you second the bairn, Donald? Come, Patrick, I'll have you. There's one for you and one for me, my man, ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... he said, and taking Elizabeth's hand he led her up to where the MacAllisters were climbing into their buggy. He leaned over and talked in a low tone to Mr. MacAllister and they both laughed, and the latter called, "Hey, hey, Lizzie, come awa', bairn, and jump in!" And Mother MacAllister said, as her arms went around her, "Hoots, toots, and did the lamb do it to save the little dog?" And Charles Stuart looked at her with undisguised admiration in his ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... she, and her sorrow away, The wife of her Jamie, the tear couldna stay; A bonnie wee bairn—the auld folks by the fire— Oh, now she has a' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... again without being asked." Then the kind, fat old woman had caught Mary in her arms and carried her upstairs, a thing that had not happened for years. And in the nursery the good creature had cried over the "poor bairn" a good deal, mumbling strange things which Mary could not understand. But a few words had lingered in her memory, something about its being cruel and unjust to visit the sins of others on innocent babies. A few days afterward Mary's father, very thin and strange-looking, with hard lines in his ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... "Ye should go, bairn, they're a fine key. Clever as the devil, but naething true about them. After the Danae-piff!" and he snapped his fingers. "Ye hae no call to worry, you're the hub, Mary—let the wheel ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... think, havin' seen the leddy and glowerin' at her as I did; but not one thocht but o' love could rise in my breast for her. I'd gie a guid deal for her to teach me, that I would. I wouldna sit down and greet like a bairn.' ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... when you were a bairn, Thora. A ship was wrecked here on the Gaulton rocks, and all your family were aboard. Your mother and Tom were picked up by the Curlew, but Carver and you werena found for some days after the wreck. My father found you both in a cave, down in the cliff, and ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... continued Sandy, "I wadna gie muckle for the waggon. It'll come rowin' an' stottin' doon the hill like a bairn's ba'." ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... was a bairn, she was the maist ugsome wee thing I ever clappit an e'e upon. My Leddy W. lodged in this verra room, in the which we are no' sittin'. She had a daughter nearly a woman grown, an' I was in my sma' back parlour washin' an' dressin' ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... mother of the Douglases sank on the ground in the dusk, leaning against the wall of her house. She held her face in her hands and sobbed aloud, "O Willie, Willie Douglas, mair than ony o' my ain I loed ye. Bonny were ye as a bairn. Bonny were ye as a laddie. Bonny abune a' as a noble young man and the desire o' maidens' e'en. But nane o' them a' loed ye like poor auld Barbara, that wad hae gien her life to pleasure ye. And noo she canna even steek thae ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... take the bairn's money!" Andrew exclaimed angrily. "What do you take me for, Malcolm? Assuredly I will take the child. Janet and I have no bairn of our own, and it's good for a house to have a child in it. I look upon it as if it were yours, for it is like enough you will never hear of its ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... "Ysobel, my bairn, what I knew was that he had not gone far from the body that had held him when he fell. Perhaps he had felt lost for a bit when he found himself out of it. But soon he had begun to call to her that was like his own heart to him. And she had heard. And then, being half away from earth herself, ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... exclaimed the grand-dame; "na, na—bless thee frae scathe, my bairn, it's been nae Peght that—it's been the Brown Man of the Moors! O weary fa' thae evil days!—what can evil beings be coming for to distract a poor country, now it's peacefully settled, and living in love and law—O weary on him! he ne'er brought gude to these lands or the indwellers. ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... bairn, dinna leave me, to gang far away, O bairn, dinna leave me, ye're a' that I hae, Think on a mither, the wind and the wave, A mither set on ye, her feet ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... wanting me,' and away he fled up the chimney, leaving the tailor more dead than alive." In the neighbouring county of Dumfries the story is told with more gusto. The gudewife goes to the hump-backed tailor, and says: "Wullie, I maun awa' to Dunse about my wab, and I dinna ken what to do wi' the bairn till I come back: ye ken it's but a whingin', screechin', skirlin' wallidreg—but we maun bear wi' dispensations. I wad wuss ye,' quoth she, 'to tak tent till't till I come hame—ye sall hae a roosin' ingle, and a blast o' the goodman's tobacco-pipe ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... loss it wad be tiv us. But," said he, "to tell the truth, aa hev been for prayin' mesel ever since the bairn tuck bad, but then aa thowt it was cowardly to ask help when aa was in difficulties and nivvor at ony other time. ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... good. Nay, nay, wench! keep your white looks for the time when it comes—I don't say it ever will. But this I know, Norah will spare the child and cheat the doctor if she can. Now, I say, give the bairn a year or two's chance, and then, when the pack of doctors have done their best—and, maybe, the old lady has gone—we'll have Norah back, or do better ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... bairn to its mither, A wee birdie to its nest, I fain would be gangin' noo Unto my Faether's breast; For He gathers in His arms Helpless, worthless lambs like me, An' carries them ...
— The Birds' Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Doctor poured forth so rapidly that Nora could not get in a word edgewise. When at length she found space to utter a reply, she cried out, "Oh, Doctor, never mind me, but take pity on this bairn! It's in an ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... loving and giving," says the old rhyme that sets forth the special qualities of the children born on each day of the week, and to the superstitious who regard Friday as a day of evil omen, it seems strange that Friday's bairn should be so blessed. But they forget that before Christianity swept paganism before it, and taught those who worshipped the northern gods the story of that first black "Good Friday," the tragedy in which all humanity was involved, Friday was the day of Freya, ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... "Sleep, pretty bairn, and never know Who grudged and who transgressed: Thee to retain I was full fain, But God, He knoweth best! And His peace upon thy brow lies plain As the ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... was a butcher, in reference to the baptism of his child, found him so deficient in what he considered the needful theological knowledge, that he said to him, "Ah, Sandy, I doubt ye're no fit to haud up the bairn." Sandy, conceiving that reference was made not to spiritual but to physical incapacity, answered indignantly, "Hout, minister, I could haud him up an he were a twa-year-auld stirk[23]." A late humorous old minister, near Peebles, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... who was its father, for Groa was no man's wife. It was women's talk that Asmund the Priest was the father of this child also; but when he heard it he was angry, and said that no witchwoman should bear a bairn of his, howsoever fair she was. Nevertheless, it was still said that the child was his, and it is certain that he loved it as a man loves his own; but of all things, this is the hardest to know. When Groa was questioned she laughed ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... N. infant, babe, baby, babe in arms; nurseling, suckling, yearling, weanling; papoose, bambino; kid; vagitus. child, bairn [Scot.], little one, brat, chit, pickaninny, urchin; bantling, bratling^; elf. youth, boy, lad, stripling, youngster, youngun, younker^, callant^, whipster^, whippersnapper, whiffet [U.S.], schoolboy, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the words escaped from the woman as if involuntarily. She even drew a quick breath. "He's a strong feeling bairn—strong!" ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... whan a body's no ready for 't, would be the warst to gie him—or ony gait no the thing for the Father o' lichts to gie. Shortbreid micht be waur for a half hungert bairn nor a stane. But the minute it's fit we should look upo' the face o' the Son o' Man, oor ain God-born brither, we'll see him, Dawtie; we'll see him. Hert canna think what it'll be like. ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... ma'am, my leddy; what must be, must, but I know how it will be—you'll come back tired out, fit to drop, and Miss Val and Miss Primrose won't have a rag fit to be seen on them. But if it's your will, what must be must, for you're no better than a bairn yourself, general's lady ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Our bonnie bairn's there, John, She was baith gude and fair, John, And we grudged her sair, John, To the land ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.
... "My poor bereaved bairn!" she at length exclaimed; and she took her daughter in her arms and kissed her—"ye hae indeed cause to mourn, for Florence was a noble lad!—but, oh, dinna say it was my doing, hinny!—dinna wyte yer mother!—will ye no, Janet? It is a great ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... black-fishing, or some siccan ploy—for the neb o' them's never out o' mischief—and they just got a glisk o' his Honour as he gaed into the wood, and banged aff a gun at him. I out like a jer-falcon, and cried—"Wad they shoot an honest woman's poor innocent bairn?" And I fleyt at them, and threepit it was my son; and they damned and swuir at me that it was the auld rebel, as the villains ca'd his Honour; and Davie was in the wood, and heard the tuilzie, and he, just out o' his ain head, got up the auld grey mantle that his Honour had flung off him ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Black be its fall! If ye see the laird, tell him what ye hear; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and nineteen time that Jennet Clouston has called down the curse on him and his house, byre and stable, man, guest, and master, wife, miss, or bairn—black, black be their fall!" ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the fourteenth of next July. But she's not a woman to me, and she never will be. She's my wee bairn that I took from her mother's dyin' arms and nursed at my own breast, and she'll be that wee bairn to me as long as I live. Ye'll be up to ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Private. Yon news coom quick. Now when I were a bairn, that's forty year sin', We heard i' York 'at Merriky refused To pay the taxes, just three munth's arter; An' that wur bonnie toime, fur then t'coaach Tuk but foive daaies ti mak' t' hull waai' doon, Two hunner ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... minutes I knocked again. A boy of my own age opened the door. An old woman came towards me and asked what I wanted. I am cold, I said, and, please, might I warm myself? She was deaf and did not catch what I said. 'Whose bairn are you?' she asked me. Mary Askew's, I replied, I noticed the younger woman who had the child in her lap fixed her gaze on me. Where are you from? grannie asked. From Glasgow and I am so cold. Laying down the child in the cradle, the younger woman came to me and sitting on a stool ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... unyoked the horses and got astride, and when we came to the gate there was the bonny spaewife carrying a bairn in a tartan shawl. Dan drew up, and I also; so there we stood, the horses in an impatient semi-circle on the road, Dan and I on horseback, and the woman ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... Beal, to bellow.—Th' bairn be{a}led oot that bad, I was cl{e}an scar'd, but it was at noht bud a battle-twig 'at hed crohl{e}d up'n hisairm. (Battle-twig, ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... me, to gang far away, O bairn, dinna leave me, ye're a' that I hae, Think on a mither, the wind and the wave, A mither set on ye, her feet ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... la-amb," she protested, dwelling on the vowels in fatuous, maternal love; "the bairn's wearied, man! He's ainything but strong, and the schooling's owre sore ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... and regardless of my resistance one motherly body after another seized me, kissing my cheeks roundly, straining me to her bosom, and calling me her "brave lad!" or her "bonny bairn!" ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... the clan, dear bairn," smiled Mrs. Cameron. "No other visitor keeps us alive like ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... very pretty bairn! A boy or a child, I wonder? A pretty one; a very pretty one: sure, some scape: though I am not bookish, yet I can read waiting-gentlewoman in the scape. This has been some stair-work, some trunk-work, some behind-door-work; they were ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... is a motherless bairn who would like you to be nursey to her," said Annie, seating herself on a low hassock at the old woman's feet and ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... he was 'cross the foord, Whare in the snow the chapman smoored, {149b} And past the birks and meikle stane Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane: And through the whins, and by the cairn Whare hunters fand the murdered bairn; And near the thorn, aboon the well, Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel'. Before him Doon pours a' his floods; The doubling storm roars through the woods; The lightnings flash frae pole to pole; Near and more near the thunders roll; When glimmering through ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... my mother's white brocade that she first donned when she became a Leslie, sib to Rothes—no a bit housewife of a south-country laird. She was a noble woman, and you're but a heather lintie of a lass to come of a good kind. So God bless you, bairn; ye'll tak the blast of ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... lonely Yorkshire villages that until recent times a mother would carry her child suffering from whooping-cough along the beach to the mouth of the cave. There she would call in a loud voice, 'Hob-hole Hob! my bairn's getten t'kink cough. ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... dead corpses. And 4thly, A stone cut out of the mountain would come down, and God would be avenged on the great ones of the earth, and the inhabitants of the land for their wickedness; and then the church would come forth with a bonny bairn-time at her back of young ones; and he wished that the Lord's people might be hid in their caves as if they were not in the world, for nothing would do until God appeared with his judgments, &c.; and withal gave them ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the general (he was general now) got into great passions with them, and stormed, and swore, and drove them all away. Nurse Mackie grew to be old, and sometimes asked her, "Can you keep a secret, child?—no, no, I dare not trust you yet: wait a wee, wait a wee, my bonnie, bonnie bairn." ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... bairn, when ye hae won the croun, use it na' at all, though a' the fiends fra' hell tempted ye, but carry it to the kirkyard at mirk midnight; an' when ye hae cannily lichted a bit bleeze, burn the king's croun, an' say wha' I shall tell ye. "I ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... enlarged; he mistook the cravings of want for spiritual illumination, and so perplexed his mind by reading the scurrilous libels of the day, as to be firmly persuaded that the King was the Devil's bairn, and Archbishop Laud the personal antichrist. A description of church ceremonies thrilled him with horror, and in every prosecution of a contumacious minister his ardent fancy saw a revival of the flames of Smithfield, while his confused notions of right and justice ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... weel-used to the walkin' and my hert was sair for the auld body. Now that he had gotten deliverance from his affliction, it was for me to leave him in the place he wantit. Forbye, he wasna muckle heavier than a bairn. ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... and, forgetting the many eyes that watched us, and the fact that I was eleven years old, and almost a man, I threw my arms round his neck and kissed him again and again, sobbing and greeting as any bairn might ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... the bairn, it's weel kenn'd she was born on Hallowe'en, and they that are born on Hallowe'en whiles see ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... thought of lunch; but still a weight lay on me like a crime on conscience. But by the next dawning I judged 't was best that I should gather courage and settle things as they were to be. Margray's grounds joined our own, and I snatched up the babe, a great white Scotch bairn, and went along with him in my arms under the dripping orchard-boughs, where still the soft glooms lingered in the early morn. And just ere I reached the wicket, a heavy step on the garden-walk beyond made my heart plunge, and I came face to face with my mother. My tongue clove ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... first President was again in New York, the first seat of the new government, a Scotch maid-servant of the family, catching the popular enthusiasm, one day followed the hero into a shop and presented the lad to him. "Please, your honor," said Lizzie, all aglow, "here's a bairn was named after you." And the grave Virginian placed his hand on the boy's head and gave him his blessing. The touch could not have been more efficacious, though it might have lingered longer, if he had known he was propitiating his ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... look me out some cunning nurse; Well nurtur'd let him be: Nor aught be wanting that becomes A bairn of ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... a bairn to Mr. Napier!" cried the offended client. "Wha ever said I was the mother ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... 'Hout, ye silly bairn!' said the father, 'dinna do it nae mair, and come in by to your supper.' And he took the boy, and drew him close to him a moment, as they went through the door, with something very fond and secret, like a caress between a pair ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she said, with a twitching mouth and filmy eyes. "Let her alane. Let my bairn pray ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... to be a great comfort and blessing to the parents who have done me the honour to call their firstborn for me," returned the old gentleman, a gleam of pleasure lighting up his face. "I want to see the bit bairn myself when the mother is well enough to enjoy a call from her auld kinsman. And how soon do you think that may be, doctor?" ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... Janet M'Clour was to be servant at the manse, the folk were fair mad wi' her an' him thegether; and some o' the guidwives had nae better to dae than get round her door cheeks and chairge her wi' a' that was ken't again her, frae the sodger's bairn to John Tamson's twa kye. She was nae great speaker; folk usually let her gang her ain gate, an' she let them gang theirs, wi', neither Fair-guid- een nor Fair-guid-day; but when she buckled to, she had a tongue to deave the miller. Up she ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to pity me. "Kenneth, bairn, but you're an awfu' ignoramus. You ken naething ava about the lassies. I'm wondering what they learnt you at Oxford. Gin it's the same to you we'll talk of something mair within your comprehension." And thereupon he diverted ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... with love on him, and without more ado fell to telling everything she might think of, concerning her days in the House of Captivity, both when she was but a bairn, and when she was grown to be a young woman; and long was she about the tale, nor was it all done in one day; and a multitude of things she told him which are not ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... stresses is used. Wherever possible, the Old English syntax has been preserved (see line 1242); the word-order of the original is retained. The archaic language is wrought of several different kinds of words. In the first place, there is the 'legitimate archaism,' such as 'mickle,' 'burg,' 'bairn'; there are forms which are more closely associated with the translation of Old English, such as 'middle-garth,' 'ring-stem.' There are modern words used with the old signification, such as 'kindly' (in the sense 'of the same kind'), 'won war' (in the sense 'wage war'), 'fret' (in the sense ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... announced that there would be no more schooling till it was fresh, "as she wasna comin';" and indeed, though the smoke from the farm chimneys is a pretty prospect for a snowed-up school-master, the trudge between the two houses must be weary work for a bairn. As for the other children, who have to come from all parts of the hills and glen, I may not see them for weeks. Last year the school was practically deserted for a month. A pleasant outlook, with the March examinations staring me in the face, and an inspector fresh from Oxford. I wonder ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... replied Grizzie, "it's naething but the guidman's milk; an' gien ye dinna ken what's guid for ye at your time o' life, it's weel there sud be anither 'at does. What has a man o' your 'ears to du drinkin' soor milk—eneuch to turn a' soor thegither i' the inside o' ye! It's true I win' ye weel a sma' bairn i' ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... proper time, Dagworthy cared to inquire into nothing that went on—outside his kennels—and even those he visited in a sullen way. His child he scarcely saw; Mrs. Jenkins discovered that to bring the 'bairn' into its father's presence was a sure occasion of wrath, so the son and heir took lessons in his native tongue from the housekeeper and her dependents, and profited by their instruction. Dagworthy never inquired about the boy's health. Once when Mrs. Jenkins, alarmed by certain symptoms ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... "'er nainsell did take ten Southron loons wi' 'er own hant, wi' nobody to help 'er, an' now one callant had dinged 'er clean senseless wi' nothin' but a bairn's nief." ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough |
