"Ballad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Medsger, the naturalist of Lincoln High School, Jersey City, N. J., for reading with critical care those parts of the manuscript that deal with flowers and insects, as well as for the ballad of the Ox-eye, the story of its coming to America, and ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... Colonel had been singing his ballad there had come into the room a gentleman, by name Captain Costigan, who was in his usual condition at this hour of the night. Holding on by various tables, he had sidled up without accident to himself or any of the jugs and glasses ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the drama. The stage was a new thing; and those who had to supply its demands laid their hands upon whatever came within their reach: they were not particular as to the means, so that they gained the end. Lear is founded upon an old ballad; Othello on an Italian novel; Hamlet on a Danish, and Macbeth on a Scotch tradition: one of which is to be found in Saxo-Grammaticus, and the last in Hollingshed. The Ghost-scenes and the Witches in each, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... relating to the yeomanry the most important was the "Pleasant Historic of Thomas of Reading; or, The Sixe Worthie Yeomen of the West," by Thomas Deloney, a famous ballad-maker of the 16th century. It is the narrative of the life and fortunes of a worthy clothier of Henry the First's time, telling how he rose to wealth and prosperity, and was finally murdered by an innkeeper. There is interwoven a relation ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... issued at the rate of three each month,—a story, a ballad, and a Sunday tract. They were collected and published in one volume in 1795. It is said that two million copies were sold the first year. There were also editions in 1798, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Through the Looking Glass ballad singer for shaking conversation out of people, tho somewhat too strenuous, is less fatiguing than Sherlock Holmes's inductive methods. Like Sherlock without his excuse, the kind and generous must confess to ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... is more generally known through the medium of the novel, the opera, and the print-shop than by the pages of history. Procopius, Gibbon, and Lord Mahon have done less for his universal popularity than some unknown Greek romancer or ballad-singer in the middle ages. Our ideas of the hero are involuntarily connected with the figure of a tall old man, clad in a ragged mantle, with a stout staff in his left hand, and a platter to receive an obolus in his right, accompanied by a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... apprentice before marriage), though of a high order, and exerted to the utmost, failed to please. Miss Pillbody's thorough knowledge of French, and the higher branches of an elegant education, as well as her proficiency on the piano, and her sweet, simple style of ballad singing, were worse than useless acquirements in ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... the task of seeking him. In fact, if he had not committed the murder at Towcester, I am convinced that the public would have elevated him to the position of a great popular hero. Even as it was, he had no lack of apologists; and an eminent ballad-monger celebrated his exploits in some verses, which were immensely applauded when recited by long-haired enthusiasts at smoking concerts and similar gatherings. All this was gall to Forrest; and at last one day, three ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... several weeks with even increased violence. The proprietors now sent in hired bruisers, to MILL the refractory into subjection. This irritated most of their former friends, and, amongst the root, the annotator, who accordingly wrote the song of "Heigh-ho, says Kemble," which was caught up by the ballad-singers, and sung under Mr. Kemble's house-windows in Great Russell-street. A dinner was given at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand, to celebrate the victory obtained by W. Clifford in his action against Brandon the box-keeper, for assaulting him for wearing the letters O. P. in his hat. ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... referred to the then popular song of 'Marlbrook,' which she used to sing. 'When the Dauphin,' she said, 'was born, a nurse was procured for him from the country, and there was no song with which she could soothe the babe but 'Marlbrook,' an old ballad, sung till then only in the provinces. The poor Queen heard the air, admired, and brought it forward, making it the fashion.' This is the only one of Mme. de Peleve's stories which I remember, although I was very greatly amused by them, and could have listened to her ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... nice. We must have some grand singing matches, but you mustn't sing that ballad. It's Ruth's special property. She sings it ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... murmured, bending over her sewing. "But it wouldn't have been so happy if the defender of his kindred hadn't slaved on the high seas 'for to maintain his brither and me,' like Henry Martin in the ballad." ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... ballads; and as his brother, who had often heard it before, expressed his readiness to hear it again, he responded readily, and, taking a small manuscript volume out of a section of the bookcase that had been locked, read us The White Ship. I have spoken of the ballad as a poem at an earlier stage, but it remains to me, in this place, to describe the effect produced upon me by the author's reading. It seemed to me that I never heard anything at all matchable with Rossetti's elocution; his rich deep voice lent ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... admitted grudgingly, "I suppose not. But you will come sometimes, won't you? I have a perfectly lovely idea for a ballad and I want to ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Plymouth speedilye took they ship valiantlye, Braver ships never were seen under sayle, With their fair colours spread, and streamers o'er their head: Now, bragging foemen, take heed of your tayle. OLD BALLAD, 1596. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... all in the humor, mamma," said she; nevertheless she rose. Nicolas sat down to the piano; and standing, as usual, in the middle of the room, where the voice sounded best, she sang her mother's favorite ballad. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... not you; my own abilities place me there. But come, each one sing"; and she commenced a ballad, well known to the ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... grave of sturdy Daniel Malcom and look upon the splintered slab that tells the old rebel's story,—to kneel by the triple stone that says how the three Worthylakes, father, mother, and young daughter, died on the same day and lie buried there; a mystery; the subject of a moving ballad, by the late BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, as may be seen in his autobiography, which will explain the secret of the triple gravestone; though the old philosopher has made a mistake, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... with the belief that the perpetrator of a murder, or a death spell, could be detected when he approached his victim's corpse. If there was no wound to "bleed afresh", the "death thraw" (the contortions of death) might indicate who the criminal was. In a Scottish ballad regarding a lady, who was murdered by her lover, the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Marius Reybas of the Bobino lifts a mighty larynx in "Mahi Mahi." Great talent? Well, maybe not. But show me a group of vaudevillians and acrobats who, like this group at the Gaite, can amuse one night with risque ballad and somersault and the next with Moliere—and not be shot dead on ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... In a ballad, entitled "The Fairy Queen," in Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Nichols's edition, vol. iii., p. 172, are stanzas similar to the Welsh verse given above, which also partially embody the Welsh opinions ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... triangle, for through the green meshes of the trees he caught a glimpse of the lake and a thin blue column of fire-smoke, and then in the surrounding silence he heard Kiddie's well-known voice singing a snatch of a Scots ballad— ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... tendency to look askance at the supernatural as at something wild and barbaric. Such ghosts as presume to steal into poetry are amazingly tame, and even elegant, in their speech and deportment. In Mallet's William and Margaret (1759). which was founded on a scrap of an old ballad out of The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Margaret's wraith rebukes her false lover in a long and dignified oration. But spirits were shy of appearing in an age when they were more likely to be received with banter than with dread. Dr. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... moonlight into noon Hid in gleaming piles of stone; On the city's paved street Plant gardens lined with lilac sweet, Let spouting fountains cool the air, Singing in the sun-baked square. Let statue, picture, park and hall, Ballad, flag and festival, The past restore, the day adorn And make each morrow a new morn So shall the drudge in dusty frock Spy behind the city clock Retinues of airy kings, Skirts of angels, starry wings, His fathers shining in bright fables, His ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... main efforts appeared in Germany another epoch-making book—Wolf's Introduction to Homer. In this was broached the theory that the Iliad and Odyssey are not the works of a single great poet, but are made up of ballad literature wrought into unity by more or less skilful editing. In spite of various changes and phases of opinion on this subject since Wolf's day, he dealt a killing blow at the idea that classical works are necessarily to be taken at what may ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the translators of the Iliad, or of parts of it, the metres which have been selected have been almost as various: the ordinary couplet in rhyme, the Spenserian stanza, the Trochaic or Ballad metre, all have had their partisans, even to that "pestilent heresy" of the so-called English Hexameter; a metre wholly repugnant to the genius of our language; which can only be pressed into the service by a violation of every rule of ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... daughter hath soft brown hair (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) And I met with a ballad I can't say where, That wholly consisted of lines like these, (Butter and eggs ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... being the hero of that romantic affair. "Sir Urian Legh was knighted by the Earl of Essex at the siege of Cadiz, and during that expedition is traditionally said to have been engaged in an adventure which gave rise to the well-known ballad of 'The Spanish Lady's Love.' A fine original portrait of Sir Urian, in a Spanish dress, is preserved at Bramall, which has been copied for the family at Adlington." So that between these two chivalrous knights it is difficult to decide which is the famed gallant. From the care exercised ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... light and shadow fleet: She is walking in the meadow, And the woodland echo rings. In a moment we shall meet; She is singing in the meadow, And the rivulet at her feet Ripples on in light and shadow To the ballad that ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... entertainer, recited a ballad; and Delia also "spoke a piece," an amusing episode of child life, which she rendered with much humor. The next turn was Irene's, and the girls, who were in a mood for listening, clamored for ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... authors have described to us in copious and entertaining detail the romance and the poetry, the writings and the imaginations, of the Scandinavian races, interspersed with abundant and well-selected specimens of the historical, romantic, legendary, chivalric, ballad, dramatic, song, and critical literature of Northern Europe. They have brought to light the treasures of the illustrious poets, historians and bards of Scandinavia, in a work ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... took place while Agnes was in the garden picking oranges and lemons, and filling the basket which her grandmother was to take to the town. The silver ripple of a hymn that she was singing came through the open door; it was part of a sacred ballad in honor of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... several favorite melodies which we had often sung in camp, when, as on a pleasant Sunday evening, we were met together in little knots, to mingle our emotions in plaintive song, thinking of dear friends at home. One of these was a simple ballad describing the following incident—one of the most touching of the war. A youthful soldier from the state of Maine died in New Orleans, with none but strangers—as has been the lot of many—to watch over him in his dying hours, or to perform the sad rites of burial. When the funeral service ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... in a book any thing which contradicts God's book, cast it away, trample it under foot, believe that it is the devil tempting you by his cunning, alluring words, as he tempted Eve, your mother. Would to God all here would make that rule,—never to look into an evil book, a filthy ballad, a nonsensical, frivolous story! Can a man take a snake into his bosom and not be bitten?—can we play with fire and not be burnt?—can we open our ears and eyes to the devil's message, whether of covetousness, or filth, or folly, and ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... young woman in so poetical a light," replied she in the same tone, "you had better turn the affair into a ballad. It is a grand subject, and worthy of supernatural machinery. The storm, the startling knock at the door, the entrance of the sable knight Hollingsworth and this shadowy snow-maiden, who, precisely at the stroke of midnight, shall melt away at my feet in a pool of ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 'Erbert 'Iggins A Song of Winter Weather Tipperary Days Fleurette Funk Our Hero My Mate Milking Time Young Fellow My Lad A Song of the Sandbags On the Wire Bill's Grave Jean Desprez Going Home Cocotte My Bay'nit Carry On! Over the Parapet The Ballad of Soulful Sam Only a Boche Pilgrims My Prisoner Tri-colour A Pot of Tea The Revelation Grand-pere Son The Black Dudeen The Little Piou-piou Bill the Bomber The Whistle of Sandy McGraw The Stretcher-Bearer ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... expert care. And when new ground is covered and new troops are seen, we capture sometimes those sharp delightful moments of thirsting interest that made the Retreat into an epic and the Advance a triumphant ballad. ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... trod on; his words rang in mine ears, but I kept them from mine heart. I remember he alleged many a Scripture, but those I valued not; the Scriptures, thought I, what are they? A dead letter, a little ink and paper, of three or four shillings' price.[39] Alas! What is the Scripture? Give me a ballad, a news-book, George on horseback, or Bevis of Southampton; give me some book that teaches curious arts, that tells of old fables;[40] but for the holy Scriptures I cared not. And as it was with me then, so it is with my brethren now, we were all of one spirit, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... she managed to throw into her part. Covered with glory, she gave place to her successor, who, while bewailing the hardness of her luck in having to follow so smart a performance, recited a humorous ballad which won peals of applause. Mrs. Arnold again dipped her hand into the bag and unfolded a ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... begins his stirring ballad of the Armada. The lines have helped to perpetuate a popular error—one of the many connected with the story as it is generally told in our English histories. It somehow became the fashion at a very early date to speak of the defeat of the so-called "Invincible Armada" of Spain. ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... wit, there is a play on the meaning of words. Punning is an art easily acquired; but a pun is usually an impertinence to be excused only by its felicity. Hood was one of the most ingenious of punsters; and in his ballad, "Faithless Nelly Gray," the wit of each stanza is found ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... and Music did their business together (with the Dance conjoined as third partner); and that, by practice, men have tended to trust Poetry, for an interpreter, more and more above Music, while Dancing has dropped out of the competition. The ballad, the sonnet, have grown to stand on their merits as verse, though their names—ballata, sonata—imply that they started in dependence upon dance and orchestra. This supersession of music by verse, whether as ally or competitor, is a historical ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Auvergne and Languedoc in 1840,{2} she states that she picked up three charming ballads, and was not aware that they had ever been printed. She wrote them down merely by ear, and afterwards translated Me cal Mouri into English (see page 57). The ballad was very popular, and was set to music. She did not then know the name of the composer, but when she ascertained that the poet was "one Jasmin of Agen," she resolved to go out of her way and call upon him, when on her journey to the Pyrenees about two years later.{3} She had already heard ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... old popular poetry will recognize, in the principal incident of this story, the subject of the well-known ballad, ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... home there was a refined family life; the father had profited by the unusual privilege of three years' study abroad, and his library of some four thousand volumes was not limited to theology; the mother, whose maiden name was Spence and who traced her Scotch ancestry back to the hero of the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, taught her children the good old ballads and the romantic stories in the Fairie Queen, and it was one of the poet's earliest delights to recount the adventures of Spenser's heroes and heroines ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Widow Jones, a Familiar Ballad To My Old Oak Table The Horkey, a Provincial Ballad The Broken Crutch, a Tale Shooter's Hill A Visit to Ranelagh Love of the Country The Woodland Hallo Barnham Water Mary's Evening Sigh Good Tidings; or, News from ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... stands in perfect antithesis to Peer. When Peer is an outlaw she deserts her father's house and follows him to his hut in the forest. The scene in which she presents herself before Peer and claims to share his lot is worthy to stand beside the ballad of the Nut-browne Mayde: indeed, as a confessed romantic I must own to thinking Solveig one of the most beautiful figures in poetry. Peer deserts her, and she lives in the hut alone and grows an old woman while her lover roams the world, seeking everywhere and through ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Wright's England under the House of Hanover, illustrated by the Caricatures and Satires of the Day, given in the Athenaeum (No. 1090.), cites a popular ballad on the flight and attainder of the second Duke of Ormonde, as taken down from the mouth of an Isle of Wight fishmonger. This review elicited from a correspondent (Athenaeum, No. 1092.) another version of the same ballad as prevalent in Northumberland. I ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... and dim, there came, borne to me by the night wind, a gay young voice, blithely carolling the sweet strains of a well-remembered song, familiar to me long years ago in another and distant clime. It was a simple ballad, one heard most frequently in my youth, old when I was young; it was like a voice from the dead—a thought from the shrouded past appealing to my soul. There was something so solemn and strange, so mystically spiritual in the fact that ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for the sale of cakes, fruit, sweetmeats, toys, combs, cheap jewelry, glass, crockery, boots and shoes, holy-water vessels, rosaries, medals, and little colored prints of saints and martyrs; there were brass bands, and string bands, and ballad-singers everywhere; and there was an atmosphere compounded of dust, tobacco-smoke, onions, musk, and every ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... So sang a ballad-monger of the Revolution; and the opinion which he voiced persisted after him. According to some American historians of the first half of the nineteenth century, the Loyalists were a comparatively insignificant class of vicious criminals, and the people ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... Fortune, suggesting his Motive for repining at her Dispensations," with his celebrated "Pastoral Ballad, in four parts." were alike produced by what one of the great minstrels of our own times has so ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... best traditional ballads of England and Scotland. The scheme of classification by subject-matter, arbitrary and haphazard as it may seem to be at one point or another, has, I think, proved more satisfactory than could have been anticipated; and in the end I have omitted no ballad without ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... found another ballad which he thought might figure with advantage in the Spring Annual, and consigning these two precious documents to Warrington, the pair walked from the Temple to the famous haunt of the Muses and their masters, Paternoster Row. Bacon's shop was an ancient low-browed building, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... very beautiful picture in the manner of a great English Pre-Raphaelite. This was called "Thomas the Rhymer, meeting with the Faerie Queen," but it did not follow the description of the ballad. The Faerie Queen, a figure of a Botticellian grace, was coming, with all her fellowship, out of a wonderful pinewood, while Thomas the Rhymer, handsome and young and lean and brown, his harp across his back, had just crossed a mountain-stream by a rough bridge. He appeared suddenly ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... were, I could give a long detail of the arts and tricks made use of behind the counter to wheedle and persuade the buyer, and manage the selling part among shopkeepers, and how easily and dexterously they draw in their customers; but this is rather work for a ballad and a song: my business is to tell the complete tradesman how to act a wiser part, to talk to his customers like a man of sense and business, and not like a mountebank and his merry-andrew; to let him see that there is a way of managing behind a counter, ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... shall hear more of the Puritans and Christ-tide, only my scheme is to treat the season chronologically, and, consequently, there must be a slight digression; and the following ballad, which must have been published in the time of James I., because of the allusion to yellow starch (Mrs. Turner having been executed for the poisoning of Sir Thomas ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... usually been considered a sort of nuisance: now, by the persevering labours of these ingenious gentlemen, converted into an instrument of public gratification. Most of the guards of the stage-coaches now make their entrance and exit to the tune of some old national ballad, which, though it may not, perhaps, be played at present in such exact time and tune as would satisfy the leader of the opera band, is yet pleasant in comparison to the unmeaning and discordant strains which formerly issued ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... "A most delightful ballad, truly," said the Baron. "But like many others of our little songs, it requires a poet to fell and understand it. Sing them in the valley and woodland shadows, and under the leafy roofs of garden walks, and at night, and alone, as they were written. Sing them not in ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... climbed the attic ladder (they called it the 'mainmast tree' out of the ballad of Sir Andrew Barton, and Dan 'swarved it with might and main,' as the ballad says) they saw a man sitting on Duck window-sill. He was dressed in a plum-coloured doublet and tight plum-coloured hose, and he drew ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... the Diary is started, chatty, full of gossip and incident. She writes, October 30th: "A ballad-singer was this morning singing beneath my window in a strain most unmusical and melancholy. My own name caught my ear, and I sent Thomas out to buy the song. Here ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... Raeven ("The Hare and the Fox"), are significant because of the masterly security with which they strike the national key and keep it. Not a word is there that rings false. And with what an exquisite tenderness the elegaic ballad strain is rendered in Venevil and "Hidden Love" (Dulgt Kaerlighed), and the playful in the deliciously girlish roguery of Vidste du bare ("If you only knew"), and the bold dash and young wantonness ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... MS. poem in the Brit. Mus. (Bibl. Sloan. 1489) entitled "The Trimming of Tom Nash," written in metre-ballad verse, but it does not relate to our author, though written probably not very long after 1600, and though the title is evidently borrowed from the tract by Gabriel Harvey. Near the opening it contains some notices of romances and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Greek songs illustrate the conversion of the Armatole into the Klepht in the age preceding the Greek revolution. Thus, in the fine ballad called "The Tomb of Demos," which Goethe has translated, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... in a ballad, made upon the quarrel between George the First and the Prince of Wales, at the christening recorded at p. 83 when the Prince and all his household were ordered to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... subject of a Scottish ballad, well known to collectors in that department; and the history of the conversion of the murderess, and of her carriage at her execution, compiled apparently by one of the clergymen of Edinburgh, has been lately printed by Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, whose merits as an author, antiquary, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... tuned the neglected instrument, "but it seemed sort of sacrilegious—after coming home and finding my father gone and the ranch about to go. However—why sip sorrow with a long spoon? What's that ballad about the old-fashioned garden, Miss Kay? I like it. If you'll hum ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... machines, as patronised by the nobility (either sex) when travelling"; another of "Mrs. Rodd's anatomical ladies' stays (which ensure the wearer a figure of astonishing symmetry";) and another of a "Brilliant burlesque ballad, 'Get along, Rosey,' sung with the most positive triumph every evening by ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... as it has been collected, consists of a wedding-song of the fifteenth century, to be found in Camerarius, with addition of, perhaps, a dozen such morceaux as the following approaches to song, epigram, and ballad, respectively. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... talk of Prohibition in Scotland, we are informed that one concert singer began the chorus of the famous Scottish ballad by singing "O ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... a new ballad ready on the Golden Dog, which I shall sing to-night—that is, if you will care to listen to me." Jean said this with a very demure air of mock modesty, knowing well that the reception of a new ballad from him ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... calculations of consequences, which he applies wisely and prudently to the trifles of the present, forgets to ask himself, 'And, after all that is done, what shall I do then?' You remember the question in the old ballad: ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Oracle.—Appeared in the University Magazine for June, 1878. The legend on which it is founded, a mediaeval myth here transferred to classical times, is also the groundwork of Browning's ballad, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... to room in the bright September sunshine—now sitting down to the piano to trill out a ballad, or the first page of an Italian bravura, or running with rapid fingers through a brilliant waltz—now hovering about a stand of hot-house flowers, doing amateur gardening with a pair of fairy-like, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Recessional The Vampire To the Unknown Goddess The Rubaiyat of Omar Kal'vin La Nuit Blanche My Rival The Lovers' Litany A Ballad of Burial Divided Destinies The Masque of Plenty The Mare's Nest Possibilities Christmas in India Pagett, M. P. The Song of the Women A Ballad of Jakko Hill The Plea of the Simla Dancers Ballad of Fisher's Boarding-House ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... last sixty years that the Russians have become generally aware that their country possesses this wonderfully rich treasure of epic, religious, and ceremonial songs. In some cases, the epic lay and the religious ballad are curiously combined, as in "The One and Forty Pilgrims," which is generally classed with the epic songs, however. But while the singing of the epic songs is not a profession, the singing of the religious ballads is of a professional character, and is used as a means ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... Idle, 'I have not done with Annie Laurie yet.' And he proceeded with that idle but popular ballad, to the effect that for the bonnie young person of that name he would 'lay him doon and dee'—equivalent, in prose, to ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... quaint ballad-verses on the young hero give a realistic touch to one of the most ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... and still more with Dryden and the Restoration dramatists, the popular element in the drama passes away, and the triumph of the court is complete. The Elizabethan court could find no use for the popular ballad, but, like other forms of literature, it was attracted from the country-side to the city. Forgetful of the greenwood, it now battened on the garbage of Newgate, and 'Robin Hood and Guy of Gisburn' yields place to 'The Wofull Lamentation of ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... what portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora? ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... pressure from without had assaulted Greece, it was of particular service to that little rascally system that they were split into sections more than ever we have counted or mean to count. They throve by mutual repulsion, according to the ballad: ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... engag'd him with them more than once in robbing a Park that belong'd to Sir Thomas Lucy of Cherlecot near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and in order to revenge that ill usage, he made a ballad upon him. And tho' this, probably the first essay of his Poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree, that he was oblig'd to leave his business and family in Warwickshire, for ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... for a nation; it is a source of progress; it elevates and develops the moral nature of men at the same time that it amuses them and stirs them deeply. We have just seen what oaths were taken by the knights and administered by the priests; and now, here is an ancient ballad by Eustache Deschamps, a poet of the fourteenth century, from which it will be seen that poets impressed upon knights the same duties and the same virtues, and that the influence of poetry had the same ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Which a Certain Songster Treats the Company To a Dolorous Ballad Whereby Mr. Irons ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... side, there is the reminder and exhortation: 'He is thy Lord, worship thou Him.' The beggar-maid that, in the old ballad, married the king, in all her love was filled with reverence; and the ragged, filthy souls, whom Jesus Christ stoops to love, and wash, and make His own, are never to forget, in the highest rapture ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thing I do: I cannot doubt but to find a welcome, since she is a banished woman, without friends or protection; and especially, when she shall see how civilly you have handled her here, in your doggerel ballad: I will teach you to be a wit, sir; and so your humble servant.'—And leaving him almost wild with his fears, he went directly to Sylvia, where he told her his nephew was going to make up the match between himself and madam ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... dishonour? Or who shall discover why derivation becomes degeneration, and where and when and how the bastardy befalls? The decivilised have every grace as the antecedent of their vulgarities, every distinction as the precedent of their mediocrities. No ballad-concert song, feign it sigh, frolic, or laugh, but has the excuse that the feint was suggested, was made easy, by some living sweetness once. Nor are the decivilised to blame as having in their own persons possessed ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... The situation here is a common one. Parallels will be found in the "Voyage de Charlemagne", in the first tale of the "Arabian Nights", in the poem "Biterolf and Dietlieb", and in the English ballad of "King Arthur and King Cornwall". Professor Child, in his "English and Scotch Ballads", indexes the ballads in his collection, which present this motive, under the following caption: "King who regards himself as the richest, most magnificent, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... the pieces fall under the denomination of "Legends," if we except "the Feast of alle Deuiles, an ancient ballad;" "the Costly Dague;" "the Ladye's Counselloure;" and "the Dole of Tichborne;" which are in the quaint olden style. Throughout the other papers there is a pleasant spice of dry humour and knowledge of character, intermixed with a few touches of pathos, and a nice perception ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... lunch to fold his napkin, And if one biscuit graced the platter 'Twas ever less than fighting matter, Or if they'd beans—no doubt they had 'em— They failed to snap a few at Adam. I fear me as they ate their salade They hummed some raw primeval ballad, And when the Serpent came to dinner, They made remarks about the sinner. No doubt they criticised the cooking And hooked the fruit when none was looking, And when they'd soup—O my! O Deary! The very notion makes me weary. About these youngsters ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... would keep it out of her husband's way: it might be the cause of another duel! Mrs. Germaine, in spite of all her endeavours to conceal her vexation, was obviously so much hurt by this mock heroic epistle, that the laughers were encouraged to proceed; and the next week a ballad, entitled, "THE MANUFACTURER TURNED GENTLEMAN," was circulated with the same injunctions to secresy, and the same success. Mr. and Mrs. Germaine, perceiving themselves to be the objects of continual enmity and derision, determined to leave the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... marriages of her sons, and showed some of his practised skill in dignifying such themes; but it is not here that he found his work as laureate. He achieved greater success in the poems which he wrote to honour the exploits of our army and navy, in the past or the present. In his ballad of 'The Revenge', in his Balaclava poems, in the 'Siege of Lucknow', he struck a heroic note which found a ready echo in the hearts of soldiers and sailors and those who love the services. Above all, in the great ode on the death of the Duke of Wellington ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... mean to say about its darkest expression, and be done with it for good. Some charitable critics see no more than a jeu d'esprit, a graceful and trifling exercise of the imagination, in the grimy ballad of Fat Peg (Grosse Margot). I am not able to follow these gentlemen to this polite extreme. Out of all Villon's works that ballad stands forth in flaring reality, gross and ghastly, as a thing written in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... LILLY UN!"—One day last week, MR. W.S. LILLY—i.e. W. "SHIBBOLETHS" LILLY—delivered an excellent lecture on the Papal-Italian question, and although at Birmingham, it was by no means a brummagem discourse. But to quote the immortal ballad of Billy Taylor, "When the Captain he come for to hear on't, He werry much applauded what she'd done," and, to apply the lines to the present instance, "When the POPE he comes for to hear on't," will he "werry much applaud," the opinions ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... accident or a shipwreck before it could produce any effect on our minds at all. To us the ridiculous bombardments of Scarborough and Ramsgate were colossal tragedies, and the battle of Jutland a mere ballad. The words "after thorough artillery preparation" in the news from the front meant nothing to us; but when our seaside trippers learned that an elderly gentleman at breakfast in a week-end marine hotel had been interrupted by a bomb dropping ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... my lord," responded the courageous young girl, "ought also to know the ballad that is ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... bellowing. Apart stood Potters from far Saxony, with their crockery in fair rows; Nurnberg Pedlers, in booths that to me seemed richer than Ormuz bazaars; Showmen from the Lago Maggiore; detachments of the Wiener Schub (Offscourings of Vienna) vociferously superintending games of chance. Ballad-singers brayed, Auctioneers grew hoarse; cheap New Wine (heuriger) flowed like water, still worse confounding the confusion; and high over all, vaulted, in ground-and-lofty tumbling, a particolored Merry-Andrew, like the genius of the place and ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... submarine vessel. He made several attacks upon the enemy by means of automatic torpedoes, none of which met with complete success. One of these attacks, made at Philadelphia in December, 1777, furnished the incident upon which is founded the well-known ballad of the "Battle of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Jig was little other indeed than a ballad opera in embryo lasting about twenty-five minutes and given as an after-piece. It was a rhymed farce in which the dialogue was sung or chanted by the characters to popular ballad tunes. But after the Restoration the Jig assumed a new and more serious complexion, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... fine gentleman, and master of arts Of Henry the Fourth's time, that made disguises For the King's sons, and writ in ballad-royal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... in that gentle, polite weary voice of his, 'but was I mistaken in thinking that I caught a familiar word just now? Were you not singing some old ballad of Babylon?' ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... life was to be passed in the dark, in chase of the Kilkenny mail, as we read in the true history of the flying Dutchman, who, for his sins of impatience—like mine—spent centuries vainly endeavouring to double the Cape, or the Indian mariner in Moore's beautiful ballad, of whom we are ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... the Possession of the Society of Antiquaries of London' (1866) and Lilly's 'Black Letter Ballads and Broadsides,' (1867) will also be of use to you here, as will the publications of the Percy, Ballad, and Philobiblon Societies. In 1856 J. Russell Smith, the antiquarian publisher of Soho Square, issued a 'Catalogue of a Unique Collection of Four Hundred Ancient English Broadside Ballads, Printed Entirely in the Black Letter' which he had for sale—a small octavo ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... amusement in observing the various personages that daily passed and repassed beneath my window. The character which most of all arrested my attention was a poor blind fiddler, whom I first saw chanting a doleful ballad at the door of a small tavern near the gate of the village. He wore a brown coat, out at elbows, the fragment of a velvet waistcoat, and a pair of tight nankeens, so short as hardly to reach below his calves. A little foraging cap, that ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Ercildoune, Jedburgh, Yetholm, the Cowdenknowes, the Yarrow, and Ettrick, all lie on different sides within a circle of twenty miles, and most of them much nearer. Smailholme Tower, the scene of some of Scott's youthful days, and of his ballad of "The Eve of St. John," is also one of these. Grose tells us that "The ruins of Dryburgh Monastery are beautifully situated on a peninsula formed by the Tweed, ten-miles above Kelso, and three below Melrose, on the southwestern confine of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey |
