"Fife" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for singing. He sings at certain parts of his work;—indeed, he must sing, if he would work. On vessels of war, the drum and fife or boatswain's whistle furnish the necessary movement-regulator. There, where the strength of one or two hundred men can be applied to one and the same effort, the labor is not intermittent, but continuous. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... Scotland, save only the Scandinavian jarldoms of Caithness, Sutherland, and the Isles. Strathclyde rapidly adopted the tongue of its masters, and grew as English in language (though not in blood) as the Lothians themselves. Fife, in turn, was quickly Anglicised, as was also the whole region south of the Highland line. Thus a new and powerful kingdom arose in the North; and at the same time the cession of an English district to the Scottish kings had the curious result ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... those of Fife, Stirling, and Ayr in Scotland; Cumberland, Newcastle, and Durham in ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... I saw a phantom army come, With never a sound of fife or drum, But keeping time to a throbbing hum Of wailing and lamentation: The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill, Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville, The men whose wasted figures fill The patriot graves of ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... City Hall he justifies its erection; in the churches he interprets to themselves the weekly assembly of citizens. He uses the pen with which, just now, the coal-man scrawled his bill, and turns off an epic with the fife that in the band so sadly pierced our ears. He moves our trudging lives to the beauties of golden measures. He laughs heartily at our absorbing charities and meetings, upon which we waste our health and grow thin. He answers our distressing ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... Sophia does not set out till the middle of the week, which is unlucky, our antiquarian skirmish beginning in Fife just about the time she is to arrive. Letter from John touching public affairs; don't half like them, and am afraid we shall have the Whig alliance turn out like the calling in of the Saxons. I told this to Jeffrey, who said ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... away. One morning Theodore was on his way from one office to another when he heard the sound of drum and fife and saw a body of the strikers marching up Washington street. Every boy within sight or hearing at once turned in after the procession, and Theodore ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... gates unbar, the column's solemn tread, I saw the Tree of a single leaf its splendid foliage shed To wave awhile that August morn above the column's head; I heard the moan of muffled drum, the woman's wail of fife, The Dead March played for Dearborn's men just marching out of life; The swooping of the savage cloud that burst upon the rank And struck it with its thunderbolt in forehead and in flank, The spatter of the musket-shot, the rifles' whistling rain,— ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us bow and apologize never more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Mr. Asquith (Fife E.) said: The House of Commons voted earlier in the session, before any outbreak of war was anticipated, under normal conditions, under Vote A, 186,000-odd men for the regular army. It is perhaps not necessary to point out, but it may be convenient ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... fife and cry the slogan; Let the pibroch shake the air With its wild, triumphant music, Worthy of the freight we bear. Let the ancient hills of Scotland Hear once more the battle-song Swell within their glens and valleys As the clansmen march along! Never from the field ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... marched in those bygone days! He remembered the first time he had tried to keep step with his fellows. The tune had been Yankee Doodle—with a fife and drum—and he was a raw young recruit in his queer ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... with soft repose; Grand mansions do not taste the joys that the poor man's cabin knows. I hate the threatening clash of arms when fierce retainers throng, I loathe the drunkard's revels and the sound of fife and song; But I love to seek a quiet nook, and some old volume bring, Where I can see the wild flowers bloom and hear the birds ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... to sit on Monday, and Mr Gillespie wrote the answer on Saturday and the Sabbath, when he (the thing requiring haste) staid from sermon, and my informer, Mr Patrick Simson, transcribed it against Monday at ten, when it passed without any alteration. And just the week after, he went over to Fife, where he died. He was not full ten years in the ministry. He had all his sermons in England, part polemical, part practical prepared for the press, and but one copy of them, which he told the printer's wife he used to deal with, and bade her have a care of them. ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... have been telling you that ever since you could speak," said his mother, to which the boy answered, "Yes, I know, but that didn't interest me." Our children had been told the story of how the Countess of Buchan crowned the Bruce, a duty which should have been performed by her brother the Earl of Fife, who, however, was too much afraid of the wrath of English Edward. A few days after, an argument arose and one little girl was heard to say, "I don't want to be brave," and a boy rejoined, "Girls don't need to be brave." ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... among them, fast fading was his life, A lancer from the border, from the good old county Fife; Already was death's icy grasp upon his honest brow, When through the ward was passed the word, "The Queen is ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... musical instrument maker, friend of poets. Born half a man and half a goat. Took after the latter. Studied music under the old masters and outfluted Apollo. Was also a sheep fancier. Fathered fife and drum corps. Ambition: A pair of shoes or a goat's appetite. Recreation: Hunting and falling in love. Address: Greece. ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... orators. He followed my advice, and now feels the good effects of it. His defence of M. de Portes is worthy of Demosthenes. He came every year within a quarter of a league of the Hermitage to pass the vacation at St. Brice, in the fife of Mauleon, belonging to his mother, and where the great Bossuet had formerly lodged. This is a fief, of which a like succession of proprietors would render nobility ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... notes and tones do not excite devotion, love, or poetic melancholy in a native of Indostan and of Europe. And "the Highlander has the same warlike ideas annexed to the sound of a bagpipe (an instrument which an Englishman derides), as the Englishman has to that of a trumpet or fife," (Dr. Brown's Union of Poetry and Music, p. 58.) So "the music of the Turks is very different from the Italian, and the people of Fez and Morocco have again a different kind, which to us appears very rough and horrid, but ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... seldom needed. The young learned to like to do what was right, and were too brave and manly to give pain and trouble to others, by forcing them to find fault or to punish. I should have mentioned, also, that they had a little band of musicians. One beat the drum, a few played the fife, and others some simple instrument; while almost all could sing tolerably well in parts. Thus, many a traveller would pause and listen with delight, as he heard, on a summer's evening, the chorus sung from many voices, or the music from the band ...
— The Gold Thread - A Story for the Young • Norman MacLeod
... Scotland's, that those who watch his bearing in the battle-field may know who sent him there, may thrill his heart with memories of her who stands alone of her ancestral line, that though he bears the name of Comyn, the blood of Fife ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... be able to get the boys up here, without letting him know that we are in the mine," answered Elmer. "We needn't travel with a fife and drum corps ahead of us, nor even carry any lights down with us. He's probably working ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... in truth, any one who stood looking on, that day, must have felt the impressiveness of the long line as it slowly filed down the broad street under the graceful arches of the tall old elms, in the cold light of the cloudy afternoon. First came the drum corps, with wailing fife and muffled drum; next appeared the gray uniforms of the company who marched two by two, with bowed heads and reversed arms, to escort the hearse in their midst. Directly behind the hearse trotted a ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... hearty, believing work for our Saviour. The history of the North American Indians is a sad story of wrongs. You may begin far back in the days of our Puritan fathers, when Christian men marched to the music of a fife and drum, with the head of King Philip on a pole, and then after prayer, decided that the sins of the father ought to be visited on the children, and therefore sold his son as a slave to Bermuda; and you ...
— The American Missionary Vol. XLIV. No. 2. • Various
... fairly, as I thought, reckoned them up, and received the amount, taking care to remind me of the chambermaid. Having with some difficulty likewise procured from him a glass of milk, I mounted my horse, and followed the conscripts, who, with drum and fife, were merrily but regularly marching before me. The regularity of the march continued only till they got beyond the town, and down the hill, when the music ceased, the ranks broke, and every one walked or ran as he pleased. As they ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... burn with devotion excessive: But the King, who's been bored by that song From his cradle - each day - all day long - Who's heard it loud-shouted By throats operatic, And loyally spouted By courtiers emphatic - By soldier - by sailor - by drum and by fife - Small blame if he thinks it the plague of his life! While his subjects sing loudly and long, Their King - who would willingly ban them - Sits, worry disguising, anathematising That ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... a braver spirit. They talked of Boris and of his open-hearted, open-air life, and the Bishop read aloud several letters from young men then at the front. They were full of enthusiasm. They might have been read to an accompaniment of fife and drums. Ian was visibly affected and made no further demur about joining them. One of them spoke of Boris "leading his volunteers up the hill like a lion"; and another letter described his tenderness to the wounded and convalescents, ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... AND WEST, two contiguous royal burghs on the Fife coast, the former the birthplace of Tennant the poet, Thomas Chalmers, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... masters, the spirits. He, nothing daunted by the dreadful ceremonies which he saw, boldly answered, "Where are they? let me see them." And they called the spirits, which were three. And the first arose in the likeness of an armed head, and he called Macbeth by name, and bid him beware of the thane of Fife; for which caution Macbeth thanked him: for Macbeth had entertained a jealousy of Macduff, the thane ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to this volume contains an account of some ancient sculptures on the walls of certain caves in Fife. The essay originally appeared as a communication to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in January 1866, and was also soon afterwards printed separately—"Inscribed to James Drummond, Esq., R.S.A., as a small token of the Author's very ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... English king, who had been abroad when the defeat of Stirling Bridge lost him Scotland, had now returned home, and was already on his march toward the borders at the head of a powerful army. A body of English, which had landed in the north of Fife, led by Aymer de Vallois, Earl of Pembroke, is said by the Scottish authorities to have been attacked and routed by Wallace on June 12, 1298, in the forest of Blackironside, in that county; but when ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... vanished over the hill. Ashby, remounting, proceeded to make his dispositions, beginning with the Horse Artillery which he posted on a rise of ground, behind a mask of black thorn and dogwood. From the east arose the strains of fife and drum. "Maryland Line," said the 6th, the 7th, and the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... will after hee hath laught at such shallow follies in others, become the argument of his owne scorne, by falling in loue, & such a man is Claudio. I haue known when there was no musicke with him but the drum and the fife, and now had hee rather heare the taber and the pipe: I haue knowne when he would haue walkt ten mile afoot, to see a good armor, and now will he lie ten nights awake caruing the fashion of a new dublet: he was wont to speake plaine, & to the ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... even when red war swept through the land— I somehow thought, because I loved you so, That you would stay. I did not understand That something stronger than my love could come, To draw you, half-reluctant, from my heart; I never thought the call of fife and drum Would rend our ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... were loosed, the men were going round the capstan to the sound of the merry fife, when a messenger from the Admiralty arrived in hot haste, directing the captain to carry out despatches to the governor of Cape Coast Castle, instead of proceeding direct to the ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the Duke and Duchess of Fife. Great alterations and improvements are, it is said, being made at Mar Lodge. The name also is to be altered, and henceforth it is to be known as "Mar ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... contritely, "I meant noting bersonal. I ton't tink we are all cuilty or gorrubt, and efen among the rich there are goodt men. But gabidal"—his passion rose again" where you find gabidal, millions of money that a man hass cot togeder in fife, ten, twenty years, you findt the smell of tears and ploodt! Dat iss what I say. And you cot to loog oudt for yourself when you meet a rich man whether you meet ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... or four hundred of these forlorn outcasts were bundled wholesale into the streets, and they formed up in a large body, many of them with only a shift and a petticoat on, and with a lot of drunken men and boys with a fife and fiddle they paraded the streets for several days. They marched in a body to the workhouse, but for many reasons they were refused admittance.... These women wandered about for two or three days shelterless, and it was felt that the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... thought he saw an Elephant, That practised on a fife: He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife. 'At length I realise,' he said, "The bitterness ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... out and exposed to the sun and air. On the Sunday and Thursday mornings, the ship's company was mustered, and every man appeared clean shaved and dressed; and when the evenings were fine, the drum and fife announced the fore castle to be the scene of dancing; nor did I discourage other playful amusements which might occasionally be more to the taste of the sailors, and ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... and the fife, War's rattling throng, And a wandering life The world along! Swift steed—and a hand To curb and command— With a blade by the side, We're off far and wide. As jolly and free, As the finch in its glee, On thicket ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Scotland, north of the Firth of Forth, where now are the counties of Fife, Kinross, Perth, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... freely shed, had wiped away all stains upon his memory, and enshrined him in the hearts of Snowdon's people as a martyr. He was the first dead soldier returned to them, his the first soldier's grave in their churchyard; and so a goodly throng were there, with plaintive fife and muffled drum, to do him honor. His major was coming with him, it was said—Major Stanley, who had himself been found, in a half-fainting condition watching by the dead—Major Stanley, who had seen that the body was embalmed, had written ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... of the "Funny Folks" booth went "Bang! bang!" Opposite, the fife and drum spoke for the temple of the legitimate drama. At the selling-stalls importunate vendors of tin-ware rattled their stock-in-trade and roared at the world in general, as if buyers could be forced to attend to the most noisy—which, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... runs his word! Yet on the verge of strife, They jest not who have never known the knife; They tremble who in the waiting ranks are found, While those scarred deep on many a battle-ground Sing to the throbbing of the drum and fife. They laugh who know the open, fearless breast, The thrust, the steel-point, and the spreading stain; Whose flesh is hardened to the searing test, Whose souls are tempered to a high disdain. Theirs is the lifted brow, the gallant ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... directly to a brace of the most finished little fiends that ever banged drum or tootled fife in the Band of a British Regiment. They ended their sinful career by open and flagrant mutiny and were shot for it. Their names were Jakin and Lew - Piggy Lew and they were bold, bad drummer-boys, ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... soldiers of the Pennsylvania line, stationed at Lancaster, marched in a body to Philadelphia, where they were joined by about two hundred from the barracks in that city. The whole body then proceeded, with drum and fife, and fixed bayonets, to the statehouse, where the Pennsylvania legislature and the continental Congress were in session, with the avowed purpose of demanding a redress of specified grievances from the state authorities. They ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... eight years old when a great excitement arose among the colonists in Virginia, and the fife and drum were heard, to announce that England, the mother country, ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... little man was Auld Jock, of tough fiber, but worn out at last by fifty winters as a shepherd on the bleak hills of Midlothian and Fife, and a dozen more in the low stables and storm-buffeted garrets of Edinburgh. He had come into the world unnoted in a shepherd's lonely cot. With little wit of mind or skill of hand he had been a common tool, used by ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... of composition. 'Robin Gray,' 'Oh no we never mention her,' 'The Soldier's Tear,' and such compositions, are a description of ballads, of which, with the Irish, Scotch, and Welsh melodies, we are proud; but if we admit that the drum and fife compositions of Mr. Lee and others, such as 'Bonnets of blue,' 'Blue bonnets,' 'Charley's over the water,' and 'Over the water to Charley,' are other than trash, fit only to amuse the gentlemen and ladies of colour in the gallery, we should be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... robin his fife will trill, And the wood-piper beat his drum; And out of their tents on the hill The little green ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... an expression of the moods and morals of its time. The bugle and the fife share with the drum the rousing of martial spirit in our armies to-day, but to our savage ancestors the drum was supreme. Primitive man expressed his harmony with nature by imitating its sounds. He struck his own body ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... to do it. I hope they will turn out strong, for you will find that the workers are the men that make the soldiers. I am glad we've got a drum and fife. You don't know how hard it would be for me to drill a large squad without some kind of music to help ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... tranquil mind! farewell content! Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars, That make ambition virtue! O farewell! Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... naming of Edward the Confessor gives us at the same time the epoch in which these historically accredited transactions are made to take place. The ruins of Macbeth's palace are yet standing at Inverness; the present Earls of Fife are the descendants of the valiant Macduff, and down to the union of Scotland with England they were in the enjoyment of peculiar privileges for their services to the crown.] the Confessor, and on which he set a great value, is brought ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... a Scumite busily engaged in delivering a speech to a few of his fellow creatures. It would remind you of a person playing a fife or violin without ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... no glittering tourney's mimic strife,— 'Twas in that bloody fight in Raxton Grove, While hungry ravens croaked from boughs above, And frightened blackbirds shrilled the warning fife— 'Twas there, in days when Friendship still was rife. Mine ancestor who threw the challenge-glove Conquered and found his foe a soul to love, Found friendship—Life's great second ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Phelan's being was concentrated in his eyes at that moment and it is highly doubtful if he would have heard a fife and drum corps in full blare enter the kitchen. He heard nothing and saw nothing below that ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... fair the wrestling was ended, and the tongues going over it all again, and throwing the victors; the greasy pole, with leg of mutton attached by ribbons, was being hoisted, and the swings flying, and the lads and lasses footing it to the fife and tabor, and the people chattering in groups; when the clatter of a horse's feet was heard, and a horseman burst in and rode recklessly through the market-place; indeed, if his noble horse had been as rash as he was, some would have been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... peautiful song!" moaned Dunnerwurst. "I understandt der author uf dot song got only fife hundret dollars ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... was the first Central American republic to follow. During the War President Cabrera "would allow nothing to interfere with the advancement of free and compulsory education in the State." (See Domville- Fife, C. W., Guatemala and ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... course, on July 30th 1917, Lieut. D. Marshall (Fife & Forfar Yeomanry), arrived from the 4th "M.G." Company. He had been "posted" as Commanding Officer, and "took over" from Lieut. Cazalet; shortly afterwards he was promoted ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... how the sailors can't work together without a song. "A song is as necessary to a sailor as the drum and fife are to the soldier. They can't pull in time, or pull with a will, without it." Some songs were much more effective than others. "Two or three songs would be tried, one after the other, with no effect—not an inch could be got upon the tackles, when a new song struck up ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... N.D., a main line relay, a Waterbury lens and a fife with mouthpiece for $6 worth ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... you for alarms and agitation, but if good signs appear, you will eventually find a smooth path through your fife. ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... not sleep—dear father! in his normal condition he sleeps like a bag of corn-meal—who was there in all the house to keep those boys quiet? Nobody but me. When they organized a military company in our back yard directly under father's windows—two drums, a fish-horn, a jews-harp, a fife, and three tin pans—was there anybody but me to put a stop to it? It was on this occasion that the pet name Moolymaria, afterward corrupted into Messymaria, and finally evolved into Meddlymaria, became attached to me. To this day I do not like to think how many ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... stir along the table, then Foster said: "That was a great voice of Weatherbee's. I've seen it hearten a whole crowd on a mean trail, like the bugle and fife ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... movements, however, become imperative, so far as the general's health permits. In spring and early summer is some successful skirmishing; in July Cromwell's army has, for the most part, got into Fife, thereby cutting off the supplies of the king's army at Stirling, which suddenly marches straight for the heart of England, the way being open. Cromwell, having just captured Perth, starts in pursuit, leaving George Monk to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Looked it all over, and behold! there is no good thing in it. Might have said this in ten minutes, or at most, quarter of an hour. But temptation to straddle irresistible; discoursed for full hour and half; talked clean out of Peers' Gallery FIFE and Earl SPENCER, who had innocently looked in. MADDEN, not to be outdone, talked for another hour and half; out of a possible seven hours' debate three appropriated by two speakers. Quite Maddening. ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... that some Pagan gay doth Marlotes' daughter wed, And that they bear my scorned fair in triumph to his bed? Or is it that the day is come—one of the hateful three, When they, with trumpet, fife, and drum, ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... a knocking, and Macbeth wished it was a knocking which could wake the dead. It was the knocking of Macduff, the chieftain of Fife, who had been told by Duncan to visit him early. Macbeth went to him, and showed him the door of ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... patient, and does not mention any other place of sojourn, but the record just quoted goes on to say that he abode with the Primate for eleven weeks at his country residence at Monimail, near Cupar, Fife, where there is a well called to this ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... seen, with baying hounds and blast of horns; and when those hunters were asked of whose company and household they were, they replied "of Arthur's".' We hear of him again in The Complaynt of Scotland, that curious composition attributed by some to Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount in Fife, and of Gilmerton in East Lothian, pp. ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... flute and fife in summer evening's calm, And odorous with incense all the year, With nard and spice, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... for the soldiers drilling Nor the fever nothing cures: Throb of drum and timbal's rattle Call but man alive to battle, And the fife with death-notes filling Screams for blood but not for yours. Times enough you bled your best; Sleep on ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... trilogy of ancient social pictures are the three "Banquets" respectively of Plato, Xenophon, and Plutarch. Plutarch's has the least claim to historical accuracy; but the meeting of the Seven Wise Masters is a charming portraiture of ancient manners and discourse, and is as dear as the voice of a fife, and entertaining as a French novel. Xenophon's delineation of Athenian manners is an accessory to Plato, and supplies traits of Socrates; whilst Plato's has merits of every kind,—being a repertory of the wisdom of the ancients on the subject of love,—a picture of a feast ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... consorted marriage, the soul, the mind, esteem and faith, the pure strain of friendship, enter more largely. The grave is not the boundary of its functions. After death, the love is cherished in the ideal fife of the mind as vividly as ever, and with an added sanctity. Widowed memory clings to the disconsolate happiness of sitting by the fountain of oblivion, and drawing up the sunken treasure. If, as Statius said, to love the living ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... extremity by concession? Boston, indeed America, had seen no hour of intenser interest, of deeper solemnity, of more instant peril, or of truer moral sublimity; and as this assembly deliberated with the sounds of the fife and drum in their ears, and with the soldiery in their sight, questions like these must have been on every lip,—and they are of the civil-war questions that cause an involuntary shudder ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... under the shadow of my father's death I might have welcomed the chance of new lands and new folk. As it was, I felt the loneliness of an exile. That afternoon I walked on the Braid Hills, and when I saw in the clear spring sunlight the coast of Fife, and remembered Kirkcaple and my boyish days, I could have found it in me to sit down ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... fortifications there proved stronger than was expected. And not merely were their assaults on Leith repelled, but the Lords soon saw themselves driven from their strongest positions, for instance from Stirling; their possessions were wasted far and wide; the war, which was transferred to Fife, took an unfortunate turn for them; to all appearance they were lost if they did not obtain help ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... find time to make parties in the family way. We have not only seen all the villas and villages within ten miles of the capital, but we have also crossed the Firth, which is an arm of the sea seven miles broad, that divides Lothian from the shire, or, as the Scots call it, the kingdom of Fife. There is a number of large open sea-boats that ply on this passage from Leith to Kinghorn, which is a borough on the other side. In one of these our whole family embarked three days ago, excepting my sister, who, being exceedingly fearful of the water, was left to the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... masques? Hear you me, Jessica: Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum, And the vile squeaking of the wry-neck'd fife,[66] Clamber not you up to the casements then, Nor thrust your head into the public street, To gaze on Christian fools with varnish'd faces: But stop my house's ears, I mean my casements; Let not the sound of shallow ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... All your thoughts of meat and drink! Bertrand the fifer!—you were shepherd once,— Draw from its double leathern case your fife, Play to these greedy, guzzling soldiers. Play Old country airs with plaintive rhythm recurring, Where lurk sweet echoes of the dear home-voices, Each note of which calls like a little sister, Those airs slow, slow ascending, as the smoke-wreaths ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... for it was the fashion of those musical, as well as valiant days) up rose that noble old favorite of good Queen Bess, from cornet and sackbut, fife and drum; while Parson Jack, who had taken his stand with the musicians on the poop, worked away ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... curb The wild creations of their mirth, All that would wake the soul to earth. Choose ye the softly-breathing-flute, The mellow horn, the loving lute; The viol you must not forget, And take the sprightly flageolet And grave bassoon; choose too the fife, Whose warblings in the tuneful strife, Mingling in mystery with the words, May seem like ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... can not resist the rollicking music back of the paying booth. Three sable musicians form the orchestra, and from a bass viol, fiddle and fife they extract melody that, with all its short-coming, would make a deacon wish to dance. Any one, white or black, can purchase the privilege of keeping step to the music for two cents, or one strawberry ticket. Business ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... ABERCORN wonder and FIFE tootle praise, His two thousand hearers raise cheering—raise cheering. Of wild would-be Scuttlers he proves the mad craze, And of Governments prone to small-beering—small-beering. Sullen Boers may prove bores to a man of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... "Set the fiddle and fife going, it will keep up the spirits of the men," said Adair to the first lieutenant, who at once issued the order. Presently merry notes were heard amid the howling of the gale, sounding strangely, and yet inspiriting the crew. Still, in spite of all that could be done, ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... rainbow. Some trees appeared from a distance to be covered with many-colored flowers. Nell was particularly charmed by the sight of paradisaical fly-catchers and rather large, black birds, with a crimson lining to the wings, which emitted sounds like a pastoral fife. Charming woodpeckers, rosy on top and bright blue beneath, sped in the sun's luster, catching in their flight bees and grasshoppers. On the treetops resounded the screams of the green parrot, and at ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the heads of the hills; here and there a light wreath of mist lay along their sides, floating slowly off, or softly dispersing; the river lay in quiet beauty waiting for the gilding that should come upon it. I listened—the brisk notes of a drum and fife came to my ear, playing one after another joyous and dancing melody. I thought that never was a place so utterly delightsome as this place. With all speed I dressed myself, noiselessly, so as not to waken Mrs. Sandford; and then I resolved I would go out and see if I could not find ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and he might have succeeded in a masterly way in these sublime arts had he not early in life acquired the habit of the flute. He played the flute all day long, and often played the flute in the morning and the fife at night. As it was the flute that had won him his gracious wife, he thanked God for the gift and continued to play as long as he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... and fife with the parrot money, and sent them to the Poppleton Guards, the company to which "the fellows didn't want him to belong." And he wrote a letter to the Guards, telling them about the military tactics that he had learned at the camp, where ...
— Sonny Boy • Sophie Swett
... would say, when nightfall found them supperless in the waste. "Look at the eagle overhead! God can feed us through him if He will"—and once at least he owed his meal to a fish that the scared bird let fall. A snowstorm drove his boat on the coast of Fife. "The snow closes the road along the shore," mourned his comrades; "the storm bars our way over sea." "There is still the way of heaven ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... remain of this period show him chiefly residing at Broomhall, where, in his father's absence, he takes his place in the affairs of the county of Fife; commands his troop of yeomanry; now presides at a farmers' dinner, for which be has written an appropriate song; now, at the request of Dr. Chalmers, speaks at a public meeting in favour of church extension. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Zealand, and so on. At home, too, curious arrangements come under notice. A family, for example, in London find it to their advantage to have a roast of beef sent to them by parcel post twice a week from a town in Fife. And a gentleman of property, having his permanent residence in Devonshire, finds it convenient, when enjoying the shooting season in the far north-west of Scotland, to have his vegetables forwarded by parcel post from his home garden in Devonshire to ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... mail, And tied a bow-knot to his tail; He wore a pistol by his side, And on a bull-frog he did ride. "March on!" he cried. And, hot and thick, His army rushed, in double quick. And hardly one short hour had waned, Before the ranks the rat-camp gained, With sounding drum and screaming fife, Enough to raise the dead to life. The rats, awakened by the clatter, Rushed out to see what was the matter, Then down the whole mouse-army flew, And many thieving rats it slew. The mice hurrahed, the rats they squealed, And soon the dreadful battle-field Was blue with smoke and red with ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... morning, the polls were opened for the election of officers. A box was placed on the fife-rail, at the mainmast, in which the ballots were deposited, under the inspection ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... yellow ditto, one peacock Indian scarf, one blue blanket, six German silver spoons, sixteen pairs of various car-rings, twelve finger-rings, two dozen mule harness bells, six elastic heavy brass spring wires, one pound long white horsehair, three combs, one papier-mache tray, one boxwood fife, one kaleidoscope. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... relished his modest dram, and delighted in his quiet yet graphic manner to tell of men and things of Speyside familiar to him during his long life by the riverside. Charles Grant was the first person who ever rented salmon water on Spey. It was about 1838 that he took a lease from the Fife trustees of the fishing on the right bank from the burn of Aberlour to the burn of Carron, about four miles of as good water as there is in all the run of Spey. This water would to-day be cheaply rented at L250 per annum; the annual rent paid by Charles Grant ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... The bands of the two regiments played on alternate afternoons, and every morning they were to be heard practising outside the entrenchment. The most pleasant part of the day was just after six o'clock, when we used to be enlivened in the cool of the evening by the fife and drum band playing the 'Retreat.' The water with which we were supplied was indeed excellent, and the bathing places, I need not say, were very extensively patronised. The grazing was not nearly sufficient for the cattle, and from the first ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... was the only one of the crew remaining on board, hastily belayed the clewline at the fife-rail, hauling it just taut enough to hold Bitts, without choking him to death. As the ruffian leaped into the boat, to which he had been assigned, Perth gave the order to shove off, and the runaways pulled with all ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... her smoke, Cragg'd, spired, and turreted, her virgin fort Beflagg'd. About, on seaward drooping hills, New folds of city glitter. Last, the Forth Wheels ample waters set with sacred isles, And populous Fife smokes with a score of towns, There, on the sunny frontage of a hill, Hard by the house of kings, repose the dead, My dead, the ready and the strong of word. Their works, the salt-encrusted, still survive; The sea bombards their founded ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... your pusiness, young Armstrong,' he said to Paul when the rush was over. 'I gan deach anypoty his pusiness if he is not a vool. I am Cheorge Dargo. You haf done your work gabidally, and you are vorth fife dimes vot I am baying you. But I alvays like the shady site of a pargain, and I shall only gif you ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... people had come down to bid farewell to those on board, among whom were about a hundred or so of soldiers. Hungry and weary as I felt, the sight of these soldiers, and the inspiriting sounds of drum and fife music played upon the quarter-deck of the Indiaman, made me stand upon the log so that I might obtain a better view. Just then I heard a voice ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... personal friends, the weather is bright and warm, the ladies wear their smartest dresses, the course is kept and order maintained with the aid of bluejackets from the gun-boat in port, while her drum and fife band or nigger troupe renders selections of varied merits. A race over, the successful owner and jockey are seized and carried shoulder high to the bar behind the grand-stand, where winners and losers alike have preceded them to secure a ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... authorities, perceiving the inefficiency of the local police powers, and alarmed at the still-increasing mob and the vicious spirit which it displayed, invoked the aid of the sheriff of the county. At midnight Sheriff Fife came to Twenty-eighth Street with a hastily summoned posse, a part of which deserted him before he reached the scene of action, and ordered the rioters to disperse, which they, with hoots and jeers, defiantly refused to do. The sheriff then sought aid from the military, and General A. ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... reason Sir Arthur Sullivan has replaced it in the score of "Ivanhoe" by a high G flute. The piccolo is exactly an octave higher than the flute, excepting the two lowest notes of which it is deficient. The old cylindrical ear-piercing fife is an obsolete instrument, being superseded by a small army flute, still, however, called a fife, used with the side drum in ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... Lord and Lady Fife are expected here every day from Spa; but we hear nothing certain yet of their graces of Richmond, for whom I am a little impatient; and for pam too, who I hope comes with them. In French houses it is impossible to meet with any thing but whist, which I am determined never ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the Synod of Fife met at St. Andrews, and James Melville as the retiring Moderator had to preach the opening sermon. It was a full meeting. The Archbishop with a 'grait pontificalite and big countenance' was seated by the preacher's side. ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... much spirit that it had a strong effect on the little training company. They had always liked him much better than Fred, and were glad of an excuse now to make him their captain. A boy who could fife so well, and drum so well, ought to be promoted, they ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... not likely that he would support, with patience, the haughtiness and overbearing manner of Albany. It was an evil day for Scotland when our good king, who was then but prince, lamed himself for life; and so was forced, on his accession, to leave the conduct of affairs to Albany, then Earl of Fife. The king, as all men know, is just and good, and has at heart the welfare of his subjects; but his accident has rendered him unfit to take part in public affairs, and he loves peace and quiet as much as Albany loves intrigues, and dark and devious ways. 'Tis ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... righteous cause on earth To many a battle growing, Of music God has thought them worth, A gift of His bestowing. It came through Jubal into life; For Lamech's son inventing The double sounds of drum and fife, They both became consenting. For music good Wakes manly mood, Intrepid goes Against our foes. Calls stoutly, "On! Fall on! fall on! Clear field and street Of hostile feet, Shoot, thrust them through, and cleave, Not one against ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... furnace of a bakery; the whole land as far as the eye could see looking like another heaven wherein some ambitious archangel, covetous of creative power, had attempted to rival the celestial splendors of the one above us. There was no sound of drum or fife or bugle; the sweet notes of the 'good-night' call had floated into space and silence a half hour before; only on the still air were heard the voices of a hand of negroes chanting solemnly and slowly, to a familiar sacred tune, the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Their tails are considerably forked, their beaks cone-shaped and heavy, and their flight undulating. Those who have heard the grosbeak describe its song as similar to that of the finch, though no doubt it is louder and stronger. The finch's instrument is a fife tuned to love and not to war. He blows a clear, round note, rapid and intricate, but full of sweetness and melody. His hardier relative with that larger beak and deeper chest must fill the woods with sounds. Audubon describes its song as ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... the weather was so much more favourable. On the morning of December 3rd, having reduced our stores to mobile column dimensions, we loaded up the long suffering, but grousing camels, and marched forth to the cheery strains of a drum and fife band, kindly provided by the 10th Middlesex. We plugged steadily on through the soft sand and finally camped for the night inside the outpost line in front of Bir el Abd. Next day the march continued and we reached Salmana. We enjoyed nothing better than ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... enfants de la patrie— Electric... piercing... shrill as a fife the voice of a little Russian breaks out of the shivered circle. Another voice rises... another and another leaps like flame to flame. And life—surging, clamorous, swarming like a rabble crazily fluttering ragged petticoats— comes rushing back into ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... foe's advance Now swells upon the wind; No troubled thought at midnight haunts Of loved ones left behind; No vision of the morrow's strife The warrior's dream alarms; No braying horn nor screaming fife At ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter |
