"Murrain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... double-faced fellow after all, and speechifies in the House for any side he hopes to make most by. Oh, how many fine speeches and squeezings by the hand we had of him on the canvas! 'And if ever I shall be so happy as to have an opportunity of serving you.' A murrain on the smooth- tongued knave, and after all to get it for this pimp of a gauger." "The gauger! there must be some mistake," said Harley. "He writes me, that it was engaged for one whose long services—" "Services!" ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... "A murrain on the bugs," he said. "We shall have a creepy night of it. Let us bottle this treasure and lay the mattress out of their reach on the sarcophagus. Endure them a while, Deborah, till we make ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... King in sore despite; "A murrain seize that traitrous knight, For that he lies!" he cried— "A base, unchristian paynim he, Else, by my beard, he would not be ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... the chief is checked by that of the priest. A supposed skill in medicine, imaginary arts of divination, and an accredited power over the elements are the prerogatives of certain witches and wizards. Thus, when a murrain among the cattle, or the death of an important individual has taken place, the blame is laid upon some unfortunate victim whom the witch or wizard points out. And the ordeal to which he must submit, is equal in cruelty to those of the Gold Coast. He is beaten with sticks, ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... them loose upon us, is so ridiculous, that it scarcely deserves notice. It would be to us as a moral pestilence; a plague, far worse than all the plagues of Egypt! Yes, far worse, than frogs and lice, and locusts, and flies, and murrain of beasts, and biles on man, and darkness all combined. Free negroes would then deluge the great Northern cities. It would be as tornadoes and volcanoes let loose upon us. Our country is already deluged with as many vagrants, as she is able ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... my neighbor Engla passed her on the Fjord; and now the boy has sickened of some strange disease, and 'tis said he will die. Again, the drove of cattle owned by Hildmar Bjorn were herded home when she passed by. Now they are seized by the murrain plague! Tell your good saint Dyceworthy these things; if he can find ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... "A murrain on such pagan thirst!" exclaimed he who had been toasted, snatching the cup away. "Art thou altogether unslakable? Is thy belly a lime-kiln? Nay, shalt taste not a single drop more, Hubert, till we have a stave. Come, tune ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... course When the grey mare's the better horse; When o'er the breeches greedy women Fight to extend their vast dominion; 700 And in the cause impatient Grizel Has drubb'd her Husband with bull's pizzle, And brought him under Covert-Baron, To turn her vassal with a murrain; When wives their sexes shift, like hares, 705 And ride their husbands like night-mares, And they in mortal battle vanquish'd, Are of their charter disenfranchis'd And by the right of war, like gills, Condemn'd to distaff, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... at one time hailstones and another frost, at another drought or a deluge of rain, or mildew, or other pest, will obliterate all the fair creations and designs of men; or behold, his fleecy flocks most fairly nurtured, then comes murrain, and the ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... breaking, and therefore have no paces or action to the eye, but their speed and endurance are wonderful. There is no such thing as a cock-tail in the country, and the waggon teams of wiry little thoroughbreds, half Arab, look very strange to our eyes, going full tilt. There is a terrible murrain, called the lung-sickness, among horses and oxen here, every four or five years, but it never touches those that are stabled, however exposed to wet or ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... brow? Say, where is thy mirth and thy melody now? Thy pipe thrown aside, and thy looks full of thought, As silent and sad as a bird newly caught. Has any misfortune befallen thy flocks, Some lamb been betray'd by the craft of the fox; Or murrain, more fatal, just seized on thy herd; Or has thy dear Phyllis ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... given. At the same time, prayers are offered to St. Como by those who desire children. In Midlothian, in 1268, the clergy instructed their flock to sprinkle water with a dog's phallus in order to avert a murrain. The same practice existed in Inverkeithing, and in Easter week priest and people danced round a wooden phallus.[87] Mr. Westropp, quoting an eighteenth-century writer,[88] says: "When the Huguenots took Embrun, they found among the relics of the principal church a Priapus, of three pieces in the ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... the rich man, "why hast thou come hither? Has thy plough broken, or thy oxen failed thee? Perchance thou hast watered them with foul water, so that their blood is stagnant, and their flesh inflamed?"—"The murrain take 'em if I know thy meaning!" cried the poor brother. "All that I know is that I thwacked 'em till my arms ached, and they wouldn't stir, and not a single grunt did they give; till I was so angry that I spat ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... business, nothing but paying lock-dues, bumping against schuyts, and towing down stinking canals. Never a peaceful night like this—always moored by some quay or tow-path, with people passing and boys. Heavens! shall I ever forget those boys! A perfect murrain of them infests Holland; they seem to have nothing in the world to do but throw stones and mud at ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... "Now a murrain on thee, Shrope, for mentioning that name," cried Elizabeth her humor changing instantly. "We, too, have somewhat to say of Francis Stafford, but the time is not yet ripe. When it is, then will I hear ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... the plague had subsided, a murrain attacked the cattle, and great numbers of all kinds died; so that they became reduced in the same proportion as the race of ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... uplandish (or country) men will liken themselves to gentlemen, and strive with, great busyness to speak French for to be more told of." "This manner," adds John of Trevisa, Higden's translator in Richard's time, "was much used before the first murrain (the Black Death of 1349), and is since somewhat changed. For John Cornwal, a master of grammar, changed the lore in grammar school and construing of French into English; and Richard Pencrych learned this manner of teaching of him, as other men did of Pencrych. So that now, the year ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... speak, with a murrain to thee," muttered Heriot to himself; and suddenly changing his tone, he said aloud,—"I pray you, neighbour David, when are you and I to have a settlement for the bullion wherewith I supplied you to mount yonder hall-clock at Theobald's, and that other whirligig that you made for the Duke of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the money; see that you do not overreach me, master. You are not the first man whom I have known to have fallen, even sometimes to the endangering, if not breaking, of his own neck, for endeavouring to rise all at once. A murrain seize thee for a blockheaded booby, cried the angry seller of sheep; by the worthy vow of Our Lady of Charroux, the worst in this flock is four times better than those which the Coraxians in Tuditania, a country of Spain, used to sell for a gold talent each; and how much dost thou think, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... business!" said the elder son, "for I perceive no end to it. Here I have the red, and here the blue and the green; and to me they seem all excellent, and yet shame each other. A murrain on the trade! If it were not for the King that is a priest, and whom I have called my father, and if it were not for the fair maid of the dun that makes my mouth to sing and my heart enlarge, I would even tumble them all into the salt sea, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... "A murrain light on the snivelling bully! Let him stay at his own homestead, and not take mastership here, to trouble us with his humours ere the portion be his. His younger brother Oliver is worth a whole pack of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... I, not of wolf. His frequent visitations have of late Perplexed me; now the riddle reads itself. A proper man, a very proper man! A fellow that burns Trinidado leaf And sends smoke through his nostril like a flue! A fop, a hanger-on of willing skirts— A murrain on him! Would Elizabeth In some mad freak had clapped him in the Tower— Ay, through the Traitor's Gate. Would he were dead. Within the year what worthy men have died, Persons of substance, civic ornaments, And here 's this gilt court-butterfly on wing! O thou most potent lightning in ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of enticing all pestilential and noxious influences to attach themselves to him only. He is assisted by a priest. Finally the scapegoat, hotly pursued by men and women beating gongs and tom-toms, is driven with great haste out of the town or village. In the Punjaub a cure for the murrain is to hire a man of the Chamar caste, turn his face away from the village, brand him with a red-hot sickle, and let him go out into the jungle taking the murrain with him. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the rogue at Oxford, with a murrain on him, instead of lurching about here carrying tales and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the middle of the road with his sacks, and commenced crying his wares afresh. Almost at once Roger opened the door again. "A murrain upon you, noisy rascal," he called; "can you not ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... loss of these poor fellows, when he said it was their own fault; they would never wear monkey-jackets, but clung to their thin India robes, even in the bitterest weather. He talked about them much as a farmer would about the loss of so many sheep by the murrain. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... War isn't missed; there's a murrain of strikes Where a paper can take any side that it likes; We are done with denouncing the filth of the Bosch, But we still have our own dirty linen to wash; Though we trade with the brute as a man and a brother, Our Warriors still can abuse ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... the king invaded the bishopric of Rochester; and this year came first the great murrain of ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... of the State, with that or a halter; a foolish nation, not able to get into its head that free trade does indeed mean the removal of taxation from its imports, but not of supervision from them, demands unlimited foreign beef, and is supplied with the cattle murrain and the like. There may be all manner of demands, all manner of supplies. The true political economist regulates these; the false political economist leaves them to be regulated by (not Divine) Providence. For, indeed, the largest final demand anywhere ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... hands or you would not need to ask. When half the folk in the country were dead it was then that the other half could pick and choose who they would work for, and for what wage. That is why I say that the murrain was the best friend that ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... deride me and steal away unto his castle this very night when I did supplicate him to regale me with goodly viands around the board of that noble host, the gracious Sir Wralsy of Murdough. I would to heaven a murrain would seize the hearts of all such craven caitiffs who hath not in them the sweet courtesy and generous hospitality that doth so well become thee, O glorious and ever-to-be-mulcted Sir Knight of the well-stored wallet. I do ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... outlived or had become a burden to her natural protectors, and whose temper was soured by infirmities, especially if her language was vulgar and her appearance repulsive, ran the risk of being defamed as a witch. If in her neighbourhood a murrain seized the cattle, or a disease entered a family which baffled the little knowledge of the country practitioners—such as epilepsy, St. Vitus' dance, or St. Anthony's fire—it was ascribed to witchcraft, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... then, with a murrain to you,' said Lieutenant Brown, impatiently, 'or, by heaven, I'll beat it out of you with the flat of my sword.' "'Well, then,' cried the negro, angrily, 'the tory Captain Lewis came to our house last night with some sodgers, ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... such a pretty uneasiness, I warrant you, and then recovered herself from one eye to another, until she was perfectly confused by meeting something so wistful in all she encountered, that at last, with a murrain to her, she cast her bewitching eye upon me. I no sooner met it but I bowed like a great surprized booby; and knowing her cause was to be the first which came on, I cried, like a great captivated calf as I was, 'Make ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... either in his person or possessions, from the machinations of the devil and his agents. Every calamity that befell him he attributed to a witch. If a storm arose and blew down his barn, it was witchcraft; if his cattle died of a murrain—if disease fastened upon his limbs, or death entered suddenly and snatched a beloved face from his hearth—they were not visitations of Providence, but the works of some neighbouring hag, whose wretchedness or insanity caused the ignorant to raise their finger and point ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... PRELATES! is your light withdrawn? Where now the lustral influence of your lawn?[A] Where the meek crosier, and the crook of fleece, That guard the fold (not reckless of the peace)? Is there no wolf in all your pastur'd plains? No murrain rankling in your lambkins' veins? No lurking thief, by whom they nightly bleed? No arid spots refreshing streams that need? O why, forgetful of your solemn call, Sit ye, unmindful where the victims fall, To hire ONE SACRIFICE with cords be bound, And your anointed ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous
... answered Timothy, "your honour has a mortal good hand at giving a flap with a fox's tail, as the saying is—'t is a wonderment you did not try your hand on that there wiseacre that stole your honour's harness, and wants to be an arrant with a murrain to 'un. Lord help his fool's head, it becomes him as a sow doth a cart saddle." "There is no guilt in infirmity," said the knight; "I punish the vicious only." "I would your honour would punish Gilbert then," cried the squire, "for 't is the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... entertainment on every road. "For the belly one will play many tricks"; and Asirvadam, in financial straits, may teach dancing to nautch-girls; or he may play the mountebank or the conjurer, and with a stock of mantras and charms proceed to the curing of murrain in cattle, pip in chickens, and short-windedness in old women,—at the same time telling fortunes, calculating nativities, finding lost treasure, advising as to journeys and speculations, and crossing out crosses in love for any pretty dear who will cross the poor Brahmin's palm with a rupee. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... pain: what then if there were millions doubly venomous, because sent to punish you? So these little flies must have greatly punished the Egyptians. The fourth plague was flies that filled the land and covered everything, to the great disgust of the people. The fifth plague was murrain—a disease that broke out among the cattle. The sixth plague was a disease—boils—that broke out on men and beasts, so that scarcely anyone could move on account of the pains and suffering. The seventh plague was hail, that fell in large pieces and destroyed all their ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... the deaths by shot or sword-stroke make up the chief sum of mortality. As usual the murrain-like pestilence which swept off its daily victims both within an without the town, was more effective than any direct agency of man. By the month of December the number of the garrison had been reduced to less than three thousand, while ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was soon accompanied by a fatal murrain among the cattle. Of what nature this murrain may have been can no more be determined than whether it originated from communication with the plague patients or from other causes. There was everywhere a great rise in the price of food. For a whole year, until it terminated in August, 1349, the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... a plague, a special plague, a veritable murrain on Lola Brandt for complicating the splendid singleness of my purpose. I don't know what to think of myself. I have become a common conundrum—which provides the lowest form of intellectual amusement. It ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... embers, and I have hours yet to wait. Oh that I were an idiot!—The night is one dead, dun gloom! It looks as if murrain, mildew, and contagion were abroad, hovering over earth and brooding plagues. I will walk out awhile, among them—Will try to meet them—Would that my disturbed imagination could but conjure up goblins, sheeted ghosts, heads wanting ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... may presume, of my disastrous love-business; and with all an author's relish of emotion, in others, chose his gambit swiftly. "Mr. Townsend, is it not? Then may a murrain light upon thee, Mr. Townsend,—whatever a murrain may happen to be,—since you have disturbed me in the concoction of an ever-living ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al |
