"Ribald" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his fresh step began to be understood, when Lady Mildmay came with him no more, and it dawned upon Henstead that Sir Winterton would not bring her, the very supporters felt themselves offended. Were a few ribald cries and the folly of a wrong-headed old Japhet Williams to outweigh all their loyalty and devotion? Was the town to be judged by its rowdies? They could not but remember that Lady May Quisante sat smiling through the hottest meetings, and one evening had at ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... in a box at the Palace Grand. The place is packed with rowdy men and ribald women. I am at the zenith of my shame. Right and left I am buying wine. Like vultures at a feast they bunch into the box. Like carrion flies they buzz around me. That is what ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... station. Dusk settles down over the valley. An engine near by begins to throb and electric lights spring up here and there. All over the town the flames of the great bonfires leap out of the gloom. From the camps of the workmen come ribald songs and jests, The presence of death has no effect on ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... life of domestic tranquillity, employed upon the training of her children, and inspiring her husband to noble deeds. But, under the emperors, these virtues had fled. Woman was miserably educated, being taught by a slave, or some Greek chambermaid, accustomed to ribald conversation, and fed with idle tales and silly superstitions. She was regarded as more vicious in natural inclination than man, and was chiefly valued for household labors. She was reduced to dependence; she saw but little of her brothers or relatives; she was confined to her home as ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... founded on excitement. Counting its numerous shootings and consequent lynchings, and proportioning them to its population, White Lodge had experienced more thrills than the largest of Eastern cities. Some ribald verse-writer, seizing upon White Lodge's weakness as a ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... pervaded the atmosphere, mingled with that close sickly odor which is felt where great numbers of uncleanly human beings are closely packed together; and from some distance was heard the sounds of riotous merriment, ribald song, and hoarse, unfeeling laugh, with curses and execrations not a few. It was a time when the abominations of the prison ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... strange coincidence the name that appears the following instant is that of Henry Hide, the head of the leather Trust. The ribald jest of the boy proves to ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... congregate, this subject crops up, and those who talk most freely to the others are just those with the most distorted and vicious ideas, whose discourse abounds in obscene detail and ribald jest. Your child must learn either from ignorant, unclean minds, or be taught in a clean, sacred way, which will rob sex of secrecy and obscenity; learn he will; if you will not teach your child, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... a cliff where the morning sun, searching and fervid, did not reach, and threw themselves to the ground, resting their backs against the foot wall, and trying patiently to await the appearance of their guides. The steady, hurried clink of glass and bottle on bar, the ribald shouts and threats of the crowd that filled the road house, the occasional burst of a maudlin song, all told the condition of the ejected placer men who had ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... below when they were on deck—to get anywhere where they were not. Still, so persistent are depraved human beings under the influence of Satan, in showing their enmity to those who love God, and to God Himself, that they often followed him with their ribald shouts, and kept him forcibly down ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... repair-shop merely laughed at him, however. Hradzka became more insistent in his manner, making signs to indicate his hunger and willingness to work. The other men in the shop left their tasks and gathered around; there was much laughter and unmistakably ribald and derogatory remarks. Hradzka was beginning to give up hope of getting employment here when one of the workmen approached the master and whispered something ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper
... time back the mob had not been gratified with a spectacle of this nature. In the ribald language of the day, the "holy guillotine had grown thirsty from long drought;" and they read the announcement with greedy eyes, commenting as they went upon those whose names were familiar to them. There were many of noble birth among the proscribed, but by ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... charity which bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things, which rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; and make us thrust aside henceforth, in dignified disgust, the cynic and the slanderer, the ribald and the rebel. ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... have understood his meaning, or she may not, as she rocked herself to and fro in the roadway. The ribald songs of these patriots, these apostles of freedom, had not died as they marched and danced out of Tremont when there was a smell of burning in the air, and first smoke, then flame burst from the tavern, quickly ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... stores. As Hollis walked down to his office after leaving the court house, he was kept busy nodding to friends—many of whom had become such during the later days of the drought. Merchants grinned at him from their doorways; Dunlavey's friends sneered as he passed or sent ribald ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... this sweet clay, That even from her picture breathes perfume, Was carried on a fiery wind away, Or foully locked in the worm-whispering tomb; This casket rifled, ribald fingers thrust 'Mid all her ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... observably on the increase; and at the end of another four weeks one of the gates of the mills was beaten down, and several hundred men and boys paraded around shop after shop, breaking windows and singing ribald songs. It was not a very serious demonstration in itself. Its ominous feature lay in the fact that the police made no attempt to check it. There was something else about it, to the thinking of McGrath. It was not so much that events were moving ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... Elder's party, but offered no comment other than some sneering laughter and ribald whispering. Yet Beaudry breathed freer when he was out in the open again lengthening the distance between him ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... the comic effect of his action, and armed with a dagger of lath, perhaps as symbolical that his use of weapons was but to the end of provoking his own defeat. Therewithal he was vastly given to cracking ribald and saucy jokes with and upon the Devil, and treating him in a style of coarse familiarity and mockery; and a part of his ordinary business was to bestride the Devil, and beat him till he roared, and the audience roared ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... a hand in protest, even when he was bared to his under-clothing in front of fraeulein, who signalled her appreciation of the sight by wildly clapping her hands, laughing merrily, and giving expression to ribald jokes. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... would reach the souls of these river people who sang ribald songs, danced to lively music, and lived clear of all laws except the one they called "The Law," a deadly, large-calibre ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... that she had come afoot, despite the knowledge that she would have suffered many inconveniences, accidental and intentional jostling, insolence and ribald jest. The Cantonese, excepting in the shops where he expects profit, always resents the intrusion of the fan-quei—foreign devil. The chair was torture. It hung from the centre of a stout pole, each end of which rested upon the calloused shoulder ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... St. Denis, was sentenced only to a month's imprisonment, bread and water, and a flogging. He was marched through the city in a night-man's cart; and the king, meeting the procession, called out, as he passed, to the executioner, "Strike hard, and spare not that ribald; he has well ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... it as breadwinners, Mr. Morelock, and the most ribald one of them wouldn't laugh at you. I wouldn't be afraid to promise that you could fill St. John's, forbidding as its atmosphere is to the average working-man, the very next ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... crown of some nondescript sort on a cushion. The dragon looked rather like a frog rampant, and the crowned cushion bore a singular resemblance to a mushroom with an angry ladybird on its apex. How this family insignia had been obtained Peter did not know. His ribald questions had been treated by his sister with silent scorn. He would not be surprised if Ena had designed the ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... when the sneers and jokes of these young beggars had much effect upon him: the cabmen and watermen at the cabstand knew him and passed their comments upon him: the policemen gazed after him and warned the boys off him, with looks of scorn and pity; what did the scorn and pity of men, the jokes of ribald children, matter to the General? He reeled along the street with glazed eyes, having just sense enough to know whither he was bound, and to pursue his accustomed beat homewards. He went to bed not knowing how he had reached it, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Anti-Slavery Standard, representing the American Anti-Slavery Society, denies that the society asks for the enfranchisement of colored men, and the Liberator apologizes for excluding the colored men of Louisiana from the ballot-box, they injure us more vitally than all the ribald jests of the whole pro-slavery press." Finally the convention insisted that any such things as the right to own real estate, to testify in courts of law, and to sue and be sued, were mere privileges so long as general political liberty was withheld, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... he raise his voice against the proceeding; the "couple-beggar" smothered his objections in ribald jests. ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... fair entreats her lover foul, * Sighs rend his bosom and bespeak his soul By charms of thee and whitest cheek I swear thee, * Pity a heart for love lost all control Bend to him, be his stay 'gainst stress of love, * Nor aught accept what saith the ribald fool.'" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... finery he could call into service. What he lacked in attire he made up in the grooming. Billy shone. Billy was plastered. Billy smelled to high heaven of soap and kerosene. But there was that about Billy which checked Maggie's ribald jeers, and the mother's question as ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... ribald laughter. A certain sudden thought which had cut into him like a knife thrust into flesh drove ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... scarcely comprehended the words the baby babbled out. But as they became clear to him, a novel feeling crept slowly over his heart. It had been so long since he had heard anything but curses and stern words of command, or the ribald songs of obscene merriment, that the clear tones of this voice from heaven cooled his calloused heart as the water of the brook had soothed his blistered feet. It was so strange, so unwonted a thing, that he lay there with half-closed eyes while the child brought leaves and flowers and laid them ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... were so helplessly drunk that they could hardly stand. Yet, somehow, they managed, with assistance, to clamber up our low side and reach the deck; when, as well as their drunken state would allow, they forthwith proceeded, in ribald language, to entertain their more sober shipmates with a tale of gross, wanton, cruel outrage, perpetrated on board the Spaniard, that made my blood boil with indignation, and caused me, thick-skinned sailor as I was, ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... cried, "ne let me hear Their ribald sounds of Yuletide cheere That mock at mine and me; Graunt that my sore affliction cease And give me of the heavenly peace That comes ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... violent items; he amused himself with abuse of their private lives, and with sardonic humour, with blasphemous and obscene detail, attacked the legitimacy of their births and the purity of their conjugal relations: he used an Oriental imagery and an Oriental emphasis to accentuate his ribald scorn. Nor did he conceal his contempt for the students whose work he examined. By them he was hated and feared; the women by his brutal sarcasm he reduced often to tears, which again aroused his ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... teaching letters to his employer's children or lecturing to the students of the Latin Quarter. At last he decides to return to his father,—possibly the Archbishop of Paris or the Abbot of Saint-Denis,—who receives him with open arms, and gives him a new robe, which to the ribald student would mean a church living—an abbey, perhaps Saint Gildas-de-Rhuys in Brittany, or elsewhere. The fatted calf is killed, the feast is begun, and the elder son, whom the malicious student would name Bernard, appears in order to make protest. Above, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... assumed the centre of the ring. The sanctified were without sense of humor, but the unregenerate onlookers were not proof against the comic aspects of emotional religion, and from the dark outskirts rang a ribald laugh. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... weak and the gentle, the ribald and rude, She took as she found them, and did them all good; It always was so with her—see what you have! She has made the grass greener even here ... ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... scandalous liver, but he would fain stifle all the voices that call for better things. Ay, you look back at yon ballad- monger! Great folk despise the like of him, never guessing at the power there may be in such ribald stuff; while they would fain silence that which might turn men from their evil ways while ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I think his fine motive was apparent) took care to bring their ribald remarks under Burton's notice. Furny's idea evidently was to point out to Burton that his position was untenable, that it was not fitting that the same man should deal with Mr. Wrackham and with Ford Lankester. He had to keep himself clean for him. If ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... and muddy light; girls in white aprons and with their hands full of beer glasses, passed in and out among the tables, flirted with the drinking men and flung cynical remarks and answers at those who accosted them. Ribald laughter and coarse jokes flew around like fire-works and were immediately answered by broad, ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... about drunken men, about beer, all of them jokes worn threadbare. A similar kind of fun, with local differences, prevails in the States, but is wonderfully mixed up with scriptural and religious jokes. To us sober Britons, whatever our opinions, these latter japes appear more or less ribald, though ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... torch and axe. This specialty is Mr. Cleveland's long suit. Little wonder that his school should place him at its head. His preeminence in the field where self-admiration is a supreme virtue and ribald abuse passes for irrefutable argument will scarcely be denied by anybody who shall have read the following characteristic specimens from this Waldorf essay, carefully written down and calmly delivered: "We are gathered here to-night as patriotic citizens anxious to do something toward ... protecting ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... thou wilt Of injury. Say that, grown into man, I've known the pittance of the hospital, And, more degrading still, the patronage Of the Colonna. Of the tallest trees The roots delve deepest. Yes, I've trod thy halls, Scorned and derided midst their ribald crew, A licensed jester, save the cap and bells, I have borne this—and I have borne the death, The unavenged death, of a dear brother. I seemed, I was, a base, ignoble slave. What am I?—Peace, I say!—What am I now? Head of this great ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... young girl giving up all for God;' and Caroline gave the ribald laugh on which she prided herself— a shocking sound. 'Rose Mallett,' Sophia went on, so lost in her vision that the jarring laughter was not heard, 'such a pretty name—a nun! She would never be forgotten: people would tell their children. Sister Rose!' She developed ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... who spake all tongues there be Made antics with solemnity, Or closely huddled each to each Talked ribald in a ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... played sprightly airs; thence back to Market street and the Midway. "Little Egypt," tiny, graceful, sensually pretty, performed a "danse du ventre," at the conclusion of a long program of crude and often ribald "turns." When "off-stage" the performers, mostly girls, drank with the audience in a tier of curtained boxes which lined the sides of the auditorium. At intervals the curtains parted for a moment and faces peered down. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... great position, a great rank. And already she had derogated from the increase of dignity accruing to her from his very intention to translate her to so great an eminence. Not again would she suffer it; not again would she be so weak and childish as to permit Andre-Louis to utter his ribald comments upon a man by comparison with whom he was ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... he is after, Makes the woods ring with ribald laughter; "Hee, hee, ha, ha," he says, and then "Ha, ha, hee, hee, ha, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... the present rulers of France. Could any statesman not gifted with second sight have spoken otherwise? At that time the Reign of Terror was approaching its climax. The Goddess of Reason had lately been enthroned in Notre Dame amidst ribald songs and dances. The schism between Robespierre and the atheistical party was beginning to appear; and few persons believed that France would long bend the knee before the lords of the guillotine, whose resources were ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... of it, my lad. But look here, Murray; the people are quite friendly towards us, so help me in making our lads behave themselves. I mean, there must be no ribald laughing at the poor wretches. That is not the way to appeal to their better feelings. Look at that! Poor benighted creatures. These slave-owners must keep them in a darkness ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... the third train and the fourth and all the rest of them. The station became a sty where before it had been a kennel; the flies multiplied; the stenches increased in volume and strength, if such were possible; the windows of the littered waiting room, with their cracked half panes, were like ribald eyes winking at the living afflictions which continually trailed past them; the floors looked as though there had been ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... following corner. The loungers from the trees before the State House had gathered, with an increasing mob aware of the hearing within, at the entrance to the municipal offices. The windows on either side of the marble steps were crowded with faces, ribald or blank or censorious, and Jasper Penny had to force his way into the building. He tried to recall if there was another, more private, ingress, through which Susan might be taken; but his thoughts evaded every discipline; they whirled in a feverish course about the sole fact of the public degradation ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... improbable that Belinda was both flattered and offended. Delighted with the praise of her beauty she may none the less have felt called upon to play the part of the offended lady when the poem got about and the ribald wits of the day began to read into it double meanings which reflected upon her reputation. To soothe her ruffled feelings Pope dedicated the second edition of the poem to her in a delightful letter in which ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... the middle hour of the night. Many, just out of banquet-hall, theatre, and circus, thronged the main thoroughfares of the capital. Cries of venders, ribald songs, shouts of revelry, the hurrying of many feet roused the good people who, wearied by other nights of dissipation, now sought repose. They turned, uneasily, reflecting that to-morrow they would ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... indelibly impressed itself upon those rough, boisterous Western spirits out in front. Before her parting lips uttered a line she had thoroughly mastered them, the innate purity of her perfected womanhood, the evident innocence of her purpose, shielding her against all indecency and insult. The ribald scoffing, the insolent shuffling of feet, the half-drunken uneasiness, ceased as if by magic; and as her simple act proceeded, the stillness out in front became positively solemn, the startled faces picturing an awakening to higher things. It was a triumph far exceeding ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... be expected that I should altogether escape the attentions of wretches such as these, and accordingly my ears were soon assailed with ribald jests and ruffianly speculations touching the mode and time of my execution, the manner in which I should bear myself, and so on; but I turned a deaf ear to it all, devoting my entire energies to the devising of some practicable ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... Cleek, and leant far out into the darkness as though sucking in the air when the sash was raised and the thing which had been only a dim babel of wordless sounds a moment before became now the riotous laughter and the ribald comments of men upon the verses of a comic song which one of ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Prospero, too; both to be dragged back to Albuquerque and cast into a military prison. Perhaps worse still—tried by court-martial soon as captured, and shot as soon as tried. Nor is this the direst of his previsions. There is one darker—Adela in the company of a ribald crew, surrounded by the brutal soldiery, powerless, unprotected—she his own dear one, now his betrothed! Overcome by his emotions he remains for some time silent, scarce heeding the remarks of his comrade. One, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... amain, though for the most part their shooting was very wild; but presently, finding we made no reply, they grew bolder, hallooing and shouting blithely and taking better aim, so that their shot hummed ever nearer and once or twice the boat was struck. And as I hearkened to their ribald shouting and the vicious hiss of their bullets, fierce anger took me and I began to curse Sir Richard's delay; then came the roar of his piece and as the smoke cleared I saw a man start up in the bows of the pursuing boat and tossing up his arms, fall backwards upon the rowers, thereby ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... January, 1482, in a very surly and peevish mood. Whence came this ill temper? He could not have told himself. Was it because the sky was gray? or was the buckle of his old belt of Montlhery badly fastened, so that it confined his provostal portliness too closely? had he beheld ribald fellows, marching in bands of four, beneath his window, and setting him at defiance, in doublets but no shirts, hats without crowns, with wallet and bottle at their side? Was it a vague presentiment of the three hundred and seventy livres, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... devil, whence thou camest—go out from before me, from the castle, from the country, and stay not here one moment more than is necessary, otherwise I will surely prepare for thee a death by slow fire that shall make thee curse twenty times an hour thy villainous and ribald partner!" ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... one of them, "we are well punished this time; but at any rate it is better that the trick should only be known to us than to us and our wives, for there would be much danger if it came to their knowledge. You hear by their confession that these ribald monks have done marvels—both more and better than we could do. And, if our wives knew that, they would not be satisfied with this experience only. My advice is that we swallow ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... have caught a note of ribald scorn in Mr. Doolittle's drawl, as he quoted from his candidate's statement, via the voiceless ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... expression of purely animal melancholy; as she spoke she showed her blue teeth, which contrasted with the whiteness of her powdered countenance. She leaped from joy to dejection without transition. She could not smile. Her face was as soon darkened by stupidity as it was illuminated by a ribald merriment, insulting and cynical. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Newman found a seat in Misery's brake, squatting on the floor with his back to the horses, thankful enough to be out of reach of the drunken savages, who were now roaring out ribald songs and startling the countryside, as they drove along, with unearthly ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Washington before he was heartily home-sick for Indiana. No maid-of-all-work in a cheap boarding-house was ever more harassed. Everyone conspired against him. His enemies gave him no peace. All Washington was laughing at his blunders, and ribald sheets, published on a Sunday, took delight in printing the new Chief Magistrate's sayings and doings, chronicled with outrageous humour, and placed by malicious hands where the President could not but see them. He was sensitive to ridicule, and it mortified him to the heart ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... it from the opening of Jonson's "Poetaster," the furious dramatic satire which blasted for upward of two centuries the fame or the credit of the poet to whose hand this masque has been hitherto assigned. In it, after a full allowance of rough and ribald jocosity, the presence of a poet becomes manifest with the entrance of an allegoric figure whose declamatory address begins ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... suspicious glances towards him; but he continued to walk on, speaking so low that no one else but the unhappy lady could hear him; and thus the band of prisoners arrived at Smithfield. Here they were saluted by the ribald shouts of the populace, who seemed to delight in hurling all sorts of abusive epithets on their heads. A'Dale wanted to remain, but I kept to my purpose. My chief interest was with the unhappy lady. I rejoiced, however, to see that ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... was a gentleman. When he was scurrilous, abusive, ribald, malicious, it was anonymously. Is this to his credit? I should not say so, but if a man is indecent and he hides behind a "nom de plume," it is at least presumptive proof that he is not dead ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... trap with lying words had kissed another. He seemed to hear the Alexandrians laughing at the forsaken bridegroom, to see them pointing the finger of derision at the man whom cunning woman had deceived even before marriage. What a feast for their ribald wit! ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... answers to his insults from Buonarroti. These three men, Machiavelli, Cellini, and Aretino, each in his own line, and with the proper differences that pertain to philosophic genius, artistic skill, and ribald ruffianism, sufficiently indicate the dissolution of the social bond in Italy. They mark their age as the age of adventurers, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... trade-registration; and in this, as an established custom, Cromwell's Government had acquiesced. Only in one particular, apart from politics, was there any disposition to interfere with the liberty of printing. This was where popular wit, humour, or poetry might pass into the ribald, profane, or indecent. Vigilance against open immorality had from the first appeared to Cromwell one of the chief duties of his Government; and he seems to have been unusually attentive to this duty in 1655-6, when he had just put the country under the military ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... considered it must mobilize them all. Thus the professors found themselves enlisted in the service of the State. Unluckily—to give examples would be painful—it too often happened that the poor professor damaged irretrievably his reputation and held up the State to ribald laughter. Those who belong to an old, cultured nation are not always cognizant of the petty atmosphere, to say nothing of the petty salaries, which is to-day the common lot of Balkan professors. (A really eminent man, who, for twenty years has been a professor, not merely ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... Callias the town-slave and the like of him, antic-jesters, [Footnote: [Greek: Mimous geloion], players of drolls, mimes, or farces. Our ancient word droll signifies, like [Greek: mimos], both the actor and the thing acted.] and composers of ribald songs to lampoon their companions, such persons Philip caresses and keeps about him. Small matters these may be thought, Athenians, but to the wise they are strong indications of his character and wrong-headedness. Success perhaps throws a ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... incredible to those who have not seen them. Certainly the extraordinary honours which he pays his dead wife show how dearly he loved her. She has left him two little sons. And all Ferrara sorrows for her death, and I saw many weeping. And so goes this ribald world."[68] ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... myself upon a country road. I dared not ask my way, but luckily I had stumbled upon the highway to Port Washington, whence there was a ferry to the Connecticut shore. As I stole along in the darkness, my ear caught far ahead a voice roaring out a ribald song—and I knew that the time had come to take personal charge of my wretched client— the "old man of the sea" that my own stupidity had seated upon my shoulders. Soon I overtook them, the Italian stolidly driving his weary horse and ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... knew this ben ye Chrystmass time. And as rage doth often confirm in ye human harte an evill purpose, so was ye Divell now more diabolically minded to work his unclean will, and full hejeously fell he to roar and lash his ribald legs with his poyson taile. But ye Divell did presently conceive that naught might he accomplish by this means, since that men, affrighted by his roaring and astonied by ye fumes of brimstone and ye sulphur flames issuing from ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... doors, thronged with brilliantly dressed ladies, and watched to see if his little sister might not dash up in one of those satin-lined coaches and take him where he would be warm and safe and would sleep undisturbed by drunken, ribald songs and loathsome surroundings. There were days when he almost forgot his name, and, striving to remember, would lose his senses for a moment and drift back to the harmonious solitudes of the North and breathe the resin-scented frosty atmosphere. ...
— A Michigan Man - 1891 • Elia W. Peattie
... in the ear of Ernest. Meantime joke followed jest, among Polydore and the rest of the gay youths, in riotous and ribald succession, which, however characteristic of the rude speakers, may as well be omitted here. Their effect was to shake in some degree the fortitude of the Saxon maiden, who had some difficulty in mustering courage to address them. "As you have mothers, gentlemen," she said, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... accordance with these fears, no doubt, an edition of only 500 was published; but it achieved a success which Wordsworth had neither anticipated nor desired. There was a general guffaw of laughter, and all the copies were immediately sold; within a month a ribald public received a third edition, only to discover, with disappointment, that ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... hesitate. There were some prints among them very odd indeed; some that girls could not understand; some that boys, indeed, had best not see. We swiftly turn over those prohibited pages. How many of them there were in the wild, coarse, reckless, ribald, generous book ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... porter, struck with the strange appearance he exhibited, replied, "In the name of all that is marvellous, what are you?" "I am," said he, "Jovinian, your emperor; go to your lord, and command him from me to supply the wants of his sovereign. I have lost both horse and clothes." "Infamous ribald!" shouted the porter, "just before thy approach, the Emperor Jovinian, accompanied by the officers of his household, entered the palace. My lord both went and returned with him; and but even now ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... half-pence, carried links on foggy nights. By the clear force of genius he had made his way up from that;—from throwing cart-wheels for the amusement of the queues waiting at the pit entrances of theaters, from the ribald knock-about of East End halls, from the hilarity of Drury Lane pantomimes. Professionally his success was a solid indubitable thing. If he weren't actually preeminent in his special field, at least there was no one who was accorded a preeminence ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... against. As if nothing been said during previous hour-and-half, ILLINGWORTH urges Prince ARTHUR to concede adjournment; PRINCE ARTHUR rises to reply. Irish Members, pulling themselves together, walk steadily out, amid ribald laughter from Ministerialists. Once more the CURSE OF CAMBOURNE turns up. This seems, quite naturally, to suggest the Closure; sort of automatic procedure; CONYBEARE—Closure. One more division just to wind up, and at ten minutes past two Vote ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... he was unable to endure certain tests (or he thought so) which were about to be made with a view to retiring certain officers grown fat in the service. As he explained to Culhane, and the latter was always open and ribald afterward in his comments on those who offered explanations of any kind, his plan was to take the course here in order to be able to make the ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... place which they had selected in Massachusetts Bay, then called Wessagusset, now the town of Weymouth, which they had selected for their residence. They left their sick behind them, to be nursed by those Christian Pilgrims whose piety had excited their ribald abuse. ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... climate. There was little in the character of the people around to induce me to enter much into society. The higher class of the Andalusians are probably upon the whole the most vain and foolish of human beings, with a taste for nothing but sensual amusements, foppery in dress, and ribald discourse. Their insolence is only equalled by their meanness, and their prodigality by their avarice. The lower classes are a shade or two better than their superiors in station: little, it is true, can be said for the tone of their morality; they are overreaching, quarrelsome, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... it was not the soft music such as a lover demands if he is to give of his best. It was a brassy, clashy rendering of a ribald one-step, enough to choke the eloquence of the most ardent. Couples were dipping and swaying and bumping into one another as far as the eye could reach; while just behind him two waiters had halted in order to thrash out one of ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... horseback, with shouts and ribald songs, rode four rough men, too drunk to know where they were going. The little schoolhouse seemed to attract their attention as they passed, and just for deviltry they shouted out a volley of oaths and vile ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... from these through his ignorance. Still I wish they were not there, and I hope the time will come when the beast-man will be so far subdued and tamed in us that the memory of him in literature shall be left to perish; that what is lewd and ribald in the great poets shall be kept out of such editions as are meant for general reading, and that the pedant-pride which now perpetuates it as an essential part of those poets shall no longer have its way. At the end of the ends such things do defile, they do corrupt. We ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and it was through the boy. He had murdered Bill Fletcher, and he had done it through the only thing Bill Fletcher had ever loved. From this he returned again to the memory of the deliberate purpose of that day—to the ribald jests, the coarse profanities, the brutal oaths. Then to the night when he had forced the first drink down Will's throat, and so on through the five years of his revenge to the present moment. Well, his triumph had come at last, the summit was put upon his life's work, and he ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... me a brief respite, had enabled me to collect my thoughts, and, disregarding the ribald interruptions, which at first were frequent, I began as follows: 'I am no Rabelais, sire,' I said, 'but droll things happen to the most unlikely. Once upon a time it was the fortune of a certain swain, whom I will call Dromio, to arrive in a town not a hundred miles from Blois, having ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... took the matter very hard, and rebuked the ribald mirth of Mr. Tubbs. He had to shed tears over a devastating poem called "The Drunkard's Home," before she would forgive him. Cookie made his peace by engaging to vote the prohibition ticket at the next election. My own excuses for the unfortunate were taken in very ill ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... paper recently invited the surviving Union and Confederate officers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each during the Civil War. Colonel Thomas W. Higginson said that at a dinner at Beaufort, S. C., where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied, Dr. Miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that he could not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song. He replied: "I cannot sing, but I will give a toast, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... cried the Mayor, "d'ye think I'll brook Being worse treated than a cook? Insulted by a lazy ribald With idle pipe and vesture piebald? You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst, Blow your pipe ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... I realised that he was in an advanced state of intoxication. As I entered he rose unsteadily, and addressing me declared that life in the Spasso-Preobrazhensky was most pleasant, and at once began singing a ribald song. ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... festivity, really felt astonished at it all, and became servile, promising his support, and pledging himself far more than he really wished to. Moreover, he showed himself very gay, found some witty remarks to repeat, and even some rather ribald jests. But when the champagne appeared after the roast and the grand burgundies, his over-excitement brought him back perforce to his real nature. The conversation had now turned on Corneille's "Polyeucte" ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... pined to its cone point, and a race-track, with a saloon, at its foot. I ran away out there once at a big Fourth of July barbecue. It rained like the devil and I lounged in the bar with jockeys and sporting girls, listening to their ribald talk. ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... There are other mosaics in the Torcello cathedral, especially those in the apsis and in one of the side chapels, which are in a beautiful spirit of art, and form the widest possible contrast to the eighteenth-century high altar, with its insane and ribald angels flying off at the sides, and poising themselves in the rope-dancing attitudes favored by statues of heavenly persons in the decline of the Renaissance. The choir is peculiarly built, in the form of a half-circle, with seats rising one ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Company, a cheery soul, who possesses the entirely Hibernian faculty of being able to combine a most fanatical and seditious brand of Nationalism with a genuine and ardent enthusiasm for the British Empire, one day made a contemptuous and ribald reference to the Ulster Volunteers and their leader. M'Ostrich, who was sitting on his bedding at the other side of the hut, promptly rose to his feet, crossed the floor in three strides, and silently felled the humorist to the earth. Plainly, ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... keep your eye on MASTERMAN, Dear DAVID'S henchman leal, Whose piety and "uplift" Make ribald Tories squeal; In every public function Displaying the conjunction Of perfect moral unction With ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... to his publisher? Does he write begging letters? Does he get clothes or lodgings without paying for them? Again, whilst a wanderer, does he insult helpless women on the road with loose proposals or ribald discourse? Does he take what is not his own from the hedges? Does he play on the fiddle, or make faces in public-houses, in order to obtain pence or beer? or does he call for liquor, swallow it, and then say to a widowed landlady, "Mistress, I have no brass"? In a word, what vice and crime does ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... long hours. Only his great strength and physical endurance had pulled him out of the arms of violent death. There had been no shot fired from the shops. The strikers saw the utter futility of forcing armed men, so they had hung about with gibe and ribald jeer, waiting for some one careless enough to pass them alone. This Bennington did. His men had forgotten him. Bennington's injuries had been rather trivial; it had been his personal appearance that had terrified ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... the window, glanced round. Her first impulse was to speak; her second to remain silent. For the Arkansan was not looking at her. His mocking ribald gaze was ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... Mr. Greene, a felt-maker, at a conventicle in Fetter Lane, a place always renowned for its heterodoxy. The thoughtless Cavaliers, who did not like long sermons, and thought all religion but their own hypocrisy, delighted in gaunt Barebone's appropriate name, and made fun of him in those ribald ballads in which they consigned red-nosed Noll, the brewer, to the reddest and hottest portion of the unknown world. At the Restoration, when all Fleet Street was ablaze with bonfires to roast the Rumps, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... down at his table, and drink some of the wine they had brought him as a sign of voluntary homage. He would then have them led home by his men in the middle of the night, all dead drunk, torches in hand, and making the forest resound with ribald songs. Libertinism completed the demoralization of the peasantry. In every family the Mauprats soon had their mistresses. This was tolerated, partly because it was profitable, and partly (alas! that it should have to be said) because it gratified vanity. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... out the previous day's Coast newspaper. He was tired from his all day's running around after Jim. It was a raw evening out-of-doors, but it was cosy in there. The popping of corks, the clinking of glasses, the hum of voices and the occasional burst of ribald laughter, even the quarrelsome argument; all had more or less a soothing effect, which began to make Phil feel at harmony with the world at large. He looked at his watch. It was eight o'clock. He stretched his legs, unfolded the large ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... indignant historian writes: "Unleashed pagans from the purlieus of the gross court of King James, danced about the Idoll of Merry Mount, joining hands with the lasses in beaver coats, and singing their ribald songs." ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... prisoners ek scholden go Endlong the Charr on eyther hond, And alle the nobles of the lond Tofore and after with him come Ridende and broghten him to Rome, In thonk of his chivalerie And for non other flaterie. 2380 And that was schewed forth withal; Wher he sat in his Charr real, Beside him was a Ribald set, Which hadde hise wordes so beset, To themperour in al his gloire He seide, "Tak into memoire, For al this pompe and al this pride Let no justice gon aside, Bot know thiself, what so befalle. For men sen ofte time falle 2390 Thing which men wende siker stonde: Thogh thou victoire ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... are fearful tenants, but fevers are worse. And some of the flushed, staggering folk, that reeled along the roadside, were literally out of their minds. They muttered and talked incoherently, and shouted ribald songs till my blood curdled to see them. At the first house on the right of the road, a half-mile past the Creek, I noticed many idle soldiers climbing the white palings, to watch something that lay in the yard. A gray-haired man was expiring, under the coolness of a spreading ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... statement, that this charming young person, who day after day parades the streets with a barrel-organ and a monkey,—the last unhappily indisposed at present,—listening to the degrading jokes of ribald boys and depraved men,—you are quite correct, Sir, in stating that she is not my daughter. On the contrary, she is the daughter of an Hungarian nobleman who had the misfortune to incur my displeasure. I had a son, crooked spawn of a Christian!—a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the Magisterial Bench and dispenses justice. It is as JEMMY, J.P., he rises to the fullest height of his judicial manner. Still, pretty well just now. A little embarrassed at the outset by consciousness that his postal address at Leeds is "Swillington House." Afraid some ribald person will remember this, and vulgarly connect it with the discussion. Delightful to observe the way in which he reproved GEORGE CAMPBELL for language unbecoming the precincts of the Court. CAMPBELL had lightly spoken about "Members requiring a pick-me-up." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... what is to do?' quoth he. 'I have made an ill bargain. Oh, perverse heart, that turneth from doctrine.' So I bade him keep his breath to cool his broth, ne'er would I shame my folk with singing ribald songs. 'Then,' says he sulkily, 'the first fire we light by the wayside, clap thou on the music box! so 'twill make our pot boil for the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... illustrated, however, most pointedly in what he had to say regarding the charge of polygamy: "The remaining charge connects itself with that unmixed outrage, the spiritual wife story; which was fastened on the Mormons by a poor ribald scamp whom, though the sole surviving brother and representative of their Jo. Smith, they were literally forced to excommunicate for licentiousness, and who therefore revenged himself by editing confessions and disclosures of savor ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... king's wearing. He was considered to have gotten much the worse of the treaty of Peronne with Charles the Bold, and he had a mistress named Perrette, so that the Parisians trained their parrots, magpies, and other speaking birds to ask Perrette to give them a drink, among other ribald phrases. Consequently, the king issued a royal commission "to a young man of Paris named Henry Perdriel, in the said city of Paris" to take and seize "all magpies, jays, and chevrettes being in cages or otherwise, and being private property, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... scholars within were told to say A, the blackguards without were bellowing B; or if the usher asked how many three times three made, the answer from the outside would be "ten," or else that "it depended upon circumstances." Every week some ribald and libellous paragraph would appear in the county newspaper, headed "Advertisement," in such terms as the following:—"We have just learned from the best authority, that the usher of a school not a hundred miles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various |
