"Distaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... much used now, is still occasionally employed, except in large factories. This combing is repeated two or three times, till it is sufficiently smooth and even for spinning. Spinning or converting wool, or cotton, silk, &c. into thread, was anciently performed by the distaff and spindle: these we find mentioned in sacred history, and they have been used in all ages, and in all countries yet discovered. The natives of India, and of some other parts of the world, ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... from its context, and falsely interpreted, has given rise to most absurd theories with regard to the views of Talmudic times on the matter of woman's education. It should be taken into consideration that its author, who is responsible also for the sentiment that "woman's place is at the distaff," was the husband of Ima Shalom, a clever, highly cultured, but irascible woman, who was on intimate terms with Jewish Christians, and was wont to interfere in the disputations carried on by men—in short, a representative Talmudic blue-stocking, with all the attributes ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... all-bounteous Nature meant For offices of hardiment, 490 A modern Hercules at least, To rid the world of each wild beast, Of each wild beast which came in view, Whether on four legs or on two, Degenerate, delights to prove His force on the parade of Love, Disclaims the joys which camps afford, And for the distaff quits the sword; Who fond of women would appear To public eye and public ear, 500 But, when in private, lets them know How little they can trust to show; Who sports a woman, as of course, Just as a jockey shows a horse, And then returns ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... of Domitor Equi, he being proud of the achievement of taming the horse, and then, so far as we can learn, gentler woman sat like Penelope handling the distaff. Subsequently there arose a race of Amazons, who, aspiring to the feats of man, lost the gentleness of woman; but in our happy land and day, rising above the one without running to the excess of the other, lovely woman, with all the gentle charms which graced a Penelope, ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... she went to an apartment in which their eldest daughter Agnes, but commonly called "Meikle-mouthed Meg," then sat, twirling a distaff. The old dame sat down by her daughter's side, and, after a few observations respecting the weather, and the quality of the lint she was then torturing into threads, she said—"Weel, I'm just thinking, Meggie, that ye mak me an auld woman. Ye would be six-and-twenty ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... Will I not? Oh! if it must be so, and these rash slaves Will not be ruled with less, I'll use the sword Till they shall wish it turned into a distaff. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... this elegant, but unsteady circle. Pickles, hemp, chickens, curds and whey, butter; washing the clothes, minding the children, seeing to the meals of the household: say that and you have summed up the strenuous woman's round of ideas. On her left side, the distaff, with its load of flax; in her right hand, the spindle turning under a quick twist of her thumb, moistened at intervals with her tongue: so she went through life, unwearied, attending to the order and the welfare of the house. I see ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... character of being a cold and dispassionate woman. And this was the more remarkable because on the distaff-side she was of Spanish descent, and might reasonably have been supposed to have inherited the instincts of that passionate and hot-tempered nation. She never quarrelled as the brothers had done, but her eyes narrowed for an instant with a trick that was characteristic of her when ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... saints, she was vigorously attacked by Beda, who had the verses condemned by the Sorbonne and caused the pupils of the College of Navarre to perform a morality in which Marguerite was represented under the character of a woman quitting her distaff for a French translation of the Gospels presented to her by a Fury. This was too much even for Francis, and he ordered the principal and his actors arrested; it was then that Marguerite showed her gentleness, mercy, and humanity by throwing herself at her brother's ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... in order to proceed by degrees, probably contains some demand more difficult to grant than that of yielding to a child scarcely a year old a crown which belongs to me by birthright, and to abandon my sceptre to take a distaff." ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... corresponding period of Grecian and Roman history, we find Penelope and Lucretia at the loom, Nausicaa, a laundress, the daughter of the king of the Lestrigons, fetching water from the spring, Odysseus, a carpenter, a queen of Macedonia as a cook, and finally the distaff of Tanaquil.(348) In the highlands of Scotland, in 1797, there were a great many peasants all of whose clothing was home-made, with the exception of their caps; nothing coming from abroad except the tailor, his ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... Odysseus'—high and proudly. She saw that her son was now indeed a man. Penelope spoke no word to him, for a new thought had come into her mind. She turned round on the stairs and went back with her hand-maids to the chamber where her loom and her distaff were. And as she went up the stairway and away from them her wooers muttered one to the other that she would soon have to choose one of ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... of twisted skins of rabbits worked in the open with her primitive loom in an arbor before her door, beside her a man whirled a distaff and spun the coarse hemp of which the warp was made. Maids and mothers with water jars on their heads walked in stately file from a spring near the river's edge—and above all the serene accustomed life of that Indian village, ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... there were, just then, evident motives for speech. There was no hope that Catharine would have a son, and the secret that a queen may reign by her own right, that the nation may be ruled by the distaff, had not been divulged in England. In foreign policy and in home policy alike, there were interests which favoured a new marriage, if ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... sitting in one of the narrow streets, we saw an old woman spinning with a distaff; a far more ancient implement than the spinning-wheel, which the housewives of other nations have long since ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... withstood By feeble human flesh and blood. 'Twas he that brought upon his knees The hect'ring kil-cow Hercules; Transform'd his leaguer-lion's skin T' a petticoat, and made him spin; Seiz'd on his club, and made it dwindle T' a feeble distaff ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... their tongues out; behind the cart the man pushed. It contained a disorderly freight: a large feather-bed, a copper cauldron, a bird-cage, a mattock, a clock curiously carved, a spinning-wheel with a distaff impoverished of flax, and some kitchen utensils, which, as the woman stumbled and the cart ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... thou wilt be." But, for all she said, Tofano wavered not a jot in his foolish purpose. So at last:—"Lo, now," quoth the lady, "I can no more abide thy surly humour: God forgive thee: I leave thee my distaff here, which be careful to bestow in a safe place." So saying, away she hied her to the well, and, the night being so dark that wayfarers could scarce see one another as they passed, she took up a huge stone that ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... denied admittance to the dooty's house, and could not obtain even a handful of corn. Reaching, however, a humble hut at which an old motherly-looking woman sat spinning cotton, he made signs that he was hungry. She immediately laid down her distaff, and desired him in Arabic to come in, setting before him a dish of kous-kous. In return he gave her one of his pocket-handkerchiefs, and asked for a little corn for his horse, which she readily ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Yes, Kaiser you, your Majesty; excellent!" And sets to consider the methods: "Hm, ha, hm! Think, your Majesty: ought not that Bohemian Vote to be excluded, for one thing? Kur-Bohmen is fallen into the distaff, Maria Theresa herself cannot vote. Surely question will rise, Whether distaff can, validly, hand it over to distaff's husband, as they are about doing? Whether, in fact, Kur-Bohmen is not in abeyance for this time?" "So!" answered Kur-Sachsen, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... boiled chestnuts, the frugal breakfast of an earlier time which nothing could induce her to change. Off she went at once with long strides, the keys jingling on the great silver key-ring fastened to her belt, her plate in her hand, held in equilibrium by the distaff which she held under her arm as if ready for battle, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even to eat her chestnuts. A glance, as she passed, at the stable, still dark, where the horses were sluggishly moving about, at the stifling cow-shed, filled with heads ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... to the King, set about carding the flax, preparing and putting it on the distaff, twirling her spindle, reeling it and working away without ceasing; so that on Saturday evening her thread was all done. But Renzolla, thinking she was still the same as in the fairy's house, not having looked at herself in ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... and out, in and out, she was a twentieth century version of any one of the Fates, with the Klinger darner and mender substituted for distaff and spindle. There was something almost humanly intelligent in the workings of Martha's machine. Under its glittering needle she would shove a sock whose heel bore a great, jagged, gaping wound. Your home darner, equipped only with mending egg, needle, and cotton, would ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... some part of the Border Minstrelsy, ascribes to the clan of Tweedie, a family once stout and warlike, a descent which would not have misbecome a hero of antiquity. A baron, somewhat elderly we may suppose, had wedded a buxom young lady, and some months after their union he left her to ply the distaff alone in his old tower, among the mountains of the county of Peebles, near the sources of the Tweed. He returned after seven or eight years, no uncommon space for a pilgrimage to Palestine, and found his family had not been lonely in his absence, the lady having; been cheered by the arrival ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... humble garment. The two young ladies spun, as used to do the great ladies of the court of King Alfred, and as Hercules himself is said to have done when he changed his club and lion's skin for a spindle and distaff with the Queen of Lybia; Jack was apparently sketching, Fritz had a collection of hunting apparatus before him, and the other two young men, each with a book, ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... witness, he says, 'I am he, who measures out the long year, who beholds all things, {and} through whom the earth sees all things; the eye, {in fact}, of the universe. Believe me, thou art pleasing to me.' She is affrighted; and in her alarm, both her distaff and her spindle fall from her relaxed fingers. Her very fear becomes her; and, he, no longer delaying, returns to his true shape, and his wonted beauty. But the maiden, although startled at the unexpected sight, overcome by the beauty of the God,[39] {and} dismissing {all} complaints, submits ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... "But then I am not a mighty man—I shall never be a man of renown. The choice of Hercules is a pretty fable; but Prodicus makes it easy work for the hero, as if the first resolves were enough. Another story says that he came to hold the distaff, and at last wore the Nessus shirt. I suppose one good resolve might keep a man right if everybody else's resolve ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... sides, and loud above all rings the regular Io Talasse—whatever that may have meant, for no man now knows, and almost certainly no one knew then. In the midst of the procession Marcia, followed by bearers of her spindle and distaff, is being led by two pretty boys, while a third carries a torch; Silius meanwhile is scattering nuts or walnuts, or confetti made like them, to the crowd. Arrived on the Caelian, the bride is once more seized and lifted over the ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... when she questioned him the sweet- faced rogue clung to her and murmured, "Oh, Pacifica, I do want Luca to win you, because he loves you so; and I do love you both!" And she grew pale, and answered him, "Ah, dear, if he could!" and then said never a word more, but went to her distaff; and Raffaelle saw great tears fall off her lashes ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... hurly-burly of washing over. Dorcas had nearly finished her "stent" on the little wheel. As she sat by the open door, diligently trotting her foot, and softly pulling the last flax from her distaff, her glance went hastily and often towards the setting sun. She could see beyond the sloping orchard, no longer loaded with fruit, the Great Meadows, extending along the banks of the Connecticut. She could see on the eastern side great white mountains, that went modestly by the name of hills, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... blessing into the warme sune. At eve[r]y dogges barke to awake A lone day My self can tell best where my shoe wringes me A cloke for the Rayne To leap owt of the frieng pan into the fyre Now toe on her distaff then she can spynne To byte and whyne The world runs on wheeles He would haue better bread than can be made of whea[t] To ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... engravings some curious illustrations are met with showing Englishwomen using the distaff. St. Distaff's Day was formerly the 7th of January, for it was then that the women resumed work after the Christmas festivities were over. The distaff and the spindle belonged to an age little understood now, and the occupations ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... birth. But the children, at length, tired out with their play, And stamping the snow from their feet by the way, Come slipping and stumbling and scrambling along, While the big brother catching the baby-girl's song, "Oh, my finders are told!" gives her now a gay toss, The golden hair streaming like distaff of floss; And so cheery the group that is ranged round the board, That for snow, blessed snow! we ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... feel that the Stuarts were the last kings of England to rule by the grace of God rather than by the grace of Parliament. As a matter of fact, the present reigning family in England is glad to derive its ancient strain of royal blood through a Stuart—descended on the distaff side from James I., and winding ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... much the same order, a black hunter with racing blood in him, loins and withers that assured any amount of force, and no fault but that of a rather coarse head, traceable to a slur on his 'scutcheon on the distaff side from a plebeian great-grandmother, who had been a cart mare, the only stain in his otherwise faultless pedigree. However, she had given him her massive shoulders, so that he was in some sense a gainer by her after all. Wild Geranium was ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... tore over hill and dale, through bush and bog. When the lad had run so a long time, he began to get weary, and when he had held on a while longer, he had more than enough of his watching, and just there, he came to a cleft in a rock, where an old hag sat and spun with a distaff. As soon as she saw the lad who was running after the foals till the sweat ran down his brow, this ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... sides of our path, and the fine level road is adorned with a beautiful red flower named Bolcamaria. The markets or sleeping-places are well supplied with provisions by great numbers of women, every one of whom is seen spinning cotton with a spindle and distaff, exactly like those which were in use among the ancient Egyptians. A woman is scarcely ever seen going to the fields, though with a pot on her head, a child on her back, and the hoe over her shoulder, but she is ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... bewilder Johnny, and make him believe that fairy tales might be true, after all, for how could he know that the strange woman was an Italian servant, in her native dress, with a distaff in her hand? After pausing a moment, to rub his eyes, he took another look, and made fresh discoveries by twisting his head about. A basket of oranges stood near the Princess, a striped curtain hung from a limb of the tree to keep ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... his last field he came. Men said he saw strange visions Which none beside might see; And that strange sounds were in his ears Which none might hear but he. A woman fair and stately, But pale as are the dead, Oft through the watches of the night Sat spinning by his bed. And as she plied the distaff, In a sweet voice and low, She sang of great old houses, And fights fought long ago. So spun she, and so sang she, Until the east was gray. Then pointed to her bleeding breast, And shrieked, ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... wet afternoon was wearing on, beguiled by the young girls as best it might be, with the spindle and distaff, and incessant chatter and laugh, save when they joined their voices in some popular chant. Signora Martina was delivering fresh flax to the spinners; Marietta, the maid, was busy about the fire, in provident forethought for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Father-in-law; but it is not on that ground that he looks to inherit. He is Nephew of old Anton Ulrich, Son of a younger Brother (who was also "Bevern" in Anton's time); and is the evident Heir-male; old Anton being already fallen into the distaff, with nothing but three Grand-daughters. Anton's heir will now be this Nephew; Nephew has wedded one of the Grand-daughters, youngest of the Three, youngest Daughter of Ludwig Rudolf, Sovereign Duke that now is; which Lady, by the family she brought him, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... with the sex that has not remarked this propensity in lovely woman, and how often the wisest in the council are made to be as fools at HER board, and the boldest in the battle-field are craven when facing her distaff? ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... distant stragglers lure. The children leave their play and round him flock; E'en sober aged grand-dame quits her seat, Where by the door she twines her lengthen'd threads, Her spindle stops, and lays her distaff by, Then joins with step sedate the curious throng. She praises much the fashions of her youth, And scorns each gaudy nonsense of the day; Yet not ill-pleas'd the glossy ribband views, Uproll'd, and changing hues with ev'ry fold, ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... bride comes to her husband's house, she finds at the door a broom; or, if he takes possession of her's, a ploughshare is placed there: both allegorical of their duties. The distaff of the bride is carried by an old woman throughout ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... folks, you must know, were quite poor, and had to work pretty hard for a living. Old Philemon toiled diligently in his garden, while Baucis was always busy with her distaff, or making a little butter and cheese with their cow's milk, or doing one thing and another about the cottage. Their food was seldom anything but bread, milk, and vegetables, with sometimes a portion of honey from their beehive, and now and then a bunch of ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... and partly play You must on St. Distaff's Day; Give St. Distaff all the right, Then give Christmas ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... and her feet were bare. Her black hair hung down her back. Her eyes were the color of a topaz. Her form was tall and straight. She carried a distaff under her arm and looked as if she had just come ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... us pictures of women of the humbler ranks of life at their work. On the border of a fine manuscript of the time of Edward IV. there is the figure of a woman employed with her distaff, her head and neck enveloped in a coverchief. The figure rises out of a flower. In a manuscript of 1316, a country-woman is engaged in churning, dressed in a comfortable gown and apron, the gown tidily pinned up, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... immortal forty thieves. In the center of the palace little remains; but in the southeastern corner, where the land begins to slope abruptly to the valley below, there are to be seen several stories of the ancient building. Here one comes upon the rooms marked with the so-called "distaff" pattern, supposed to indicate that they ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... here alluded to were the Par'coe, or Fates—three goddesses who presided over the destinies of mortals: 1st, Clo'tho, who held the distaff; 2d, Lach'esis, who spun each one's portion of the thread of life; and, 3d, At'ropos, who cut off the thread ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... own good feeling—"for it's a well-written log that has no blots; but hang it, as I said before, I never could spin a yarn like my friend Robin here, either from the wheel, which I mean to typify the head—or the distaff, which, be it understood, signifies the heart: So here goes—" and, with a trembling hand, and a sparkling eye, the generous Springall drained the deep tankard, to the health ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... clear majority, seven of the nine Electors, Bavaria itself (nay Bohemia this time, "distaff" or not), and all the others but Friedrich and Kur-Pfalz, being so disposed or so disposable, Traun being master of the ground—no difficulty about electing Grand-Duke Franz Stephan of Tuscany? Joint-King of Bohemia, to be Kaiser of the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... profession talents and knowledge were essentials, and before making a choice he was applying himself with great success to the study of mathematics. He ultimately decided upon the military profession, thus imitating Achilles, who preferred the sword to the distaff, and he paid for it with his life like the son of Peleus; though not so young, and not through a wound inflicted by an arrow, but from the plague, which he caught in the unhappy country in which the indolence of Europe allows ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... fox! was all the cry; Out from his house ran every neighbour nigh: The vicar first, and after him the crew, With forks and staves the felon to pursue. Ran Coll our dog, and Talbot with the band, And Malkin, with her distaff in her hand: Ran cow and calf, and family of hogs, 730 In panic horror of pursuing dogs; With many a deadly grunt and doleful squeak, Poor swine, as if their pretty hearts would break. The shouts of men, the women ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... counsellors, at once determined to go and succour his sovereign, and accordingly mounted the king's horse, and in a few minutes was in the land of the Philistines. On arriving at Ishbi's house, he discovered that gentleman's venerable mother spinning at the door. The old lady threw her distaff at the Israelite, and, missing him, desired him to bring it back to her. Abishai returned it in such a manner that she never afterwards required a distaff. This little incident was witnessed by Ishbi, who, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... collected specimens of all kinds. When sixteen years old he was sent for a year to [Christ Church] Oxford, but he did not like the place, and thought (in the words of his father) that the 'vigour of his mind languished in the pursuit of classical elegance like Hercules at the distaff, and sighed to be removed to the robuster exercise of the medical school of Edinburgh.' He stayed three years at Edinburgh, working hard at his medical studies, and attending 'with diligence all the sick ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... but they were the earl's utter undoing: for when Christina heard of it, she persecuted him to death. Sophia the empress, Justinian's wife, broke a bitter jest upon Narsetes the eunuch, a famous captain then disquieted for an overthrow which he lately had: that he was fitter for a distaff and to keep women company, than to wield a sword, or to be general of an army: but it cost her dear, for he so far distasted it, that he went forthwith to the adverse part, much troubled in his thoughts, caused the Lombards to rebel, and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... partly play Ye must on S. Distaff's day: From the plough soon free your team, Then come home and fodder them. If the maids a-spinning go, Burn the flax and fire the tow; Scorch their plackets, but beware That ye singe no maidenhair. Bring in pails of water, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... of Tigernach, and the bards of Ulster, rapt into visions of the future:—'When a king of Erin shall flee at the voice of a woman, then shall the distaff and spindle conquer whom the sword and buckler shall not subdue.' That woman is yon heretic queen. A usurper, an intruder on our birthright. Never were the O'Neales conquered but by woman! I have lingered here when the war-cry hath rung from the shores ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... poised upon her head, and she was leading a horse by means of a bridle hung over her arm. Her hands, being thus not required either for the horse or for the vessel, were employed in spinning, as she walked along, by means of a distaff and spindle. ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the following night a bigger monster, "the father", came ashore, and he also was slain. But the most powerful enemy had yet to be dealt with. "The next night a Big Hag came ashore, and the tooth in the front of her mouth would make a distaff. 'You killed my husband and son,' she said." Finn acknowledged that he did, and they began to fight. After a prolonged struggle, in which Finn was almost overcome, the Hag fell and her head was ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... with the idea of your strength. Yet now I understand that you and your cord and your threats all depend from a mere cobweb. It seems to me Clotho should be the one to boast: she has you dangling from her distaff, like a sprat at the end of ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... Of course, the girl left alone would be an easy prey to every fortune hunter in India, should anything happen!" There was a ferocious, wild gleam in Alan Hawke's eyes as the aide grasped his hat and stick. "I wish to probe the family records and find out what I can of the 'distaff side of the line,' as Mr. Guy Livingstone would say. I have some really valuable presents, and I am on honor to the Viceroy in this, for, of course, a baronetcy must not be given into sullied hands. Johnstone will probably hermetically seal the girl up till the Kaisar-I-Hind ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... were crammed full of linen and all sorts of things, all tied up with ribbons of various colors and decorated with artificial flowers. In the wardrobe there were at least thirty dresses, and nearby were the high beds, the cradle, the distaff with its beautiful spindles, and everywhere children's clothes were hanging, presents ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... tales and other lore in which the Greeks particularly abound—a people who possess a special faculty for fiction of this sort. Similar are the tales commonly related by our women and maidens while spinning at the distaff, also those which knaves are fond of relating. Here belong also worldly songs which either relate lewd matters or turn upon slippery, frivolous themes. Such are "The Priest of Kalenburg," "Dietrich of Berne" and ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... man careless and negligent of his appearance. He sat with his hands clasped before him, and his heavy eyes fixed on the embers of the peat fire which smouldered on the hearth. The mother was at her distaff, and so were the other two females—to wit, her grandmother and Grace's sister. But the mother! gracious heaven, what a spirit of distress and misery breathed from those hopeless and agonizing features! There was not only natural sorrow there, occasioned by the disappearance ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... of the Libyan people; but her worship was firmly implanted by them in Egypt. She was a goddess of hunting and of weaving, the two arts of a nomadic people. Her emblem was a distaff with two crossed arrows, and her name was written with a figure of a weaver's shuttle. She was adored in the first dynasty, when the name Merneit, 'loved by Neit,' occurs; and her priesthood was one ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... and Nourgehan was charmed when he saw the sage who had proposed the question agree that she had answered with her usual justness, when she said that it was a Chestnut. She answered the third without hesitation, that it was a Distaff. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... Omphale)—Ver. 1026. He alludes to the story of Omphale, Queen of Lydia, and Hercules. Being violently in love with her, the hero laid aside his club and boar's skin, and in the habit of a woman plied the spindle and distaff with her maids. See a curious story of Omphale, Hercules, and Faunus, in the Fasti of Ovid, B. ii. l. 305. As to the reappearance of Thraso here, Colman has the following remarks: "Thraso, says Donatus, is brought back again in order to be admitted to some share in the good graces of Thais, that ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... Eve, a curiously forbidding woman, rather a Gauguinesque type, results; she is presented to Adam; they eat the fruit; they take to foliage; they are judged; the leaves become real garments; they are driven forth to toil, Adam with an axe and Eve with a distaff. ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... lion in her toils, Such are her charms, he dare not raise his mane, Far less expand the terror of his fangs. So great Alcides made his club a distaff, And spun to ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... long years ago in Hellas, Lydia, wife of Melas the Spartan, sat upon a stool in the court of her house, with her wool-basket beside her, spinning. She was a tall, strong-looking young woman with golden hair and blue eyes, and as she twirled her distaff and twisted the white wool between her fingers she sang a little song to herself that sounded like the humming of bees ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... means a distaff. Humpi means perspiration. Saca is a game bird, also a comet. Chima-chaui is a proper name with no meaning. The name of the fifth son is rather unmanageable. Uchun-cuna-ascalla-rando. Uchun-cuna would mean the Peruvian pepper with the ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... had lived at the Terra Vergine all her life; big, gaunt, and very strong, she could do the work of a man, although she was over seventy years of age; burnt black by the sun, and with a pile of grey hair like the hank of flax on her distaff, she was feared by the whole district for her penetrating glance and her untiring energy. When Gianna was satisfied the stars had changed their courses, said the people, so rare was the event; therefore, that this little wanderer ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... she cried, in a haughty tone. 'Clothe me more beautifully than mortal maid was ever clad before, so that I may find favour in the prince's sight and become the bride of the castle. I would that I were done for ever with the spindle and the distaff.' ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... was but a swamp. This swamp, crags, firs, and snow, with the dirty village, made up the prospect. As for the inhabitants—as the carriage stopped short of the village, none were to be seen, but a girl with her distaff amidst a flock of goats, and some soldiers ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... was of yore raised on the field of battle by the scalds of the yet heathen Saxons. Her long dishevelled gray hair flew back from her uncovered head; the inebriating delight of gratified vengeance contended in her eyes with the fire of insanity; and she brandished the distaff which she held in her hand, as if she had been one of the Fatal Sisters who spin and abridge the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... fidelity. The ceremony was begun by sacrificing a sheep to Juno, the fleece being spread upon two chairs on which the bride and bridegroom sat: then a prayer was said over them. The young wife, carrying a distaff and spindle filled with wool, was conducted to her house, a cake, baked by the vestal virgins, being carried before her. The threshold of the house was disenchanted by charms, and by annointing it with certain unctuous perfumes; but as it was ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... only the men with crowns on their heads, or the women who wear jewelled and embroidered robes, or riders locked up in steel, or men under tonsure or tiara, that did great things and made the world move. Carleton shows how the milk-maid, the wagoner, the blacksmith, the spinster with the distaff, the rower of the boat, the common soldier on foot, the student in his cell, and the peddler with his pack, all had a part in ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... Dionysus has sent the sting of his enthusiasm upon them, and has pushed it to a sort of madness, a madness which imitates the true Thiasus. Forced to have the form without the profit of his worship, the whole female population, leaving distaff and spindle, and headed by the three princesses, have deserted the town, and are lying encamped on the bare rocks, or under the pines, among the solitudes of Cithaeron. And it is just at this point that the divine child, [61] supposed to have perished at ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... her protege, until at length she got, as the saying goes, "over head and ears." Nay, was she not, in the long nights, busy working a pair of red slippers for the object of her new affections, and were not these so very suitable to one who, like Hercules, was reduced almost to the distaff, and who, unlike that woman-tamed hero, did not need them to be applied anywhere ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... farther, we come to Mr. Waldron's, and find him nestled quietly under a hill in his double log-house, with a view of the lake on the west, and with comforts all around him. We find Aunt Polly too, and she lays down her distaff, welcomes us in, tells us a story of the backwoods, and gives us a taste of ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... said the old woman; "and a kennel be your burying-place! May the evil demon Zernebock tear me limb from limb, if I leave my own cell ere I have spun out the hemp on my distaff!" ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... bunches of dried vegetables that hung from the roof and on the copper kettles and saucepans ranged along the wall. The wind raged against the shutters of the unglazed windows, and the maid-servants, distaff in hand, crowded closer to the blaze, listening to the songs of some wandering fiddler or to the stories of a ruddy-nosed Capuchin monk who was being regaled, by the steward's orders, on a supper of tripe and mulled wine. The Capuchin's ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... back to the Bunch, the Planet Strappers. To the wild fulfillment they had sought... So—most of them had made it. They had become men—the hard way. Except, of course, Eileen—the distaff side... They had planned, callowly, to meet and compare adventures in ten years. And this was still less ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... they make them ready forth to fare To bright flower-pastures, and no more endure To linger therewithin, but each to other Crieth the challenge-cry to sally forth; Even so bestirred themselves the women of Troy, And kindled each her sister to the fray. The weaving-wool, the distaff far they flung, And to grim weapons stretched their ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... vital tool?" cried Martin. "As well might you bid Madam Toad to spin flax without her distaff." ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... contains Bread Street, Friday Street, Distaff Lane, Basing Lane, part of the Old Change, part of Watling Street, part of Old Fish Street, and Trinity ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... and brothers who were going out to manly labor: and they chatted meanwhile of books, studies, embroidery; discussed the last new poem, or some historical topic started by graver reading, or perhaps a rural ball that was to come off next week. They spun with the book tied to the distaff; they wove; they did all manner of fine needle-work; they made lace, painted flowers, and, in short, in the boundless consciousness of activity, invention, and perfect health, set themselves to any work they had ever read or thought ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... arts—weaving; the art of queens, honoured of all noble Heathen women, in the person of their virgin goddess[242]—honoured of all Hebrew women, by the word of their wisest king—"She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff; she stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. She maketh herself covering of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple. She maketh fine linen, and selleth ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... workshop, for the manufacture of linen. Woofs, white and fine as those of Holland, and quite as good, are there produced. This variety of work commences after harvest. In the autumn evenings, women, young girls, &c., assemble at different houses, with their distaff or bundle of flax, which they place before the hearth. It is pleasant, indeed, to see this collection of industrious women, busied in the performance of the task prescribed to them, laughing, talking, without sometimes taking time even to listen to the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... never yet saw; no, never! All the day long he idleth away his time with the sons of the quarter, vagabonds like himself, and his father (O regret of me!) died not save of dolour for him. And I also am now in piteous plight: I spin cotton and toil at my distaff, night and day, that I may earn a couple of scones of bread which we eat together. This is his condition, O my brother-in-law; and, by the life of thee, he cometh not near me save at meal-times and none ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... with a red handkerchief wound about her head, was a chestnut merchant. The sailors, children, and Italians coming over the border bought her wares, and when she was not employed in serving them she twisted flax on a distaff. ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... feminine habits had Clorinda been from her childhood. She disdained to put her hand to the needle and the distaff. She renounced every soft indulgence, every timid retirement, thinking that virtue could be safe wherever it went in its own courageous heart; and so she armed her countenance with pride, and pleased herself with making it stern, but not to the effect she looked for, for the sternness itself ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... queen happened one day to be away, on pleasure bent. The princess was running about the castle, and going upstairs from room to room she came at length to a garret at the top of a tower, where an old serving-woman sat alone with her distaff, spinning. This good woman had never heard speak of the king's proclamation forbidding the use ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... this community she proved herself to be of unusual ability. In her youth she had been trained in practical affairs as well as in art, and, although she felt that "the needle and distaff were enemies to the brush and pencil," her varied knowledge served her well in the responsibilities she had assumed, and at the head of the institution she had founded she became as well known for her executive ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... the sedentary trade of a tailor, and worked for some years with his relation, Mr. Austerbury, of Friday Street, Cheapside; but love, which works so many changes, and which has ere now transformed blacksmiths into painters, and which induced Hercules to exchange his club for the distaff, caused this Knight of the Steel Bar to relinquish the shop-board and patch up his fortune by the patty-pan. He married his landlady, a widow, who resided in Turnmill Street, Clerkenwell. He had a soul above buttons, and abandoned the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... if you could once muster the energy to gaze across the high road-walls when the thoroughfare sank clown a declivity. After a while there were cottages, outside of which ancient crones sat knitting like the wind, or spinning as smoothly as machines, by the aid of a distaff. Little girls, who were full-fledged peasant women in everything but size, pecked away at their knitting of blue socks, proud of their lately won skill and patient of the undesired toil. They were so small and comely and conformable, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... wife had seen: and one winter evening beside the peat-fire, as Annette was busy with her distaff, and he sat smoking and watching the glowing embers, he told her her mother's story. She and Paul's father, the elder Paul Gignol, had been betrothed in their youth; but his fishing-smack had struck on the rocks one foggy night, and gone down, ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... a wide-opened door, was seen another chamber, where a troop of domestics were busy at their tasks. Some were grinding the yellow grain in hand-mills, others were walking to and fro at the loom, and others sat plying distaff and spindle, nodding their heads like poplars waving in the wind. Very choice was the fabric woven in that chamber, for the women of Phaeacia were famed beyond all others for their skill in weaving, even as the men surpassed ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... husband's mother, old widow Malmayns, fancies herself attacked by the plague, and if he will be kind enough to visit her, she lodges in the upper attic of a baker's house, at the sign of the Wheatsheaf, in Little Distaff-lane, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... brightness of thy lovely hue, Hidest grave thoughts, ripe wit, and wisdom old, More skill than I, in all mine arts untrue, To thee my purpose great I must unfold, This enterprise thy cunning must pursue, Weave thou to end this web which I begin, I will the distaff hold, come ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... One day more brought them to the place, and they saw that this was the column of light which binds together the whole universe. The ends of the column were fastened to heaven, and from them hung the distaff of Necessity, on which all the heavenly bodies turned—the hook and spindle were of adamant, and the whorl of a mixed substance. The whorl was in form like a number of boxes fitting into one another with ...
— The Republic • Plato
... ocean; in Hydraulics, from carrying water by hand in a vessel or in horizontal aqueducts, to those vast conduits which supply the demands of a city, and to steam fire-engines which throw a column of water to the top of the loftiest buildings; in the arts of Spinning and Rope-making, from the hand distaff to the spinning-frame, and to the machine which makes cordage or cables of any length, in a space ten feet square; in Horology or Time-keeping, from the sun-dial and the water-clock to the watch, and to the chronometer, by which the mariner is ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... to a family or a person who never had fortune to be broken in! It was so far well that the MacKelpies—that was the maiden name of Mrs. St. Leger—were reputable—so far as fighting was concerned. It would have been too humiliating to have allied to our family, even on the distaff side, a family both poor and of no account. Fighting alone does not make a family, I think. Soldiers are not everything, though they think they are. We have had in our family men who fought; but I never heard of any of them who fought ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... partly play Ye must on St. Distaff's day; From the plough soon free your team, Then come home and fodder them; If the maids a-spinning go, Burn the flax and fire the tow; Scorch their plackets, but beware That ye singe no maiden-hair; Bring in pails ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... pillory, and she was marched to one of the gates and made to abjure the City for the remainder of her life. A procurer or procuress was also set in the thewe to the accompaniment of music, with a "distaf with towen"—i.e., a distaff dressed with flax—in his or her hand; and the transgressor was made to serve as a public spectacle for such time as the Mayor and Aldermen deemed fit. A priest detected in the company of a loose female, if she were ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... extraneous impurities before the process of reduction is commenced. In all the minor details of the mill there has been the same marked change, until the modern merchant mill of to-day no more resembles that of twenty-five years ago than does the modern cotton mill the old-fashioned distaff. The change has extended into the winter wheat sections, and no mill in the United States can hope to hold its place in the markets unless it is provided with the many improvements in machinery and processes which have resulted ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... wall from clime to clime; With bells and dragons crests her Pagod-bowers, Her silken palaces, and porcelain towers; With long canals a thousand nations laves; 110 Plants all her wilds, and peoples all her waves; Slow treads fair CANNABIS the breezy strand, The distaff streams dishevell'd in ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... children to look after. So, wouldn't it be better to spare these arms of ours, now that they are growing old? You will always find something to occupy your time about the house;—there'll be no lack of furniture and things to mend, and I'll be more than ever beside you with my distaff and ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the box. At jog breech, or prick him At the queens. forward. At the trades. At knockpate. At heads and points. At the Cornish c(h)ough. At the vine-tree hug. At the crane-dance. At black be thy fall. At slash and cut. At ho the distaff. At bobbing, or flirt on the At Joan Thomson. nose. At the bolting cloth. At the larks. At the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... her maid, spinning together in the Hall, their fingers drawing the roving from the distaff and stretching it out as the spindle twisted it, were finally on the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... with Lord Wharncliffe, the loss of domestic manufactures; we would prefer one housewife skilled in the distaff and the dairy—home-bred, and home-taught, and home-faithful—to a factory full of creatures who live amid the eternal roll, and clash, and glimmer of spindles and rollers, watching with aching eyes the thousand twirls and capable of but one act—tying the ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... Maiden, born on the borders of France, in the duchy of Lorraine, and the see of Toul, towards the Imperial territories. This Maiden her father and mother employed in tending sheep; daily, too, did she handle the distaff; man's love she knew not; no sin, as it is said, was found in her, to her innocence the neighbours bore witness . ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... great to be withstood By feeble human flesh and blood. 350 'Twas he that brought upon his knees The hect'ring, kill-cow HERCULES; Transform'd his leager-lion's skin T' a petticoat, and made him spin; Seiz'd on his club, and made it dwindle 355 T' a feeble distaff, and a spindle. 'Twas he that made emperors gallants To their own sisters and their aunts; Set popes and cardinals agog, To play with pages at leap-frog. 360 'Twas he that gave our Senate purges, And flux'd the House ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... queen of rags and patches, turn Those solemn eyes a moment from your distaff, And say, what tidings your magnificence Can bring us ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley |
