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Folk   /foʊk/   Listen
Folk

noun
1.
People in general (often used in the plural).  Synonyms: common people, folks.  "Folks around here drink moonshine" , "The common people determine the group character and preserve its customs from one generation to the next"
2.
A social division of (usually preliterate) people.  Synonym: tribe.
3.
People descended from a common ancestor.  Synonyms: family, family line, kinfolk, kinsfolk, phratry, sept.
4.
The traditional and typically anonymous music that is an expression of the life of people in a community.  Synonyms: ethnic music, folk music.



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"Folk" Quotes from Famous Books



... the towns grew, the masters left the smoke they were creating and bought country places and became country gentlemen, preserved their own game and judged their own tenants. And thus disappeared yet another section of the ancient country folk. For the large landowners would seldom sell and the land bought by the new men was mostly the land of small farmers and yeomen. This was the age of new country houses with a hundred rooms and vast offices that housed an army of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... other side of a lake. They have no women, and they hope to rob the folk on the other side ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... once the royal head of James; Some thirsty limner passing made it Charles; I've heard it said 'twas e'en our good Queen Bess, By curious folk that trac'd her high starch'd ruff In the quaint faded back of antique chair, Her stomacher in Charles's shrivell'd vest— Who in his turn is gone. Well, take this letter, See the old knight; but not a word to him. Stay, I forgot, my little rosy cousin Should be a woman now; thus—full ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... resources at once it would be an unkindness to the horticulturists of two thousand years from now, who would be left moping around with nothing to do. Chinquapin nuts borne in heavy profusion by the plants are delicious in quality, but usually too small to attract customers aside from the wood folk. The wood of the chinquapin of tree form (C. pumila var. arboriformis) is valuable for purposes to which wood of the common American chestnut is put, and some of the tree chinquapins acquire an earned ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various

... very evident Joe was only joking, and there were smiles on the faces of the other circus folk. ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum

... deepened within him as he listened to her singing in the drawing-room. She had been known to bluntly, flatly refuse an Emperor who had asked her to sing, and yet to take a little Sicillian street singer's tambourine from her hand, and sing the coppers and silver out of the pockets of the folk who had crowded the market-place at the first liquid notes of her song. She rarely sang in the houses of her hosts and hostesses. Tonight she had voluntarily gone to the ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... becoming self-supporting, self-respecting citizens, and ask only for the just enforcement of law and intelligent instruction and supervision. Others, living in more remote regions, primitive, simple hunters and fisher folk, who know only the life of the woods and the waters, are daily being confronted with twentieth-century civilization with all of its complexities. Their country is being overrun by strangers, the game slaughtered and driven away, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... you, my lad," continued the visitor. "I know what you busy London people are, and how we slow-going country folk get in your way. I only want to look at a ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... same friendly indolence. Half the breakfasters were lying on coloured shawls in groups about the square; the other half were strolling off—all in one direction, I noticed—as slowly as could be towards the open fields beyond; no one was active or had anything to do save the yellow folk who flitted to and fro fostering the others, and doing the city work as though it were their only thought in life. There were no shops in that strange city, for there were no needs; some booths I saw indeed, and temple-like ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... the hands of the Liberals. Bismarck regarded this as a frightful situation. Bismarck, of the Old Regime, stood by the landlords and the titled folk. He had prodigious pride of station, hated to see the King make a fool ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... dear girl, is of many kinds; absurd to speak of it as one and indivisible. There's the marriage of interest, the marriage of reason, the marriage of love; and each of these classes can be almost infinitely subdivided. For the majority of folk, I'm quite sure it would be better not to choose their own husbands and wives, but to leave it to sensible friends who wish them well. In England, at all events, they think they marry for love, but that's mere nonsense. Did you ever know a love match? I never even heard of one, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... neither her mother's temper nor her father's spoiling could keep her from growing up tall and beautiful. Meanwhile the fortunes of the family had changed. From his youth up, Master Peter had hated trouble; when he had money he spent it freely, and fed all the hungry folk who asked him for bread. If his pockets were empty he borrowed of his neighbours, but he always took good care to prevent his scolding wife from finding out that he had done so. His motto was: 'It will ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... at once a conviction of having been hit. Two days later I was down with her malady. She herself and two more of her family owed their disease to the overflow of a neighbor's cesspool, and to them—poor, careless folk—Death dealt out a yet sterner retribution. There was a semi-civilized community beyond both. Should one go to law about it and test the matter ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... them, and it was a matter of indifference to her that they had been freed, as she had plenty of money to pay their wages. But that the negro should vote had always seemed to her incredible and monstrous, and she laughed to herself when she met on the streets the smartly dressed coloured folk out for a walk. They seemed farcically unreal, travesties on the people to whom a discriminating Almighty had given the world. To her the entire race were first slaves, then servants, entitled to all kindness so long as they kept their place, but to be stepped ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... through the leafy by-ways, avoiding town and village; yet oft from afar they heard the joyous throb of bells upon the air, or the sound of merry voices and happy laughter from village commons where folk rejoiced together that Ivo's iron yoke was lifted from them at last. But Beltane kept ever to the woods and by-ways, lest, being recognised, he should be stayed longer from her of whom he dreamed, bethinking him ever of the deep, shy passion of her eyes, the soft tones of her ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... in dat letter I know'd afore, and dar's odder points as 'pear new to me; but whether de old or de new, 'twon't do for us folk declar a single word o' what de young lady hab wrote in dat ere 'pistle. No, Phoebe, neery word must 'scape de lips ob eider o' us. We muss hide de letter, an' nebba let nob'dy know dar's sich a dockyment ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... behind him crouches a woman. At his right and left are two men somewhat resembling him, and like him, bearing wooden clubs. These four face the west, and between them and the bloody rock squat some threescore of cave-folk, talking loudly among themselves. It is late afternoon. The name of him on the pile of stones is Uk, the name of his mate, Ala; and of those at his right ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... Edwin to the edge of the pavement. He could read on the immense banner: "Moorthorne Saint John's Sunday School." These, then, were church folk. And indeed the next moment he descried a curate among the peacocks. The procession made another curve into Wedgwood Street, on its way to the supreme rendezvous in Saint Luke's Square. The band blared; the crimson cheeks of the trumpeters sucked in and out; ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... Bryant to Burnaby, what do you mean? The Cause of old Rowley you've ruin'd quite clean. I had taught Folk to think, by my learned Farrago, That Drydens and Popes wrote three Centuries ago; Though they stared at my Comments, and sometimes might slumber, Yet the Truth they might fancy beneath all my Lumber: But your stupid Jargon is seen through instanter, And your Works give the ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone

... last he was forced to go to her. It was twilight again, soft, filled with the breath of the forest, vibrant with the call of birds off in some marshy land to the south, and he found her alone, sitting upon the step, staring into the gathering dusk, listening to the laughter of the young married folk from the cabin next where Marie and Henri ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... undeserved and so arbitrary. No doubt people had a right to take the line they liked; but why should his people have liked the line of pushing and toadying and lying and cheating? What had their forefathers—all decent folk, so far as he knew—done to them, or what had he done to them? Who had poisoned their blood with the fifth-rate social ideal, the fixed idea of making smart acquaintances and getting into the monde chic, especially when it was foredoomed ...
— The Pupil • Henry James

... ignorance of all her life. And very slowly it became clear to her that she was no exception to the order of mankind, but one of a scattered brotherhood, who had all eaten the Food and grown for ever out of the little limits of the folk beneath their feet. Young Redwood spoke of his father, of Cossar, of the Brothers scattered throughout the country, of the great dawn of wider meaning that had come at last into the history of the world. "We are in the beginning of a beginning," he said; "this world of theirs is only the prelude ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... the house seemed deserted, though the front door was ajar. It was a warm, sweet afternoon in early Summer, and the world was very still, except for the winged folk of wood and field. ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... and Resurrection of our Lord, would demand a separate treatise. This would, in part, be concerned with the attempts to find in the narratives concerning our Lord, a large admixture of the mythology and ritual connected with the sacrificed Rex Nemorensis, and whatever else survives in peasant folk-lore of ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... of Jackson the duellist, but this also is a characteristic picture, and should go into the gallery; for Jackson, like many another man who has been denied children of his own, was singularly tender with little folk. It is certainly good to be able to think of him, fierce man that he was, as turning from fondling a child to enter on his ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown

... Joseph requested a song from Cleopatra. This apparently necessitated a long search in the music cabinet during which all the young people rose from their seats. At last a song was found; it was a sort of French folk-song entitled Les ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... uses may we come at last! Her remarks on art, once she lets go of Rio's skirts, are amazing—Fra Angelico, for instance, only painted Martyrs, Virgins &c., she had no eyes for the divine bon-bourgeoisie of his pictures; the dear common folk of his crowds, those who sit and listen (spectacle at nose and bent into a comfortable heap to hear better) at the sermon of the Saint—and the children, and women,—divinely pure they all are, but fresh from the streets and market place—but she is wrong every ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... "floundered all the summer among the extinct mine-shafts of Scotch politics—the most damnable set of pitfalls mortal man was ever set to blunder through in the dark." His study opened on the garden, from which the sea-view is one of the finest in England. Froude loved Devonshire folk, and enjoyed talking to them in their own dialect, or smoking with them on the shore. He was particularly fond of the indignant expostulation of a poor woman whose husband had been injured by his own chopper, and obliged in consequence to keep his bed. If, she said, it ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... take a walk. I stipulated for Kiomi to be of the party, which was allowed, and the gipsy-women shook my hand as though I had been departing on a long expedition, entreating me not to forget them, and never to think evil of poor gipsy-folk. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... seeking its equivalent of the carceres of the Roman Coliseum, to inaugurate the carriage of twelve inside and fourteen out to many kinds of Divine Service early in the day, and one kind only of dinner-service late—the one folk eat too much pudding and mince-pie at, and have to take a dose after. During this early introductory movement of the 'bus its conductor sits inside like a lord, and classifies documents. But he has nothing to do with our story. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... They shall win them only over my dead body!" At whatever cost he was stubbornly resolved that as long as he lived the tail should still wag the dog instead of the dog the tail; and that a continually dwindling minority of simple farmer folk should rule an ever-growing majority of enterprising city men. Though the political equality of all white inhabitants was the underlying condition on which self-government was restored to the Transvaal, ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... but to put up the horse in the stable and do as my prisoner demanded. So we had dinner together, Hawkins talking in a loud, thick voice that made the waitresses and other guests stare at him and me as if we were some sort of outlandish folk; and after the meal was over he dragged me to the nearest clothier and ordered new ready-made suits for both of us. He had now imbibed much more than was good for him; and when I took out my roll of bills to pay for what we had bought he snatched it out of my hand ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... they discovered all sorts of wonderful things in what Florence called the Fairy Dell: moss-grown rocks from which sprung tiny bell-shaped flowers; a circle of wee pink toadstools, which indeed seemed fit for the elfin folk; a wild grapevine with a most delightfully arranged swing on which the two girls "teetered" away in great joy; shining pebbles, bits of rose-colored quartz, a forest of plumy ferns, and all such like things, over which the city child ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard

... reds and blues. At every corner of the winding ways A carven saint did gaze, With mild sweet eyes, upon the quiet town, From niche and shrine of brown; And many an angel, graven for a charm To save the folk from harm Of evil sprites, stood sentinel ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... two-thirds of their children and of the year's supply of corn and milk[810]—an obvious misunderstanding, the victims really being offered to obtain corn and milk. The numbers are exaggerated,[811] but there can be no doubt as to the nature of the sacrifice—the offering of an agricultural folk to the divinities who helped or retarded growth. Possibly part of the flesh of the victims, at one time identified with the god, was buried in the fields or mixed with the seed-corn, in order to promote fertility. The blood was sprinkled ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... Stanleys, St. Maurs and such-like folk, have led armies and made laws time out of mind; but those noble families would be somewhat astonished-if the accounts ever came to be fairly taken-to find how small their work for England has been by the side of that of the Browns." (Tom ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... Quijada, with the haughty precision of the Castilian grandee, was passing through the humble folk around him and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... flowing water till it finds a way round it, and through the streams of wheels and horses pedestrians scuttled in and out like bolted rabbits. The whole tide of movement was at its height, and the little islands in mid-street were crowded with folk who were cut off, it would seem, by the rising flood-water from all communication with the shore, with but remote chance of escape. Then an omnipotent policeman stepped out into the surging traffic, held up a compelling and resistless ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... proud he certainly was, with those words and those cheers ringing in his ears. He had just done the best he could, and tried to help Beale and the dogs, and the man who had thought himself to be Lord Arden had said, "I am proud that he should be the head of our house," and all the Arden folk had cheered. It ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit

... this Lu gave what they call "a little company,"—not a party, but a reunion of forty or fifty people with whom the family were well acquainted, several of them living in our immediate neighborhood. There was a goodly proportion of young folk, and there was to be dancing but the music was limited to a single piano played by the German exile usual on such occasions, and the refreshments did not rise to the splendor of a costly supper. This kind of compromise with fashionable gayety was wisely deemed by Lu the best method of ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... office, his qualities of thoroughness and grip had splendid scope. A glance at his comments discloses the high standard of excellence which he exacted from every branch of the service. Only the other day timid folk were bewailing his methods at manoeuvres. Four horses had succumbed to a gruelling day of fierce exertion. But French expressed himself as "well pleased." One does not remember his ever going farther up the ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm

... 'neath the moon, Like a star in water; Sylvia's dancing to a tune Fairy folk have ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... the ancient religion, the spirit and traditions of the old mythology remained in the minds of the people, and became their fireside literature under the name of "Folk Sagas." Their legends and nursery tales are diffused over modern Scandinavia, and appear, with many variations, through all the literature of Europe. Among them are found the originals of "Jack the Giant Killer," "Cinderella," "Blue Beard," the "Little Old Woman Cut Shorter," "The Giant ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... Richard Moniplies, like most folk who have a good opinion of themselves, was fond of the task of consolation, which at once displayed his superiority, (for the consoler is necessarily, for the time at least, superior to the afflicted person,) and indulged ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... white jessamine in her hand, and, as the little coffin disappeared from sight, she showered the flowers upon it. Nance was too infirm to accompany her, so that she stood alone beside the grave, although surrounded by the fisher folk of the island. She sobbed bitterly as she heard the heavy clods fall on the coffin, and when at last everything was over, and it was time to move away, she looked round as if for a friend; and Mr. Francis, ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... called ceorles, if they did not live in a dependence on some thane, held their small portions of land as an inheritance likewise,—not by charter, but by a sort of prescription. This was called Folk-land. These estates of inheritance, both the greater and the meaner, were not fiefs; they were to all purposes allodial, and had hardly a single property of a feud; they descended equally to all the children, males and females, according to the custom of gavelkind, a custom ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... newsboy into a corner of the cushioned seat and Miss Armacost followed without assistance; but her doing so made Towsley remember something and sent a blush to his pale cheek. That was, the manner in which real gentlemen helped their women folk ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond

... he, in the tender singsong caressing voice old Russian peasant women employ. "Don't fret, friend—'suffer an hour, live for an age!' that's how it is, my dear fellow. And here we live, thank heaven, without offense. Among these folk, too, there are good men as well as bad," said he, and still speaking, he turned on his knees with a supple movement, got up, coughed, and went off to another ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... been extremely merry, and never were four hard-worked old ladies who deserved it better. All a woman can do in war-time they do daily and cheerfully. Just as their men-folk are doing it at the Front; and now, with the mops and pails laid aside, they sprawl gracefully at ease. There is no intention on their part to consider peace terms until a decisive victory has been gained in the field (Sarah Ann ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie

... This has been a common motif in folk-tales from the time of Jephthah downwards; but the manner in which the different stories are worked ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... di of rym folcum a | Came they of three folk the strangestan Germaniae; aet of | strongest of Germany; that of the Seaxum, and of Angle, and of | Saxons, and of Angle, and of the Geatum; of Geatum fruman sindon | Geats. Of the Geats originally Cant-waere and Wiht-saetan, aet ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... "Upon my word, and a very good thing you must make of it; for I see you dressed like a gentleman from top to toe. Are you not ashamed to go about the world in such a trim, with honest folk, I dare say, glad to buy your cast-off finery second-hand? Speak up, you dog," the man went on; "you can understand English, I suppose; and I mean to have a bit of talk with you before I march ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... town, the Magistrate's wife went up to the nursery and hugged her sleeping little ones, one after the other, and tear-drops fell upon their warm cheeks that had wiped out the guilt of more than one sinner before, and the children smiled in their sleep. They say among the simple-minded folk of far-away Denmark that then they see ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... the previous winter with her ailing Mother in the Alps, at an hotel built on purpose for sick folk as high up in the air as was possible. And the boys were never tired of listening to her descriptions of the life so far up in the clouds and snows that the sun ...
— A Big Temptation • L. T. Meade

... bravura touch: the unquenchable vanity of the intellectual snob asserting itself over all prudence. That is to say, I laid down the rule that no idea should go into the book that was not already so obvious that it had been embodied in the proverbial philosophy, or folk-wisdom, of some civilized nation, including the Chinese. To this rule I remained faithful throughout. In its original form, as published in 1918, the book was actuary just such a pastiche of proverbs, many of them English, and hence familiar even to ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... my house as a hovel and stinking; which is an outrageous fashion of speaking. The houses on the bridge are not imposing, because there are such multitudes of people; but, nevertheless, the butchers continue to dwell there, who are wealthy folk, and married to very proper and ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... rigid shapes with us. It is all fluent with you. You may become pretty nearly what you like. I do not mean in regard to circumstances: other considerations come in to determine these; but circumstances are second, character is first; and I do say, in regard to character, you young folk have all but infinite possibilities before you; and, I repeat, may become almost anything that you set yourselves to be. You have no long, weary trail of failures behind you, depressing and seeming to bring an entail of like failure with them for the future. You have not yet acquired habits—those ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... exact dividing line between the actual combatants of North and South. Eleven States seceded: Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. But the mountain folk of western Virginia and eastern Tennessee were strong Unionists; and West Virginia became a State while the war was being fought. On the other hand, the four border States, though officially Federal under stress of circumstances, were divided against themselves. In Maryland, ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... the Doctor's side, the Mayor opened the larger parcel; and inside was a dog-collar made of solid gold! And a great murmur of wonder went up from the village-folk as the Mayor bent down and fastened it round the dog's neck with ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... expresses his terror in the language of Dante:—'Let us not speak of them, but look and pass on.' In my youth, I lived some time in the vale of Keswick, under the roof of a shrewd and sensible woman, who more than once exclaimed in my hearing, 'Bless me! folk are always talking about prospects: when I was young there was never sic a thing neamed.' In fact, our ancestors, as every where appears, in choosing the site of their houses, looked only at shelter ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... ravine, that they might have spoken to him from the heights above, where they had paused to observe him; but they pulled the capes of their cloaks over their faces and suffered him to pass unchallenged. "But they are young folk," said the Cardinal, benignantly, after relating all these particulars to the Duchess, "and one should pay little regard to their actions." He added, that one of Egmont's gentlemen dogged their party on the journey, lodging ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... course, fruitlessly; but what was that disappointment compared with the discovery of Bevis Marks! Here dwelt Mr. Brass and Sally and the Marchioness. Up and down the little street, this side and that, I went gazing and dreaming. No press of busy folk disturbed me; the place was quiet; it looked no doubt much the same as when Dickens knew it. I am not sure that I had any dinner that day; but, if not, I daresay I did not ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... that throng of joyous folk, I lost myself. I became an actor in a prodigious and picturesque American social comedy. For stage we had the lawn, banks of flowers, and the massive towers of the castle. For background rose the rugged hills!—Nothing could have been farther from our home in Neshonoc. Glowing with esthetic ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... carpeted with thick grass and ferns. The sight gave me my first earnest of safety. I was approaching my own country. Behind me was heathendom and the black fever flats. In front were the cool mountains and bright streams, and the guns of my own folk. ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... while visiting the town. They were, in fact, very curious to study her in her new and splendid setting; and though some of them peeked and peered amid the beds, and thumped the mattresses in vulgar curiosity, the young housewife merely laughed. All her life had been spent among folk of this directly inquisitive sort. She expected them to act as they did, and, being a hearty and generous soul, as well as a very democratic one, ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... smelt each morning of last evening's wine. The praises heaped by Homer on the bowl At once convict him as a thirsty soul: And father Ennius ne'er could be provoked To sing of battles till his lips were soaked. "Let temperate folk write verses in the hall Where bonds change hands, abstainers not at all;" So ran my edict: now the clan drinks hard, And ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... silvered by the light of an August moon floating serenely between swaying stays. The orator's passionate words and gestures evoked wild responses from his hearers, whom the drag of an ancient hatred had snatched from the peaceful asylum of the west. This smiling, happy folk, which I had seen in our manufacturing towns and cities, were now transformed, atavistic—all save one, a student, who stared wistfully through his spectacles across the waters. Later, when twilight deepened, when the moon had changed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... mourned its departed glories. That it would ever again be a place of interest to anybody but people of fishy pursuits was an idea Tenby did not entertain concerning itself; but, lo! in the present century there arose a custom among genteel folk of going down to the sea in bathing-machines. It was discovered that Tenby was a spot favored of Neptune (or whatever god or goddess regulates the matter of surf-bathing), and Tenby was taken down from the shelf, as it were, dusted, mended and set on its legs ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... regard this tendency towards collecting as a first degree of mental aberration when it is set on small things. The Baron de Watteville treasured shells and geological fragments of the neighborhood of Besancon. Some contradictory folk, especially women, would say of Monsieur de Watteville, "He has a noble soul! He perceived from the first days of his married life that he would never be his wife's master, so he threw himself into a mechanical occupation and ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac

... the fisherman's child On the sandy beach at his play; Oh, well for all sensible folk Who are ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... flow'd, no ebb between; And the old folk, time's doting chronicles, Say it did so a little time before That our great-grandsire, Edward, ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]

... then complained that he had not had enough. Sir George Simpson states that at Athabasca Lake, in 1820, he was one of a party of twelve who ate twenty-two geese and three ducks at a single meal. But, as he says, they had been three whole days without food. The Saskatchewan folk, however, known of old as the Gens de Blaireaux—"The People of the Badger Holes"—were not behind their congeners. That man of weight and might, our old friend, Chief-factor Belanger—drowned, alas, many years ago with young Simpson at Sea Falls—once served out to ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... Irish folk-lore,' says Mr. W. B. Yeats in his charming little book Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, 'have, from our point of view, one great merit, and from the point of view ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... Sleary has a heart which no brandy-and-water can harden, and he enables Mr. Gradgrind to send off the wretched cub to America, refusing any guerdon but a glass of his favourite beverage. The circus troupe are kindly, simple, loving folk. Cissy Jupe proves the angel of the Gradgrind household. Stephen is the victim of unjust persecution on the part of his own class, is suspected, by young Gradgrind's machinations, of the theft committed by that young scoundrel, falls into a disused pit as he is coming to vindicate his character, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... the Tales, the folk say, Is known the world around, For children by taking his stories To ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls

... bon droict ce meschant a este execute par justice en la ville de Geneve. 1554.—In this famous little book the author classifies doctrinal errors according to their gravity. Slight superstitions and the ignorance into which simple folk have fallen, are to be borne with till God reveal the truth to them. Offences of greater magnitude, because injurious to the church, should be visited with mild penalties. "But when malicious spirits attempt to overthrow the foundations of religion, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... his son, aged two years, playing with the red, lacquered cylinder in which he kept his reed pens. Beharilal had two girls also, but they were with the women folk in the interior of the house, where he was content they should stay. This was his only boy, the pride and joy of his heart. Engrossed as he was in recording his gains, he could not refrain from lifting his ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... and the simple-minded country folk with whom he had taken up his abode seemed more thoroughly devoted to him; the anchor of their belief seemed now deeply grounded, and in the peaceful bay of their affection his bark floated, safe from shipwrecking current or storm. There was neither subterfuge or duplicity in ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... towards us, and hating them moreover. He promised to do all that he might towards making a good warrior and seaman of me; and he was ever thereafter as a foster father to me, for my own had died in the hall with Vemund. It was his wish to make amends thus, if he could, for the loss his folk had ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler

... word, for speech to them was grievous, With bovine eyes they supplicated me; "We wot not what ye will, but prithee leave us, Unlettered folk are we." ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams

... Evolution of tone-language. French writer of 1835. Prince of Waldthurn, in 1690. Spencer's theory. Controversy and answer. Music of primeval man and early civilizations. The Vedas. Hebrew scriptures. Basis of scientific laws. Church ritual. Folk-music. Influence of crusades. Modern music architect of its own fortunes. Present musical vocabulary and literature. Counsel of Pythagoras. What Plato taught. Euripides on song. Auerbach. Martin Luther. Napoleon Bonaparte. Bain and Dr. Marx. Shakespeare, in Merchant ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... between the prosperous and the broken-hearted, "I, too, have suffered." I came across one such woman in the neighbourhood of Villequier-au-Mont. She was a woman of title and a royalist. Her estates had been laid waste by the invasion and all her men-folk, save her youngest son, were dead. Directly the Hun withdrew last spring, she came back to the wilderness which had been created and commenced to spend what remained of her fortune upon helping her peasants. These peasants had been the hewers of wood and drawers ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... especially fortunate that the chief investigations were made in the summer of 1906, when the new "messiah craze" was at its height, thus affording exceptional opportunity for observing an interesting wave of religious ecstasy sweep over this primitive folk. ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... paused to watch our game and make audible comment on our folly. We also bought a lawn-mower, the second in the town, and shaved our front yard. We took down the old picket fence in front of the house and we planted trees and flowers, until at last some of the elderly folk disgustedly exclaimed, "What won't them ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... clergy; those laymen who had any culture at all knew a little Latin and a few scholastic propositions. All this was changing. Despite reiterated ecclesiastical prohibitions, parts of the Bible were translated into the vulgar tongue and eagerly studied by ignorant folk; everywhere men appeared to whom religion was a matter of vital importance, men who strove to find God in their own souls, instead of blindly accepting the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... me no honour, and if I were to lose, it would be the greatest possible disgrace." And, saying to Messer Baldo that he should give the work to Niccolo, because he would execute it in such a manner as would please the folk that went to ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... of Anagni, to which the Pope had withdrawn, laid violent hands upon his holiness. If measured by numbers, the whole affair was trifling. So few were the French soldiers that in a few days the handful of towns-folk in Anagni were able to rise against them, expel them from the place and rescue the aged Pope. He had been struck—beaten, say not wholly reliable authorities—and so insulted that rage and shame drove him mad, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... were now heard, for some fisher folk were putting out off shore to discover what all ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... lofty pillars, tapers white Illuminate, with delicate sharp flames, The brows of saints with venerable names, And in the night erect a fiery wall, A great but silent fervor burns in all Those simple folk who kneel, pathetic, dumb, And know that down below, beside the Rhine— Cannon, horses, soldiers, flags in line— With blare of trumpets, mighty ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... appreciation of his work by turning out in force. It's the least we can do, I think. Mind you, I don't fancy football a little bit, but Remsen taught us to win from St. Eustace last year, and any one that helps down Eustace is all right and deserves the gratitude of the school and all honest folk." ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... custom condemned by the New College statutes is doubtless that already furnished. Hearne, however, had an idea that it was a reflexion on the Lollards. Wiclif is always represented with a beard, and, as most of his followers were lay-folk, it was possibly a symbol of the sect, which may have recollected the text: "Neither shalt thou mar the corners of ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... village. His first care was to rebuild the family residence, a congenial task which occupied five years and made a large hole in his savings. It slowly grew into a masonry structure divided into two distinct Mahals (wings)—the first inhabited by men-folk; the second sacred to the ladies and their attendants. Behind it stood the kitchen; and the Pujardalan (family temple) occupied a conspicuous place in front, facing south. The usual range of brick cattle-sheds and servants' quarters made up quite ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... in a surly tone, 'let's have none of that gammon, for it'll be of no use. If folk will meddle in others folk's concerns, they must take the consequences; we're not such fools as to put the rope round our own necks, I can ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... that lived by the Lin-tree Scaur. 'Tweer I that laid him out, poor aad fellow, and a dow man he was when aught went cross wi' him; and he cursed and sweared, twad gar ye dodder to hear him. They said he was a hard man wi' some folk; but he kep a good house, and liked to see plenty, and many a time when I was swaimous about my food, he'd clap t' meat on ma plate, and mak' me eat ma fill. Na, na—there was good as well as bad in farmer ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... resign, and return to Hampton Court, with the promise of a pension and of payment of the debts incurred by his father. While packing for his departure, he sat down on a box containing all the complimentary addresses made to him, and said, "Between my legs lie the lives and fortunes of all the good folk in England!" He then returned to Hursley, where he found himself pursued by those debts of his father which the Long Parliament had engaged to pay, and which swallowed up more than his patrimony, though the manor of Merdon, having been settled upon his ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... preaching, this white-haired patriarch had long given up the idea of great discourses. To him the Master had said, "Comfort ye, comfort ye My people," and he had walked long, long miles up the mountain side to do it. Pace the critic! This preaching was the very thing for those needy folk this wintry afternoon. ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... unfortunate and eager to assist those who needed money, as many a poor girl and worthy young fellow could testify. In all their charities they were strongly supported by Mr. Merrick, whose enormous income permitted him to indulge in many benevolences. None gave ostentatiously, for they were simple, kindly folk who gave for the pure joy of giving and begrudged all knowledge of their acts to anyone outside their ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne

... have granted for us and our heirs, as well to archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and other folk of holy Church, as also to eaarls, barons, and to all the commonalty of the land, that *for no business from henceforth will we take such manner of aids, tasks, nor prises but by the common consent of the realm,* and for the common profit thereof, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... jes' go right into dinnah; I'll take keer of the auto'bile; I'll see that nun of those ign'rant folk stannin' roun' lay their han's on it; they think Sambo doan know an auto'bile; didn't I see you heah befoh? an' didn't I hole de hose when you put de watah in? Me an' you are de only two pussons in dis whole town who knows about de auto'bile,—jes' ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... one gift, at least," he answered, "which we country folk are supposed to possess. We know truth when we see it. But I am saying more than I have any right to. I don't want to make ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... folk, not fighting people. We had no weapons, nor weapon-skill. Those who fought were all killed; we held up empty hands, and were spared to be captives of ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper

... Commission held a series of conferences throughout the United States, which brought them into the closest touch with every type of American farm life. They received written replies from some 125,000 rural folk to whom they had sent a circular with a dozen questions covering the essential heads of inquiry. The Commissioners say in their report: "We have found by the testimony, not only of the farmers themselves, ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett

... stood idly watching the said ship, and as he looked, lo! folk passing him toward the gangway. These were three; first came a dwarf, dark-brown of hue and hideous, with long arms and ears exceeding great and dog-teeth that stuck out like the fangs of a wild beast. He was clad in a rich coat of yellow silk, and bare in his hand a crooked bow, ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... report rendered by the clerk and treasurer, the congregation has during the pastorate of Dr. Willis raised more than $68,000 for general expenses and $1,850 for their Old Folk's Home. This does not by any means account for the amount raised for charitable purposes, which include home and foreign missions. The support given needy members and institutions of learning, traveling ministers, and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... house of God is closed this Whitsun Eve. The reverend clergy will grant no audience with the Lord to-day, and so the worshipful commonalty will have to go home and go to bed without any mass. Look here, good folk! Here you have a door—mere wood, of course, but that matters little, as it is lined with copper. Just take a look at this door! If I say that the Lord is living within—this being His house; and if I say that the bishop's diaconus, or secretarius, ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... herself till we go home, and then we'll give such assistance as in the power of a good sword. Who knows, man, but we'll be riding through the muirs of Ayrshire after something bigger than muir-fowl before many years are over? But the camp, man, what's going on here this morning, and what are the folk talking about, for, as ye know, I've been on the broad of my back ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren



Words linked to "Folk" :   line, pedigree, descent, pleb, folk writer, square-dance music, country and western, country music, social group, people, gens, stock, grass roots, plebeian, ragtag and bobtail, lineage, C and W, folk music, ragtag, schottische, dynasty, stemma, line of descent, blood, parentage, name, gentlefolk, sept, blood line, gospel, folk song, popular music, phyle, house, origin, riffraff, country people, rabble, bloodline, moiety, ancestry, popular music genre, gospel singing



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