"Gaelic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... singing in a most uncouth way. Of all the horrible noises I ever heard, those which a half-drunken Tartar makes are the most discordant. The deep nasal and guttural noises he emits would beat Welsh and Gaelic by a ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... stopped could hold. I went out into the street to get a look at the place, but a genuine Scotch mist covering me with water soon compelled me to return. I heard the people, a well-limbed brawny race of men, with red hair and beards, talking to each other in Gaelic, and saw through the fogs only a glimpse of the sides of the mountains and crags which ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... possessed several of these dogs, verified as being derived from the best stock on the island, from which their parents—who understood no language but Gaelic—were brought direct, I have noted some of their odd, whimsical ways, a few of which I will illustrate, taking for my exponent one very remarkable little fellow who was a genuine type ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... this day; the deep sea on either hand of it, full of rugged isles and reefs most perilous to seamen—all overlooked from the eastward by some very high cliffs and the great peals of Ben Kyaw. The Mountain of the Mist, they say the words signify in the Gaelic tongue; and it is well named. For that hill-top, which is more than three thousand feet in height, catches all the clouds that come blowing from the seaward; and, indeed, I used often to think that it must make ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Chapter VII) the idea of a General Convention took firm root and led to remarkable developments. For the present, the chief work of these clubs was the circulation of Paine's volumes (even in Welsh, Gaelic, and Erse) at the price of sixpence or even less. They also distributed "The Catechism of the French Constitution" (of 1791), drawn up by Christie, a Scot domiciled at Paris, which set forth the beauties of that child of many hopes. Less objectionable was a pamphlet—"The ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... meaning himself,—"hersel' may go to ta deevil if he wull; ta little lassie sall be a lady." (Jamie's Scotch always grew more Gaelic as he got excited.) It was evident that he regarded religion as a sort of ornament of superior breeding, that Mercedes must have, though he could do without it. And Mr. James Bowdoin looked in Jamie's eye, and held his peace. In those days deference ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... is often called Cumine Ailbhe (Cumine the Fair-haired). His name survives in Kilchuimein (Church of St. Cumine), the ancient designation of Fort-Augustus, and the only name by which it is still called in Gaelic. A spot in the same neighbourhood is known as St. Cumine's Return; it is in the vicinity of a hill called St. Cumine's Seat. The parish church of Glenelg also ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... in Gaelic. "Perhaps the lad will be called to break a great rock some day. The Lord ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... rivers; the fields well cultivated, I understand, but not lovely to the eye. It is of the coast I speak: the interior may be the garden of Eden. History broods over that part of the world like the easterly HAAR. Even on the map, its long row of Gaelic place- names bear testimony to an old and settled race. Of these little towns, posted along the shore as close as sedges, each with its bit of harbour, its old weather-beaten church or public building, its flavour of decayed prosperity and ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that I would soon recover with his good food and the sea air; but he refused to take me. When I reached Yokohama, I immediately began to see if I could not secure sailing from there; day after day went by, it was the old story, everything taken. When the Gaelic was returning I told the captain that I would be willing to take even third cabin at first class rates, but even thus there were no accommodations. Within an hour of the ship's sailing, word was brought to me ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... allowed at times to be outside his cage on parole; and, always observing good faith and gratitude for such indulgences, they were repeated as often as appeared consistent with safe custody. The few words of Gaelic which he had picked up in his voyage to the north, were just sufficient, on his arrival, to bespeak the good-will of the family, and recommend himself to their hospitality; but his vocabulary was soon increased—he became a great mimic—he could imitate the cries of every domestic animal—the voices ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... life, to be inconsistently rewarded after death by a national monument; his fellow-townsmen let the living starve to deify him when dead. Cervantes and his like have met the same fate elsewhere. Leaving Thurso for the Hebrides, in company with no fewer than 700 Gaelic fishermen, we passed the magnificent cliffs of Cape Wrath in a pleasant calm,—which next day when we had reached Stornoway turned to a furious storm: had we encountered it with those 700 loading the deck it would infallibly have wrecked us,—as it did many ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Donald," said he, in the Gaelic; "and I will tell you that the Skye College in the old times never turned out a better pupil. And will you take a glass of whiskey now, or a glass of claret? And it is a great pity your hair is red, or they would call you Donull Dubh, and people would say you were the born successor of the ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Missionaries in changing the names of native children, and even adults, so soon as they go into their families to live, as though their own were not good enough for them. These native names are generally much more significant, and euphonious than the Saxon, Gaelic, or Celtic. Thus, Adenigi means, "Crowns have their shadow." This was the name of a servant boy of ours, whose father was a native cotton trader, it is to be hoped that this custom among Missionaries ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... various denominations, but was particularly interested in my own, the Protestant Episcopal. The Rt. Rev. H. C. Potter, Bishop of New York, and his secretary, Rev. Percy S. Grant, were passengers on board our ship, the Gaelic. The special purpose of the Bishop's visit to Honolulu was to effect the transfer of the Episcopal churches of the Sandwich Islands to the jurisdiction of our House of Bishops. He expressed himself as delighted with his cordial reception and with the ready, Christian-like ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... Mallow said, "The Gaelic clubs all over the country are in a high state of organisation, and a perfect state of drill. The splendid force of constabulary which are now for you would be against you. The Irish Legislature, from the first, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... the song the harper sings, what tongue Is this he speaks? for in no Gaelic lands Is speech like this upon the lips of men. No word of all these honey-dripping words Is known to me. Beware, beware the words Brewed in the moonshine under ancient oaks White with pale banners of the mistletoe Twined round them in their slow and stately death. ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... this observation to a tradition extracted from "Grahame's Sketches of Scenery in Perthshire" pp. 116-118, remarks—"that this story, translated by Dr. G. from a Gaelic tradition, is to be found in the Otia ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... do to you whatever, if you cannot keep off that crapeau yonder a little better," said Big Mack, reaching for a Frenchman who kept dodging in upon him with annoying persistence. Then Mack began to swear Gaelic oaths. ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... Highland Society of Scotland, with English-Gaelic and Latin-Gaelic Vocabularies, 2 vols. 4to. (pub. at 7l. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... epochal event was the publication (1760 ff.) of the poems attributed to Ossian. Their "editor and translator," James Macpherson, author of a forgotten sentimental epic, alleged that Ossian was a Gaelic poet of the third century A.D., who sang the loves and wars of the heroes of his people, brave warriors fighting the imperial legions of Rome; and that his poems had been orally transmitted until now, fifteen centuries later, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Teutonic speech of the Anglo-Saxon settlers drove out the old Celtic speech throughout almost all England and the Scotch Lowlands before the end of the eleventh century; it drove out the Cornish in the eighteenth century; and it is now driving out the Welsh, the Erse, and the Gaelic, under our very eyes. In language at least the British empire (save of course India) is now almost entirely English, ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... cashier." No one who knows the novels well can question this. Fergus MacIvor's ways and means, his careful arrangements for receiving subsidies in black mail, are as carefully recorded as his lavish highland hospitalities; and when he sends his silver cup to the Gaelic bard who chaunts his greatness, the faithful historian does not forget to let us know that the cup is his last, and that he is hard-pressed for the generosities of the future. So too the habitual thievishness ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... Samnite and Umbrian used -p where the Roman used -q, as -pis- for -quis-; just as languages otherwise closely related are found to differ; for instance, -p is peculiar to the Celtic in Brittany and Wales, -k to the Gaelic and Erse. Among the vowel sounds the diphthongs in Latin, and in the northern dialects generally, appear very much destroyed, whereas in the southern Italian dialects they have suffered little; and connected with this is the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... They are, however, so far determined by the fragments of Gaelic originals, since published by Scottish antiquaries, that the amplifications ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... were taken from the Gaelic, and are charming examples of the naive beauty of the old Irish, and of Dr Hyde's accurate and sympathetic modern rendering. From Beside the ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... that had lost its way and hurt itself. Carmichael marked with a growing tenderness at his heart how gently the old man washed and bound up the wounded leg, all the time crooning to the frightened creature in the sweet Gaelic speech, and also how he must needs give the lamb a drink of warm milk before ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... family, as Mrs Murray, the baby and Polly, with the gentlemen of the party, embarked on board the Stella, which was to convey them to Oban. The men waved their bonnets, and uttered a prayer in Gaelic that the laird and his good wife and the "bairn" might be brought back to ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... the young people in the British Isles learn English, and they are generally content to talk only one language. The other Celtic languages which have existed within the last one hundred years are the Gaelic of the north of Scotland, the Breton of western France, and the Cornish of the southwestern corner ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... winter, was thenceforth his base of operations. But he shot meanwhile erratic in many directions: twice to America, as we have seen, on telegraph voyages; continually to London on business; often to Paris; year after year to the Highlands to shoot, to fish, to learn reels and Gaelic, to make the acquaintance and fall in love with the character of Highlanders; and once to Styria, to hunt chamois and dance with peasant maidens. All the while, he was pursuing the course of his electrical studies, making fresh inventions, taking up the phonograph, ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the first installment of what professed to be a translation of the poems of Ossian, a Gaelic bard, whom tradition placed in the 3d century. Macpherson said that he made his version—including two complete epics, Fingal and Temora, from Gaelic MSS., which he had collected in the Scottish Highlands. A fierce controversy at once ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Aranmor, sitting over a turf fire, listening to a murmur of Gaelic that is rising from a little ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... than of those which made that brilliant personality an ornament and a force in our party. A more serious aspect of this conservatism was the separation which it produced between him and the newer Ireland. He welcomed the Gaelic League and disliked Sinn Fein, but undervalued both as forces: he was never really in touch with either of them. Ideally speaking, he ought to have seen to it that his party, which represented mainly the standpoint of Parnell's day, was kept in sympathy ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... these creatures was of composite sound—now a word of Spanish, then of German, then of French, then of Gaelic, at times of Basque. It was either a patois or a slang. They appeared to be of all nations, and yet of the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... picked up great numbers of tales, which they repeated; "and as the country people made the telling of these tales, and listening to hear them, their winter night's amusement, scarcely any part of them would be lost." In these tales Gaelic words were often used which had dropped out of ordinary parlance, giving proof of careful adherence to the ancient forms; and the writer records that the previous year he had heard a story told identical with one he ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... more usually from the word we now spell "quay," though Key and Keys can also be shop-signs, as of course Crosskeys is. Linnell is sometimes for Lionel, as Neil, [Footnote: But the Scottish Neil is a Gaelic name often exchanged for the unrelated Nigel.] Neal for Nigel. The ladies have fared better. Vivian, which is sometimes from the masculine Vivien, is found in Dorset as Vye, and Isolt and Guinevere, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... and rainy; elderly gentlemen would have needed "their lass with a lantern," to escort them from their chambers. The old city guard sputtered their Gaelic, and stamped up and down for warmth. The chairmen drank their last fee to keep out the cold—and in and out of the low doorways moved middle-aged women barefooted, and in curch and short gown, who, when snooded maidens, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... his sickness; for the exposures of a year had browned his round and ruddy face, if it had not dimmed the brightness of his blue eye; and the heavy waved brown hair and moustache in which he retained so prominent a characteristic of his Gaelic ancestry of a hundred years before, added materially to the appearance of manly maturity. Were it a preux chevalier sitting under this verbal lens for his photograph, there might be difficulty in proceeding farther in this description; for though your knight ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... and as for reason, no man of a truly philosophical genius ever saw a monkey crack a nut, without perceiving that the creature possesses that endowment, or faculty, in no small perfection. Their speech, indeed, is said not to be articulate; but it is audibly more so than the Gaelic. The words unquestionably do run into each other, in a way that, to our ears, renders it rather unintelligible; but it is contrary to all the rules of sound philosophizing, to confuse the obtuseness of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... on, "a' the languages o' the earth cam, or luik as gien they had come, frae ane, though we're no jist dogsure o' that. There's my mither's ain Gaelic, for enstance: it's as auld, maybe aulder nor the Greek; onygait, it has mair Greek nor Laitin words intil 't, an' ye ken the Greek 's an aulder tongue nor the Laitin. Weel, gien we could work oor w'y back to the auldest grit-gran'mither-tongue o' a', I'm thinkin' it wad ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... through all Irish Literature that has come out of Ireland itself (compare the fantastic Irish account of the Battle of Clontarf with the sober Norse account) is the unbroken character of Irish genius. In modern days this genius has delighted in mischievous extravagance, like that of the Gaelic poet's curse upon his children, 'There are three things that I hate, the devil that is waiting for my soul, the worms that are waiting for my body, my children, who are waiting for my wealth and care neither for my body nor my soul: Oh, Christ hang all in the same noose!' I think those ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... the door. Arctic to freeze the boldest bud of liberty! I'd like a French chanson from ye, Pat, to put us in tune, with a right revolutionary hurling chorus, that pitches Kings' heads into the basket like autumn apples. Or one of your hymns in Gaelic sung ferociously to sound as horrid to the Saxon, the wretch. His reign 's not for ever; he can't enter here. You're in the stronghold defying him. And now cigars, boys, pipes; there are the boxes, there are the bowls. I can't smoke till I have done steaming. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... full light of day. Yet we question whether we could have been more deeply sensible of the beauty and grandeur of the scene than we were under the unusual circumstances we have described. The boatmen sang a Gaelic joram or boat-song in the cave, striking their oars very violently in time with the music, which resounded finely through the vault, and was echoed back by roof and pillar. One of them, also, fired a gun, with the view of producing a still stronger effect of the same kind. When we ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... heard the songs by Liffey's wave That maidens sung. They sang their land, the Saxon's slave, In Saxon tongue. Oh, bring me here that Gaelic dear Which cursed the Saxon foe. When thou didst charm my ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... remember his coming to Muirtown, and none knew whence he came. His birthplace was commonly believed to be the West Highlands, and it was certain that in dealing with a case of aggravated truancy he dropped into Gaelic. Bailie McCallum used to refer in convivial moments to his schooldays under Bulldog, and always left it to be inferred that had it not been for that tender, fostering care, he had not risen to his high estate in Muirtown. Fathers of families ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... of verse a Celtic Psaltery because it mainly consists of close and free translations from Irish, Scotch Gaelic, and Welsh Poetry of a religious or serious character. The first half of the book is concerned with Irish poems. The first group of these starts with the dawning of Christianity out of Pagan darkness, and the spiritualising of the Early Irish by the wisdom to be ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... small boy, with a dog and a cat, was playing at being on a raft. The boy's name was Gervase Taunton, but he was known to a large circle of acquaintances as "the Mhor," which, as Jean would have explained to you, is Gaelic for "the great one." Thus had greatness been thrust upon him. He was seven, and he had lived at The Rigs since he was two. He was a handsome child with an almost uncanny charm of manner, and a gift of make-believe that made his ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... to maintain an establishment that was at least superior to anything which most of his new friends were accustomed to. Every day he entertained some of the chiefs at his table. He made himself acquainted with the faces and names of the principal tacksmen of each clan, and mastered a few words of Gaelic to enable him to address and return salutations. In the field he lived no better than the meanest of his men, sharing their coarse food and hard lodging, and often marching on foot by their side over the ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... ed. at Eton and Edin., was afterwards Sec. to the Lighthouse Commission. He was an authority on Celtic folk-lore, and pub. Popular Tales of the West Highlands (4 vols., 1860-62), and various Gaelic texts. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... from the Gaelic on pages 77 and 78 were made by the late P. H. Pearse, who was executed in Dublin for his part in the Easter Rebellion. The translations appeared in New Ireland, and I am indebted to the Editor of that review for permission ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... canopied roof with its in- terstices filled up with its yellow lutings; the same precision of outline in the prismatic angles, sharp as though chiseled by a sculptor's hand; the same sonorous vibration of the air across the basaltic rocks, of which the Gaelic poets have feigned that the harps of the Fingal minstrelsy were made. But whereas at Staffa the floor of the cave is always covered with a sheet of water, here the grotto was beyond the reach of all but the highest waves, while the prismatic ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... that I am devoted to Celtic studies, and it is the first time that I have met with this type among the Scandinavians. Perhaps this is a precious indication for science, and we may be able to place Norway among the regions visited by our Gaelic ancestors?" ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... court was crowded by Gaelic Leaguers and the proceedings were marked by some disorderly scenes, until the magistrates ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... speech is doubted by many Welshmen. These hold that it cramps and dwarfs the national genius; but in the mean time in Ireland the national genius, long enlarged to our universal English, offers the strange spectacle of an endeavor to climb back into its Gaelic shell. ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... us to form another acquaintance that for some time afforded us some amusement, en passant. We discovered that a very ugly old widow, who resided in that quarter, had two very pretty young daughters, to whom we discoursed in Gaelic; they answered in Iroquois; and in a short time the best understanding imaginable was established between us, (Mac and myself, be it always understood.) No harm came of it, though; I vow there did not; the priests, it seems, thought otherwise. Our acquaintance ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... quick and disdainful. Somehow he would rather Granny would not pat his head and lavish endearing Gaelic epithets upon him to-night; such things had been very soothing in the past when he was sleepy and wanted to go to bed; but now he was a big boy, going to school, and had fought and defeated in single combat one of the MacDonalds' ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... that they consulted one another from time to time with grave and searching eyes, and that once or twice, when Sempronia, who alone of those present understood their language, was at a distance, they uttered a few words in Gaelic, not in the most agreeable or ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... renowned bishop, head of justice and faith in the Gaelic island came into Ireland, i.e. Patrick sent by Celestinus, the Pope. Aongus Mac Nathfrich went to meet him soon as he heard the account of his coming. He conducted him (Patrick) with reverence and great honour to his own royal city—to Cashel. Then Patrick ...
— The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore • Anonymous
... must remember that parts of these stories are very old; they were invented by the heathen Welsh, or by the ancient Britons, from whom the Welsh are descended, and by the old pagan Irish, who spoke Gaelic, a language not very unlike Welsh. Then these ancient stories were translated by French and other foreign writers, and Christian beliefs and chivalrous customs were added in the French romances, and, finally, the French was translated into English ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... to his feelings in Gaelic when labouring under strong excitement. On this occasion his utterances were terrible in tone ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... Uxbridge road she breathed more freely, and in the lightness of her heart she continued her conversation with Bras, giving that attentive animal a vast amount of information, partly in English, partly in Gaelic, which he answered only by a low whine or a shake of his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... bank on Tuscan, Ay, or even on Etruscan, Than on Erse; But fanatical campaigners, Gaelic Leaguers and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... (or Gaelic), consisting of the three languages, or properly the three dialects, known as the Gaelic of Ireland, of the Scottish Highlands, and of the Isle of Man. It has been said, with some truth, that these three are as far apart as three ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... (Gaelic), spoken mainly in areas located along the western seaboard, English is the language ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... said I, "and have gone through it. It contains poems in the Gaelic language by Oisin and others, collected in the Highlands. I went through it a long time ago with great attention. Some of the poems ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... had formally taken in demolishing them. Fortunately the landlord had never heard the aesthetic principle that exposure of basic construction is more desirable than gaudy decoration. In course of time it was discovered that the old woman could speak Gaelic, and when one or two grave professors came to see her, the neighborhood was filled with pride that such a wonder lived in their midst. To mitigate life for a woman of ninety was an unfailing refutation of the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... was in his face, and his eyes were as bright as a five-year-old child's with a new toy. And presently he sat down upon the table, sword in hand; the air that he was making all the time began to run a little clearer, and then clearer still; and then out he burst with a great voice into a Gaelic song. ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... opposite shore of the lake is a large rock, called "Bull's Rock," having a door in the side, with a stairway cut through the interior to a pulpit on the top, from which the pastor at Arroquhar preaches a monthly discourse. The Gaelic legend of the rock is, that it once stood near the summit of the mountain above, and was very nearly balanced on the edge of a precipice. Two wild bulls, fighting violently, dashed with great force against the rock, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... romance of the Shetland Islands, with a handsome, strong willed hero and a lovely girl of Gaelic blood as heroine. A sequel ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... attract attention by spending money. He said he tried to get into public notice one time by planting a little public square on the east side with garlic for free use of the poor; but Carnegie heard of it, and covered it over at once with a library in the Gaelic language. Three times he had jumped in the way of automobiles; but the only result was five broken ribs and a notice in the papers that an unknown man, five feet ten, with four amalgam-filled teeth, supposed to be the last of the famous ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... do many harmless things which cannot be done on five shillings a week, and so he sought the haunts of "thieves and chimney sweeps!" he says, and wrote sonnets in those shy retreats, which are known, perhaps, in Scotland, as "shebeens." Why "shebeens"? Is the word Gaelic misspelled? Cases of "shebeening" are tried before the Edinburgh magistrates, and as "my circle was being continually changed by the action of the police magistrates" (he says) conceivably his was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... surprise of Hungary is its language. Though one knows that Jokai writes in the strange tongue which sticks its verb into the middle of its noun, yet one vaguely thinks of it as of Gaelic or Welsh—something archaic, kept for Eisteddfods and Renaissances—and it is not till one arrives in Hungary that one realises that it is a living, disconcerting reality. The great European languages have affinities with one another: ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... on his Highland property at Lochshiel, Mr. Hope-Scott personally acquainted himself with his smaller tenantry, and entered into all their history, going about with a keeper known by the name of 'Black John,' who acted as his Gaelic interpreter. His frank and kindly manners quite won their hearts. Sometimes he would ask his guests to accompany him on such visits, and make them observe the peculiarities of the Celtic character. On one of these occasions he and the late Duke of Norfolk went to visit an old peasant ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... across Jocelyn Thew's face as he listened, and the tears stood in his eyes. The man was reciting Gaelic verses, verses familiar to him from childhood. The whole desolate picture seemed to envisage thoughts which he had never been able to drive from his mind, seemed in the person of this old man to breathe such ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the drama is named, not for him, but for the crafty and pitiless executioner of the king's justice. But he is after all the most interesting character in the piece, with his Biblical references in broad Lowland Scots (we may suppose that the Stewarts speak Gaelic among themselves), his superstition, his remorseless cruelty. We should like to see how he takes the discovery that, perhaps for the first time, he has been baffled in his career of unscrupulous and ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... without a thought of his relations, he read the legends of Meath on his way out; he often sat considering his adventures, the circus, the mining camp, and his sympathy with the Cubans in their revolt against Spain; these convinced him of his Gaelic inheritance and that something might be done with Ireland. England's power was great, but Spain's power had been great too, and when Spain thought herself most powerful the worm had begun. Everything has its day, and as England decayed, Ireland would ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... she, speaking, as he did, in the guttural Gaelic tongue, "come, I beseech you, to the help of two poor ouzels, whose nest is far in under the roots of yonder birch tree. If you help not quickly, their little fledglings will be eaten up by a thieving stoat that has but a few ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... that they are in our own complicated sphere, where the cultivation of all the higher forms of poetic diction through five centuries has made simple expression extremely difficult. I am therefore ready to believe that in Welsh, as in Gaelic and in Erse, the poets have still wide fields of lyric, epic, and dramatic art untilled. We have seen, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Provencal poets capable of producing simple and ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... now, with her own Government, with her own language back again—Gaelic—an' what language in the wurrld yields greater music than the old Gaelic?—with Ireland united and Ireland's land in the care of IRISHMEN: with Ireland's people self-respectin' an' sober an' healthy an' educated: with Irishmen employed on Irish industries, exportin' them ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... from the engrossing nature of his exertions, or from his unwillingness to alarm the boys, spoke not a word at the commencement of the conflict—his son within the cave, finding the light excluded from above, asked in Gaelic, and in an abrupt tone, "Father, what is keeping the light from us?"—"If the root of the tail break," replied he, "you will soon know that." Before long, however, the man contrived to get hold of his hunting-knife, and stabbed the wolf in the most vital parts he could reach. The enraged ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... To do his ghostly battling, With curdling groan and dismal moan, And lots of chains a-rattling! But no—the chiel's stout Gaelic stuff Withstood all ghostly harrying; His fingers closed upon the snuff Which upwards ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... their oath made them fight on the King's side in the Revolutionary War, have been somewhat overlooked in history. Tradition, handed down among the transplanted clans—who, for the most part, spoke only Gaelic for a generation and wrote nothing—and latterly recorded by one or two of their descendants, supplies us with all we are now able to learn of the early coming of the Gaels to Carolina. It would seem that their first immigration to ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... and cursed him soundly in both English and Gaelic, without avail, but the child's cry so full of pain and weakness roused him with a start. In a minute Dr. Frederick Barner was himself. He took the child gently from his mother and laid him on ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... Irish, though far inferior to the Scotch in art and literature, are hugely superior to them in practical politics. You do need to be very romantic to accept the industrial civilisation. It does really require all the old Gaelic glamour to make men think that Glasgow is a grand place. Yet the miracle is achieved; and while I was in Glasgow I shared the illusion. I have never had the faintest illusion about Leeds or Birmingham. The industrial dream suited the Scots. Here ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... came in, and as Charles marched southeast, each glen sent down its warriors to join the stream. The clansmen, as a rule, had probably little knowledge of or interest in the cause. They followed their chiefs. The surviving Gaelic poetry speaks much of the chieftains; of Tearlach, righ nan Gael, but little is said. It was the middle of August before the rulers of England received the news of the landing. They at once set a reward of L30,000 on Charles's head, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... kind abound among the sea-loving Gaelic and Cymric people. Nowhere, perhaps, have they been given a more pleasing and touching expression than in Arnold's poem. Note carefully the dramatic manner in which the pathos of the story ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... WHEELER,—Your letter followed me here, where at least one can breathe. This really is a most beautiful country filled with self-respecting Gaelic-speaking Scotch from the islands of the north—crofters driven here to make place for sheep and fine estates on their ancestral homes ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... nondescript clothing at the wheel was "Mac," the coxswain, whose voyages in Arctic seas with the Iceland fishing fleet numbered more than his years of life, and whose deep-voiced Gaelic roar could bring the "watch below" on to the cold, wet deck to their action stations in less time than it would take a new recruit to tumble ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... Chicago, 1881. Educated at St. Jarlath's School, West Division High School, and University of Chicago. In newspaper work since 1900. Chosen by Gaelic League in 1912 to write for American newspapers a series of articles on the Irish situation. First story, "The Boy Who Went Back to the Bush," Scribner's Magazine, November, 1909. For three years secretary of the Woman's Auxiliary of the Catholic Church Extension Society; ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... lived not far from our house. His wife was a good singer, and what is more, she had a varied selection of good old Irish and Scotch songs. She was occasionally good enough to sing for me. This woman taught me the song "Shan Van Vocht," and other Irish Gaelic songs. ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... generations of them—on the Prince Edward Island farm where Donald was born; and still more generations of them in old Scotland. Pure Scotch on both sides of the house for hundreds of years were the Mackintoshes, and the Gaelic tongue was to-day freer spoken in their ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... a prayer rug for which Kenny had toured into the south of Persia and led an Arabian Nights' existence with pursuing bandits whom, by some extraordinary twist of genius, he had conciliated and painted; an illuminated manuscript in Gaelic which he claimed had been used by a warrior to ransom a king; chain armor, weapons of all kinds, climes and periods; an Alpine horn, reminiscent of the summer Kenny had saved a young painter's life at the risk of his own; some old masters, a cittern, a Chinese cheng with ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... may be permitted to express a mild regret that our native school, though by no means excluded, does not make so good a show as its energy and talents would seem to warrant. Our native composers are especially noticeable for their wide range of themes, for the Celtic and Gaelic glamour which they infuse into their treatment of them, and for their realistic titles. We have drawn up a list of instrumental works which illustrate these characteristics, but which are unfortunately conspicuous by their absence from Sir HENRY ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... to Scandinavian mythology. Bodmer soon afterwards published for the first time the Nibelungen Lied. Macpherson startled the literary world in 1762 by what professed to be an epic poem from the Gaelic. Chatterton's career (1752-1770) was a proof not only of unique poetical precocity, but of a singular facility in divining the tastes of the literary world at the time. Percy's Reliques appeared in 1765. Percy, I may note, had begun oddly enough by publishing a Chinese ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... having the Gaelic, was somewhat taken aback by the cryptic utterance; but an anxious-looking younger son of an embarrassed peer, who for a considerable consideration was bear-leading the millionaire through the social ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... talk Gaelic and French also; the first two they learned from their father, and the other ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... to have spent the last week eating six-course dinners in cellars with grizzled sky-blue colonels, endeavouring to reply to their charming compliments in a mixture of Gaelic and CORNELIUS NEPOS. I myself had no intention of babbling these jargons; it is the fault of my tongue, which takes charge on these occasions, and seems to be under the impression that, when it is talking to a foreigner, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... tale did she tell me of "Henry's" ceaseless activity, and courage and patience. He had learnt three Indian dialects, the patois of the habitant, and the Gaelic of two Scotch settlements, in order to converse freely with his people and understand their wants properly. He could doctor the body as well as the soul, set a fractured limb, bind a wound, apply ice for sunstroke and snow for chilblains. He ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... number of farmers and dealers came together notwithstanding the weather. Indeed, there were nearly as many men and boys as animals on the ground. A score or more had come in, each leading or driving a single cow or calf. The cattle generally were evidently of the Gaelic origin and antecedents— little, chubby, scraggy creatures, of all colors, but mostly black, with wide-branching horns longer than their fore-legs. Their hair is long and as coarse as a polar seal's, and they look as if they ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... language generally used, Irish (Gaelic) spoken mainly in areas located along the ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... wave of impassioned eloquence. Second, he unloosed as never before the reservoirs of ink, for he used every device of newspaper and pamphlet to drive home his message. He even printed his creed in Gaelic, Welsh and Erse. Third, he employed his kinship with the people to the fullest extent. The Commoner won. As the great structure of social reform rose under his dynamic powers so did the influence of the ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... times unknown to its annals, the family had given its name, taking in return no small portion of its history, and a good deal of the character of its individuals. It lay in the debatable land between highlands and lowlands; most of its inhabitants spoke both Scotch and Gaelic; and there was often to be found in them a notable mingling of the chief characteristics of the widely differing Celt and Teuton. The country produced more barley than wheat, more oats than barley, more heather than oats, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... department of the "Modern Gaelic Minstrelsy," the Editor has obtained the assistance of a learned friend, intimately familiar with the language and poetry of the Highlands. To this esteemed co-adjutor the reader is indebted for the revisal of the Gaelic department of this work, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... crowded dinner-table to which Edward sat down, told of the Chief's immense hospitality. After the meal, healths were drunk, and the bard of the clan recited a wild and thrilling poem in Gaelic—of which, of course, Edward could not understand so much as one word, though it excited the clansmen so that they sprang up in ecstasy, many of them waving their arms about in sympathy with the warlike verses. The Chief, exactly in the ancient manner, presented a silver cup full of ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... there are crack regiments in the British Army which wear the kilt—the kilt which, as Macaulay says with perfect truth, was regarded by nine Scotchmen out of ten as the dress of a thief. The Highland officers carry a silver-hilted version of the old barbarous Gaelic broadsword with a basket-hilt, which split the skulls of so many English soldiers at Killiecrankie and Prestonpans. When you have a regiment of men in the British Army carrying ornamental silver shillelaghs ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... has imbued himself with their ultimate spirit and significance, and has bodied it forth in his music with splendid veracity and eloquence. He has attempted no mere musical recounting of those romances of the ancient Gaelic world at which he hints in his brief motto. It would be juster to say, rather, that he has recalled in his music the very life and presence of the Gaelic prime—that he has "unbound the Island harp." Above all, he has achieved ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... indeed, and it's the new doctor! Hoch, yes, yes, it is welcome you will be to Elmbrook. Eh, and we would not be expecting such a fine-looking one. Indeed, no! And it would be a fine Scottish name, too, oh, a fine name indeed, Allen. And—you would not be hafing the Gaelic, I suppose?" His eyes gleamed wistfully from between the hat and ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... the rule of party war. Who, then, can hope for peace where into the strife is imported a race difference, where the division is not of party but of people? That is in truth the vain hope. And be it borne in mind the race difference is not due to our predominating Gaelic stock, but to the separate countries and to distinct households in the human race. If we were all of English extraction the difference would still exist. There is the historic case of the American States; it is easy to understand. When a man's children come of age, they set up establishments ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... of the stronghold a man's voice rose in the Gaelic language, ringing in a cry for service, but ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Cargill, an old soldier, who had been chosen as leader of the new settlement. At the head of a fine harbour, which they called Port Chalmers, they laid the foundations of a town, to which they gave the patriotic name of Dunedin, Gaelic for Edinburgh. It was in a fine district, troubled by few natives, and it steadily grew. Less than a year later, it had 745 inhabitants, who could boast of a good jetty, and a newspaper. The life of pioneers cannot be very easy, but these were of ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... touching thing I ever heard." The melody was Gaelic, slow and plaintive, and though Maggie gave the English words with her own patois, the beauty and simplicity of the song was by no means injured. "Put by the books, David," said Allan. "I have no heart now for ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... in Monterey, charged with tender greetings. Pray you, take him in. He comes from a house where (even as in your own) there are gathered together some of the waifs of our company at Oakland; a house—for all its outlandish Gaelic name and distant ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Castle at Fochabers, drove over the heath where Macbeth met the witches, 'classic ground to an Englishman,' as the old editor of Shakespeare felt, and reached Nairn, where now they heard for the first time the Gaelic tongue,—'one of the songs of Ossian,' quoth the justly incredulous doctor,—and saw peat fires. At Fort George they were welcomed by Sir Eyre Coote. The old military aspirations of Bozzy flared up and were soothed: 'for a little while I fancied myself a ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... points of Gaelic orthography were found to be involved, it was decided to mention the house as standing in a bi-lingual district upon the borders of Wales, and Lord Bute arranged with Sir William Lewis to have these linguistic points represented by Welsh ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... that I have not made the boatman say "whateffer," because he doesn't. The occasional use of the imperfect is almost his only Gaelic idiom. It is a great comfort and pleasure, when the trout do not rise, to meet a skilled and unaffected narrator of the old beliefs, old legends, as ancient as the hills that girdle and guard the loch, or as antique, at least, as man's dwelling among the mountains—the Yellow Hill, the ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... little creatures must have come several long miles for their balmy spoil. There is but one human creature in that shieling, but he is not at all solitary. He no more wearies of that lonesome place than do the sunbeams or the shadows. To himself alone he chants his old Gaelic songs, or frames wild ditties of his own to the raven or red-deer. Months thus pass on; and he descends again to the lower country. Perhaps he goes to the wars—fights—bleeds—and returns to Badenoch or Lochaber; and once more, blending in his imagination the battles of his own regiment, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Yeats published his Wanderings of Oisin; in the same year Douglas Hyde, the scholar and folk-lorist, brought out his Book of Gaelic Stories. ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... imposing spectacle. It seems to me a pity to let these old customs die out so completely. I estimate that more than half these Gothic forms have altogether passed out of memory. There must have been some splendid things in Erse and Gaelic too; for the Celtic mind, with its more vivid sense of colour, its quicker transitions, and deeper emotional quality, has ever over-cursed the stolid Teuton. But ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... I spent a solid hour trying to decide on a name for the shack. I wanted to call it "Crucknacoola," which is Gaelic for "A Little Hill of Sleep," but Dinky-Dunk brought forward the objection that there was no hill. Then I suggested "Barnavista," since about all we can see from the door are the stables. Then I said ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... and neither expostulations, pulls, cracks of the whip, or even kicks, I am sorry to say, seemed to produce the slightest effect upon their determination to remain stretched at full length on the ground. What were we to do? The driver vociferated in Gaelic, but the poor brutes did not mind, and they would have been cruelly maltreated if we had not interfered to protect them. Gilbert said to the man: "You see well enough that they have no strength to work, therefore allow them to rest till they are ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... into a company and drilled for the defence, under Lieut. Neil Morison and Captain James Wright, whose house was the headquarters of General De Watteville and a frequent scene of the council of officers. He was a tall and stern man, a Highlander, his name of "Wright" being a translation of his Gaelic one, "MacIntheoir." His Chateauguay sword is said to have long hung on the wall in the house ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall
... their war-chariots, their mode of life and their treatment of women, are all so closely similar to that of the Greeks of Homer that a theory has been advanced and ably defended, that the Homeric Greeks were really invading Celts—Gaelic or Gaulish tribes from the north of Europe. If it indeed be so, we owe to the Celts a debt of imperishable culture and civilisation. To them belongs more especially, in our national amalgam, the passion for the past, the ardent ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... in this direction between the highlands and lowlands; and until within a few years both English and Gaelic were spoken here. One of James VI.'s witticisms was to boast that in Scotland he had a town "sae lang that the folk at the tae end couldna understand the tongue spoken at the tother."' Murray's Handbook for Scotland, ed. 1867, p. 308. 'Here,' writes Johnson ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... and ample surrounding shelves. These were filled for me by expert hands with whatever I might require for my task, and a screen shut off my corner from the corridor through which at times perambulated Roosevelt, and other secluded delvers, intent on early Gaelic literature and what not. Here I spent the most of two years, finding it an ideal spot, but my task required more than an examination, under the quiet light of my great window, of books and documents. The fields themselves must also be surveyed, so I travelled ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... however, are not written by the Editor, as he has often explained, 'out of his own head.' The stories are taken from those told by grannies to grandchildren in many countries and in many languages— French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Gaelic, Icelandic, Cherokee, African, Indian, Australian, Slavonic, Eskimo, and what not. The stories are not literal, or word by word translations, but have been altered in many ways to make them suitable for ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... throughout Great Britain, is neither the ancient primitive speech of the island, nor derived from it; but is altogether of foreign origin. The language of the first inhabitants of our island, beyond doubt, was the Celtic, or Gaelic, common to them with Gaul; from which country, it appears, by many circumstances, that Great Britain was peopled. This Celtic tongue, which is said to be very expressive and copious, and is, probably, one of the most ancient languages in the world, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Highlands, where Jenkin learned to love the Highland character and ways of life. He was a good shot, rode and swam well, and taught his boys athletic exercises, boating, salmon fishing, and such like. He learned to dance a Highland reel, and began the study of Gaelic; but that speech proved too stubborn, craggy, and impregnable even for Jenkin. Once he took his family to Alt Aussee, in the Stiermark, Styria, where he hunted chamois, won a prize for shooting at the Schutzen-fest, learned the dialect of the country, sketched the neighbourhood, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... fact, Meredith realized this, and was a friend to many Irish national movements from the Home Rule struggle down to the Gaelic League, to the latter of which the Irish part of him sent a subscription a year or two ago. He saw things from the point of view of an Imperial Liberal idealist, however, not of a Nationalist. In the result, he did not know the every-day and traditional ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... thicket. The formula of leaving obstacles behind occurs in the Indian collection, the 'Kathasarit sagara' (vii. xxxix.). The 'Battle of the Birds,' in Campbell's 'Tales of the West Highlands,' is a very copious Gaelic variant. Russian parallels are 'Vasilissa the Wise and the Water King,' and 'The King Bear.' {93a} The incident of the flight and the magical obstacles is found in Japanese mythology. {93b} The 'ugly woman of Hades' is sent to pursue the hero. He casts down his black head-dress, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... Scottish man having killed with his own hand Enrique, a Danish general, presented the head of the enemy to his Sovereign, and, holding in his hand the bloody dagger with which the deed had been performed, exclaimed, in Gaelic, "Eris Skyne," alluding to the head and the dagger; upon which the surname of Erskine was imposed on him. The armorial bearing of a hand holding a dagger, was added as a further distinction, together with the motto, Je pense plus, in allusion ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... The Wee Folk.—In Gaelic they are usually called "The Peace People" (sithchean). Other names are "Wee Folk" (daoine beaga); "Light Folk" (slaugh eutrom), etc. As in the Lowlands, they are also referred to as "guid fowk" and ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... from the red puffy cheeks developed by innumerable bottles of port and burgundy at Carlton House; and the whole surmounted by a bonnet with waving plumes. Scott was chiefly responsible for disguising that elderly London debauchee in the costume of a wild Gaelic cattle-stealer, and was apparently insensible of the gross absurdity. We are told that an air of burlesque was thrown over the proceedings at Holyrood by the apparition of a true London alderman in the same costume as his master. An alderman ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... influence in behalf of a balance at the banker's, or the Christianized Scotch Highlander of even the early nineteenth century who threw a piece of hasty pudding over the left shoulder on the anniversary of Bealdin (the Gaelic for no other than Baal) to appease the spirits of the mists, the winds, the ravens, the eagles, and thus protect the crops and flocks. There is a thin boundary line as difficult to define as "to distinguish and divide a hair 'twixt south and southwest side," between ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the Scots Plantation of Ulster have assumed that the Scots settlers were entirely or almost of Gaelic origin, ignoring the fact, if they were aware of it, that the people of the Scottish lowlands were "almost as English in racial derivation as if they had come from the North of England." Parker, the historian of Londonderry, New Hampshire, speaking of the early Scots ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... permanently connected with the names of their authors. In the preparation of the work, especially in procuring materials for the memoirs and biographical notices, the editor has been much occupied during a period of four years. The translations from the Gaelic Minstrelsy have been supplied, with scarcely an exception, by a gentleman, a native of the Highlands, who is well qualified to excel in various ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... which invests this earliest translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, viz., that in fact this translation was the earliest publication to the human race of a revelation which had previously been locked up in a language destined, as surely as the Welsh language or the Gaelic, to eternal obscurity amongst men, I go on to mention that the learned Jews selected for this weighty labor happened to be in number seventy-two; but, as the Jews systematically reject fractions in such cases (whence it is that always, in order to express the period of six weeks, they ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... so marked in these Marquesan instances, is no less common both in Gaelic and the Lowland Scots. Stranger still, that prevalent Polynesian sound, the so-called catch, written with an apostrophe, and often or always the gravestone of a perished consonant, is to be heard in Scotland to this day. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fine morning, the Queen left Taymouth. She was rowed up Loch Tay, past Ben Lawers with Benmore in the distance. The pipers played at intervals, the boatmen sang Gaelic songs, and the representative of Macdougal of Lorn steered. At Auchmore, where the party lunched, they were rejoined by the Highland Guard. As her Majesty drove round by Glen Dochart and Glen Ogle, the latter reminded her of the fatal Kyber Pass with which her thoughts ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... papers, and these, following the example of the modern press, carefully eliminate serious thought as likely to deprive them of readers. But Patrick, for all his economic backwardness, has a soul. The culture of the Gaelic poets and story-tellers, while not often actually remembered, still lingers like a fragrance about his mind. He lives and moves and has his being in the loveliest nature, the skies over him ever cloudy like an ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Gaelic, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish note: only official languages are listed; German, the major language of Germany, Austria, and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... little inn of Rowardennan, from which the ascent is made of Ben Lomond, the greatest elevation in these parts. The boatmen are fine, athletic men; one of those with us this evening, a handsome young man of two or three and twenty, sang to us some Gaelic songs. The first, a very wild and plaintive air, was the expostulation of a girl whose lover has deserted her and married another. It seems he is ashamed, and will not even look at her when they meet upon the road. She implores him, if he has not forgotten all that scene of bygone love, at least ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... from the Gaelic word tanaiste, a chief, or the next heir to an estate—have been frequently found. These stones were used in connection with the coronation of a king or the inauguration of a chief. The custom dates from the remotest antiquity. We see traces ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... since 1803 nearly 900 miles of roadway and more than 1,000 bridges, by which the population of the Highlands was suddenly placed within reach of civilisation. The Highlanders had hitherto been chiefly poachers and smugglers; they now became farmers and hand-workers. And, though Gaelic schools were organised for the purpose of maintaining the Gaelic language, yet Gaelic- Celtic customs and speech are rapidly vanishing before the approach of English civilisation. So, too, in Ireland; between the counties of ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... you could speak Gaelic," said my father, thinking of his wife, I believe, whose mother tongue it was. "But that is not what you want most to learn. Do you think Kirsty could teach you ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... that the young man seemed to bring with him and shed around him. Nor was this matter of the sketches the only thing that had particularly recommended Lavender to the old man. Mackenzie had a most distinct dislike to Gaelic songs. He could not bear the monotonous melancholy of them. When Sheila, sitting by herself, would sing these strange old ballads of an evening, he would suddenly enter the room, probably find her eyes filled with tears, and then he would in his inmost heart devote the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... would lead me to say as little as possible about myself. My great-grandfather fell at Culloden, my grandfather used to tell us national stories, and my grandmother sang Gaelic songs. To my father and the other children the dying injunction was, "Now, in my lifetime I have searched most carefully through all the traditions I could find of our family, and I never could discover that there was a dishonest man among our forefathers. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... the ill-fated, James Dawson, and a regiment three hundred strong. Lord James Drummond had landed at Montrose with men, money, and supplies. The Young Chevalier's troops were eager to advance; they were flushed with victories, their hearts were high; they believed, in the wild Gaelic way, in the sanctity of their cause; they believed that the Lord of Hosts was on their side, and such a belief strengthened ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... ever. Eerie, apprehensive; inspiring ghostly fear. Eild, eld. Eke, also. Elbuck, elbow. Eldritch, unearthly, haunted, fearsome. Elekit, elected. Ell (Scots), thirty-seven inches. Eller, elder. En', end. Eneugh, enough. Enfauld, infold. Enow, enough. Erse, Gaelic. Ether-stane, adder-stone. Ettle, aim. Evermair, evermore. Ev'n down, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... his hearty grasp than the cold formality of conventional humbug. The hardy old pioneer has realized a very comfortable independence, and he told me his only neighbours were a band of his countrymen at the back of the hill, who speak Gaelic exclusively and scarce know a word of English. They mostly came out with "The Macnab," but from time to time they are refreshed by ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Highlands of Scotland the last handful of corn that is cut by the reapers on any particular farm is called the Maiden, or in Gaelic Maidhdeanbuain, literally, "the shorn Maiden." Superstitions attach to the winning of the Maiden. If it is got by a young person, they think it an omen that he or she will be married before another harvest. For that or other reasons there is a strife ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Blue Beard which has so often made our young blood run cold. Sister Anne is represented, and so are the rescuing brothers, the latter in the person of the heroine's old friend and playmate, Toennis the goose-herd. Several very curious Gaelic versions of the story are given by Mr. Campbell ("Tales of the West Highlands," No. 41, ii. 265-275). Two of the three daughters of a poor widow look into a forbidden chamber, find it "full of dead gentlewomen," get stained knee-deep in blood, and refuse to give a drop of milk to a cat which ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston |
