"Gaelic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an Irish language," explained his fair instructor. "Anciently the Irish spoke the Gaelic, a branch of the Celtic. In this reign of Queen Elizabeth, the Irish language was forbidden. The English is now universal, but many still speak the Gaelic. In recent years there has been an awakening of interest ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... 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 ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... of true Gaelic blood came and gazed curiously at us one evening, as we thus sat. The elder of the two, a head shorter than her companion, responded readily to the Bailie's questions,—among other things naively accounted to us for her diminutive size, as if it were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... told me that his mother never shed a tear, but looked prouder than he ever saw her, and before they left the hall she bade each gentleman good-bye, and to the chief she spoke in Gaelic, being of Cluny's blood and a ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... rate, it took," went on Drysdale. "I thought old Murdock would have wept on his neck. As it was, he scattered snuff enough to fill a pint pot over him out of his mull, and began talking Gaelic. And Blake had the cheek to jabber a lot of gibberish back to him, as if he understood ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the skipper, eyeing the bottle, and added with a brutal laugh that "he could weather the roughest gale that ever wind did blow." A whole Gaelic society, he said, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... (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 ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... Scotland, 43 m. by 28 m., with a bold and rocky coast; has flagstone quarries; fishing the chief industry, of which Wick is the chief seat; the inhabitants are to a great extent of Scandinavian origin, and English, not Gaelic, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... broke 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 incomparable, unalterable fidelity that ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was indeed what the original Gaelic words implied, a drizzly, dark, moist day; the mist had settled upon the hills, and unrolled itself upon brook, glade, and tarn, and the spring breeze was not powerful enough to raise the veil, though from the wild sounds which were heard occasionally on the ridges, and through ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... speak, but put his head under his coverlet and went to sleep. Once more he was roused in like manner, and saw the same sight. In the morning he spoke to his father about it, who told him that it was Macdonnochie [the Gaelic patronymic of the laird of Inverawe] whom he had seen, and who came to tell him that he had been killed in a great battle in America. Sure enough, said my informant, it was on the very day that the battle of Ticonderoga was fought and ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... unwrought, but from which it is understood silver had been derived, wherewith some of the family plate of the proprietor was formed. Whisky is distilled to such an amount, as to return L.30,000 per annum of revenue to the government. The Gaelic-speaking people, the fine shooting-grounds, the romantic cliffs and caves, the lonely moors and lochs of this island, altogether give it a degree of romantic interest calculated strongly to attract the regard ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... at present, spoken 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 ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... on linguistic, physical, social or religious distinctions, is in a very unsatisfactory condition. Surprising yet illusory resemblances are constantly cropping up in the most unexpected ways and places. Wilson was struck with the Gaelic traits of the Mongolian Budhists who inhabit the mountains of Zanskar, south-east of the valley. "The sound of their language, the brooches which fasten their plaids, the varieties of tartan which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... "town," which, as often as we use, we are speaking the tongue of the Trans-Alpine Gauls, taking a syllable from the word of a half-forgotten people. From yet another source is the locative "ham." Chester is of Roman origin, tun is of Gaelic; but "ham" is Anglo-Saxon, and means village, whence the sweet word home. Witness the use of this suffix in Effingham and the like. "Stoke" and "beck" and "worth" are also Saxon. "Thorpe" and "by" are Danish, as in ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... many versions current in Europe, such as the Norse tale of Big Peter and Little Peter, the Danish tale of Great Claus and Little Claus; the German tale (Grimm) of the Little Farmer; the Irish tale of Little Fairly (Samuel Lover's collection of Irish Fairy Legends and Stories); four Gaelic versions in Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands; a Kaba'il version in Riviere's French collection (Contes populaires Kabylies); Uncle Capriano in Crane's recently published Italian Popular Tales; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... once in a while to visit the tenants who'd hired the castle from him, if they happened to be people he knew, and would 'do' him well. He and his daughter were mostly in London, where they had a flat, and prided themselves on knowing no Gaelic. They took pains to show that they considered the crofter's son a common brat, and resented the meenister's' expecting them to do anything for his future, just because his name happened to be MacDonald, and ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... circumstances of another description render this privacy desirable, sir! And yet, sir, you intrude upon me, sir,—you intrude! How do you do, young man?—I recognize you," added Mr. Jinks, slightly calmed by his victory over O'Brallaghan, who only muttered his sentiments in original Gaelic, and bore the storm without ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... distance is too great: the Russians are not checked, but still sweep onward through the smoke with the whole force of horse and man, here and there knocked over by the shot of our batteries above. With breathless suspense everyone awaits the bursting of the wave upon the line of Gaelic rock, but ere they come within a hundred and fifty yards another deadly volley flashes from the levelled rifles and carries death and terror into the Russians. They wheel about, open files right and left, and fly back ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... these few words like one unused to speak much. They were in the Gaelic language, which was often spoken by Simon and his family. Madge immediately brought her some food; she was evidently famished. It was impossible to say how long she might have ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... called a glengarry. His profile was remarkable—hardly less than grand, with a certain aquiline expression, although the nose was not roman. His eyes appeared very dark, but in the daylight were greenish hazel. Usually he talked with the girl in Gaelic, but was now speaking English, a far purer English than that of most English people, though with something of the character of book-English as distinguished from conversation-English, and a ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... 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: Latin puts one on bowing terms with French ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... count—I don't know who—and that the combat took place in this square. Now, my dear fellow, here is the prison, which ought to give you some idea of human vicissitudes. Gil Blas didn't change his condition more often than this monument its purposes. Before Caesar it was a Gaelic temple; Caesar converted it into a Roman fortress; an unknown architect transformed it into a military work during the Middle Ages; the Knights of Baye, following Caesar's example, re-made it into a fortress; the princes of Savoy used it for a residence; ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... over the race of rude warriors with whom she lived? But her affection was of that quiet, timid, meditative character, which sought rather a reflected share in the happiness of the beloved object, than formed more presumptuous or daring hopes. A little Gaelic song, in which she expressed her feelings, has been translated by the ingenious and unhappy Andrew M'Donald; and we willingly transcribe ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... the royal hunting-grounds. Very probably these were on both sides of the Earn—stretching westward into the neighbouring parish of Dunning, the northmost part of which is still called Dalreoch or Dailrigh, a word which, in Gaelic, means ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... is an old puzzle of mine. You see C.'s dialect is not wholly a bed of roses. If only I knew the Gaelic. Well, I'll try ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... called this volume 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, ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... and staunched the gore An' ere Macfee got ae lick, Macfadden cursed him heid an' heels In comprehensive Gaelic. ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... 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 revive. A good time ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... language generally used, Irish (Gaelic) spoken mainly in areas located along the ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... reverence, to call upon you to ascertain whether you'd be agreeable to our what I may call unanimous intinsion of asking the new cojutor to be prisident of the Gaelic association of ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Mallet in his work upon Denmark (1755) gave a translation of the Eddas which called attention 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 ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... black, grey, and tawny one. These indicate that the family was dark complexioned, which would also accord with a pre-Celtic origin. The Celts were fair, their predecessors dark. One of the sisters was called Pata, with an initial P. This is impossible in a Gaelic name. ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... riddles 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 Fire" ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... for he was busy with a lamb 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 he set ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... house in St. James Street, where I can recall his mother, Mrs. Colquhoun, and father, and brothers, Patrick and James. Patrick was a remarkable young man. He had graduated at Cambridge and Heidelberg and filled diplomatic capacities in the East, and was familiar with many languages from Arabic to Gaelic, and was the first amateur light-weight boxer in England, and first sculler on the Thames, and had translated and annotated the principal compendium of Roman law. He took me to see a grand rowing match, where ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... 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 ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... manner, as an Ossianic river, was utterly unknown to him; he does not even attempt to translate its name. All that pertains to Arran, and still so distinctly traceable there by the help of his own text in Berrathon—for which Gaelic no longer exists—he transfers in his ignorance to the wilds of Morven. As for Ireland, all that he knows, or seems to know, is that Ullin is Ulster; but the very scenes which are most conspicuous in Ulster he transfers to Leinster—from Antrim, for example, to Meath; and the ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... of the room, in a deep window, a 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)
... 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 ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... Literaturs-Historie, Copenhagen). The cases for both British and Norwegian origin are based chiefly on rather fanciful arguments from supposed local colour. The theory of the Corpus Poeticum editors that many of the poems were composed in the Scottish isles is discredited by the absence of Gaelic words or traces of Gaelic legend. Professor Bugge's North of England theory is slightly stronger, being supported by several Old English expressions in the poems, but these are not enough to prove that they were composed ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... long years it had lain hid in a Samoan chest, the present writer came across the mimic war correspondence here presented to the public. The stirring story of these tin-soldier campaigns occupies the greater share of the book, though interspersed with many pages of scattered verse, not a little Gaelic idiom and verb, a half-made will and the chaptering of a novel. This game of tin soldiers, an intricate "Kriegspiel," involving rules innumerable, prolonged arithmetical calculations, constant measuring with foot-rules, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... begin when you reach the Cruach-na-spiel-bo, which sounds like Gaelic, and will serve us as a name for the river. It is, of course, extremely probable that you pay a large rent for the right to gaze at a series of red and raging floods, or at a pale and attenuated ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... will 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
... qualities which made T.M. Kettle difficult to handle in his team 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 ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... the bardic legend with merely a little compression; but in others a certain amount of reshaping has seemed desirable. The object in all cases has been the same, to bring out as clearly as possible for modern readers the beauty and interest which are either manifest or implicit in the Gaelic original. ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... very beautiful romance of the Shetland Islands, with a handsome, strong-willed hero and a lovely girl of Gaelic blood as heroine. A sequel to ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... old McTaggart's. He's the head-keeper and a real friend. McTaggart "has the Gaelic." But he hasn't much else, so perhaps ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... The Gaelic names of places are usually word pictures reflecting with fidelity the physical features of each place, or "tell sad stories of the death of kings." Where possible, the equivalents have been given ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... blushing daughter of Torman," a Gaelic bard in the Songs of Selma, one of the most famous portions of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Goidels were only to be found in Ireland, though at a later time they colonised a part of what is now known as Scotland, and sent some offshoots into Wales. At present the languages derived from that of the Goidels are the Gaelic of the Highlands, the Manx of the Isle of Man, and the Erse of Ireland. The only language now spoken in the British Isles which is derived from that of the Britons is the Welsh; but the old Cornish language, which was spoken nearly ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... Richard, John Crawford looked older than he did even in 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
... 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
... Butler 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
... MacPhail's house, that's the superior tenement. I believe the auld women wad hae agreed, for Luckie MacPhail sent down the lass to tell my friend Mrs. Crombie that she had made the gardyloo out of the wrang window, out of respect for twa Highlandmen that were speaking Gaelic in the close below the right ane. But luckily for Mrs. Crombie, I just chanced to come in in time to break aff the communing, for it's a pity the point suldna be tried. We had Mrs. MacPhail into the Ten-Mark Court—The Hieland limmer of a lass wanted ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... his master had demanded, Herries turned away from Mr. Foxley somewhat impatiently, saying with emphasis, 'I give you my word of honour, that you have not the slightest reason to apprehend anything on his account.' He then took up the tankard, and saying aloud in Gaelic, 'SLAINT AN REY,' [The King's health.] just tasted the liquor, and handed the tankard to Justice Foxley, who, to avoid the dilemma of pledging him to what might be the Pretender's health, drank to Mr. Herries's own, with much pointed solemnity, but ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... idea of certain kinds of novel writing, both Association and Rugby Football seem to come to the Scotchmen by nature. My readers can, perhaps, easily remember the clever jeu d'esprit on the antiquity of the Gaelic tongue which appeared several years ago advocating the claims of that race as lisping the first "speech" heard in Eden in a manner that must have stirred the blood of Professor Blackie. As the history of Association ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... of conjecture. There seems reason to believe that it refers to the time when the site, or a portion of it, formed an island, as sea-sand is the subsoil even of the oldest quarters. Another derivation is from Gaelic words meaning "the island beyond the bend." With Dysart, Kinghorn and Kirkcaldy, it unites in returning ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the passionate lament, Which from the crowd on shore was sent, The cries which broke from old and young In Gaelic, or the English tongue, Are stifled—all is ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... "Tales of a Grandfather" and other works. As a boy I remember listening to him with delight, for his memory was stored with a never-ending stock of stories, many of which were wonderfully like those I have since heard while sitting by the African evening fires. Our grandmother, too, used to sing Gaelic songs, some of which, as she believed, had been composed by captive islanders languishing hopelessly among ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish; note - only official languages are listed; Irish (Gaelic) will become the twenty-first language on 1 ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... viii., pp. 5. 111.)—A slight knowledge of Gaelic enables me to supply the meaning of some of the words that have puzzled your Irish correspondents. Molchan (Gaelic, Mulachan) ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... sense of lightness and vivacity 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... one could 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 who ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... advantage in the 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 ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... Nor'westers at Fort William in July of 1814. Like generals on field of war they laid out their campaign. Duncan Cameron, a United Empire Loyalist officer of the 1812 War, is to don his red regimentals and proceed to Red River, where his knowledge of the Gaelic tongue may be trusted to win over Selkirk settlers. "Nothing but the complete downfall of the colony will satisfy some," wrote one of the fiery Nor'westers to a brother officer. Such was the mood of the Nor'westers ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... 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, any foreign ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... roughly 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
... As they travelled about, they 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
... Banney (i.e. Ban-ea, "ea" also meaning water) in Yorkshire, Bain in Herefordshire; Banavie (avon) is a place on the brightly running river Lochy in Argyleshire; and, as meaning "white," a fair-haired boy or girl is called in Gaelic "Bhana." ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... boy's answer was 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' enemies, and he could not ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... note 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 ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... Gaelic, Irish, or Welsh Mr Arnold knew at first-hand, I cannot say: he frankly enough confesses that his knowledge was very closely limited. But what is really surprising, is that he does not seem to have taken much trouble to extend it at second-hand. ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... Rhode Island. Other waves of voluntary immigration followed—Ulster Presbyterians, driven out by the attempt of England to crush the Irish woolen manufacture, and, still later, Highlanders, Roman Catholic and Presbyterian, who soon made Gaelic the prevailing tongue of the easternmost counties. By 1767 the colony of Nova Scotia, which then included all Acadia, north and east of Maine, had a prosperous population of some seven thousand Americans, two thousand Irish, two thousand Germans, barely a thousand English, and ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... peasants say, for there was a rosary hanging from a nail on the rim of the barrel, and I saw I shuddered, and I did not know why I shuddered. We had passed him a few yards when I heard him cry in Gaelic, 'Idolaters, idolaters, go down to Hell with your witches and your devils; go down to Hell that the herrings may come again into the bay'; and for some moments I could hear him half screaming and half muttering behind us. 'Are you not afraid,' ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... 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 Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... 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 WOOD'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... the Great Lady of the Cat, is the Gaelic title of the Countess-Duchess of Sutherland. The county of Sutherland itself is in that dialect Cattey, and in the English name of the neighbouring one, Caithness, we have another trace of the early settlement ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... however, so far determined by the fragments of Gaelic originals, since published by Scottish antiquaries, that the amplifications of Macpherson can ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... plain, homely and unromantic is the little house where Carlyle was born. The place is shown the visitor by a good old dame who takes one from room to room, giving a little lecture meanwhile in a mixture of Gaelic and English which was quite beyond my ken. Several relics of interest are shown, and although the house is almost precisely like all others in the vicinity, imagination throws round it all a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... this kingdom. The Irish came into the new order of things frankly and in good faith; and if wise counsels prevailed then amongst our rulers, oh, what a blessed ending there might have been to the bloody feud of centuries. The Irish submitted to the Gaelic King, to whom had come in the English crown. In their eyes he was of a friendly, nay of a kindred race. He was of a line of Gaelic kings that had often befriended Ireland. Submitting to him was not yielding to the brutal Tudor. Yes, that was the hour, the blessed opportunity for laying the ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... 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, or ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... 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 children. Much has been left out in ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... we neglect. Latin drama we hear at Westminster; a Greek company came to the Court but did not act. A Chinese has been promised, and a Turkish drama threatened; Danish has been given; there are awful hopes of Gaelic and Erse; and goodness knows why we have escaped Echegaray, Lope di Vega and Calderon in the original. A Mezzofanti would be at a premium in the craft if knowledge of languages alone were sufficient; but one may know many ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... 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 ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... named Calphurnius espoused Conchessa, the niece of St. Martin of Tours. Heaven blessed their union with several children, the youngest of whom was a boy, who received at his baptism the name of Succath, which in the Gaelic tongue signifies "valiant." ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... of Carey and Simeon, thus linked to each other by Martyn, find another pleasant and fruitful tie in the Rev. Alexander Stewart, D.D., Gaelic scholar and Scottish preacher. It was soon after Carey went out to India that Simeon, travelling in the Highlands, spent a Sunday in the manse of Moulin, where his personal intercourse and his ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... Kay. But the last named is, like Key, 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, which long survived as font-names ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... 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 you will have done the ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... to her "difficult to point out any quarter of the horizon as a probable source of rising light." Yet Mr. Yeats had published his "Wanderings of Oisin" three years before; Mr. Russell had already gathered about him a group of eager young writers; and Dr. Hyde was organizing the Gaelic League, to give back to Ireland her language and civilization, and translating from the Gaelic "The Love Songs of Connacht" (1894) into an English of so new and masterful a rhythm, that it was to dominate the style of many of the writers of the ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... other becomes suddenly full of people and fertile in adventure. Our new companions were not of the most agreeable cast: they were rough and surly, hiding, we thought, a desire to avoid communication under the pretence of inability to speak any thing but Gaelic; while, in the midst of their Celtic communications with each other, they swore profusely in the Scottish vernacular. What their pursuits were, or what occasion they had to be in that wild region, was to us a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... means and strongest influence. It was a duel—indeed a fight, as old Sir Walter Scott would say, "a l'outrance"—to the bitter end. That the struggle was between two chieftains—one a Lowlander, the other a Highlander, did not count for much, for the Lowlander spoke the Gaelic tongue—and he was championing ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... nevertheless, sense enough about me remaining, to make me aware that the best place for me would be my bed; so, after making Nanse bring the bottle and glass to the door on a server, to give Peter Farrel a dram by way of "doch-an-dorris," as the Gaelic folk say, we wished him a good-night, and left him to drive home the bit gig, with the broken shaft spliced with ropes, to his own bounds; little jealousing, as we heard next morning, that he would be thrown over the back of it, without ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... reverend author of this song, "is undoubtedly old, from its resemblance to several Gaelic and Irish airs. 'Cuir's chiste moir me,' and several others, might be thought to have been originally the same in the first part. The second part of the air is, I think, modern." The Gadie is a rivulet, and Bennachie a mountain, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... obscure, indefinite, and intangible, which unite that material result to the outcome of two forces, allied but distinct, which have operated solely on men's minds and spirits. These are, of course, the Gaelic revival and the whole literary movement which has had its most concrete expression in the Irish theatre, and its most potent inspiration in the ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... effect on the national spirit of the noblest inhabitants of the world. Nor has this oral poetry entirely died out. In the present day Mr. Stephen Gwynne has astonished the world by telling of how he heard aged peasants in Kerry reciting the classics of Irish-Gaelic literature, legendary poems and histories that had descended from father to son by oral tradition; and the same phenomena was found by Mr. Alexander Carmichael among the Gaelic peasants in the Scottish Highlands and surrounding islands. It has been said that heroic poetry is of the people, and ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... 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 our own ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... shows a coin to the new moon to propitiate its fancied waxing 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 ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... poor fellow Gibbie Mackerrach, one of the band of gipsies who are staying here just now,' he said. 'Go away, Gibbie,' he added in Gaelic, shaking his head, since it was unlikely that the gipsy would be able to hear distinctly where he stood; 'I ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... have forgotten, however, that one incident—the most daring incident in the book—that of the rifling of a grave for treasure —is not new: it will at once remind folk-lorists of certain practices charged against our old Norse invaders. And students of Celtic and Gaelic literature are familiar with the same idea. Quite, lately, indeed, Mr. Alfred Nutt, in his analysis of the Gaelic Agallamh na Senorach, or 'Colloquy of the Elders,' has made some ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... auctioned, and listened to the excited conversations of the fish-curers, gutters, and fishermen. It was a veritable babel—the mournful intonation of the East Coast, the broad guttural of the Broomielaw, mingled with the shrill Gaelic scream of the Highlands, and the occasional twang of the cockney tourist. Having retrieved Sholto, who was inspecting some fish which had been laid out to dry in the middle of the village street, and packed him safely in the bows, we set out to sea, Myra at the ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... 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 ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... twist but limber in the joints—distinguished by a constant lowering of the eye and a spasmodic twitching of the corners of the mouth. He was active and nimble, and in moments of excitement much given to spitting Gaelic oaths like a wild-cat. But, spite his half-century of life, he was still the best and the most daring man of a company who had ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the word Celtic to the Irish branch of that dialect. My notion of the words iosal and iriosal is taken from the Highland Gaelic, and the authorised version of the Bible in that language. Let Celtic scholars who look to the sense of words in the four spoken languages, decide between us. There can be no doubt of the meaning of the two words in the Gaelic of Job v. 11. and Ps. iv. 6. In ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... devoted much of his time to collecting and studying the oral traditions of his own district and of many lands. His equipment as a student of West Highland folklore was unique. He had the necessary knowledge of Gaelic, the hereditary connection with the district which made him at home with the poorest peasant, and the sympathetic nature which proved a master-key in opening the storehouse of inherited belief. It is not likely that another ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... the Roman conquest, one language, the Celtic, under two principal dialectical divisions, the Cymric and the Gaelic, was spoken throughout the British Islands. Cymric was spoken ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... A secession of Scotland or Wales is as unlikely as a secession of Normandy or Languedoc. The part of the island which is not thoroughly assimilated in language, that part which still speaks Welsh or Gaelic, is larger in proportion than the non-French part of modern France. But however much either the northern or the western Briton may, in a fit of antiquarian politics, declaim against the Saxon, for all practical political purposes he and the Saxon are one. The distinction between the southern ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... information, until I met an old schoolmaster in the neighbourhood, from whom I had obtained much insight into the manners and customs of that district. He informed me that there is a distemper occasioned by want of water, which cattle are subject to, called in the Gaelic language shag dubh, which in English signifies 'black haunch.' It is a very infectious disease, and, if not taken in time, would carry off most of the cattle in the country." The method taken by the Highlanders to prevent its destructive ravages is thus: "All fires are extinguished ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... 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
... Evening.—In the Gaelic Chapel, on 'I know that my Redeemer liveth,' with more seeming power on the people than for a while. I never remember of compelling souls to come in to Christ so much as in ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... by 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 ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... 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 ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... or of judgment, withdrew that regiment from the fight. It was a Highland regiment, great in fighting reputation, and full of daring. How black were the looks of the officers, and what loud swearing in Gaelic took place in the ranks, as the gallant regiment—discipline overcoming human nature—obeyed the mysterious order to retire, may be imagined. Almost at the same moment on the right, Bunbury, who ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... was shed by the females of the 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
... a kind of roar, as near to the above as English letters will sound. Perhaps he was laughing in Gaelic, with a cross of Scandinavian; but, whatever it was, he seemed heartily ashamed of his rudeness, and looked as ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... will be commenced in the next number, and continued from month to month. Under this heading will be given Highland Legends, Old Unpublished Gaelic Poetry, ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... 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 Imperialia of Gervase ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... end. In Humphry Clinker, in the letter dated Sept. 3, he makes one of his characters write:—'The poems of Ossian are in every mouth. A famous antiquarian of this country, the laird of Macfarlane, at whose house we dined, can repeat them all in the original Gaelic.' See Boswell's Hebrides, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Highlanders, was full of imagination, and, when melancholy themes came upon her, expressed herself almost poetically, owing to the genius of the Celtic language in which she thought, and in which, doubtless, she would have spoken, had I understood Gaelic. In two minutes the shade of gloom and regret had passed from her good-humoured features, and she was again the little, busy, prating, important old woman, undisputed owner of one flat of a small tenement ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... the abattis, and went up to the breastwork, eight feet high. They tried to scale it, but could not. Unwilling to retreat, they stood in front of it, exchanging shots with the French, shaking their guns at them, and cursing them in Gaelic. ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... Burns, Donal learned also not a little of the capabilities of his own language; for, Celt as he was by birth and country and mental character, he could not speak the Gaelic: that language, soft as the speech of streams from rugged mountains, and wild as that of the wind in the tops of fir-trees, the language at once of bards and fighting men, had so far ebbed from the region, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... She was Ellen Douglas, and was in banishment on an island with her father. You are Ellen, and Josephine is your old harper—Allan Bane; she talks French, you know, and that will do for Highland: Gallic and Gaelic sound alike, you know. There! Then I'm going out hunting, and my dear gallant grey will drop down dead with fatigue, and I shall lose my way; and when you hear me wind my horn too-too, you get upon your hoop—that will be your boat, you know—and answer 'Father!' and when I too-too again, ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into Lydia's pale face and reddened eyes, the smile died away. She clasped her big hands with a pitying gesture, and cried out a Gaelic exclamation of compassion with a much-moved accent; then, "It's time I was here," she told herself. She wiped her eyes, passed the back of her hand over her nose with a sniff, picked up the dishcloth from the floor, and ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... remember the circumstance was this, that whenever afterwards he used the Highland tongue the monkey manifested peculiar signs of joy. The only way the miner could account for this singular fact was to suppose that somehow or other this monkey had once belonged to some one who used the Gaelic language—a suggestion, however, which people generally laughed at. The miner always maintained, nevertheless, that the monkey really knew Gaelic, and he seldom spoke to it in any other language. Of course, people said this was simply to ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... 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 could harness a horse and milk a cow; paddle ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... well to mention that the Finnish language is very remarkable. Like Gaelic, it is musical, soft and dulcet, expressive and poetical, comes from a very old root, and is, in fact, one of the most interesting languages we possess. But some of the Finnish words are extremely long, in which respect they excel even ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... language, is that it was not the primitive and original tongue of any of the British Islands, nor yet of any portion of them. Indeed, of the whole of Great Britain it is not the language at the present moment. Welsh is spoken in Wales, Manks in the Isle of Man, and Scotch Gaelic in the Highlands of Scotland; besides which there is the ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... Scotch literary man, who in 1760 published "Fingal" in six books, which he declared he had translated from a poem by Ossian, son of Fingal, a Gaelic prince of the third century. For a moment the work was accepted as genuine in some quarters, especially by some of the Edinburgh divines. But Dr. Johnson denounced it as an imposture from the first. He pointed out that Macpherson had never produced the manuscripts from which he professed ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... and we will cut it with a drink; as the Highlander says, Skeoch doch nan skial ['Cut a tale with a drink;' an expression used when a man preaches over his liquor, as bons vivants say in England. S.]; and that 's good Gaelic.—Here is to the Countess Isabelle of Croye, and a better husband to her than Campobasso, who is a base Italian cullion!—And now, Andrew Arnot, what said the muleteer to this ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... his {8} contemporaries in Great Britain, was filled with disgust at the blind carnage of the Revolution. He returned to Scotland and began a series of tours in the Highlands, studying the conditions of life among his Celtic countrymen and becoming proficient in the use of the Gaelic tongue. Not France but Scotland was to be the scene of his ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Gaelic, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish; note - only official ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... amply tasted, than in these rustic villages, where creature comforts yet abound, and nowhere is the dolce far niente so easily induced. Why should we be at the trouble of undertaking a hot, dusty railway journey in search of Gaelic tombs, Gothic churches, or Merovingian remains when we have the essence of deliciousness at our very door?—waving fields of ripe corn, amid which the reapers in twos and threes are at work—picturesque figures ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... therefore of the same race, kin, and religion as the Irish Macdonnells, and sharing their ancient grudge against the whole race of the Campbells. He had the personal peculiarity of being ambidexter, or able to wield his claymore with his left hand as well as with his right; and hence his Gaelic name of Coll Kittoch, or Coll the Left-Handed. The peculiarity having been transmitted to his son Alaster, it was not uncommon to distinguish the two as old Colkittoch and young Colkittoch. The old ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Captain 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 ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... 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
... present county of Pictou, where a very few American colonists from Philadelphia had preceded them. In later years a steady tide of Scotch population flowed into eastern Nova Scotia and did not cease until 1820. Gaelic is still the dominant tongue in the eastern counties, where we find numerous names recalling the glens, lochs, and mountains of old Scotland. Sir William Alexander's dream of a new Scotland has been realised in a measure in the province ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... 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 ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... crowd, Mr Brand! Macnab didna like what ye said. He had a laddie killed in Gallypoly, and he's no lookin' for peace this side the grave. He's my best friend in Glasgow. He's an elder in the Gaelic kirk in the Cowcaddens, and I'm what ye call a free-thinker, but we're wonderful agreed on the fundamentals. Ye spoke your bit verra well, I must admit. Gresson will hear tell of ye as ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... 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 ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... recorded that both these young women had long since ceased to regard their father as anything except an unfailing source of revenue—an old dear who clung to Port Agnew, homely speech, and homely ways, hooting good-naturedly at the pretensions of their set, and, with characteristic Gaelic stubbornness, insisting upon living and enjoying the kind of life that appealed to him with peculiar force as the ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and translated from the Gaelic, or Erse Language," the production of James Macpherson; the first presentation to the world of that literary novelty, which was afterwards to excite so much discussion and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... traveller was prevented from executing his friendly purpose by a sort of crowd which came rushing down the alley, the centre of which was occupied by Captain MacTurk, in the very act of bullying two pseudo Highlanders, for having presumed to lay aside their breeches before they had acquired the Gaelic language. The sounds of contempt and insult with which the genuine Celt was overwhelming the unfortunate impostors, were not, indeed, intelligible otherwise than from the tone and manner of the speaker; but these ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... missed nothing: 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, ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... went 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 ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Sloy!" now rose the voices overhead, surely the maddest place in the world for a Gaelic slogan: it gave him a sense of unspeakable savagery and antique, for it was two hundred years since his own family had ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... accompanied the bailiff was a Scotchman called Stracan, the head of the Reformed College of Loudun. Hearing this answer, he called on the demon to translate aqua into Gaelic, saying if he gave this proof of having those linguistic attainments which all bad spirits possess, he and those with him would be convinced that the possession was genuine and no deception. Barre, without being in the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... published in Gaelic,[44] in Welsh,[45] and in Irish,[46] have been published. The works of American authors are included in Allibone's Dictionary, referred to under English literature, but special books have also been prepared, such as Truebner's ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... fingers. "That's right! I sold both of those pistols at about the same time; a gentleman in Chicago got the Murdoch. The Strahan had a star-pierced lobe on the hammer. Did you ever get anybody to translate the Gaelic ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... wildest recesses of the Perthshire Highlands. It was in autumn, and the little school supported mainly by the Chief, who dwelt all the year round in the midst of his own people, was to be examined by the minister, whose native tongue, like that of his flock, was Gaelic, and who was as awkward and ineffectual, and sometimes as unconsciously indecorous, in his English, as a Cockney is in his kilt. It was a great occasion: the keen-eyed, firm-limbed, brown-cheeked little fellows were all ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... 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 roughest country and in the wildest ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... 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 to reprint ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... Gaelic and also Erse, which languages he had learnt during his childhood, which was spent partly in the Highlands of Scotland ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... the utmost of kind hospitality. From Loch Goil we took the coach for Inverary, a beautiful drive of about two hours. We had seats on the outside, and the driver John, like some of the White Mountain guides, was full of song and story, and local tradition. He spoke Scotch and Gaelic, recited ballads, and sung songs with great gusto. Mary and the girls stopped in a little inn at St. Catherine's, on the shores of Loch Fine, while Henry and I took steamboat for Inverary, where we found the duchess waiting in a carriage for ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... A British or Gaelic term for a rocky eminence, or rocks on a wash: hence the word hard, in present use. It is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... absorption, are as yet undigested. Hundreds on hundreds on hundreds of journals minister to the daily and weekly needs of Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, Norwegians, Swedes, Russians, Hungarians. There are Polish newspapers, and Armenian, and Hebrew, and Erse and Gaelic. Sleepy old Spain is rubbing shoulders with the eager and energetic races of Maine and New York and Massachusetts. The negro element is everywhere, and the Chinese add a flavour of their own to the olla podrida. So far no American writers ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... and 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 Builtmore," in a spirit of mockery, and then ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... down and, putting his pipes to his lips, he played resolutely through to the end "The Song of Angus to the Stars." As the last, high, confident note died, he put his pipes down hastily, and dropped his face in his hands with a broken murmur of Gaelic lament. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... 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 Cork, Limerick, and Kerry, lay hitherto ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... aboard of it, came flying round that corner of the isle, bound for Iona. I shouted out, and then fell on my knees on the rock and prayed to them. They were near enough to hear—I could even see the colour of their hair—and there was no doubt but they observed me, for they cried out in the Gaelic tongue, and laughed. But the boat never turned aside, and flew right on, before my eyes, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... 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 and other Christian settlers, of changing the names of the natives, will be stopped, ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... 1849 it is given as 'Canadian Boat Song, from the Gaelic.' The author of the English version was Burns' 'Sodger Hugh,' the 12th Earl of Eglinton, who was M.P. for Ayrshire from 1784 to 1789, and was the great-grandfather of the present Earl. When in Canada the author is said to have heard a song of lament sung by evicted Hebridean crofters ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... Locksley Hall old-fashioned and sentimental, but to me it is the greatest poem of its age. Next to this I would place In Memoriam, which has never received its just recognition. Readers of Taine will recall his flippant Gaelic comment on Tennyson's conventional but cold words of lament. Nothing, it seems to me, is further from the truth. The many beautiful lines in the poem depict the changing moods of the man who mourned for his dead and finally found comfort in ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... E'er, 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, downright, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns |
