"Minstrelsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... responsive voices of the night I join your minstrelsy, And call across the fading silver light As something calls to me; I may not all your meaning understand, But I have touched your ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... the many eyes upon her beauty turned; One vision still oppressed her soul, one grief within her burned. The tones of holy minstrelsy, the solemn anthem strain, They were like voices in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... whose early love of song and minstrelsy was still alive, had entered the room at the sound of Edward's voice, in sufficient time to accompany the second stanza on the violin. He now, with the air of one who was entitled to judge in these matters, expressed ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Poetry. Percy to his own mind knew the Middle Ages better than they knew themselves, and he took care to dress to advantage the rudeness and plainness of his originals. Perhaps we should not blame him. Sir Walter Scott did the same with better tact and skill in his Border minstrelsy, and how many distinguished editors are there, who have tamed and smoothed down the natural wildness and irregularity of Blake? But it is more important to observe that when Percy's reliques came to have their influence on writing his additions were imitated as much as the poems on ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... new: "Who is she playing the organ? She touches it mightily true!" "She travels from Havenpool Town," the deacon would softly speak, "The stipend can hardly cover her fare hither twice in the week." (It fell far short of doing, indeed; but I never told, For I have craved minstrelsy more than lovers, or beauty, ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... "Edinbro'," and many others, and became completely enamored of the wild beauty of the Scotch ballads, the terror and pity of their stories, and the strange, sweet, mournful music to which they were told. I knew every collection of them, that I could get hold of, by heart, from Scott's "Border Minstrelsy" to Smith's six volumes of "National Scottish Songs with their Musical Settings," and I said and sang them over in my lonely walks perpetually; and they still are to me among the deepest and freshest sources of poetical thought and feeling that I know. It is impossible, I ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... music of one lute is lonely on the hills at night, then one soul calleth to his brother souls—the notes of Shimono Kani's dirge which have not been caught among the worlds—and he knoweth not to whom he calls or why, but knoweth only that minstrelsy is his only cry and sendeth ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... hath paced into the hall, Red as a rose is she; Nodding their heads before her goes The merry minstrelsy. ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... of an untilled solitude, where a few Irish monks from Lindisfarne had settled in the mission-station of Melrose. To-day the land is a land of poetry and romance. Cheviot and Lammermoor, Ettrick and Teviotdale, Yarrow and Annan-water, are musical with old ballads and border minstrelsy. Agriculture has chosen its valleys for her favourite seat, and drainage and steam-power have turned sedgy marshes into farm and meadow. But to see the Lowlands as they were in Cuthbert's day we must sweep meadow and farm away again, and replace them by vast ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... patient temper, where breathed the feeling Isabel herself would fain cherish—the deep, earnest, spiritual life and high consecrated purpose that were with the Provencal maiden through all her enforced round of gay festivals, light minstrelsy, tourneys, and Courts of Love. Thus far had the story gone. Isabel had been writing a wild, mysterious ballad, reverting to that higher love and the true spirit of self-sacrifice, which was to thrill strangely on the ears of the thoughtless ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I'm come! like a seraph's sigh Breath'd to ethereal minstrelsy, And well ye'll deem what a sigh must be From the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... Henry VI, and even afterward, the Yule log was greeted with bards and minstrelsy. If a squinting person came into the hall while the log was burning, it was sure to bring bad luck. The appearance of a barefooted man was worse, and a flat-footed woman ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... revived the true heroic style, it would have been done by Walter Scott, with his delight in the border minstrelsy, and his martial ardour; but the romantic spirit was too strong upon him. He had laid hold of the right tradition, could give picturesque scenes and characters of a bygone time, and Bonnie Dundee ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... day. The third was a man whose political life has long since been forgotten, but whose name is well remembered because of his success in quite a different field—Winthrop Mackworth Praed, the charming author of delightful verses, the founder of that English school of minstrelsy which sings for the drawing-room and the club-room, the feasts and the fashions, the joys and the well-ordered troubles of the West-End. Sidney Herbert and Praed were made joint Secretaries to the Board of Control, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... pretty-looking country girl, around whose waist he had most lovingly passed his arm under pretence of keeping her from falling, and to whom, in the midst of all his attentions to the party at large, he devoted himself considerably, pressing his suit with all the aid of his native minstrelsy. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Waiter Scott, in his notes to the 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' says that the common people of the high parts of Liddlesdale and the country adjacent to this day hold the memory of Johnnie Armstrong in ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... green with me. Its lofty head it proudly rears To greet the summer sky, Whilst, bending with the weight of years, I feebly totter by. And hushed are all the thousand songs That filled these branches high: Echo no more for me prolongs The woodland minstrelsy. Silence has gathered round life's hall; My friends are in the clay; I hear no more the footsteps fall, That cheered my early day; I see no more the faces dear, Which shone around my hearth: Bereft of all—I sojourn here— Still happy, though ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... ground, A something shining in the dark, And knew the Glow-worm by his spark; So, stooping down from hawthorn top, He thought to put him in his crop. The Worm, aware of his intent, Harangued him thus, right eloquent:— "Did you admire my lamp," quoth he, "As much as I your minstrelsy, You would abhor to do me wrong, As much as I to spoil your song; For 'twas the self-same power divine Taught you to sing and me to shine; That you with music, I with light, Might beautify and cheer the night." The songster heard his short oration, And, warbling out his approbation, Released ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... minstrelsy. Stopping short, she remarked ere long, "One could have loved Cowper, if it were only for the sake of having ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... bigotry of classical taste, which is not always accompanied by a natural one, and rests securely on prescribed opinions and traditional excellence, long contemned our vernacular genius, spurning at the minstrelsy of the nation; Johnson's ridicule of "Percy's Reliques" had its hour, but the more poetical mind of Scott has brought us back to home feelings, to ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... himself. At a later period, when Miss Scott, Walter's aunt, removed from Smailholm to Kelso, the intercourse between the families was renewed. Scott was then an Edinburgh advocate, engaged in collecting materials for his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, or, as his aunt described his pursuit, "running after the auld wives of the country gatherin' havers." He used frequently to read over by the fireside in the evening the results ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Lawrence by four boatmen who, from time to time, in a low tone, as if afraid of awakening the dawn, chaunted, now an old song of Normandy, and now a ballad upon the fate of some lost voyageur. The moon was yet shining, and he was in the mood to enjoy such minstrelsy; but when they neared the opposite shore, a feeling of sadness and apprehension stole over him, as he thought of meeting his father, to whom he knew he must either communicate distasteful tidings, or what was worse to his ingenuous mind, practice a culpable concealment. Thus musing, as day ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... chivalry and song,' exclaimed Eleanor, 'where they have courts of love and poetry, and tilts and tourneys and minstrelsy, and the sun shines as it never does in this cold bleak north; and above all there is Margaret, dear tender Margaret, almost a queen, as a queen she will be one day. Oh! I almost feel ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a hoary past, and when still hardly more than a boy, burrowed among the manuscripts of the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh, making himself an able antiquary at a time when most youth are idling or philandering. Moreover, he was himself the son of a border chief and knew minstrelsy almost at his nurse's knee: and the lilt of a ballad was always like wine to his heart. It makes you think of Sir Philip Sidney's splendid testimony to such an influence: "I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... arts have I, all noble; I play at chess so free, At ravelling runes I'm ready, At books and smithery; I'm skill'd o'er ice at skimming On skates, I shoot and row, And few at harping match me, Or minstrelsy, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... I might do credit to the Sabbath day. I thought of the old church at pretty D—-, the dignified rector, and yet more dignified clerk. I thought of England's grand Liturgy, and Tate and Brady's sonorous minstrelsy. I thought of the Holy Book, portions of which I was in the habit of reading between service. I thought, too, of the evening walk which I sometimes took in fine weather like the present, with my mother and brother—a ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... clouds: an hour of silence in the ship, an hour of agony beyond narration for the sufferers. Brown's gabbling prayers, the cries of the sailors in the rigging, strains of the dead Hemstead's minstrelsy, ran together in Carthew's mind, with sickening iteration. He neither acquitted nor condemned himself: he did not think, he suffered. In the bright water into which he stared, the pictures changed and were repeated: the baresark rage of ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... (Toxophilus, p. 29) 'that the laudable custom of England to teach children their plain song and prick-song' is 'so decayed throughout all the realm as it is,' denounces the great practise of instrumental music by older students: "the minstrelsy of lutes, pipes, harps, and all other that standeth by such nice, fine, minikin fingering, (such as the most part of scholars whom I know use, if they use any,) is far more fit, for the womanishness of it, to dwell in the Court among ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... one corner staring out of the window at the cab lights that wove in and out among the trees, all seeming to be bent upon joyous courses. Taxicabs were still new in New York, and the theme of popular minstrelsy. Landry had sung her a ditty he heard in some theater on Third ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... That blast, said Balin, is blown for me, for I am the prize and yet am I not dead. Anon withal he saw an hundred ladies and many knights, that welcomed him with fair semblant, and made him passing good cheer unto his sight, and led him into the castle, and there was dancing and minstrelsy and all manner of joy. Then the chief lady of the castle said, Knight with the Two Swords, ye must have ado and joust with a knight hereby that keepeth an island, for there may no man pass this way but he must joust or he pass. That is an unhappy custom, said Balin, that a knight ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... these times of stress and passion, When the sword is all the fashion, Only minstrelsy can keep the world in tune; For the poet is a healer, And both WILL and ELLA WHEELER Are a blessing and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... still be heard upon the lips of the people. But these exceptions are insignificant in comparison with the vast mass of songs which deal with love; and I cannot find that Tuscany, where the language of this minstrelsy is purest, and where the artistic instincts of the race are strongest, has anything at all approaching to our ballads.[21] Though the Tuscan contadini are always ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... tend to London's graceful state, Be unperform'd; as shows and solemn feasts, Watches in armour, triumphs, cresset-lights[268], Bonfires, bells, and peals of ordnance. And, Pleasure, see that plays be published, May-games and masques, with mirth and minstrelsy, Pageants and school-feasts, bears and puppet plays. Myself will muster upon Mile-end Green, As though we saw, and fear'd not to be seen; Which will their spies in such a wonder set, To see us reck so little such ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... wandered on through green arcade Where fruits were hanging in the shades, And blossoms clustering fair; Strange gorgeous insects shimmered And from the brakes sweet minstrelsy ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... been without an aim; now he determined that it should be so no longer. The dawning hope began to gladden him that he might take his place among the bards of Scotland, who, themselves mostly unknown, have created that atmosphere of minstrelsy which envelopes and glorifies their native country. This hope and aim is recorded in an entry of his commonplace book, of the probable date of ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... minstrelsy the country was alive with fairies. Over the mountains, through the glens, by babbling streams and across silent moors, the patter of tiny feet might be heard, feet which had ...
— Stories from the Ballads - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... disaster, till he died in 1180. What life went on in France, went on principally in the south. The lands of Aquitaine and Provence had never dropped the old classical love of poetry and art. A softer form of broken Latin was then spoken, and the art of minstrelsy was frequent among all ranks. Poets were called troubadours and trouveres (finders). Courts of love were held, where there were competitions in poetry, the prize being a golden violet; and many of the bravest warriors were ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... really Becket, Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas of Canterbury. Every one has heard how HIS Saracen bride sought him in London. (Robert of Gloucester's Life and Martyrdom of Thomas Becket, Percy Society. See Child's Introduction, IV., i. 1861, and Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. xv., 1827.) The legend of the dissolved marriage is from the common stock of ballad lore, Motherwell found an example in the state of Cantefable, alternate prose and verse, like Aucassin and Nicolette. Thus the cockney rhyme descends from the ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... of his funeral pall with tapers burning at his head and feet, and the low chant of prayer sounded till the dawn. All night had Otto stayed awake in sorrow and unrest. At last, with the rising of the sun he heard a burst of minstrelsy. Rouen was silent no longer; the songs of triumph and defiance burst from every parapet and tower, while the very birds (says the chronicler) seemed to join in the chorus of happiness all round the beaten camp. Then Otto rode moodily along the city walls and ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign—is it not?—of new vigor when the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet. I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provencal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of meat and drink was done, And ended was the joy of minstrelsy, Queen Helen spake, beholding how the sun Within the heaven of bronze was riding high: "Truly, my friends, methinks the hour is nigh When men may crave to know what need doth bring To Lacedaemon, o'er wet ways and dry, This prince ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... the cloud-robed sea Shall mourn him first; and then the mother land Weeping in silence by his empty hand And fallen sword that flashed for Liberty. Song-bringer of a glad new minstrelsy, He came and found joy sleeping and swift fanned Old pagan fires, then snatched an altar brand And wrote, "The fearless only shall be free!" Oh, by the flame that made thine heart a home, By the wild surges of thy silver song, Seer before the sunrise, ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... Sleek with their combs Their yellow hair.... Bates and Giles- On the shingle sat, Gazing at Turvey's Floating hat. But never a ripple Nor bubble told Where he was supping Off plates of gold. Never an echo Rilled through the sea Of the feasting and dancing And minstrelsy. They called-called-called: Came no reply: Nought but the ripples' Sandy sigh. Then glum and silent They sat instead, Vacantly brooding On home and bed, Till both together Stood up and said.- 'Us knows not, dreams not, Where you ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... had been almost wholly passed over amongst the antiquarian revivals which constitute one of the distinguishing features of the present age. While attention was successfully drawn to other forms of our early poetry, this peasant minstrelsy was scarcely touched, and might be considered unexplored ground. There was great difficulty in collecting materials which lay scattered so widely, and which could be procured in their genuine simplicity only from the people amongst whom they originated, and with whom ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... what a world of thought the calmer chimes came bringing, Telling praises every hour To His majesty and power, Telling prayers with punctual service, summers, centuries, how long? The beads upon our rosary of immemorial song." The Minstrelsy of Isis. ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... ghost stories, and some remarks about the ideas of the Russian peasants with respect to the dead, will be found in Chap. V. Scott mentions a story in "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," vol. ii. p. 223, of a widower who believed he was haunted by his dead wife. On one occasion the ghost, to prove her identity, gave suck ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... idleness, rioting, chambering, and wantonness among his soldiery. He kept them constantly to the exercise of arms, making them adroit in the use of their weapons and management of their steeds, and prompt for the field at a moment's notice. He permitted no sound of lute or harp or song or other loose minstrelsy to be heard in his fortress, debauching the ear and softening the valor of the soldier; no other music was allowed but the wholesome rolling of the drum and braying of the trumpet, and such like spirit-stirring instruments as fill the mind with thoughts of iron ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... was always "a steady hum of laughter and talk, dance, song, shout, and the twang of musical instruments." It was "a scene full of life and fun, of jostling, scuffling, and racing, of clown performances and cake-walks, of impromptu minstrelsy, speech-making, and preaching, of deviling, guying, and fighting, both real and mimic." The colonel found great difficulty in getting men to work alone. Two would volunteer for any service. "Colonel," said a visitor to the camp, "your sentinels are sociable fellows. I saw No. 5 over ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... no less than when we are wayward and criminal, our trust for personal safety, and our only chance of blessing are from our exalted Daysman, who can lay his hand upon us both. Our praise would be unmeaning minstrelsy, our prayers a litany unheard and obsolete, all our devotional service a bootless trouble, but that "yonder the Intercessor stands and pours his all-prevailing prayer." It is "through Him we both," the Jews who crucified Him and the Gentiles, ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... reference to hawking. Minstrelsy (hearpan wyn), saga-telling, racing, swimming, harpooning of sea-animals, feasting, and the bestowal of jewels, swords, and rings, are the other amusements most frequent ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... I was dead?" laughs the new god Pan (Laughs till his faun-cheeks quiver), "I'm still at my work, on a new-fangled plan. Scare is my business; I think I succeed, When the Mob at my minstrelsy shakes like a reed, And I mock, as the pale ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... Walter Scott's Border Minstrelsy, Percy's collection, Ellis's early English Metrical Romances, the European continental poems of Walter of Aquitania, and the Nibelungen, of pagan stock, but monkish-feudal redaction; the history of the Troubadours, by Fauriel; even the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Love held by ladies of high rank were originally courts in which the rules of minstrelsy were laid down, they pronounced on the qualifications of a candidate, they polished and cherished the Langue d'oc in its purity, dictated the subjects upon which the troubadours were to compose their lays, judged their pretensions, settled their controversies, recompensed ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... is from The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, together with The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1880). Sir Walter, in his introduction to the ballad, states that because the piece had been "much mangled by reciters," "some conjectural emendations have been absolutely ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... upon the sky and landscape, and on the human form divine when unmarred by vice! How rarely the taste is offended or the appetite starved, while every meal, be it ever so simple, yields enjoyment to the palate! The ear is regaled with the perpetual music of wind and ocean and feathered minstrelsy, of childhood's voice and the sweet converse of friends. So, too, Nature is a great laboratory of delicate odors: the salt breath of the sea is like wine to the sense; the summer air is freighted with delights, and every tree and flower exhales ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... his generous heart for aye; He told me where the relic lay; Pointed my way with ready will, Afar on Ettrick's wildest hill; Watch'd my first notes with curious eye, And wonder'd at my minstrelsy: He little ween'd a parent's tongue Such strains had o'er ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... pillars quivered and sprang under the blow. It was then that the foreman builder, Mr. Goodwillie, whom I see before me still in his rock-habit of undecipherable rags, would get his fiddle down and strike up human minstrelsy amid the music of the storm. But it was in sunshine only that I saw Dhu-Heartach; and it was in sunshine, or the yet lovelier summer afterglow, that the steamer would return to Earraid, ploughing an enchanted sea; the obedient lighters, relieved of their deck cargo, riding ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... contributed some pieces to Lewis' "Tales of Wonder," which are almost the only fragments of that work which have escaped oblivion. At last, in 1802, he gave to the world the two first volumes of his "Border Minstrelsy," printed by his old schoolfellow, Ballantyne; its literary merits were enhanced by the beauty of its typographical execution, and its appearance made an epoch in Scottish literary history. The ballads of this collection had been very carefully ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... have speculated much upon the thoughts of men about to die; yet it cannot be too ingenuous to believe that such thoughts vary as the men, their characters, and conditions of life vary. Nevertheless, pursuant with the traditions of minstrelsy and romance, it is conceivable that young, unmarried men, called upon to face desperate situations, might, at the crucial moment, rush to a common experience of summoning the vision, each of his heart's desire, and to meet, each his doom, with ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... sitting on the terrace with a world of silver light and cobalt shadows about them. That is to say, two of them sat there in silence while the third came and went about his duties of changing records and needles and the winding of the machine—for he still dedicated himself to minstrelsy. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... cultivated and refined people: they occupied the floor above us the last winter, and at the Baths of Lucca and Florence we have seen much of them for a year past. She published some time since a volume of 'Scottish Minstrelsy,' graceful and flowing, and aspires strenuously towards poetry; a pretty woman with three pretty children, of quick perceptions and active intelligence and sensibility. They are upright, excellent people in various ways, and it is a loss to us that they should have gone ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... was the organ and chant: hidden in the midst of forest arches of stone, pouring forth its volumes of harmony as by unseen minstrelsy, it seemed to create an atmosphere of sound, in which the massive columns seemed transfused,—not standing, as it were, but floating,—not resting, as with weight of granite mountains, but growing as by a spirit and law of development. Filled with those vast waves and undulations, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... His minstrelsy may be unchaste - 'Tis much unto that motley taste, And loud the laughter he provokes From those ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wrong. Guards by gate and hall there were, And folk went in and out in fear. When he heard the mouse run in the wall, "Hist!" he said, "what next shall befall? Draw not near, speak under your breath, For all new-comers tell of death. Bring me no song nor minstrelsy, Round death it babbleth still," said he. "And what is fame and the praise of men, When lost life ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... hale and well from the land of Faylinn, and much did he entertain the King and all the court with tales of the smallness of the Wee Folk, and their marvel at his own size, and their bravery and beauty, and their marble palaces and matchless minstrelsy. ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... too, from the Wairoa settlements, from the Oruawharo, even from Maungaturoto and distant Mangawai. Our hearts sunk into our boots when we saw the prodigious audience that was assembling to hear our crude attempts at minstrelsy. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... holding of conventions and speech-making in concert rooms, the people were disposed to be amused by them, as they are by the wit of the clown in the circus, or the performances of Punch and Judy on fair days, or the minstrelsy of gentlemen with blackened faces, on banjos, the tambourine, and bones. But the joke is becoming stale. People are getting cloyed with these performances, and are looking for some healthier and more intellectual amusement. The ludicrous is wearing away, and disgust ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... cooings, Of the amorous multitudes Flashing through the dusky woods, When a veering wind hath blown A glare of sudden daylight down?— Naught of these!—And fewer notes Hath the wind alone that floats Over naked trees and snows; Half its minstrelsy it owes To its orchestra of leaves. Ay! weak the meshes music weaves For thy snared soul's delight, 'Less, when thou dost lie at night 'Neath the star-sown heavens bright, To thy sin-unchoked ears Some dim harmonies may pierce From the high-consulting ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... rank, denationalizing his own name into Donizetti. The Scottish predilections of our composer show themselves in the music of "Don Pasquale," noticeably in "Com' e gentil;" and the score of "Lucia" is strongly flavored by Scottish sympathy and minstrelsy. ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... to the sea; but with Delos, Phoebus, art thou most delighted at heart, where the long-robed Ionians gather in thine honour, with children and shame-fast wives. Mindful of thee they delight thee with boxing, and dances, and minstrelsy in their games. Who so then encountered them at the gathering of the Ionians, would say that they are exempt from eld and death, beholding them so gracious, and would be glad at heart, looking on the ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... scarcely a rival, and he was skilled in all the learned lore of the time, wrote poetry, composed music both sacred and profane, and was a complete minstrel, able to sing beautifully and to play on the harp and organ. His Queen, the beautiful Joan Beaufort, had been the lady of his minstrelsy in the days of his captivity, ever since he had watched her walking on the slopes of Windsor Park, and wooed her in verses that are still preserved. They had now been eleven years married, and their Court was one bright spot of civilization, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... More than once he sought to assure himself that he heard it, but his fancy failed to respond to his bidding, although again and again he took up his position where it had before struck his ear. The wild minstrelsy of the woods felt no lack, and stream and wind and harping pine and vagrant bird lifted their voices in their wonted strains. He could hardly accept the fact; he would verify anew the landmarks he had made and again return to the spot, ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... impossible for Scott to get to it except through the years of exploration and editing, the collection of the Border ballads, the study of the old metrical romance of Sir Tristrem. The story of the Goblin Page was at first reckoned enough simply for one of the additions to the Border Minstrelsy on the scale of a ballad. Scott had tried another sort of imitation in the stanzas composed in old English and in the metre of the original to supply the missing conclusion of Sir Tristrem. It was not within his scope to write an original romance in the old language, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... my lyre! some hearts may beat Responsive to thy lay; The tide of sympathy may meet Thy master's lonely way; And kindred souls from envy free May listen to its minstrelsy. ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... scabbards, and upraise a mighty shout, And the trumpet of the Niblungs through the lonely street rings out And stilleth the wind in the wall-nook: but hark, as its echoes die, How forth from that hall of the Eastlands comes the sound of minstrelsy, And the brazen doors swing open: but the Niblungs are at the door, And the bidden guests of Atli o'er the fateful threshold pour; There the music faileth before them, till its sound is over and done, And fair in the city behind them lies the flood ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... taken in good humour, the whole relation between the pair degenerates into the unedifying complicity of a debauched old chaplain and a witty and dissolute young scholar. At this rate the house with the red door may have rung with the most mundane minstrelsy; and it may have been below its roof that Villon, through a hole in the plaster, studied, as he tells us, the leisures of ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... about and were merry, till the chieftain arose again and smote the board with the flat of his sword, and cried out in a loud and angry voice, so that all could hear: "Now let there be music and minstrelsy ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... O heart, for Death steps noiseless nigh, Hist to the dirges o'er the sleeping sea! Dim funeral trains pass melancholy by And monotone their mournful minstrelsy. It is the grave that opes by Heav'n's decree, And steeps each thing in its sepulchral breath, The self-same grave that soon must yawn for thee, The grave wherein all darkness slumbereth, While all around is fastened in the ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... first among modern peoples by whom the outward world was seen and felt as something beautiful.... By the year 1200, at the height of the Middle Ages, a genuine hearty enjoyment of the external world was again in existence, and found lively expression in the minstrelsy of different nations, which gives evidence of the sympathy felt with all the simple phenomena of Nature—spring with its flowers, the green fields and the woods. But these pictures are all ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... houses, crying in dreadful voices, 'Les Allemands!' And there, by the old church, round the corner, came the Highlanders! I stood still on the pavement and sang 'Scots wha hae' at the top of my old cracked voice, and they, appreciating the welcome, and excusing the minstrelsy, waved their hands to me. The Staff was here, the Flying Corps, three regiments, English and Scottish—such brave, bright, orderly, kind young men. On September 6 the cannon sounded very near. I went into the street and said to a demure, douce young Highlander, 'Do ye think the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... love, with eyes to see, With ears to hear their minstrelsy; Through us no harm, by deed or word, Shall ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... To clip nor to kiss had she Talent, nor for minstrelsy Was she fain; Mistress never would be, Nor master have; but her fee She vowed ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... not, but thy name— Thy name which thou lamentest—that shall be A song in all men's speech, a tongue of flame Between the burning lips of Poesy; And the nine daughters of Mnemos'y-ne, With Prince Apollo, leader of the nine, Shall make thee deathless in their minstrelsy! Yea, for thou shalt ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... with a disconcerted little cough and a shake of his chops, and a grim, rather red nod, and 'Good-morning, Mr. Dangerfield.' Puddock also saluted, still thrumming a low chord or two as he did so, for he was not ashamed, like his stout playmate, and saw nothing incongruous in their early minstrelsy. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... included "minstrels" in their definition of rogues and vagabonds, it is evident that the suitors of the Minstrelsy Court would have run the risk of commitment to the House of Correction and a whipping, if the acts had not specially excepted the franchise of the Dutton family from their operation. The earliest statutes are 14 Eliz. c. 5.; 39 Eliz. c. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... lordly deeds in the surf that night—men gambling their lives to save strangers and aliens. One deed there certainly was—though the movies, which are our modern minstrelsy, will never portray it. While he strained with longing to go down and show himself a man—not just a scullion in an unsuccessful tea-room—Father stood on the edge of the cliff and watched the life-savers launch the boat, saw them disappear from the radius of the calcium carbide beach-light ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... a citerne was heard in the street below her window,—nothing new in these piping times of love and minstrelsy; but so sensitive was the ear now become to exterior impressions, that she started, as though expecting a salutation from the midnight rambler. Her anticipations were in some measure realised, the minstrel pausing beneath her lattice. A wooden balcony projected from it, concealing ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... snakes are hissing death, Whose triple jaws black venom shed, And sickening breath. Ixion too and Tityos smooth'd Their rugged brows: the urn stood dry One hour, while Danaus' maids were sooth'd With minstrelsy. Let Lyde hear those maidens' guilt, Their famous doom, the ceaseless drain Of outpour'd water, ever spilt, And all the pain Reserved for sinners, e'en when dead: Those impious hands, (could crime do more?) Those impious hands had hearts to shed Their bridegrooms' gore! One only, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... the lakes and woods, which they had till then revered, the working of evil demons, yet this transitional conception was soon outgrown. By the year 1200, at the height of the Middle Ages, a genuine, hearty enjoyment of the external world was again in existence, and found lively expres- sion in the minstrelsy of different nations, which gives evidence of the sympathy felt with all the simple phenomena of nature —spring with its flowers, the green fields and the woods. But these pictures are all foreground without perspective. Even the crusaders, who travelled so far ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... pause between, (Unanswered lest thou boast) to let thee know, At first I thought that Liberty and Heaven To heavenly souls had been all one; but now I see that most through sloth had rather serve, Ministring Spirits, trained up in feast and song! Such hast thou armed, the minstrelsy of Heaven, Servility with freedom to contend, As both their deeds compared this day shall prove. To whom in brief thus Abdiel stern replied. Apostate! still thou errest, nor end wilt find Of erring, from the path of truth remote: Unjustly ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... produced a more patriotic and more extended minstrelsy than any other country in the world. Those Caledonian harp-strains, styled by Sir Walter Scott "gems of our own mountains," have frequently been gathered into caskets of national song, but have never been stored in any complete cabinet; while no attempt has been made, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... in a gingling rigmarole. The more anxious I seemed to go on our way, the more likely was she to loiter. I therefore showed no signs of impatience, and I saw her consult her watch in the course of her ugly minstrelsy, and slyly glance, as if expecting something, in the direction of ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... him in the neighbourhood the reputation, still possible in Scotland, of a local bard; and, though not printed himself, he was recognised by others who were and who had become famous. Walter Scott owed to Dandie the text of the "Raid of Wearie" in the MINSTRELSY; and made him welcome at his house, and appreciated his talents, such as they were, with all his usual generosity. The Ettrick Shepherd was his sworn crony; they would meet, drink to excess, roar out their lyrics in each other's faces, and quarrel and make it up again till bedtime. And besides ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a woman sacrifice herself for a man. In the older form of the tale Tannhaeuser lived goodness knows how long with Venus; then he forsook her, and she vowed to take vengeance on him. He returned to his friends, and entered for a competition in minstrelsy. While in the middle of his song, which would have gained him the prize, Venus visited him with sudden madness, and throwing away all cant about pure platonic love, he chanted the praise of foul carnal lust and the joy of living with the ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... form of high festivity was maintained during the twelve days of Christmas, closing on Twelfth Night. On Christmas Day (which in 1561 was a Thursday), at the first course of the dinner, the boar's head was brought in upon a platter, followed by minstrelsy. On St. Stephen's Day, December the 26th, the Constable Marshal entered the hall in gilt armour, with a nest of feathers of all colours on his helm, and a gilt pole-axe in his hand; with him sixteen trumpeters, four drums and fifes, and four ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... sympathy with Sordello himself. Who were the "Pisan pair"? Lanzi's pages were turned up to discover. And Greek scholars recognized the "Loxian." But any reader might be pardoned for not at once divining that the double rillet of minstrelsy, on page 37, was the Troubadour and the Trouvere, nor for refusing to read pages 155 and 156 without a tolerable outfit of information upon the historical points and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... Edwin was no vulgar boy; Deep thought oft seemed to fix his infant eye. Dainties he heeded not, nor gaude, nor toy, Save one short pipe of rudest minstrelsy. Silent when glad; affectionate, though shy; And now his look was most demurely sad, And now he laughed aloud, yet none knew why. The neighbours stared and sighed, yet blessed the lad: Some deemed him wondrous wise, and some believed ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... and prophets, and deep idyls of the Nazarene, The Iliad, Odyssey, plots, doings, wanderings of Eneas, Hesiod, Eschylus, Sophocles, Merlin, Arthur, The Cid, Roland at Roncesvalles, the Nibelungen, The troubadours, minstrels, minnesingers, skalds, Chaucer, Dante, flocks of singing birds, The Border Minstrelsy, the bye-gone ballads, feudal tales, essays, plays, Shakespere, Schiller, Walter Scott, Tennyson, As some vast wondrous weird dream-presences, The great shadowy groups gathering around, Darting their ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... it was, had in it that warlike character which at any other time would have roused Halbert's spirit; but at present the charm of minstrelsy had no effect upon him. He made it his request to Christie to suffer him to retire to rest, a request with which that worthy person, seeing no chance of making a favourable impression on his intended proselyte in his present humour, was at length pleased to comply. But no ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... South almost daily. Some of these songsters, like the fox-sparrow, sojourned a few weeks, favoring all listeners with their sweet and simple melodies; but the chief musician of the American forests, the hermit thrush, passed silently, and would not deign to utter a note of his unrivalled minstrelsy until he had reached his remote haunts at the North. Dr. Marvin evidently had a grudge against this shy, distant bird, and often complained, "Why can't he give us a song or two as he lingers here in his journey? I often see him flitting about in the mountains, and have ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... drinking deep, Are glad at heart straightway To feel once more the friendly heat of the sun Creative in you (as when in youth it shone), And pulsing brainward with the rhythmic wealth Of all the summer whose high minstrelsy Shall soon crown field and tree, To call back age to youth again, and pain to perfect health. ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... called them, into the wild and inaccessible district of Liddesdale, picking up the ancient "riding ballads" preserved among the descendants of the moss-troopers. To these rambles he owed much of the materials of his "Minstrelsy of the Border," and here he came to know Willie Elliot, the original of Dandie Dinmont. Another expedition, into Galloway, carried him into the scenery of Guy Mannering. Stirlingshire, Perthshire and Forfarshire became familiar ground to him, and the scenery of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... rejoicings continued all that day, with dancing-women and singing-women, and all the instruments of mirth and minstrelsy were smitten, whilst the queen and the Vizier and his son were exceeding assiduous in keeping up the festivities, so the Lady Bedrulbudour should rejoice and her chagrin be dispelled; nay, they left nought that day of that which exciteth unto liesse but they did it before her, so she should leave ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... of his Overlord, His weaving spirit, still in cloudless youth With minstrelsy made perfect, throws a cord That rings the continents in its magic reach To gather all who share his English speech In one firm warrior ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... of their mutiny: This child of fancy, that Armado hight, For interim to our studies shall relate, In high-born words, the worth of many a knight From tawny Spain lost in the world's debate. How you delight, my lords, I know not, I; But, I protest, I love to hear him lie, And I will use him for my minstrelsy. ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... melted at Tristram's minstrelsy, and he said: "That is wonderful harping. Now ask what thou wilt of me, and it shall be thine, whatever it ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... the band playing as an orchestra. In style it was the minstrel first part with which we are all familiar. There was this difference: The jokes hit off exclusively local affairs and conditions. The officers who served as instructors at West Point did not by any means escape in the running fire of minstrelsy nonsense. ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock |
