"Old Irish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you ever saw. Talked about it as if he had re-discovered the Elixir of Life. Even if he didn't say anything in actually so many words, there was the way he went about. That of itself was enough to have started the whole thing, to say nothing of that loony old Irish housekeeper of his, with her head stuffed full of elves and banshees and ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... claim a royal descent for the saint. This is an instance of a widespread policy, of which many traces are to be found in the old Irish Genealogies. The whole country was divided into territories of different clans, under which were subordinate and tributary septs. The latter bore the chief burden of taxation; and they were for the greater part composed of descendants of the aboriginal pre-Celtic ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... learn a nearer language, and rode over to Tillyra before breakfast one morning to ask our neighbour Edward Martyn to help him to a teacher. He came back without what he had sought, but with the gift of a fine old Irish Bible, which became a help in our early lessons. For we set to work together, and I found the task a light one in comparison with those first attempts. For that young priest, Father Eugene O'Growney, sent from Ireland to look for health ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... surprising that in this summer my father had at last borne witness that he wished to become a Christian altogether, and so it had come to pass that he and Owen and I used to ride to Bosham, the little seacoast village beyond Chichester town, to speak with Dicul, the good old Irish priest, who yet bided there rather than in the new monastery which Wilfrith built at Selsea, until we were taught all that was needful, and the time came when we should ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... waters in the seas, or clouds in the skies, when the world is old, and the sun burned out, and time grows weary, I shall love you still, always and forever. What is it all about, love?" He clasped her close, and did not answer at once. "Don't you know that old Irish troth," he said, "which would have been enough, even in that hard, unromantic world of ours, to have made you legally my wife, if said over any Scottish stream? I thought you knew; you are sure I would not trick you? You know I could not?" He put her head back on his shoulder and looked into ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... Lady Tallant in splendid panoply, most stately and gracious. A long account followed of the bride's family connections, in which the biographer touched upon the accident of sex that had deprived her of the hereditary honours; the ancient descent of the Gavericks, with a picture of the old Irish castle where Lady Bridget had been brought up—and so forth, and so forth. Mrs Gildea sighed as she read, and pictured in her imagination the wild wastes of the Never-Never Land and the rough head-station which was ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the character of James the First to contempt among general readers; while the narrative of historians, who have related facts in spite of themselves, is in perpetual contradiction with their own opinions. Perhaps no sovereign has suffered more by that art, which is described by an old Irish proverb, of "killing a man by lies." The surmises and the insinuations of one party, dissatisfied with the established government in church and state; the misconceptions of more modern writers, who have not possessed the requisite knowledge; and the anonymous libels, sent forth at a particular ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... upon every effort of the divine nature, bowing itself down in pity to our shadowy sphere, an understanding where the nature of the love is gauged through the extent of the sacrifice and the pain which is overcome. I recall the instance of an old Irish peasant, who, as he lay in hospital wakeful from a grinding pain in the leg, forgot himself in making drawings, rude, yet reverently done, of incidents in the life of the Galilean Teacher. One of these which ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... gratitude you bear me?' 'Yes,' said I; 'and for Dungarvon times of old.' 'Well, Shorsha,' said he, 'you are a broth of a boy, and I'll take your benefaction—five pounds! Och, Jasus!' He then put the money in his pocket, and springing up, waved his hat three times, uttering some old Irish cry; then, sitting down, he took my hand and said, 'Sure, Shorsha, I'll be going thither; and when I get there, it is turning over another leaf I will be; I have learnt a thing or two abroad; I will become a priest; that's the trade, Shorsha! and ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... development of decorative symbolic art, known as Celtic, of which we have examples on old Irish crosses, and particularly on illuminated MSS. was wrought by the Christian monks of the 7th and 8th centuries, but what is generally understood as Christian symbolic art had its finest development about the 13th ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... the last of the old harpers, blind, and with a genuine old Irish harp, and after hearing his national melodies for half an hour, taking a cup of coffee, and enjoying a little more of Lady Byron's conversation, we departed, having had a day heaped up with the richest and best enjoyments. ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... name from it. This view is strengthened by a consideration of the word janua itself. The regular word for door is the same in all the languages of the Aryan family from India to Ireland. It is dur in Sanscrit, thura in Greek, tr in German, door in English, dorus in old Irish, and foris in Latin. Yet besides this ordinary name for door, which the Latins shared with all their Aryan brethren, they had also the name janua, to which there is no corresponding term in any Indo-European speech. The word has the appearance of being ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... another land without memory of the ancient harp of Ireland. But it is as a memory-deep, wonderful, and abiding, yet a memory. I sometimes think I have forgotten, and then I hear coming through this Virginia the notes of some old Irish melody, the song of some wayfarer of Mayo or Connemara, and I know then that Ireland is persuasive and perpetual; but only as a memory, because it speaks in every pulse and beats in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... their coronation-chair—playing still its own archaic part in this gorgeous state drama. But is this Scone or Westminster coronation-stone really and truly—as it is reputed to be by some Scottish historians—the famous Lia Fail of the kings of Ireland, that various old Irish writings describe as formerly standing on the Hill of Tara, near the Mound of the Hostages? Or does not the Lia Fail—"the stone that roared under the feet of each king that took possession of the throne of Ireland"—remain still on Tara—(though latterly degraded ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... nobody entered the shop. Billy left in a little while for Boston. Granny, crooning an old Irish song, busied herself upstairs in her bedroom. Maida sat back in her chair, dreaming happily of her work. Suddenly the bell tinkled, rousing ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... their grand Templemore; I had never so many in my whole life before. One has just left me, a gentleman who lives at a distance across the bog; he comes to talk with me about Greek, and the Odyssey, for he is a very learned man, and understands the old Irish and various other strange languages. He has had a dispute with Bagg. On hearing his name, he called him to him, and, after looking at him for some time with great curiosity, said that he was sure he was a Dane. Bagg, however, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... 1688. Four children of a pious family were affected in a peculiar manner, imitating the cries of cats and dogs, and complaining of pains all over their bodies. These were the regulation symptoms of witch-possession, which presumably they had often heard discussed. An old Irish serving-woman, indentured to the family, who already bore the name of a witch, was charged with having bewitched them, and executed, the four ministers of Boston having first held at the house a day ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the Iliad and Odyssey between the wonders of mythology and the spirit of the drama. In this, as in other things, the Homeric poems observe the mean: the extremes may be found in the heroic literature of other nations; the extreme of marvellous fable in the old Irish heroic legends, for example; the extreme of plainness and "soothfastness" in the old English lay of Maldon. In some medieval compositions, as in Huon of Bordeaux, the two extremes are brought together clumsily and without harmony. In ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... were very simple. His father was a British officer quartered at Montreal, of a good old Irish family. From his account he was an ungovernable boy, imperfectly educated, and tyrannizing over a loving but weak mother. When seventeen years old he saw a young girl at church whose appearance he described as being of angelic beauty, and fell in love with her with all ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... of the mountain" appears to have been the old Irish analogue of the various kinds of rights of common in England, which have for the most part been lost to the poorer folk, not always without a struggle with the neighbouring landlord or lord of the manor. I hear from almost every place a ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... compositions dating much farther back than the introduction of our holy religion into Ireland, which the Christian annalists had in their hands when they wrote their books, sometimes in Latin, sometimes in old Irish, sometimes in a strange medley of both languages. It is now known that St. Patrick brought to Ireland the Roman alphabet only, and that it was thenceforth used not merely for the ritual of the Church, and the dissemination of the Bible and of the works of the Holy Fathers, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... addition to the family. The next two hours were spent by the Borelands in extracting quills from the repentant Kobuk. For the first time in his life, perhaps, the pain-racked animal was soothed and cheered during the hated operation by quaint old Irish terms ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... first." As he looked around the room and outside the door to detect the advent of an intruder Peg sat at the piano and played very softly the prelude to an old Irish song. ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... with deep regret, and of course I must feel this particularly for the last of my old Irish brigade with which I ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... with the four elementary rules of arithmetic; and it was a great advance to grapple with the grammar of the language. As population and prosperity increased, their almost illiterate teachers gave place to a better class; and many of my Georgia readers will remember as among these the old Irish preachers, Cummings, and that remarkable brute, Daniel Duffee. He was an Irishman of the Pat Freney stripe, and I fancy there are many, with gray heads and wrinkled fronts, who can look upon the cicatrices resulting from his merciless blows, and remember that Milesian malignity of face, with ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... noted. Mr. Walter MacMurrough Kavanagh, Chairman of the Carlow County Council, was by tradition and training a strong Unionist, by inheritance the representative of one of the old Irish princely families. He had been elected to the Vice-Chairmanship of his County Council while still a Unionist; later, he adhered to Lord Dunraven's proposals of devolution, but finding no rest in a half-way house, came into full support of Redmond and for some time was a member of our party; by ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... All through the day happiness flooded her heart. While she waited on Holt or helped Mrs. Olson cook or watched Swiftwater while he put up the tent in the lee of the cabin, little snatches of song bubbled from her lips. Sometimes they were bits of old Irish ballads that popped into her mind. Once, while she was preparing some coffee for her patient, it was a stanza ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... ancient literature of Ireland has not indeed been altogether neglected. It has been used to furnish themes on which modern poems can be written; ancient authority has been found in it for what is essentially modern thought: modern English and Irish poets have claimed the old Irish romances as inspirers, but the romances themselves have been left to ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... An old Irish apple-woman used to come into the barracks, and sit by the side of the parade ground with two baskets of apples and ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... all belonging to the parent order of the Scrophulariaceae; but the old Irish remedy is the great mullein, or Verbascum thapsus, a faithful delineation of which will be found in Plate 1, 437, vol. vi., of Sowerby. It is a hardy biennial, with a thick stalk, from eighteen inches to four feet high, and with very peculiar large ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... seemed to drop out of its place, to go "crossways," as her old Irish nurse used to say ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... India make cromlechs of large, flat unhewn stones, some six to seven feet high, and the Angami-Nagas of the extreme north of British India set up extensive alignments of menhirs, similar to those of France. Inscriptions in the old Irish cipher writing, known as ogham, prove that megalithic monuments were erected in Ireland after the time of St. Patrick; and, as we have already remarked, some of the Breton menhirs are surrounded by crosses. In India, too, we find the symbol of the Christian ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... were taken from the Gaelic, and are charming examples of the naive beauty of the old Irish, and of Dr. Hyde's accurate and sympathetic modern rendering. From "Beside the ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... Cynthia went up to the hotel and oversaw the preparation of Jeff's meals and kept taut the slack housekeeping of the old Irish woman who had remained as a favor, after the hotel closed, and professed to have lost the chance of a place for the winter by her complaisance. She submitted to Cynthia's authority, and tried to make interest for an indefinite stay by sudden zeal and industry, and the last ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Pipino's Latin, Preface to; Grynaeus' Latin; Muellers' reprint. (4) Ramusio's Italian edition, its peculiarities; probable truth about it; bases of it. MS. and some of its peculiarities; general view of the relations of the texts; notice of an old Irish version; geographical data; how far influenced in form by Rustician; perhaps in description of battles; diffusion and number of MSS.; basis of present version; specimens of different recensions of text; distribution of MSS.; miniatures in; list of MSS.; Tabular view of the filiation of chief ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... father's harp and crown. These he presented to the Pope, hoping to induce him to grant his forgiveness for a murder he had committed. Whether he won forgiveness we do not know; but it is certain that a very old Irish harp remained at the Vatican until the reign of our Henry VIII., when the Pope sent it to England. Finally, after passing through various hands, it attained its rest in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. The instrument is about three feet high, and broad and strongly made, which no doubt ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... was Fergus O'Conor and he always said he was descended from the real old Irish Kings, and he was some kind of a Fenian. I mean he used to go on something terrible against the English, and say he would never rest till they were drove out of Ireland. When he got well again he was that handsome—well I've never seen any one like him, unless it's you. I expect when you ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... old Irish gentlewoman! Is there anybody in the world in the least like you? Of course you were right when you announced that I never would think of the really practical things we should require for our work over here. But, although I spent as much money as I could possibly ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... And it's likely enough your grandmother sang 'Robin Adair' to it, and your great-grandmother too, rest her soul! But it would take an uncommonly great-grandmother of mine to have sung it when it was new, for it's one of the oldest of old Irish airs." ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... thoughts with beautiful Gertrude Chattesworth, and so were wonderfully bright and fragrant. And there were two swans upon the water, and several peacocks marching dandily in the court-yard; and a grand old Irish dog, with a great collar, and a Celtic inscription, dreaming on the steps in ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... can wantonly pamper appetites of every kind, and indulge with the affluence of so many monarchs, the poor, alas! who make at least ninety-nine of every hundred among them, are under the necessity of going clad after the fashion of the old Irish, whose manners and customs they retain to this day, and of feeding on potatoes, the most generally embraced advantage of the inhabitants, which the great Sir Walter Raleigh left behind him."[30] This writer's remarks apply chiefly to Cork, Waterford, ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... change, a change having more meaning and implications than a few sentences can define. When I was first moved by Lord Dunsany's work I thought that he would more help this change if he could bring his imagination into the old Irish legendary world instead of those magic lands of his with their vague Eastern air; but even as I urged him I knew that he could not, without losing his rich beauty of careless suggestion, and the persons and ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... An old Irish poem on the Hill of Alenn recording the disappearance of the Pagan World of Ireland and the triumph of Christianity by the establishment at Kildare of the convent ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... at all. A few wore seedy overcoats, but the greater part had none, they stood with their hands in their ragged pockets, shivering and stamping. Most of them were undersized, some tough, some rather sickly. A dull-eyed, wretched, sodden lot. I got the liquor on their breaths. A fat old Irish stoker came drifting half-drunk up the pier with ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... upon the abuse itself. Franks were given away freely to other persons for their use, they were even sold, and, moreover, they were forged. Senex, in his notes on Glasgow Past and Present, describes how this was managed in Ireland. "I remember," says he, "about sixty years ago, an old Irish lady told me that she seldom paid any postage for letters, and that her correspondence never cost her friends anything. I inquired how she managed that. 'Oh,' said she, 'I just wrote "Free, J. Suttie," in the corner of the cover of the letter, and then, ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... fault in King Corny's eyes: so that the only point in Connal's character and conduct, for which he deserved esteem, was that for which his intended father-in-law despised him. Connal had early been taught by his father's example, who was an idle, decayed, good gentleman, of the old Irish stock, that genealogies and old maps of estates in other people's possessions, do not gain quite so much respect in this world as solid wealth. The son was determined, therefore, to get money; but in ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... edifice has been impaired by the proximity of the new Roman Catholic church of St. Philip Neri, which the present Duke has been building these many years. Within, it is finished, a very charming and delicate feat in stone; but the spire has yet to come. The old Irish soldier, humorous and bemedalled, who keeps watch and ward over the fane, is not the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... might not have been so clear as they are, but for a fortunate accident which happened to me when I was a very little boy. A good-hearted old Irish nurse (whom I shall not forget in my will) took me up one day by the heels, when I was making more noise than was necessary, and swinging me round two or knocked my head into a cocked hat against the bedpost. This, I say, decided my ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe |
