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Provencal

noun
1.
The medieval dialects of Langue d'oc (southern France).  Synonym: Occitan.






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"Provencal" Quotes from Famous Books



... a draught of vintage, that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country-green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... adopted to represent the hard stop. After the Norman conquest many English words were re-spelt under Norman influence. Thus Norman-French spelt its palatalized c-sound (tsh) with ch as in cher and the English palatalized cild, &c. became child, &c. In Provencal from the 10th century, and in the northern dialects of France from the 13th century, this palatalized c (in different districts ts and tsh) became a simple s. English also adopted the value of s for c in the 13th century ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... concerned, but who also are of the same spirit as the authors they translate. Some examples come readily to mind: Pope's Horace, Dryden's Juvenal and Persius, Smollett's LeSage, Lang's Aucassin and Nicolette, and Pound's translations from Provencal. Such a felicitous combination appears in Henry Fielding's translation of Book I ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding

... vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... where lived exiles even more illustrious than himself. There were the Popes driven out of Rome by a people who, in their mediaeval nightmare, tried to restore at the bidding of Rienzi the ancient republic of the Consuls. Don Gil was not a man to live long in the pleasant little Provencal court; like a good archbishop of Toledo, he wore the coat-of-mail underneath his tunic, and as there were no Moors to fight he wished to strike at heretics instead. He went to Italy as the champion of the Church; all the adventurers of Europe and the bandits ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... 100%, rapidly declining regional dialects and languages (Provencal, Breton, Alsatian, ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Southern Provencal blood: alas, collisions, as was once said, must occur in a career of Freedom; different directions will produce such; nay different velocities in the same direction will! To much that went on there History, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... the ballade in its most elaborate and highly-finished form, which it cannot be said to have reached until the 14th century. It arose from the canzone de ballo of the Italians, but it is in Provencal literature that the ballade first takes a modern form. It was in France, however, and not until the reign of Charles V., that the ballade as we understand it began to flourish; instantly it became popular, and in a few years the out-put of these poems was incalculable. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... the senses partly by its aesthetic beauty, a thing so profoundly felt by the Latin hymn-writers, who for one moral or spiritual sentiment have a hundred sensuous images. And so in those imaginative loves, in their highest expression, the Provencal poetry, it is a rival religion with a [216] new rival cultus that we see. Coloured through and through with Christian sentiment, they are rebels against it. The rejection of one worship for another is never lost sight of. The jealousy of that other lover, for whom these words ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... [88] Provencal, the language of southern France, from the southern French oc instead of the northern oil ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... Tallemant, "as one might speak of the overthrow of the Greek empire." Her father belonged to an old and noble house of Provence, but removed to Normandy, where he married and died, leaving two children with a heritage of talent and poverty. A trace of the Provencal spirit always clung to Madeleine, who was born in 1607, and lived until the first year of the following century. After losing her mother, who is said to have been a woman of some distinction, she was carefully educated by an uncle in all the accomplishments of the age, as ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... language, and acquaintance with the ordinary French literature; I took lessons in various bodily exercises, in none of which, however, I made any proficiency; and at Montpellier I attended the excellent winter courses of lectures at the Faculte des Sciences, those of M. Anglada on chemistry, of M. Provencal on zoology, and of a very accomplished representative of the eighteenth century metaphysics, M. Gergonne, on logic, under the name of Philosophy of the Sciences. I also went through a course of the higher mathematics under the private tuition of M. Lentheric, ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... of a drain. Jansoulet might well have believed that he was in one of the frightful dens along the water front in Marseille, listening to a quarrel between a prostitute and a nervi, or looking on at some open-air fracas between Genoese, Maltese and Provencal women gleaning on the quay around bags of grain in process of unloading, and reviling each other at full speed in eddies of golden dust. She was the typical seaport Levantine, the spoiled, neglected child, who from her terrace, or from her gondola, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... with two rings or staples:—at the southern end there is the Roman, or Latin; at the northern end the Keltic, Teutonic, or Gothic; and the links beginning with the southern end, are the Romance, including the Provencal, the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, with their different dialects, then the Norman-French, and lastly ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... designs of Charles VIII for conquest were no longer for anybody a matter of doubt. The young king had sent an embassy to the various Italian States, composed of Perrone dei Baschi, Brigonnet, d'Aubigny, and the president of the Provencal Parliament. The mission of this embassy was to demand from the Italian princes their co-operation in recovering the rights of the crown of Naples for ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... and at this juncture Miss Spencer's cousin, the fortunate possessor of her sacred savings and of the hand of the Provencal countess, emerged from the little dining-room. He stood on the threshold for an instant, removing the stone from a plump apricot which he had brought away from the table; then he put the apricot into his mouth, and while he let it sojourn there, gratefully, ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James

... translate them, "Because I see it in that true mirror who in Himself affords a likeness to [or of] all other things, while nothing gives back to Him a likeness of Himself." Here pareglio corresponds with the Provencal parelh and the later French pareil,—and the Provencal phrase rendre le parelha affords an example of similar application to that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... the other, "with voices even more pointed than their caps! Before founding a mass for Monsieur Saint John, the king should have inquired whether Monsieur Saint John likes Latin droned out in a Provencal accent." ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... good Provencal stock at Aix, in the year 1715. He had scarcely any of that kind of education which is usually performed in school-classes, and he was never able to read either Latin or Greek. Such slight knowledge as he ever got of the famous writers among the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley

... singer's great voice broke out in the small room with a volume of sound so tremendous that it seemed as if it would rend the walls and the ceiling. It was an ancient Provencal song that she sang, in long-drawn cadences with strange falls and wild intervals, the natural music of an ancient, gifted people. It was very short, for she only sang one stanza of it, and in less than a ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... civilization. Chanson and carole, dance-songs, troubadour lyrics, the ballade, rondel and Noel, amorous songs of French courtiers, pious hymns of French monks, began to sing themselves in England. The new grace and delicacy is upon every page of Chaucer. What was first Provencal and then French, became English when Chaucer touched it. From the shadow and grimness and elegiac pathos of Old English poetry we come suddenly into the light and color and gayety of Southern France. [Footnote: ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... list of sixteen volumes include three on Roman history and philology made up for the most part of monographs by various members of the Faculty, or graduates of the University, two edited by Professor Henry A. Sanders, and one by Professor C.L. Meader. Another volume deals with "Word Formation in Provencal" and is by Professor Edward L. Adams. Somewhat different in scope are two volumes on Greek vases, or "Lekythoi," by Arthur Fairbanks, at one time Professor of Greek in the University, and now Director of the Boston ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... Boddaert. French, "Pitchou Provencal," "Bee-fin Pittechou."—The Dartford Warbler is by no means common in the Channel Islands—indeed I have never seen one there myself, but Miss C.B. Carey records one in the 'Zoologist' for 1874 as having been knocked down with a stone in the April of that year and ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith

... the letter to La Fiammetta, prefixed to this poem, vulgar latino is evidently Italian ("Trovata una antichissima storia ... in latino volgare ... ho ridotta"), and not the Provencal tongue, as Mr. Craik suggests in his Literature and Learning in England, vol. ii. p. 48., where he supposes Boccaccio to have translated from, and not, as is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various

... that changes Etruscan murmur into Terza rima—Horatian Latin into Provencal troubadour's melody; not, because ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... signor, and of noble state, and virtuous; and in his time they did honourable things; and to his court came by custom all the gentlemen of Provence, and France, and Catalonia, for his courtesy and noble state; and there they made many cobbled verses, and Provencal songs ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... of Mecca. By the Danish traveller, this ancient idiom is compared to the Latin; the vulgar tongue of Hejaz and Yemen to the Italian; and the Arabian dialects of Syria, Egypt, Africa, &c., to the Provencal, Spanish, and Portuguese, (Niebuhr, Description ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... a figurative sense does not affect the transcendent power of his influence. His entire life and work illustrate the beauty of holiness. "Art in its widest sense gained a marvellous impulse from his work and effort," says Canon Knox Little. The French and Provencal literature and the schools of Byzantine art preceded the life of Francis; but his influence imparted a powerful wave of sympathetic and vital insight and awakened a world of new sensibilities of feeling. Indeed, it is a proverb of Italy, "Without Francis, no Dante." Certainly the ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... framework on which the majority are composed. A few, on the other hand, depart from the type and depict purely rustic scenes. Others—and the fact is at least significant—serve to convey allusions, political, personal or didactic: a variety found as early as the twelfth century in Provencal, and about the fourteenth in northern French. Wandering scholars adopted the form from the knightly singers and produced a plentiful crop of Latin pastoralia, usually of a somewhat burlesque nature. An idea of the general style of these may be gathered from such lines as ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... historic background upon which he moves. Of the story of Paracelsus Browning merely reinterpreted the recorded facts; whereas he brushes aside the greater part of the Sordello story, as told confusedly and inconsistently by Italian and Provencal tradition. The whole later career of the Mantuan poet as an accomplished and not unsuccessful man of the world, as the friend of Raymond of Toulouse and Charles of Anjou, rewarded with ample estates by the latter for substantial services,—is either ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... too astonished to defend himself. His nerveless fingers are no longer on the rope; he stands like a stalled ox in front of his homicidal assailant. With the rapidity of lightning Pierre plunges his long Provencal dirk in the executioner's side. The butchered butcher falls with a single bawling outcry and a groan. The crowd is thunderstruck, and the pinioned de Vaudrey is wild with joy. Though bound and helpless, he tries to leap up ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... Wanley, and he notifies in his diary the arrival of books in Chinese, Armenian, Samaritan, Hebrew, Chaldee, Aethiopic and Arabic (both in Asiatic and African letters), in Persian, Turkish, Russian, Greek (ancient and modern), Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Provencal, High German, Low German, Flemish, Anglo-Saxon, English, Welsh, and Irish, in ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... name and its more modern form of Almond came to us through the French amande (Provencal, amondala), from the Greek and Latin amygdalus. What this word meant is not very clear, but the native Hebrew name of the plant (shaked) is most expressive. The word signifies "awakening," and so is a most fitting name for a tree whose beautiful flowers, appearing in Palestine ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... Provencal student declared that history was a thoroughly despicable exercise of rhetoric. According to him, the only true history was the natural history of man. Michelet was in the right path when he came in contact ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... technique he is one of those who have gone back, as men for four centuries have constantly gone back, to the manner of the ancient Greeks. Just as that clever experimenter in verse, Mr. Ezra Pound, has created something of an effect by repeating the very metres, melodies, and mannerisms of the Provencal troubadours, so Mr. Hewlett, modelling his style upon the far finer Greek originals, produced an effect which was better than Mr. Pound's in proportion as the Greek tragedians are superior to the troubadours. In his execution he has really recaptured much of the manner of the ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... to say that no guardian of animals is excluded. Goat-herds in the Greek ran the shepherd hard; neat-herds and swine-herds abound everywhere except, as concerns the last, in Jewry; even the goose-girl figures, and has in Provencal at ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... survived long enough to become the vehicle of lyric strains, mostly on subjects of love and gallantry, still familiar in mention, and famous as the songs of the troubadours. The flourishing time of the troubadours was in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Provencal is an alternative name of ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... Papa!" said Adele, darting toward him, and snatching it from his hand, with a fire in her eye he had never seen there before,—a welling-up for a moment of the hot Provencal blood in her veins; "de grace! je vous en prie!" (in ecstatic moments her tongue ran to her own land and took up the echo of her first speech,)—then growing calm, as she held it, and looked into the pitying, wondering eyes of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... examination of the condition of affairs, he resolved to devote his life and all his efforts to the restoration of the glory of his name. He married, two years after the death of his father, the daughter of an impoverished Provencal nobleman, a lady whose domestic virtues seemed likely to aid him in the execution of his plans. He brought his wife home the day after their marriage ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... Saracens at that time were among the great merchants of the world; Marseilles, Arles, Avignon, Montpellier, Toulouse, were the wonted stapes of their active traders. What civilisers, what teachers they were—those same Saracens! How much in arms and in arts we owe them! Fathers of the Provencal poetry they, far more than even the Scandinavian scalds, have influenced the literature of Christian Europe. The most ancient chronicle of the Cid was written in Arabic, a little before the Cid's death, by two of his pages, who were Mnssulmans. The medical ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... so sure that we had. The Provencal women, the women of a part of South Germany, and certain favoured spots of Italy, might challenge us, he thought. This was a point I could argue on, or, I should rather say, take up the cudgels, for I deemed such opinions treason to one's country and an outrage to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Bretons speak of the Duchess Anne as the Scotch Jacobites still speak of the Stuarts. But though Coeur de Lion is still a popular hero in the land of Bertrand de Born, there is nothing there like the Provencal feeling in Provence. At St. Remy, the beautiful birthplace of Nostradamus, a lively waiter in the excellent hotel of the 'Cheval Blanc,' taking me for a Frenchman of the north, contrived very skilfully to let me know that the Provencals do not hold themselves responsible for the failure of Northern ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... Florence is the most modern. Genoa and Pisa had been rivals in commercial activity a hundred years before the merchants of Florence were known out of Tuscany. Sicily had caught the gift of song from the Provencal troubadours half a century before the Florentine singers. Too insignificant to share in the great struggle of the Empire and the Papacy, among the last to be divided into Guelph and Ghibelline, Florence emerged into communal greatness when that ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... sunshine, Stirs the brown soil in an acre of violets— Large odorous violets—and answers slowly A child's swift babble; or else at noon The labourers come. They rest in the shadow, Eating their dinner of herbs, and are merry. Soft speech Provencal under the olives! Like a queen's raiment from days long perished, Breathing aromas of old unremembered Perfumes, and shining in dust-covered palaces With sudden hints of forgotten splendour— So on the lips of the peasant his ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... de la Roche-Hugon was a young Provencal patronized by Napoleon; his fate might probably be some splendid embassy. He had won the Emperor by his Italian suppleness and a genius for intrigue, a drawing-room eloquence, and a knowledge of manners, which are so good a substitute for the higher qualities of a sterling man. Through young ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac

... PHENOMENON.—M. de Quatrefages, the naturalist, has examined a real phenomenon, a Provencal of thirty, named Simeon Aiguier, who had been presented by Dr. Trenes. Aiguier, thanks to his peculiar system of muscles and nerves, can transform himself in most wondrous fashion. He has very properly dubbed ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various

... tongue; tho' many of his phrases are become obsolete, as in process of time it must needs happen. Chaucer (as you have formerly been told by our learn'd Mr. Rymer) first adorn'd and amplified our barren tongue from the Provencal,[3] which was then the most polish'd of all the modern languages; but this subject has been copiously treated by that great critic, who deserves no little commendation from us his countrymen. For these reasons of time, and resemblance of genius in Chaucer and Boccace, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... language shows us a two-fold tendency,—one of divergence from some common stem, followed by one of concentration, of unity, in the literature. Thus, in France, the Langue d'Oil superseded the richer and more melodious Provencal; in Spain the Castilian predominated; while for several centuries it has been the steady tendency of the High-German to become the language of letters and of the upper classes among the various ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... merry band that started long ago Upon their journey to a-Becket's shrine, Were happy that a poet's pen divine Inspired by all a genial wit can know, Or sympathetic human heart bestow, Recorded in immortal rhythmic line, As sweet as breath of old Provencal wine, Their pilgrim tales and songs of ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe

... old Latin speech in Gaul with that of the Teutonic invaders gave rise there to two very distinct dialects. These were the Langue d'Oc, or Provencal, the tongue of the South of France and of the adjoining regions of Spain and Italy; and the Langue d'Oil, or French proper, the language of the North. [Footnote: The terms Langue d'Oc and Langue d'Oil ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... some public building. If, as is likely, the town owned the soil of the town, the connexion of the inscription with the Forum becomes even clearer. In any case, the town was plainly laid out in a rectangular street-plan. To-day its lanes are as tortuous as those of any other Provencal town.[94] A strange chance reveals what it and many other of these towns ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield

... circumstances of his boyhood, of his youthful adventures,—these things are interesting in themselves and they are not without instruction. They reveal to us the reasons for the transformation that goes so far to explain Daudet's peculiar position,—the transformation of a young Provencal poet into a brilliant Parisian veritist. Daudet was a Provencal who became a Parisian,—and in this translation we may find the key to his character ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... of the Middle Ages is intimately associated with the literature of the Troubadours in the south of France. To express the case more definitely, the literature styled "Provencal," apart from mere differences of dialect, extended from the Limousine to the Roman campagna, and French literature existed only in the northern and central provinces of France, the rest being Provencal-Italian literature. The Italian ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet

... still favorites on concert programmes, and it has been given in English under the name of "Irene." Gounod's love of romantic themes, and the interest in France which Lamartine's glowing eulogies had excited about "Mireio," the beautiful national poem of the Provencal, M. Frederic Mistral, led the former to compose an opera on a libretto from this work, which was given at the Theatre Lyrique, March 19, 1864, under the name of "Mireille." The music, however, was rather descriptive and lyric than dramatic, as befitted this lovely ideal ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... manner of Petrarch, and whose successors in the sixteenth century include some of the most brilliant and inspired lyrists of Spain, was born in 1493 at Barcelona, a city which had witnessed the recent triumphs of the Provencal Troubadours. Boscan, however, from the beginning of his career, preferred to write in Castilian rather than in the Limosin dialect. Of patrician descent, and possessed of ample means, he entered the army like the majority of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... fearful of the new teaching and half influenced by the pressure of the older and more conservative of the English bishops. There was much of the foreign movement, however, which found no place in England. Difference of tongue shut out Norman and Englishman from the influence of the new Provencal poetry, and for a century to come England owed nothing to the finished art of the South. The strip of sea which kept aloof all European tumults shut out also the speculations in politics and government which were making their way abroad. Even the religious movement which overran one half of ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green

... watched her with an unceasing jealousy. Much had happened since those days. Madame de Camours' watchings had not been in vain, a decree had been obtained from the Pope annulling the marriage. Much had happened. But even after twenty years the memory of that formal life in the Provencal chateau was vivid enough; and Mrs. Thesiger yawned. Then she laughed. Monsieur de Camours and his mother had always been able to make ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason

... book is the Provencal town of Plassans, and the tragic events attending the rising of the populace against the Coup d'Etat are told with accuracy and knowledge. There is a charming love idyll between Silvere Mouret, a son of Ursule Macquart, and a young girl named Miette, both of whom fall as victims in the rising ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... and life-work of the leader of the modern Provencal renaissance was submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Columbia University. My interest in Mistral was first awakened by an article from the pen of the great Romance philologist, Gaston Paris, which appeared in ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... remain grossly ignorant of the simplest elements of the history of language. In those days Latin was held by scholars to be derived from Greek—where the Greek came from nobody knew or cared, though it was thought, from Hebrew. German was a jargon, Provencal a 'patois,' and Sanscrit an obsolete tongue, held in reverence by Hindoo savages. The vast connections of language with history were generally ignored. Hebrew was assumed, as a matter of course, to have been the primeval language, and it was wicked ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... insipid and immoral songs of the Provencal bards gave place to the immortal productions of the great creators of the European languages. Dante led the way in Italy, and gave to the world the "Divine Comedy"—a masterpiece of human genius, which raised him to the rank of Homer and Virgil. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... intelligence in France, the creation during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries of the unrivaled productions of Gothic art, stimulated and quickened the growth of the native art of Italy. But the French forms were seldom adopted for direct imitation, as the forms of Provencal poetry had been. The power of classic tradition was strong enough to resist their attraction. The taste of Italy rejected the marvels of Gothic design in favor of modes of expression inherited from her own past, but vivified with fresh spirit, and adapted to her new requirements. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... found widely spread, especially in Romance tongues, French, Italian, Provencal, and Portuguese; but it is also found in Ireland (see Celtic Fairy Tales), Hanover, Transylvania, Esthonia, and Russia; so that it has claims to be included in the fairy book of all Europe. Cosquin, ii., 209-14, gives a number of Oriental stories, Annamite, Kalmuk, ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs

... construction, from the works of the later Roman Empire. But Romanesque architecture" (and this applies equally to sculpture) "was not, as it has been called, a corrupted imitation of the Roman architecture, any more than the Provencal or the Italian language was a corrupted imitation of the Latin. It was a new thing, the slowly matured product of a long period ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... unfriendly soil. As Arts expired, resistless Dulness rose; 35 Goths, Priests, or Vandals,—all were Learning's foes. Till Julius[55] first recall'd each exiled maid, And Cosmo own'd them in the Etrurian shade: Then, deeply skill'd in love's engaging theme, The soft Provencal pass'd to Arno's stream: 40 With graceful ease the wanton lyre he strung; Sweet flow'd the lays—but love was all he sung. The gay description could not fail to move, For, led by nature, all ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... is something innately vulgar in the Yankee dialect. M. Sainte-Beuve says, with his usual neatness: 'Je definis un patois une ancienne langue qui a eu des malheurs, ou encore une langue toute jeune st qui n'a pas fait fortune.' The first part of his definition applies to a dialect like the Provencal, the last to the Tuscan before Dante had lifted it into a classic, and neither, it seems to me, will quite fit a patois/, which is not properly a dialect, but rather certain archaisms, proverbial phrases, and modes of pronunciation, which ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Bohemian, Chaldaic, Chinese (Cochin-Chinese, Trin-Chinese, Japanese), Danish (Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Laplandic), Hebrew (Antique, Rabbinic, Samaritan), Egyptian, or Coptic-Egyptian and Coptic, Arabic, Etrusean, Phoenician, Flemish, French (Breton-French, Lorraine-French, Provencal), Gothic and Visi-Gothic, and Greek and Greek-Latin, Modern Greek, Georgian or Iberian, Cretian or Rhetian, Illyrian, Indo-oriental (Angolese, Burmese or Avian, Hindostanee, Malabar, Malayan, Sanscrit), English (Arctic, Breton or Celtic, Scotch-Celtic, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... following day, near Bazas, that these two encountered Adam de Gourdon, a Provencal knight, with whom the Prince fought for a long while, without either contestant giving way; in consequence a rendezvous was fixed for the November of that year, and afterward the Prince and de Gourdon parted, highly pleased ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... to a good many foreign wines, or they would be quite unacceptable from being deficient in combustible. It is for the same reason, also, that Russians can swallow, without wincing, bumpers of brandy which would kill a Provencal outright: and that the Swedish Government has no end of trouble to keep the country people from converting into brandy the corn that ought to go to the miller; whilst the Mohammedan Arabs accept without difficulty that precept of the Koran which forbids the use of wine and spirituous ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... eyebrows. He was at that hour most happily unhappy over the late disappearance of his Glorious Lady. The peerless beauty of Padua, the incomparable Ippolita, was gone. His business was to devise dirges, monodies, laments, descortz in the Provencal manner; to cry "Heigho!" and "Well-a-day!" not "Ban!" or "Out, haro!" To have these high frenzies, these straining states of the soul, disturbed by the unclaimed remains of a resolving Jew, was ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... the chiefs are painted in the full-dress uniform of the American army, but are not for an instant to be mistaken; although Red Jacket, the great orator and warrior, and one or two others have features exceedingly resembling some of the Provencal noblesse of France: the common expression is, however, almost uniformly characteristic of their nature, cold, crafty, and cruel; I hardly found one face in which I could have looked for either mercy or compunction—always excepting the women, of whom here are a few specimens. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... style, but that it had additions of a more modern date; the large and gloomy hall, however, into which she now entered, was entirely gothic, and sumptuous tapestry, which it was now too dark to distinguish, hung upon the walls, and depictured scenes from some of the antient Provencal romances. A vast gothic window, embroidered with CLEMATIS and eglantine, that ascended to the south, led the eye, now that the casements were thrown open, through this verdant shade, over a sloping lawn, to the tops of dark woods, that hung upon the brow of the promontory. Beyond, appeared the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... courtesy and woman service which were soon to become the cult of European society. The Countess Marie, possessing her royal mother's tastes and gifts, made of her court a social experiment station, where these Provencal ideals of a perfect society were planted afresh in congenial soil. It appears from contemporary testimony that the authority of this celebrated feudal dame was weighty, and widely felt. The old city of Troyes, where she held her court, must be set down large in any map of literary ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... Judah ibn Tibbon, a famous Provencal Jew, who had migrated to Southern France from Granada, wrote in Hebrew as ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... composition, and by his experiments in the dialects of Cremona, Brescia and Verona, cities near Mantua, helped to form the Tuscan tongue. But besides the brief record of Dante, there are certain accounts of Sordello's life, very confused and conflicting, in the early Italian Chronicles and the Provencal lives of the Troubadours. Tiraboschi sifts these legends, leaving very little of them. According to him, Sordello was a Mantuan of noble family, born at Goito at the close of the twelfth century. He ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... motion of the troops seemed to quicken. Now he beheld men from the lands of the sun, the short, dark, fierce soldiers of the Midi, youths of Marseilles and youths of the first Roman province, whose native language was Provencal and not French. He remembered the men of the famous battalion who had marched from Marseilles to Paris singing Rouget de Lisle's famous song, and giving it their name, while they tore down an ancient kingdom. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... brachycephalic and becomes more pronounced along the northern boundary in the Alps, till it culminates in Piedmont along the frontier of France, where it becomes identical with the broad-headed Savoyards.[368] More than this, Provencal French is spoken in the Dora Baltea Valley of Piedmont; and along the upper Dora Riparia and in the neighboring valleys of the Chisone and Pellice are the villages of the refugee Waldenses, who speak an idiom allied to the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... the Provencal is cleft in two; Arnold of Thoulouse through the breast before; Hubert of Tours, sir Dionysius, Hugh, And Claud, pour forth their ghosts in reeking gore. Odo, Ambaldo, Satallon ensue, And Walter next; of Paris are the four — With others, that by me unmentioned fall, Who ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... principles as the Universitas Citramontanorum and the Universitas Ultramontanorum. Each was sub-divided into nations; the cis-Alpine (p. 015) University consisting of Lombards, Tuscans, and Romans, and the trans-Alpine University of a varying number, including a Spanish, a Gascon, a Provencal, a Norman, and an English nation. The three cis-Alpine nations were, of course, much more populous at Bologna than the dozen or more trans-Alpine nations, and they were therefore sub-divided into sections known as Consiliariae. ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait

... in England. This Giffard had never been so far south before, and he seemed to feel that he had got into some sort of enchanted realm. He was more soldier than courtier, but his eyes said a great deal. The luxurious abundance of a Provencal castle, the smooth ease of the serving, the wit and gaiety of the people, all were new to him. He had attended state banquets, but they were as unlike the entertainment here provided as was the stern simplicity of his boyhood home in Normandy, ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... mother and of the wisest persons in his kingdom," Louis asked for her hand in marriage. The Count of Provence was overjoyed at the proposal; but he was somewhat anxious about the immense dowry which, it was said, he would have to give his daughter. His intimate adviser was a Provencal nobleman, named Romeo de Villeneuve, who said to him, "Count, leave it to me, and let not this great expense cause you any trouble. If you marry your eldest high, the more consideration of the alliance will get the others married better and at less cost." Count ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... word are sometimes determined by accident. Glamour (see p. 145) was popularised by Scott, who found it in old ballad literature. Grail, the holy dish at the Last Supper, would be much less familiar but for Tennyson. Mascot, from a Provencal word meaning sorcerer, dates from Audran's operetta La Mascotte (1880). Jingo first appears in conjurors' jargon of the 17th century. It has been conjectured to represent Basque jinko, God, picked up by sailors. If this is the case, it is probably the only pure Basque ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... Sordello, founded upon incidents in the history of that Mantuan poet Sordello, whom Dante and Virgil met in purgatory; and who, deserting the language of Italy, wrote his principal poems in the Provencal. The critics were so dissatisfied with this work, that Browning afterwards omitted it in the later editions of his poems. In 1843 he published a tragedy entitled A Blot on the 'Scutcheon, and a play called The Dutchess of Cleves. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... them a supper in his best style. Although a native of New France he was of Provencal blood, and he had a poetic strain. He offered to his guests not an excellent inn alone, but a magnificent view also, of which he made full use. The evening being warm with a soft and soothing wind, Marie and Lizette set the ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... career are as unaffectedly charming as his style, and more of a piece than his elaborate works of fiction. A sunny Provencal childhood is clouded by family misfortunes; then comes a year of wretched slavery as usher in a provincial school; then the inevitable journey to Paris with a brain full of verses and dreams, and the beginning of a life of Bohemian nonchalance, to which we Anglo-Saxons ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... first act peasant women in the service of Thibaut, a rich country Squire, are collecting fruit. Georgette, Thibaut's young wife, controls their work. In compliance with a general request she treats them to a favorite provencal song, in which a young girl, forgetting her first vows made to a young soldier, gives her hand to another suitor. She is interrupted by the sound of trumpets. Thibaut hurrying up in great distress asks the women to hide themselves ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... The familiar appearance and proceedings of life became wonderful and heavenly, and a paradise was created as out of the wrecks of Eden. And as this creation itself is poetry, so its creators were poets; and language was the instrument of their art: 'Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse.' The Provencal Trouveurs, or inventors, preceded Petrarch, whose verses are as spells, which unseal the inmost enchanted fountains of the delight which is in the grief of love. It is impossible to feel them without ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... "I know it; it is Valetta, so named from the noble Provencal Valette, who, after vainly endeavoring to defend the holy sepulchre from the defilements of the infidels, was by them driven with his faithful Christian army from island to island, until he ultimately planted the standard of the cross on this sea-girt rock, and bravely and successfully withstood ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... continually, through Lydgate and Caxton, from Guido di Colonna, whose Latin romance of the Trojan war was in turn a compilation from Dares Phrygius, Ovid, and Statius. Then Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the Provencal poets, are his benefactors: the Romaunt of the Rose is only judicious translation from William of Lorris and John of Meun: Troilus and Creseide, from Lollius of Urbino: The Cock and the Fox, from the Lais of Marie: The House of Fame, from the French or Italian: and poor Gower he uses as if he ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... yellowish wash, and roofed with hollow tiles of a good red, constitute the grange. The rafters bend under the weight of this brick-kiln. The windows, inserted casually, without any attempt at symmetry, have enormous shutters, painted yellow. The garden in which it stands is a Provencal garden, enclosed by low walls, built of big round pebbles set in layers, alternately sloping or upright, according to the artistic taste of the mason, which finds here its only outlet. The mud in which they are set is falling away ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... and careful they must be, with watchful eyes to the right and the left, for this was no man's land, and their only passports were those which hung from their belts. Frenchmen and Englishmen, Gascon and Provencal, Brabanter, Tardvenu, Scorcher, Flayer, and Free Companion, wandered and struggled over the whole of this accursed district. So bare and cheerless was the outlook, and so few and poor the dwellings, that Sir Nigel began to have fears as to whether ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... about a quarter of a mile long, and from fifteen to twenty-five feet wide. In order to form them the rock had to be cut away, blasting being of course unknown at the time, and every handful of earth brought up from the plain below, often to a height of two thousand feet. The Provencal writers consider them the work of the Moors, but it is probable that they were commenced under the Phoceans and the Romans and continued by the Arabs. I have been shown several terraces the masonry of which was undoubtedly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... country is not wholly a polite fiction to relieve the French Government of the responsibility for the Casino. These people are different, children as well as grown-ups. They are neither French nor Italian, Provencal nor Catalan, but as distinct as mountain Basques are from French and Spanish. It is not a racial group distinction, as with the Basques. In blood, the Monegasques are affiliated to their Provencal and ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... somehow never got far with his studies. He always began with great enthusiasm and then something happened. For a time he studied French with tremendous eagerness. But he soon found that for a real knowledge of French you need first to get a thorough grasp of Old French and Provencal. But it proved impossible to do anything with these without an absolutely complete command of Latin. This Juggins discovered could only be obtained, in any thorough way, through Sanskrit, which of course ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock

... which the Byzantine mosaicists surrounded the faces of their saints, the glory of golden light that gleams about the figure of Christ in heaven in Tintoretto's decorations, the blank bright walls of the Doge's palace undermined by darkling and shadowy arcades, the refrain of a Provencal song, the sharp shadow under the visor of Verrocchio's equestrian statue, the thought-provoking chiaroscuro of Rembrandt's figure paintings—these expedients are all designed to attract attention to the essential elements of a whole ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... Bernadou grows animated and moved by the occasion,—the white wine, the remembrances! With that child-like manner which the sick find in the depths of their feebleness he asks Salvette to sing a Provencal Noel. His comrade asks which: "The Host," or "The Three Kings," or "St. Joseph Has ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... the eye becomes accustomed to the bareness and greyness of this Provencal landscape; and then we find that the scenery round Avignon is eminently picturesque. The view from Les Doms—which is a hill above the Pope's palace, the Acropolis, as it were, of Avignon—embraces a wide stretch of undulating champaign, bordered by low hills, and intersected by the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... venerable (and sometimes atrociously ill- tempered) nurse of all navigators, was to rock my youth, the providing of the cradle necessary for that operation was entrusted by Fate to the most casual assemblage of irresponsible young men (all, however, older than myself) that, as if drunk with Provencal sunshine, frittered life away in joyous levity on the model of Balzac's "Histoire des Treize" qualified by a dash of romance ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... under certain conditions, the Gaul was indistinguishable from the German. The assertion that the Anglo-Saxon character is midway between the pure French or Irish and the Teutonic, he met with the previous question, Who is the pure Frenchman? Picard, Provencal, or Breton? or the pure Irish? Milesian, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... St. Enimie is fully set forth in a Provencal poem of the thirteenth century by the troubadour Bertrand de Marseilles, who received his information from his friend the Prior of the monastery at Sainte-Enimie, which in the Middle Ages was the most important religious house in the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... one thing that miserable muleteer-boy ought to have known better than another, it was the insuperable objection entertained by the Provencal peasant to any thing like trespass on his territory (the touchiness of the proprietaire bears generally an inverse ratio to the extent of his possessions); yet, to make a short cut of about two hundred yards, he had led his party through a gap in the low stone wall over a strip of ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... you look!' Christian exclaimed, on entering. 'We enjoyed your Provencal letter enormously. That's a ramble I have always meant ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... is a successful half-way synthesis of the North and South, which makes them comprehend many things, and enjoins upon them other things, which an Englishman can never comprehend. Their temperament, turned alternately to and from the South, in which from time to time the Provencal and Ligurian blood froths over, preserves them from the dreadful, northern grey-in-grey, from sunless conceptual-spectrism and from poverty of blood—our GERMAN infirmity of taste, for the excessive prevalence of which at the present moment, blood and iron, that is to say "high politics," ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... Finally, when twenty-three years of age, and without other fortune than his fine presence and that southern beauty which, when it reaches perfection, may be called sublime (of which Antinous, the favorite of Adrian, is the type), Charles resolved to wager his Provencal audacity—taking it, like many another youth, for a vocation—on the red cloth of war. On his way to the base of the army at Nice he met the Breton. The pair became intimate, partly from the contrasts in their characters; they drank from the same cup at the wayside torrents, broke the ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... this "verte Gruyere" shut away from the world by its mountains as Ireland is by the sea, is like a lost island, fabled, remote, its speech Provencal, its soul purely Celt. Laughter loving, warlike and brave in the idyllic years of their prime, the Gruyeriens of to-day are still gay, caustic of wit as they are kindly at heart; and, in a changed world, as ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... therefore offered a price for the illustrious prisoner, and placed him in the strong Castle of Triefels. Months passed away, and no tidings reached him from without. He deemed himself forgotten in his captivity, and composed an indignant sirvente in his favorite Provencal tongue. The second verse we give in the original, for the sake of being brought so near ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... least is no defeat!" Scornfully she looked upon me With a measured eye and cold— Scornfully she viewed the token, Though her fingers wrought the gold; And she answered, faintly flushing, "Hast thou kept it, then, so long? Worthy matter for a minstrel To be told in knightly song! Worthy of a bold Provencal, Pacing through the peaceful plain, Singing of his lady's favour, Boasting of her silken chain, Yet scarce worthy of a warrior Sent to wrestle for a crown. Is this all that thou hast brought me From thy fields of high renown? Is this all the trophy carried ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... elected its Master in 1486. Though older poems (like that of Robert Wace) are connected with the Confrerie, to him is due the beginning of those "Palinods" sung in honour of the Virgin in the Church of St. Jean des Pres, which were called the "Puy de Conception," like the Puy d'Amour of the Provencal troubadours. The name probably originated in the refrain which ran through all the various metres allowed in the poems which were sent in for competition, as ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... Blanche Willis Howard, in Guenn, makes her priest exclaim, "Monsieur, I would fight with France against any other nation, but I would fight with Brittany against France. I love France. I am a Frenchman. But first of all I am a Breton." The Provencal speaks of France as if she were a foreign country, and fights for her as if she were his alone. What is true of France is true in a measure of England. Devonshire men are notoriously Devonshire men first and last. If this is true of what have become integral parts of kingdom or republic ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve

... their lives that day for the cause of Christ," to quote the annalist of the Order. Several others were wounded, and of these the Prior Giustiniani and his captain, Naro, of Syracuse, died soon after. One of the knights killed in the battle was a Frenchman, Raymond de Loubiere, a Provencal. Another Frenchman, the veteran De Romegas, fought beside Don Juan on the "Reale," and to his counsel and aid the commander-in-chief attributed much of his success in the campaign. The long lists of the Spanish, Neapolitan, Roman, and Genoese nobles who ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... us that "Nowhere, except, perhaps, in some Persian or Provencal love-songs, can be found more ardent ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... about twelve on each side of the hall. A handsome, athletic set they were, dressed in what we should call the Montfort livery—a garb which set off their natural good looks abundantly—the dark features of Drogo; the light eyes and flaxen hair of the son of a Provencal maiden, our Hubert; were fair types of the varieties of appearance to be met ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... Verse-making The People Conservative of old Dialects Jasmin's study of Gascon Langue d'Oc and Langue d'Oil Antiquity of Languages in Western Europe The Franks Language of Modern France The Gauls The "Franciman" Language of the Troubadours Gascon and Provencal Jasmin begins to write in Gascon Uneducated Poets Jasmin's 'Me cal Mouri' Miss Costello's translation The 'Charivari' Jasmin publishes First Volume ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... coxcomb of the first water, showy but superficial, and though personally brave, sure to be bewildered when he found himself for the first time working the wheels and springs of that puzzling machine, an army in the field. A caustic old Provencal marquis, with his breast glittering with the stars of a whole constellation of knighthood, yet who sat with the cross-belts and cartouche-box of the rank and file upon him, agreeing with all the premises, stoutly denied ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... clouds of tobacco smoke, and propounded fantastic philosophies amid the rattle of dominoes—and afar off in the street a voice was crying "Haricots verts!" My new friend's talk had the pathos of spiritual exile, for, as French in blood as a man could be, born in Bordeaux of Provencal parentage, he had lived most of his life in America. The decoration of a rich man's house in the neighbourhood had brought him thus into my solitude, and, that work completed, he would return to his home in ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... performance that it would make a cow shudder to watch—threw back his head, and, with a hoarse burr, called for another. This time he spoke English; but the burr was decidedly Scotch. Pigalle now looked around at him—gross, pleasant, Provencal Pigalle—and nodded; then went on placidly shuffling the tiny cards ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... and Provencal song and sunburnt mirth! Oh for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene! With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... are unacquainted with music. The few that play upon instruments, attend only to the execution. They have no genius nor taste, nor any knowledge of harmony and composition. Among the French, a Nissard piques himself on being Provencal; but in Florence, Milan, or Rome, he claims the honour of being born a native of Italy. The people of condition here speak both languages equally well; or, rather, equally ill; for they use a low, uncouth phraseology; and their pronunciation is extremely vitious. Their ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... showed their purple nodules of fruit,—where a bright-faced young peasant-girl, with a gay kerchief turbaned about her head with a coquettish tie, lay basking in the sunshine. He heard once more the trip of her voice warbling a Provencal song, while the great ruin of the Roman arene came once more to his vision, with its tufting shrubs and battered arches rising grim and gaunt into the soft Southern sky; the church-bells of the town poured their sweet jangle on his ear again, the murmur of distant voices ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... a melody grave and plaintive. Then the archangel Gabriel, using the Provencal tongue, announces the coming of Christ and tells what the Savior has suffered on earth for the sins of man. Each strophe is terminated by a refrain, of which the conclusion has the same melody as the first stanza of each of the strophes. The foolish virgins confess their sins and beg ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson

... which so much has been said; that is, variability, and consequently progressiveness. There is more life in mixed nations. France, for instance, is justly said to be the mean term between the Latin and the German races. A Norman, as you may see by looking at him, is of the north; a Provencal is of the south, of all that there is most southern. You have in France Latin, Celtic, German, compounded in an infinite number of proportions: one as she is in feeling, she is various not only in the past history of her various provinces, but in their ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... to the discovery of the mariners' compass. The first clear notice of it appears in a Provencal poet of the end of the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century it was used by the Norwegians in their voyages to and from Iceland, who made it the device of an order of knighthood of the highest rank; and from a passage in Barber's ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... I went back to sea, a lieutenant still, on board the Hercule, 100 guns—Captain Casy. Captain, petty officers, crew, all hands in fact save a few officers, were Provencal. Before a week was out I caught ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... historians. "How often," he says, "have we not seen hearers agitated by terrible spasms, weep and laugh at once, and manifest all the symptoms of delirium and fever, while listening to the masterpieces of our great masters." He relates the case of a young Provencal musician, who blew out his brains at the door of the Opera after a second hearing of Spontini's "Vestale," having previously explained in a letter, that after this ecstatic enjoyment, he did not care to remain in this prosaic world; and the ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... works, and made regular approaches for his advancing batteries and mines; yet at the end of a month not a wall was down, and the eight bastions of the eight Tongues of the Order—the English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Provencal, and Auvergnat—were so far unmoved. Gabriel Martinego of Candia superintended the countermines with marked success.[21] At last the English bastion was blown up; the Turks swarmed to the breach, and were beaten back with a ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... hair, And manhood glorious in its midst of May; Thou who upon thy shield of argent bearest The bold device, "The loftiest is the fairest!" As bending low thy stainless crest, "The vestal throned by the west" Accords the old Provencal crown Which blends her own with thy renown; Arcadian Sidney, nursling of the muse, Flower of fair chivalry, whose bloom was fed With daintiest Castaly's most silver dews, Alas! how soon thy amaranth leaves were shed; Born, what the Ausonian minstrel dream'd to ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... out in one great swell as an inspiration to glorious deeds, illuminating the world, and making an immortal epoch. Such, in one of its aspects, is the significance of chivalry, whose crest-wave broke into bloom in the Provencal literature; whose consummate flower, lifted far aloft, was Dante's homage to Beatrice. The inspiration of chivalry was the love of woman; but that love was spiritual. It aimed not at a personal union, to die away ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... who saw that his bold looks had produced their effect, "you are a Provencal, and I a Gascon. You have a quick ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... word, see vol. ix. 108. It is the origin of the Fr. "Douane" and the Italian "Dogana" through the Spanish Aduana (Ad-Diwan) and the Provencal "Doana." Menage derives it from the Gr. {Greek} a place where goods are received, and others from "Doge" (Dux) for whom a tax on merchandise was levied at Venice. Littre (s.v.) will not decide, but rightly inclines to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... sprang from the corruption of the Latin were called by the common name of romans. The name was then applied to any piece of literature composed in this vernacular instead of in the ancient classical Latin. And as the favorite kind of writing in Provencal, Old French, and Spanish was the tale of chivalrous adventure that was called par excellence, a roman, romans, or romance. The adjective romantic is much later, implying, as it does, a certain degree of critical attention to the species of fiction which it describes ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... independent Romance language, which is still used in some parts of the Canton of Graubuenden, that which is known specially as Romansch, is not recognized. It is left in the same position in which Welsh and Gaelic are left in Great Britain, in which Basque, Breton, Provencal, Walloon, and Flemish are left within the borders of that French kingdom which has grown so as to take them ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... exerted so profound an influence upon the literary history of other peoples as the poetry of the troubadours. Attaining the highest point of technical perfection in the last half of the twelfth and the early years of the thirteenth century, Provencal poetry was already popular in Italy and Spain when the Albigeois crusade devastated the south of France and scattered the troubadours abroad or forced them to seek other means of livelihood. The earliest lyric poetry of Italy is Provencal in ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor

... Cf. Conform., 14a, 1. There is nothing impossible in her having been of Provencal origin, but there is nothing to indicate it in any document worthy of credence. She was no doubt of noble stock, for official documents always give her the title Domina. Cristofani I., p. 78 ff. Cf. Matrem honestissimam habuit. 3 Soc., Edition of Pesaro, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... Cervantes' humour the latter was naturally an attractive subject for ridicule. Like everything else in these romances, it is a gross exaggeration of the real sentiment of chivalry, but its peculiar extravagance is probably due to the influence of those masters of hyperbole, the Provencal poets. When a troubadour professed his readiness to obey his lady in all things, he made it incumbent upon the next comer, if he wished to avoid the imputation of tameness and commonplace, to declare himself the slave ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... took off when he began to sing. Old France and New France, and the loves and hates and joys and sorrows of all lands, met that night in the soul of this dwarf with the divine voice, who did not give them his name, so that they called him, for want of a better title, the Provencal. And again two nights afterwards it was the same, and yet again a third night and a fourth, and the simple folk, and wise folk also, went ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... water; but we must not thence conclude that the fish would perish if it could not come up to breathe the air. The European eel will creep during the night upon the grass; but I have seen a very vigorous gymnotus that had sprung out of the water, die on the ground. M. Provencal and myself have proved by our researches on the respiration of fishes, that their humid bronchiae perform the double function of decomposing the atmospheric air, and of appropriating the oxygen contained in water. They do not suspend ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... draught of vintage, that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country-green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... La Corne pinched the shrugging shoulder of Hortense as he remarked, "Don't confess to Father de Berey that you promenade on the cape! But I hope Pierre Philibert will soon make his choice! We are impatient to visit him and give old Provencal the butler a run every day through those dark crypts of his, where lie entombed the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... villa, in a dell Above the fragrant warm Provencal shore, The dying Rachel in a chair they bore Up the steep ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... at his court; among them Jacob ben Abba-Mari ben Anatoli, to whom an annuity was paid for translating Aristotelian works. Michael Scotus, the imperial astrologer, was his intimate friend. His contemporaries were chiefly popular philosophers or mystics, excepting only the prominent Provencal Jacob ben Machir, or Profatius Judaeus, as he was called, a member of the Tibbon family of translators. His observations on the inclination of the earth's axis were used later by Copernicus as the basis of further investigations. He was a famous teacher at the Montpellier ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... with all her quickness and talent, was never able to speak French fluently, and Beatrice had recourse to interpreters when she received the visit of King Charles VIII. at Asti, and was required to make civil speeches in reply to his compliments. But they read Provencal poetry and translations of Spanish romances from the rare volumes, sumptuously bound in crimson velvet with enamelled and jewelled clasps and corners, that were among the most precious treasures of Duchess Leonora's cabinet. Above all, they took delight in French romances, such as "I reali ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... monotonous charm of grass, beneath green lime tree, or in the South the elm or plane; under which are seated the poet and the fiddler, playing and singing for the young women, their hair woven with chaplets of fresh flowers, dancing upon the sward. And poet after poet, Provencal, Italian, and German, Nithart and Ulrich, and even the austere singer of the Holy Grail, Wolfram, pouring out verse after verse of the songs in praise of spring, which they make even as girls wind their garlands: songs of quaint and graceful ever-changing ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... settled himself on the couch in the required attitude. His back was turned, but all the same the conversation continued for another moment, for he had that very morning received a letter from Plassans, the little Provencal town where he and the artist had known each other when they were wearing out their first pairs of trousers on the eighth form of the local college. However, they left off talking. The one was working with his mind far away from the world, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... which Dante may conceivably have read without coming on some passage which one feels certain he had read, or at the very least containing some information which one feels certain he possessed. A real "Dante's library"[2] would comprise pretty well every book in Latin, Italian, French, or Provencal, "published," if we may use the term, up to the year 1300. Of course a good many Latin books were (may one say fortunately?) in temporary retirement at that time; but even of these, whether, as has been suggested, through volumes, now lost, of "Elegant ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler

... sisters, fair and young, Laughed with their stranger guest, and sung In their native tongue the lays Of the old Provencal days. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... if 't were here at home, By some old wizard's orders, Or long ago in Crete or Rome Or fair Provencal borders, ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill

... to the specialists, Limnophilus flavicornis, whose work has earned for the whole corporation the pretty name of Phryganea, a Greek term meaning a bit of wood, a stick. In a no less expressive fashion, the Provencal peasant calls it lou portofais, lou porto-caneu. This is the little grub that carries through the still waters a faggot of tiny fragments ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... evidently behind the fashion. Margaret's hair was bound with a broad band of daisies, and Yolande's with violets, both in allusion to their names, Yolande being the French corruption of Violante, her Provencal name, in allusion to the golden violet. Jean thought of the Scottish thistle, and studied the dresses, tight-fitting 'cotte hardis' of bright, deep, soft, rose colour, edged with white fur, and white skirts embroidered with their appropriate flowers. She wondered how soon this could ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... double part played by the poet, who, as it were, satirizes his own doings. In Immanuel's Machberoth there is much variety of romantic incident. But it is in satire that he reaches his highest level. Love and wine are the frequent burdens of his song, as they are in the Provencal and Italian poetry of his day. Immanuel was something of a Voltaire in his jocose treatment of sacred things, and pietists like Joseph Karo inhibited the study of the Machberoth. Others, too, described ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams

... much as that without his interpreter; for in those days the Provencal tongue was an accomplishment of all well-born persons, and it was not unlike certain dialects ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... is the temperature: how hot or how cold it was—what month in the year? It is unnecessary for Inness to cover his ground with snow to make his picture express a certain degree of cold, neither is it necessary for Montenard to fill his Provencal roads with clouds of dust to show how hot they are. This is done by the opalescent tones of the sky, by the values expressed in reflected lights and in the illuminated shadows, so that you feel in looking across one of Inness's fields of brown ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith

... trees of vivid yellow spouted pyramids of thin, gold flame against a sky of violet, and the indefinable fragrance of spring was in the air. We met handsome, up-standing peasants in red or blue berets, singing melodiously in patois—Provencal, perhaps—as they walked beside their string of stout cart-horses. And the songs, and the dark eyes of the singers, and the wonderful horned harness which the noble beasts wore with dignity, all seemed to answer us: "Yes, you ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... of the word 'ballad,' or rather of its French and Provencal predecessors, balada, balade (derived from the late Latin ballare, to dance), was 'a song intended as the accompaniment to a dance,' a sense long obsolete.[1] Next came the meaning, a simple song of ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick

... in the Italian tongue, though many of his phrases are become obsolete, as in process of time it must needs happen. Chaucer (as you have formerly been told by our learned Mr. Rymer) first adorned and amplified our barren tongue from the Provencal, [Footnote: No one now believes this. An excellent discussion of the subject will be found in Professor Lounsbury's Studies in Chaucer, ii. 429-458.] which was then the most polished of all the modern languages; but this subject has been copiously treated by that great critic, who ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... the Mouse I place my friends and neighbours under requisition; they laugh at my whim but none the less proffer their traps. Yet, the moment a Mouse is needed, that very common animal becomes rare. Braving decorum in his speech, which follows the Latin of his ancestors, the Provencal says, but even more crudely than in my translation: "If you look for dung, the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... Catullus, had employed the device with singular beauty in the eighth Eclogue; but this is the first known instance of the refrain being added to a poem in stanzas of a fixed and equal length;[11] it is more than halfway towards the structure of an eleventh-century Provencal alba. The keen additional pleasure given by rhyme was easily felt in a language where accidental rhymes come so often as they do in Latin, but the rhyme here, so far as there is any, is rather incidental to the way in which the language is used, with its silvery chimes and recurrences, ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... of Mirabeau's ancestors of whom there is any notable record, was Jean Riquetti, a prominent merchant at Marseilles, who, in 1570, bought the chateau and estate of Mirabeau, near Pertuis, from the well-known Provencal family of Barras and who, a few years later, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... cured of my last misfortune. I had recovered all my usual vigour, and I accompanied my converter to church every day, never missing a sermon. We likewise spent the evening together at the cafe, where we generally met a great many officers. There was among them a Provencal who amused everybody with his boasting and with the recital of the military exploits by which he pretended to have distinguished himself in the service of several countries, and principally in Spain. As he was truly a source of amusement, everybody pretended to believe him in order ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... said the boy, a ruddy-faced youth, with gray eyes and auburn hair; "let me play the air that Rene, the troubadour, taught me yesterday. I'll warrant thee 't will set thy feet a-flying, if I can but master the strain," and he hummed over the gay Provencal measure: ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... expected the forester to turn aside to the group of servants, but in blank amazement saw him lead the way through the poor at the gate; and advancing to the porch with a courteous bending of his head, he said in the soft Provencal—far more familiar than English to Adam's ears—"Hast room ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... your principal residence, Pezenas Toulouse, or Bordeaux; but do not be persuaded to go to Aix en Provence, which, by experience, I know to be at once the hottest and the coldest place in the world, from the ardor of the Provencal sun, and the sharpness of the Alpine winds. I also earnestly recommend to you, for your complaint upon your breast, to take, twice a-day, asses' or (what is better mares' milk), and that for these six months at least. Mingle turnips, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield



Words linked to "Provencal" :   Provence, Langue d'oc, Langue d'oc French



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