"Ribaldry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vault, flecked by scarcely a cloud, rolls the sun in glory. Though fair be the earth, it has come to be tainted and marred by him who was meant to be its crowning glory. Behind me on this island are crowded vile and wicked men, the murmur of whose ribaldry riseth continually like the smoke and fumes of a lower world. Oh! Father of Mercies, forgive the hard heartlessness and blindness and scarlet sins of my ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... words," answered Steingerd, "an ill will is plain to hear. I shall tell Thorvald of this ribaldry: no man would sit still under ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... adopted from the infirmities of his own habit and constitution. Mr. Granger says, "He composed this book with a view of relieving his own melancholy, but increased it to such a degree, that nothing could make him laugh, but going to the bridge-foot and hearing the ribaldry of the bargemen, which rarely failed to throw him into a violent fit of laughter. Before he was overcome with this horrid disorder, he, in the intervals of his vapours, was esteemed one of the most facetious companions ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... a victim, which gave the ceremony a markedly religious significance. The customs connected with the bringing of the bride to the bridegroom's house—so beautifully depicted in Catullus' Epithalamium—her forcible abduction from her parents, the ribaldry of the bridegroom's companions, the throwing of nuts as a symbol of fecundity, the carrying of the bride over the threshold, a relic probably of primitive marriage by capture, the untying of the bridal knot on the bridal couch—are perhaps more akin to superstition than religion, but we ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... house front under repair supplied a scantling. Plooie was hustled upon it. He fell off. They jammed him back again. He clung, wide-eyed, white-faced, and silent. The mob, for it was that now, bore him with jeers and jokes and ribaldry along the ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and simple reasoning, the Italian prevailed. Together, without objection from the captain of the yard, with many unavailing protests from Richling, who would now do it alone, and with Ristofalo smiling like a Chinaman at the obscene ribaldry of the spectators in the yard, they scrubbed the cell. Then came the tank. They had to stand in it with the water up to their knees, and rub its sides with brickbats. Richling fell down twice in the water, to the uproarious delight of the yard; but ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... patron shamefully slandered with stories, as if Phidias were in the habit of receiving, for Pericles's use, freeborn women that came to see the works. The comic writers of the town, when they had got hold of this story, made much of it, and bespattered him with all the ribaldry they could invent, charging him falsely with the wife of Menippus, one who was his friend and served as lieutenant under him in the wars; and with the birds kept by Pyrilampes, an acquaintance of Pericles, who, they pretended, used to give presents of peacocks to Pericles's ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... fellow of mine," he said. "Yet I cannot help being attached to the ruffian. He would die to serve me; but the ribaldry of an English crowd is ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... member of the writing brotherhood, it was natural that his reviews should not pass without severe criticisms. He often complained of the insults, ribaldry, Billingsgate, and Bear-garden language to which he was exposed; and some of his biographers have taken these lamentations seriously, and expressed their regret that so good a man should have been ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... gathered in the streets of Paris. Harangues against the king and the aristocrats rendered them delirious with rage. They crowded all the avenues to the Tuileries, burst through the gates and over the walls, dashed down the doors and stove in the windows, and, with obscene ribaldry, rioted through all the apartments sacred to royalty. They thrust the dirty red cap of Jacobinism upon the head of the King. They poured into the ear of the humiliated queen the most revolting and loathsome execrations. There was no hope for Louis but in ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... that immodesty of expression, the recollection derived, it may often be, accidentally and unwillingly from oral sources during the previous life, is one of the numerous phases of insanity; and not only are the song-fragments chanted by Ophelia, but even the ribaldry addressed to her by Hamlet, in the play-scene, vindicated, there being little doubt that Shakespeare intended the simulated madness of the latter through his intellectual supremacy to be equally true to nature, the manners ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... obtain the accustomed reverence to his surplice, from the wondering parishioners, though the companions of his jovial hours have long ceased to feel the slightest compunctions arising from inward respect, when they laugh at his heinously red nose, or chorus in his ribaldry. The islanders of the South Sea are not singular then, in mentally disjoining official dignity from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... commanding a blasphemer to be stoned, could not teach one Israelite love to God, but it could save the streets of Israel from scandalous ribaldry. ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... long day I sat, with my head buried in my hands on the sordid table of our berth. I ate not, I spoke not. The ribaldry of my coarse associates moved me not; their boisterous and vulgar mirth aroused me not. They thought me, owing to my arrest, and my anticipations of its consequences, torpid with fear. They were deceived. I was never more alive. My existence was—if I may so speak—glowing and fiery hot; ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... happen that the insolence of wealth breaks into contemptuousness, or the turbulence of wine requires a vent; and Gulosulus seldom fails of being singled out on such emergencies, as one on whom any experiment of ribaldry may be safely tried. Sometimes his lordship finds himself inclined to exhibit a specimen of raillery for the diversion of his guests, and Gulosulus always supplies him with a subject of merriment. But he has learned to consider rudeness and indignities as familiarities ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... author. The father's indiscretion let out the secret; and the sale, when the book was known to be written by a nobody, fell off at once, or so Bentham believed. The anonymous writer, however, was denounced and accused of being the author of much ribaldry, and among other accusations was said to be not only the translator but the writer of the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... stories and the days to gambling. The soldiers' lodge, when the soldiers are not in session, is a very theater of amusement; all sorts of jokes are made and obscene stories are told, scarcely a woman in the camp escaping the ribaldry; but when business is in order ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... a neighbourhood so strange and ungenial to his habits; for, recovering himself in a few moments, he hurried on to the door of the Museum, and there planted himself, scanning earnestly the faces of the passers-out, and meeting, of course, with his due share of student ribaldry. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... started upon the cheek of a young person on the first hearing of an indecorous or profane sentiment, and continued for some time to be excited at repetitions of the same, should at length be so effectually laid asleep, that the impudent language of ribaldry can awaken it no more, it is clear, that a victory will have been gained over his moral feelings: and if he should remember (and what is to hinder him, when the occurrences of the stage are marked with strong action, and accompanied with impressive scenery) the language, the sentiments, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... But no part of his work manifests such bitterness, and at the same time such a specious mode of argument, as his attack on the doctrine of redemption and substitutional atonement.(637) The work, in its satire and its blasphemous ribaldry, is a fit parallel to those of Voltaire. Every line is fresh from the writer's mind, and written with an acrimony which accounts for much of its influence. The religion which Paine substituted for Christianity was the belief in one God as revealed ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... indecencies, that had distinguished earlier satirical prints; and although the popularity of Hood's "Comic Annual" and Cruikshank's "Comic Almanac" was pointed to, they would have nothing to do with a weekly, however much it professed to supersede previous ribaldry with clean wit ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... dared to be responsible for this ribaldry, and when it came home from New York and was actually cast before the people, words fail to convey the condition into which the patriarch was thrown. At last his emotions found a vent in a tract which he prepared jointly with ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... they found themselves permitted to remain even there unmolested; for their ears were continually shocked, and their liveliest apprehensions often excited, by the profane vociferations, the noisy ribaldry, and lawless conduct of the tories, who, driven from their drenched tents, which afforded them but a feeble protection against the fury of the storm, had crowded into the lower rooms of the house, where, half stifled, and jostled for want of space, they filled up the stairway, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... who were sailing upon the Thames, to accost each other as they passed, in the most abusive language they could invent, generally, however, with as much satirical humour as they were capable of producing. Addison gives a specimen of this ribaldry, in Number 383 of The Spectator, when Sir Roger de Coverly and he are going to Spring-garden. Johnson was once eminently successful in this species of contest; a fellow having attacked him with some coarse raillery, Johnson ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... obscene emblems and disgusting epigrams, so that this haunt of learning presents the aspect of the lowest brothel; and the professor's chair has become a more intolerable seat than the pillory, owing to the missiles flung at him and the ribaldry with which he is assailed. The manners and conversation of the students must have been disgusting beyond measure, to judge by a letter of complaint from a father detailing the contamination to which ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... back over the yellow teeth, and that flushed face was not pretty to look upon. Mulvaney nodded sympathy, and Ortheris, moved by his comrade's passion, brought up the rifle to his shoulder, and searched the hillside for his quarry, muttering ribaldry about a sparrow, a spout, and a thunder-storm. The voice of the watercourse supplied the necessary small talk till Learoyd picked up ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... the handle-bars like the Saturday afternoon shopmen! Wind in your hair, the broad blue Cotswold slopes about you, every ounce of leg-drive straining on the pedals—three minutes of it intoxicates you. You crawl up-wind roaring the most glorious nonsense, ribaldry, and exultation into the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... and sounds and sights of a day's tramp, out of the meditative leafiness and spiritual temper of natural things, into the garishly lit street of some little provincial town, animated with the clumsy mirth of silly young country folks, aping so drearily the ribaldry, say, of Elmira, is a painful anticlimax to the spirit. Had it only been real Summer, instead of Indian Summer, we should, of course, have been real gypsies, and made our beds under the stars, but, as it was, we had no choice. Or, had we been walking in Europe ... yes, I am afraid the truth ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... tales impromptu passages—best described in stage language as "gag"—which they think will be acceptable to their audience. And whether or not this be actually the case with the Indian bards, we are expressly told that it is so with the Arab story-teller, and that it accounts for much of the ribaldry and filth which have become embedded in the immortal "Nights." A viol having only one string accompanies the passages in verse with which the stories are interlarded; and a similar instrument seems to be ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... him. If he had been less a man than he was, they would not have taken the trouble to cover him with their drunken ribaldry. He had scored off them in the past in just such sprees as this, when he had the power to do so, and used the power good-naturedly and quietly—but ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... us modesty swarmed in too. They dragged a sheep into the lecture-room, lighted pipes, produced bottles, drank, smoked, and abused us ladies to our faces, and interrupted the lecturer at intervals with their howls and ribaldry: that was intended to show the professor he should not be listened to any more if he admitted the female students. The affair got wind, and other students, not connected with medicine, came pouring in, with no worse motive, probably, than to see the lark. Some of these, however, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... follow the Consolations of Intercourse. Conducted with "shattering candour" (as one has said who is in spirit a member of this Club, though not yet, alas, inducted), the meetings may sometimes resolve themselves into a ribaldry, sometimes into a truthful pursuit of Beauty, sometimes into a mere logomachy. But in these symposiums, unmarred by the crude claim of duty, the Club does with single-minded resolve pursue the only lasting satisfaction allowed ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... arrows discharged against all Liberals and Democrats. Again he is prosecuted, convicted, imprisoned. His boys, well taught in all manner of farm-work, send him, from his home in the country, hampers of fresh fruits, to relieve the tedium of Newgate. Discharged at length, and continuing his ribaldry in the columns of the "Register," he flies before an Act of Parliament, and takes new refuge in America. He is now upon Long Island, earnest as in his youth in agricultural pursuits. The late Dr. Francis of New York ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... converging as it were in one grand focus, toil and idleness, filth and spruceness, sharp set hunger and lavish plenty, vice without disguise, incessant gambling, brawls and quarrels every hour in the day, murders every now and then, ribaldry and obscenity, singing, dancing, laughing, swearing, cheating, and thieving without end. There many a man of quality seeks for his truant son, nor seeks in vain; and the youth feels as acutely the pain of being torn from that life ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... he was going to say, put a paper over the page, and then the seriousness of the situation came over him. "You know women; cheer up, man—try again. Stick to it—you'll win," cried Barclay. The fool might go for so small a reason. It was no time for ribaldry. "Let me tell you something," he went on. His eyes opened again with a steady ruthless purpose in them, that the man before him was too intent on his own pose to see. Barclay put a weight upon the white sheet of paper that he had spread ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... merely natural affect not the mind with any pleasure, and seem not worthy to engage our attention. The pleasantries of a waterman, the observations of a peasant, the ribaldry of a porter or hackney-coachman; all these are natural and disagreeable. What an insipid comedy should we make of the chit-chit of the tea-table, copied faithfully and at full length! Nothing can please persons of taste but nature drawn with all her graces and ornament—la ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... I live, you shan't stop here one instant longer!" cried out Agellius, starting up. "Be off with you! get away! what do you come here to blaspheme for? who wants you? who asked for you? Go! go, I say! take yourself off! Why don't you go? Keep your ribaldry for others." ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... than once," said Durward, sternly, "to restrain thy ribaldry when thou chancest to be in worthy men's company, a thing, which, I believe, hath rarely happened to thee in thy life before now, and I promise thee, that did I hold thee as faithless a guide as I esteem ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... French craft and subtlety, that it would do a man good to be in company among them. Herein only are the inferior sort somewhat to be blamed, that, being thus assembled, their talk is now and then such as savoureth of scurrility and ribaldry, a thing naturally incident to carters and clowns, who think themselves not to be merry and welcome if their foolish veins in this behalf be never so little restrained. This is moreover to be added in these meetings, that if they happen to stumble upon a piece of venison and a cup of ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... only person shocked by the ribaldry of the Swedish lady named Anna. Joe Bullitt and Johnnie Watson, on the outskirts of the group, went to Wallace Banks, drew him aside, and, with feverish eloquence, set his responsibilities before him. It was his duty, they urged, to have an immediate interview with this ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... he gave the good-night to two or three young fellows a little before our landing, one of them, instead of returning the civility, asked us, what queer old put[190] we had in the boat? with a great deal of the like Thames ribaldry. Sir Roger seemed a little shocked at first, but at length assuming a face of magistracy, told us, "That if he were a Middlesex justice, he would make such vagrants know that her Majesty's subjects were no more to be abused by water than ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... abuse heaped upon him called forth indignant remonstrance, even from the secular press. "To treat a subject of such overwhelming majesty and fearful consequences," with lightness and ribaldry, was declared by worldly men to be "not merely to sport with the feelings of its propagators and advocates," but "to make a jest of the day of judgment, to scoff at the Deity Himself, and contemn the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Axe,' which important symbol of Ashanti power had been forwarded from head-quarters with an especial mission. It was delivered on the express understanding that it should be despatched to England for the acceptance of H.B. Majesty, and not be kept upon the coast, exposed to the ribaldry of the hostile Fantis. The weapon, said Prince Bwaki, is so old that no one knows its origin, and it is held so precious that in processions it precedes the Great Royal Stool, or throne, of Ashanti. The leopard-skin, bound with gold upon the handle, symbolises ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... come, having stitched to her no leathern phallus hanging down, red at the top, and thick, to set the boys a laughing; nor yet jeered the bald-headed, nor danced the cordax; nor does the old man who speaks the verses beat the person near him with his staff, keeping out of sight wretched ribaldry; nor has she rushed in with torches, nor does she shout iou, iou; but has come relying on herself and her verses. And I, although so excellent a poet, do not give myself airs, nor do I seek to deceive you by twice and thrice bringing forward the same pieces; ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... kept. Yet, the other stock on his farm may be the meanest trash in existence, and it creates no remark. On the contrary, one who at any extra cost has supplied himself with stock of the choicer kinds, let their superiority be ever so apparent, has often been the subject of ribaldry, by his unthinking associates. And such, we are sorry to say, is still the case in too many sections of our country. But, on the whole, both our public spirit, and our intelligence, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... incapacity! In all kindness to Maga, we warn her, that, though the nature of this work precludes us from devoting space to the exposure, there may come a time when the public shall be themselves able to distinguish ribaldry from reasoning, and may require some better and higher qualifications in their critics of art, than the experience of a school-boy, and the capacities of ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... temper and his arrogance are alike essential to his role, and are true to the record of the historical D'Ambois. But there is a coarseness of fibre in Chapman's creation, an occasional foul-mouthed ribaldry of utterance which robs him of sympathetic charm. He has in him more of the swashbuckler and the bully than of the courtier and the cavalier. Beaumont and Fletcher, one cannot help feeling, would have invested him with more refinement and grace, ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... revelling in senseless ribaldry and inebriety (continues the reviewer) this song might be deemed very fine; but we shrewdly suspect that if the lines had been spoken at the theatre instead of being sung, the audience would have ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... as it may seem to link together Don Quixote and St. Theresa, I am not sure that we could do better than to accept them as models. The loud laughter of an age of intellectual ribaldry and self-conceit dies away and the gaunt figure of the last of the Crusaders still stands before us heroic in his childlike refusal of compromise, his burning compassion, his deafness to ridicule. In a sense we must ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... was very simple to suppose that I should turn from the discussion of measures and policy to notice your scandal. I will do no such thing. I am not so crazed. Your lies and calumnies about my political life I will examine forthwith. For that loose ribaldry I shall have a word hereafter, if the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... spouting up from the box, not merely overflowing. Her crew were still working, but raggedly and dispiritedly. Bert Taylor, his trumpet battered beyond all recognition, was fairly voiceless with rage. An interested and ribaldry facetious crowd spared ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... in a small top room with slanting sides would be broken upon by loud ribaldry that lasted into dawn, but never by word, and certainly not by deed, was she to know from her aunt any of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... York the first week in September. One designated "The Whole World's Convention," including men and women, black and white, orthodox and heretic; the other the "Half World's Convention," restricted to the "simon pure, white (male) orthodox saints"; which for ribaldry of speech and rudeness of action surpassed in its proceedings the outside mob, that raged and raved through an entire week, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... answer as we could expect," says Baxter, "insomuch that old Mr. Ash burst out into tears of joy." Who doubts that the profligate King avenged himself as soon as the backs of his unwelcome visitors were fairly turned, by coarse jests and ribaldry, directed against a class of men whom he despised and hated, but towards whom reasons of policy dictated a show ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Jamieson explains it as "foolish and noisy talk. Islandic, bulldur, stultorum balbuties." Dr. Ogilvie, however, has queried its derivation from the "Spanish balda, a trifle, or baldonar, to insult with abusive language; Welsh, baldorz, to prattle. Mean, senseless prate; a jargon of words; ribaldry; anything jumbled together ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... especially if a truth about religion is uttered. They are apt to think that all truths about religion are blasphemous. It is wonderful how ready good women are to find blasphemy where it is not, and to confuse reasoning with ribaldry." ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Wilson. Lamb's drama was "A Wife's Trial" in Blackwood for December, 1828. The same number of the Eclectic Review referred to Hood's parody of Lamb, "The Widow," as profaning Leslie's picture of the widow by its "heartless ribaldry." By the 2d parts of Blackwood Lamb referred, I imagine, to the pages on which his ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... pulled him up in Truckee, which was at the height of its evening revelries—fires blazing out of doors, bar-rooms and saloons crammed, lights glaring, gaming tables thronged, fiddle and banjo in frightful discord, and the air ringing with ribaldry ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... the railings and revilings, the ribaldry and mockery, with which the patient and submissive Christ was assailed while He hung, "lifted up" as He had said He would be,[1314] was that awful "If" hurled at Him by the devil's emissaries in the time of mortal agony; ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the tragic muse, proved as luckless a candidate for the smiles of the comic as the pathetic OTWAY. LA FONTAINE, unrivalled humorist as a fabulist, found his opera hissed, and his romance utterly tedious. The true genius of STERNE was of a descriptive and pathetic cast, and his humour and ribaldry were a perpetual violation of his natural bent. ALFIERI'S great tragic powers could not strike out into comedy or wit. SCARRON declared he intended to write a tragedy. The experiment was not made; but with his strong cast of mind and habitual ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Boylston Hall," &c. And we learn at their "talk," in the Representative Hall, they drew a large audience, and that audience was so indiscreet, (not to say indecorous or riotous,) as to cheer and applaud Apes in his ribaldry, misrepresentation and nonsense. Really, it looks to us, as if there was much misunderstanding upon the subject of the Marshpee difficulties. If there is any thing wrong we would have it put right; but how ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... influence secured the post of solicitor-general; and he made use of the occasion of Franklin's submitting the petition for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver, to make a personal attack upon him, which was half falsehood and half ribaldry. He pretended that the Hutchinson letters had been dishonorably acquired, and that their publication was an outrage on private ownership. Incidentally, he painted Hutchinson as a true patriot and savior of his country; and called Franklin an incendiary, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... bascinet, his long-bow upon his mailed shoulder, and, strapped to his wide back, a misshapen bundle that clinked melodiously with every swinging stride; and, while he sang, the ragged rogues about him ceased their noise and ribaldry to hearken in delight, and when he paused, cried out amain for more. Whereupon Giles, nothing ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... teeth as he muttered to himself that they might make a mock of whatever other women they pleased. He himself could out-do them all in coarse ribaldry of the sex, but they should not make a mock and flash obscene jests at the mention of Caroline de St. Castin! They should never learn her name. He could not trust one of them with the secret of her removal. And yet some one of them must ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... mankind rising against him—in its centre the form and face of a scornful courtier—the Repentigny, withering his pretensions by one contemptuous glance, to the applause of the Oeil de Boeuf. He saw the look of Madame l'Etiquette, the ribaldry of acquaintances at Versailles, the studious oblivion of the Princess de Poix, d'Estaing, Bellecour, and even Grancey; the mess-table derisive over the career of the pseudo-noble; Major Collinot striking his name from the list of the company; his arrest by Guardsmen disgusted at having to touch ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... that they received literary treatment. They adopted the dialect of the common people, and were more or less popular in their character. More details will be given when we examine them in their completer form. All such parts of these early scenic entertainments as were not mere conversation or ribaldry, were probably composed in the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... ministrations were not very successful, and that the lower order of Irish were not at all below the English of the same class in education or refinement. "The moans of the sick were drowned by the blasphemy and ribaldry of their companions. Sometimes, seated on the body of a wretch who had died in the morning, might be seen a wretch destined to die before night, cursing, singing loose songs, and swallowing usquebaugh to the health of the devil. When the corpses were taken away to be buried, the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Gaelic poetry, incommunicable except to the native reader, and, like that celebrated composition, an untranslatable tissue of tenderness, sublimity, and mocking ribaldry. The heroine is understood to have been a young person of virtue and beauty, in the humbler walks of life, who was quite unappropriated, except by the imagination of the poet, and whose fame has passed into the Phillis or Amaryllis ideal of Highland accomplishment and grace. Macdonald ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... justly remarked, that the delicacy of Chaucer's ancient tale has suffered even in the hands of Shakespeare; but in those of Dryden it has undergone a far deeper deterioration. Whatever is coarse and naked in Shakespeare, has been dilated into ribaldry by the poet laureat of Charles the second; and the character of Pandarus, in particular, is so grossly heightened, as to disgrace even the obliging class to whom that unfortunate procurer has bequeathed ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... period, with a very different purpose, has left an elegy, in which he darkly hints at and bemoans the fate of the ill-starred young person, whose very uncommon calamity Whitelaw, Dunlop, and Milne thought a fitting subject for buffoonery and ribaldry. This bard of milder mood was Andrew Symson, before the Revolution minister of Kirkinner, in Galloway, and after his expulsion as an Episcopalian following the humble occupation of a printer in Edinburgh. He furnished the family of Baldoon, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... have stopped his impudent ribaldry," said Sir John Ball. Then the lawyer tried to explain to him that no one read the ribaldry. It was of no use. Sir John read it himself, and that was enough to make ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... allows his taste to be less pure than that of Menander, has yet undertaken his defence against the outrageous censure of the ancient critick. In the first place, he condemns, without mercy, his ribaldry and obscenity. But this part, so worthy of contempt, and written only for the lower people, according to the remark of Boivin, bad as it is, after all, is not the chief part which is left of Aristophanes. I will not say, with Frischlinus, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... is quoted by Lessing! In the introduction to her translations of the Amphitruo, Rudens and Epidicus (issued in 1683), she apologizes for Plautus on the ground that he had to win approval for his comedies from an audience used to the ribaldry of the Saturae. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... time of religious excitements was proclaimed to be the true hat of Guy Fawkes. I reclaimed it, and brought it to Princess Anne, and in a vain moment put it on my head and walked into the street. It was assailed with halloos and ribaldry." ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... they sucked brandy-and water), and that mischievous little wag, little Nadab the Improvisatore (who had just come in), began to mimic him, feeling his imaginary whiskers, after the manner of the stranger, and flapping about his pocket-handkerchief in the most ludicrous manner. Hoskins checked this ribaldry by sternly looking towards Nadab, and at the same time called upon the gents to give their orders, the waiter being in the room, and Mr. Bellew about to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the ocean it may be safely said, that the intelligence of the reader forces their criticism up to some decent standard of honest painstaking. We may thus explain the bewilderment which came over us at that burst of vulgar ribaldry from the leading British press, in which the organs above named have achieved a scandalous preeminence. Vibrating from the extreme of shallowness to the extreme of sufficiency, scorning to be limited in abuse by adhering to any single ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... elucidations, and without the exhibition of any bias. But he is writing letters, reading newspapers, cutting jokes, attending only by fits and starts; then, when something smites his ear, out he breaks, and with a mixture of sarcasm and ribaldry and insolence he argues and battles the point, whatever it ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... which would be little relished in England. The tragedies acted at the Theatre Francais are generally modelled on the Greek; those of Racine and Voltaire are common. The comedies have seldom any low life or buffoonery, or vulgar ribaldry in them; The after pieces, and the ballets at the Academie de Musique, and at the Opera Comique, are often beautiful representations of rural ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... are very often laid among tradesmen and mechanics, and though it may be contrary to all good taste, the author is compelled to indulge in bombast expressions, pompous and thundering rhymes, and sometimes even ribaldry and mean, unmannerly buffoonery. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... of a fight every moment, and if one had been started there is little doubt that it would have been short and bloody, for the conduct of the rowdy portion of the travellers had enraged the decent persons, to whom the thought of drunkenness and ribaldry at such a time was abhorrent, and they were quite ready to undertake the work of pitching the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... had accomplished no more than this to relieve mankind from the pervading pressure of unlimited monarchy, they would have done more harm than good. By the fanatical treachery with which, violating the Parliament and the law, they contrived the death of King Charles, by the ribaldry of the Latin pamphlet with which Milton justified the act before the world, by persuading the world that the Republicans were hostile alike to liberty and to authority, and did not believe in themselves, they gave strength and ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... was as pretty as an angel, and as coarse in his manners as any carter. He had curly chestnut hair, beautiful eyes, and an innocent-looking mouth which gave vent to language that even a gendarme would have hesitated to use. Brought up amidst all the ribaldry and profanity of the markets, he had the whole vocabulary of the place on the tip of his tongue. With his hands on his hips he often mimicked Grandmother Mehudin in her anger, and at these times the coarsest and vilest expressions would stream from his lips in a voice of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... anguish, I was driven ashore amid the desolation of this sand. This comrade of yours found me scarce alive, ministered to my sore need, protected me through the hours of the night, stood but now between me and your ribaldry, counting his life but little beside the reputation of a woman. He may not wear the latest Paris fashions, Monsieur, but he has ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... servants left his house in horror; "Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart were let loose upon him"; and one of the favourite amusements of the period among men of petty wit and no convictions was the devising of light ribaldry against him.(484) ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much as the mincing lady prioress, and the broad-speaking gap-toothed wife of Bath. ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Carlos Santander; who, relishing the jest, joined in the "ha! ha!" till the old convent rang with their coarse ribaldry. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... laughter at some of the ribaldry and danced in a jostle of fauns, satyrs, nymphs, and maenads. Yet when her partner clenched her too straitly she could not forget that she was the wife of an absent soldier. And when on the way home he tried ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... not the least defect of the English comedies is their offensiveness. I may sum up the whole in one word by saying, that after all we know of the licentiousness of manners under Charles II., we are still lost in astonishment at the audacious ribaldry of Wycherley and Congreve. Decency is not merely violated in the grossest manner in single speeches, and frequently in the whole plot; but in the character of the rake, the fashionable debauchee, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... boatmen who professionally propelled the keels and flats of the Ohio, they were a class unto themselves—"half horse, half alligator," a contemporary styled them. Rough fellows, much given to fighting, and drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for coarse drollery and stinging repartee. The river towns suffered sadly at the hands of this lawless, dissolute element. Each boat carried from thirty to forty boatmen, and a number of such boats frequently traveled in company. ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... which he had meant for the little Friend of the Flag was not that of any glorious death by combat, but that of a life (unless no bullet early cut its silver cord in twain) when youth should have fled, and have carried forever with it her numberless graces, and left in its stead that ribaldry-stained, drink-defiled, hardened, battered, joyless, cruel, terrible thing which is unsightly and repugnant to even the lowest among men; which is as the lees of the drunk wine, as the ashes of the burned-out fires, as the discord of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... was the fate of those unlucky leaders who fell in battle, or were captured and slaughtered and devoured thereafter. Their heads stuck upon the posts of the victor's pa were targets for ribaldry, or, in later days, might be sold to the Pakeha and carried away to be stared at as oddities. Their bones might be used for flutes and fishing-hooks, for no fisherman was so lucky as he whose hook was thus made; their souls were doomed to successive stages of deepening ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... nature uninspired, untaught by art; With not one thought that breathes the feeling heart, With not one offering vow'd to Virtue's shrine, With not one pure unprostituted line; 10 Alike debauch'd in body, soul, and lays;— For pension'd censure, and for pension'd praise, For ribaldry, for libels, lewdness, lies, For blasphemy of all the good and wise: Coarse violence in coarser doggrel writ, Which bawling blackguards spell'd, and took for wit: For conscience, honour, slighted, spurn'd, o'erthrown:— Lo! Bufo shines the minion ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... and the last offices of the dead. We may agree with the doctrines of the Church of Rome, or we may not; the solemn rites may be unavailing, or they may be otherwise; but at least they can do no harm, and the death-chamber should surely be sacred from such vulgar ribaldry! Good taste, if no higher consideration, might have kept her from mocking the religious ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... steps of the Rheingold, a disreputable drinking cellar, and disappeared from my sight down its steps. A great shout greeted him, and the rattle of tankards on a table, as he joined what was evidently his coterie. Standing outside, I heard song and ribaldry within. The heir-presumptive to the throne of the Empire was too obviously a drunken brawler; a friend and comrade of the ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... on this, my brothers, you all know why. Let us pass from it, remembering that till the nineteenth century this story provoked only devotion not ribaldry, and it is only with the coming in of the grosser type of western thought that you have these ideas put into the Bhagavad-Purana. I would to God that the Rishis had taken away the Shrimad Bhagavata from a race that is unworthy to have it; that as They have ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... press groaned in bringing forth a hateful brood of pamphlets, malicious scribbles, and billingsgate ribaldry. No generous and impartial person then can blame the present undertaking which is designed purely for the diversion and merriment of the reader. Pieces of pleasantry and mirth have a secret charm in them ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... fetish made of turnips and cabbages. He was as fanatical a devotee of vegetarianism as others have been of a middle state or adult baptism; and, after having torn through a life of spiteful controversy with his fellow-men, and ribaldry of all sacred things, he thus expressed the one weight hanging on his conscience, that "on one occasion, when tempteed by wet, cold, and hunger in the south of Scotland, he ventured to eat a few potatoes dressed under the roast, nothing less ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... barbarism. Yet the good and zealous men whose lot it was to be thus set upon by a depraved, infuriate rabble, the foremost of them active in direct assault, and the rest venting their ferocious delight in a hideous blending of ribaldry and execration, of joking and cursing, were taxed with a canting hypocrisy, or a fanatical madness, for speaking of the prevailing ignorance and barbarism in terms equivalent to our sentence from the Prophet, "The people are destroyed for lack of knowledge," and for deploring the hopelessness ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... slipped from the crowd and out of the house. Drawing a reboso about her head she walked swiftly down the street and across the plaza. Sounds of ribaldry came from the lower end of the town, but the aristocratic quarter was very quiet, and she walked unmolested to the house of General Castro. The door was open, and she went down the long hall to the sleeping room of Dona Modeste. There was no response to her knock, and she pushed open the ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... by the desire for victory. The admission to the polls of delicate and tender women would, without injury to them, tend to refine and elevate the politics in which they took a part. When, in former times, women were excluded from social banquets, such assemblies were scenes of ribaldry and excess. The presence of women has substituted for them the festival of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... addressing at least a few of the future noble lords of Graustark. Good day, gentlemen. That is all for the present. Kindly inform me if any of my soldiers or followers overstep the bounds of prudence. Rapine and ribaldry ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to support the religion of their country, even unto death, had never heard a hymn or psalm in all their lives. But these fellows having for the most part strong lungs, and being naturally fond of singing, chanted any ribaldry or nonsense that occurred to them, feeling pretty certain that it would not be detected in the general chorus, and not caring much if it were. Many of these voluntaries were sung under the very nose of Lord George Gordon, who, quite ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... termed "the license of camps" had grown very much worse; and we know in what condition Joan of Arc found the army of the King. Blasphemy and ribaldry in every quarter. The noble girl swept away these pests, but the effect of her action was not long-lived. She was the person to reestablish chivalry, which in her found the purity of its now-effaced type; but she died too soon, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... with hooded cloaks of red or tartan—tapped at the windows and shouted insultingly as they passed; but, with pursed lips, Thrums bent fiercely over its wobs, and not an Auld Licht showed outside his door. The day wore on to noon, and still ribaldry was master of the wynds. But there was a change inside the houses. The minister had pulled down his blinds; moody men had left their looms for stools by the fire; there were rumours of a conflict in Andra ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... not to rejoice too soon, when we meet among these men a figure which seems immaculate; on further inquiry there is always a danger of meeting with some foul charge, which, even if it is incredible, still discolors the picture. The mass of indecent Latin poems in circulation, and such things as ribaldry on the subject of one's own family, as in Pontano's dialogue 'Antonius,' did the rest to discredit the class. The sixteenth century was not only familiar with all these ugly symptoms, but had also grown tired of the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... infidelity and the frailty of virgins, which were the sole themes of Restoration comedy. Massinger's heroes are not always gay seducers. His husbands are not always fools. Pepys might quite consistently scorn the ribaldry of Etherege and condone the obscenity of Fletcher. It was a question of degree. Pepys was clear in his own mind that a line must be drawn somewhere, though it would probably have taxed his logical power to ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... spectacle; and Master Teach or one of his acolytes (for my head was too much lost to be precise) remarked upon my pale face in a very alarming manner. I had the strength to cut a step or two of a jig, and cry out some ribaldry, which saved me for that time; but my legs were like water when I must get down into the skiff among these miscreants; and what with my horror of my company and fear of the monstrous billows, it was all I could do to keep an Irish ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Paul's Cross stood in the centre, and just beneath the stone pulpit, where the sermons were wont to be preached, stood a man with a throng round him, declaiming a ballad at the top of his sing-song voice, and causing much loud laughter by some ribaldry about monks and friars. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upon a campaign against the smaller fry of the pen with a vigor, a deadly earnestness, and a determination to wound, unparalleled in the history of letters. One of the most gifted of his critics, the late Rector of Lincoln College, speaks of the "Dunciad" roundly as "an amalgam of dirt, ribaldry, and petty spite," and M. Taine brought against it the more fatal charge of tediousness. But even if one admits the indiscriminate nature of that onslaught which confuses Bentley with such creatures of a day as Ralph and Oldmixon, it is impossible not to admire the surpassing skill ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... the Archbishop of Paris has been sacked, and every object in it demolished. —— told me that the ribaldry and coarse jests of the mob on this occasion were disgusting beyond measure; and that they ceased not to utter the most obscene falsehoods, while they wreaked their vengeance on the property of this venerable prelate, against whom they can ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... whole very fond of the Genoese; they have, it is true, much ribaldry and many vices, but they are a brave and chivalrous people, and have ever been so, and from them I have never experienced aught ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... onlooker says 'Don't revile,' we are too ready to set down that expression of civility as at least the first beginning of true religion. But the religion of Jesus Christ cuts far deeper into the heart of man than to the dividing asunder of justice and injustice, civility and incivility, ribaldry and good manners. And it is always found in the long-run that the cross of Christ and its crucifixion of the human heart goes quite as hard with the gentlemanly-mannered man, the civil and urbane man, as it does with the man of bad behaviour and of brutish manners. 'Civil men,' says Thomas ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... gaze, the fakir recovered confidence and jeered new ribaldry, until some one suddenly shot out from behind Cunningham, and before he had recovered from his surprise he saw the fakir sprawling on his back, howling for mercy, while Mahommed Gunga beat the blood out of him ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... and ill together. Pleasant the Church with fair Mass cloth, No dwelling for Christ's declining To its crystal candles, of bees-wax both, On the pure, white Scriptures shining. Beside it a hostel for all to frequent, Warm with a welcome for each, Where mouths, free of boasting and ribaldry, vent But modest and innocent speech. These aids to support us my husbandry seeks, I name them now without hiding— Salmon and trout and hens and leeks, And the honey-bees' sweet providing. Raiment and food enow will be mine From the King of all ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... for our childhood is not wholly justifiable: so much a man may lay down without fear of public ribaldry; for although we shake our heads over the change, we are not unconscious of the manifold advantages of our new state. What we lose in generous impulse we more than gain in the habit of generously watching others; and the capacity to enjoy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Gobbo, the fact remains that humour is one of the most delicate, the most evasive, and the most unstable of human qualities. I am myself inclined to hold that sheer outrageous ribaldry, especially if graced with an undertone of philosophic irony, is the only kind of humour which is really permanent. To give permanence to any human quality in literature, there must be an appeal to something which is beyond the power of time and change and fashion and custom and ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... in the "Fair Penitent." But the low moral tone of the time is indicated in all these works, in which heroic sentiments, rising often even to religious rapture, are mingled with scenes of the grossest ribaldry. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... doubt that the English sparrows are regular bullies. They do not fight other birds so much as they hector them, making life intolerable by their ribaldry, coarse jests, and prying manners. Some birds, especially many of our beautiful native species, are sensitively organized, and cannot endure such boorish society as the badly bred foreigners furnish. That as much as ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... tongue," said Brand, "thou art like enough to lose it again by slice of knife, talking such ribaldry of dignities. Dost not know"—and he sank his voice—"that Abbot Leofric is Earl Harold's man, and that Harold himself made ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... poets that savor of ribaldry: I will admit the expullcion of such enormities, poetry is dispraised not for the folly that is in it, but for the abuse whiche manye ill Wryters couller by it.[375] I must confess with Aristotle that ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... smirk and eager inquiries with a ceremonious bow, and took his seat by the side of the now delighted Miss Dundas. The vivid spirits of Diana, which she now strove to render peculiarly sparkling, entertained him. When compared with the insipid sameness of her ladyship, or the coarse ribaldry of her son, the mirth of Miss Dundas was ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... another. "You can't read a warrant!" "You let Dondon cheat you!" "You tried to cheat Nincan!" "You want to build a watch-house!" "You have an old ewe at home now, that you did not come honestly by!" "You denied your own hand!"—with other ribaldry still more gross and indecent. But the most singular part of the scene was a number of little boys, dressed in black and white, who all wore badges of the parties to which they belonged, and were provided with a syringe, and two canteens, one filled with rose-water, and the other ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... wasting my time and brains on ribaldry, but I am worth nothing better—at least, I think so at times; but you, who can do anything you put your hand to, what business have you, in the devil's name, to be throwing yourself away on gimcracks and fox- hunting foolery? Heavens! If I had your talents, I'd be—I'd make a name for myself before ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... which is the chief cause of making plays odious to virtuous and modest persons; but he abhorred such writers and their works, and professed himself an enemy to all such as stuffed their scenes with ribaldry, and larded their lines with scurrilous taunts, and jests, so that whatsoever even in the spring of his years he presented upon the private and public theatre, in his autumn and declining age he needed not to to be ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... again, the ribaldry ceased on her approach, and after the religious service she remained inside the walls an hour conversing with those who wished to talk with her, going to all the children that were sick and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... think that, by the coarseness of their ribaldry, they could destroy his well-earned fame? Are learning, sensibility, and taste, no securities to exempt their possessor from this vulgar abuse? Did you ever read, Williams, of a man more gallant, generous, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Lopez, "you are a lady; she is only a common woman. Things would be insults to you which she only laughs at. I cannot allow you to expose yourself to the brutal ribaldry of the ruffians below. If a father had his daughter here, he would lock her up, as I do ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... chronologies,—snapping up unconsidered trifles of anecdote,—tasting some long-interred bon-mot and relishing some disentombed scandal,—pausing over the symphonic prose of Milton, only to run, the next moment, to the Silenian ribaldry of Tom Brown the younger,—and so keeping up a Saturnalia, in which goat-footed sylvans mix with the maidens of Diana, and the party-colored jester shakes his truncheon in the face of Plato. Only in this wild and promiscuous license ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... revilers of great fame for ribaldry was one Marvell. From his youth he lived in all manner of wickedness; and thus, with a singular petulancy from nature, he performed the office of a satirist for the faction, not so much from the quickness of his wit, as from the sourness of his temper. A vagabond, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... permitted the young maids to go in the habit of boys whenever they pleased, which occasioned a world of scandal. He drove out of doors the concubines, or turned them into lawful wives, according to his former method. As for the children, who had no knowledge of God, and who learnt songs of ribaldry and obsceneness as soon as they began to speak, he formed them so well in a little time, that they publicly recited the Christian doctrine, and set up little altars in the streets, about which they sung together the hymns of the Catholic ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... through the country or were attached to the lord's court to amuse the company, were a despised race because of their ribaldry, obscenity, cowardice, and unabashed self-debasement; and their newfangled dances and piping were loathsome to the old court-poets, who accepted the harp alone as an ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... innocent, should be paraded through the streets like a wild beast which it was unsafe to have at large, that he should be exposed to the prying looks of coarse and unfeeling men, and compelled to hear their vile ribaldry, and, finally, compelled to an ignominious punishment, among the vicious, in a workhouse! The disgrace was more than she could bear. It seemed her heart would break. Overcome by her emotions, she left the room, followed by Anne, who partook of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... fierce ribaldry and ghastly mirth, the voice of the dying woman penetrated, speaking more slowly, more distinctly, more terribly than it had ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... considered him almost sternly what time he coldly recited the advantages of this marriage. If he did riot presume to rebuke the ribaldry of his master, neither would he condescend to smile at it. He was too honest ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... enjoyed themselves, ridiculing that young man! For five good minutes they stood there, shouting ribaldry at him, deriding him, mocking him, jeering at him. They peppered him with stale jokes, they even made a few new ones and threw at him. They hurled at him all the private family jokes belonging to our set, and which must have been perfectly unintelligible to him. And then, unable to stand their ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... him. 1. For good books, they might lie in his master's house till they rotted from him, he would not regard to look into them; but contrariwise, would get all the bad and abominable books that he could, as beastly romances, and books full of ribaldry, even such as immediately tended to set all fleshly lusts on fire.[24] True, he durst not be known to have any of these to his master; therefore would he never let them be seen by him, but would keep them in close places, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... who had lost all sense of decency. Such a potion was too strong to be administered even in a time when great license was allowed, and men were not over-nice. But Byron chooses fifty armour-bearers of that class of men who would find indecent ribaldry about a wife a good joke, and talk about the 'artistic merits' of things which we hope would make an honest ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... thought of viler origin. The others continued to give utterance to their mock admiration; and I was glad—as the girl herself appeared to be—when the tent was pitched, and she was able to retire out of reach of their rude ribaldry. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... us pass the jest along the trenches Where, in cold blood, we waited in the trenches, You touched its ribaldry and made it fine. You stood beside us in our pain and weakness. We're glad to think You understand our weakness. Somehow it seems to help ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... in this manner, by several good people of every persuasion; and that[121] and the violent raging of the infection, I suppose, was the occasion that they had abated much of their rudeness for some time before, and were only roused by the spirit of ribaldry and atheism at the clamor which was made when the gentleman was first brought in there, and perhaps were agitated by the same devil when I took upon me to reprove them; though I did it at first with all the calmness, temper, and good manners that I could, which, for a while, they insulted me ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... than of wonder. Thus, on the arrival of the Strathfieldsay (1834), the fair emigrants, 286, most of good character, were indiscreetly landed at high noon: 2,000 persons awaited them on the beach. Their feelings were outraged with ribaldry and insult: they were astounded at their reception, and many wept. The ladies of the colony protected and advanced them; and some, whose want drove them from their native country, remember the day with gratitude when they first pressed the soil of Tasmania. 1,280 females ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... Restoration dramatists thus:— Congreve—Genius 15, Judgment 16, Learning 14, Versification 14; Vanbrugh—14, 15,14,10; Farquhar—15, 15, 10, io. Unlike Goldsmith, unhappily, Farquhar's moral tone is not high; sensuality is confounded with love, ribaldry mistaken for wit The best that can be said of him that he contrasts favourably with his contemporary dramatists; Virtue is not always uninteresting in his pages. He is free from their heartlessness, malignity, and cruelty. The plot ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... at demoralizing the public sentiment. Under a wretched mask of stupid drollery, slavery, war, the social glass, and, in short, all the valuable and time-honoured institutions justly dear to our common humanity and especially to republicans, are made the butt of coarse and senseless ribaldry by this low-minded scribbler. It is time that the respectable and religious portion of our community should be aroused to the alarming inroads of foreign Jacobinism, sansculottism, and infidelity. It is a fearful proof of the wide-spread nature ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... merely with that plodding spirit with which men of adust temperament follow up any track of study, merely because it is denominated learning; indifferent to its intrinsic nature, whether it be the illustration of the wisdom, or of the ribaldry and obscenity of antiquity. He had poured over these old volumes so intensely, that they seemed to have been reflected into his countenance indeed; which, if the face be an index of the mind, might be compared to ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... a snatch of ribaldry that made my foot twitch in my boot. Behind his back, I pocketed the priceless relic, dank and red with my unworthy blood, and followed ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... his smile. She shrinks from the riot and ribaldry that encompass her. She is but a young bride whom the bridegroom has betrayed, and she would fain be alone in the bitterness of her anguish and her humiliation. Why have they come, these creatures who are stamping and reeling round her, these flushed women who clap the cymbals, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Resurrection, to which Sherlock's 'Tryal of the Witnesses' gave both the impulse and the form. Annet, like Woolston, was prosecuted for blasphemy and profanity; and if the secular arm should ever be appealed to in such matters, which is doubtful, he deserved it by the coarse ribaldry of his attacks ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... architecture of the day, and commenting on them in a caustic, colloquial style—large, loose, discursive—a blend of Ruskin, Carlyle and Whitman, yet all Mr. Sullivan's own. He descends, at times, almost to ribaldry, at others he rises to poetic and prophetic heights. This is all a part of his method alternately to shame and inspire his pupil to some sort of creative activity. The syllabus of Mr. Sullivan's scheme, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... beginneth againe his exorcismes, wherein he had not proceeded farre, but up cometh another spirit singing most filthy and baudy songs: every word almost that he spake was nothing but ribaldry. They that were present with one voyce affirmed that devill to be ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... twenty-seven miles, to the garrison house of John Woodcock, within the limits of the present town of Attleborough. Woodcock kept a sort of tavern at what was called the Ten Mile River, which tavern he was enjoined by the court to "keep in good order, that no unruliness or ribaldry be permitted there." He was a man of some consequence, energetic, reckless, and not very scrupulous in regard to the rights of the Indians. An Indian owed him some money. As Woodcock could not collect the debt, he paid himself by going into the Indian's house and taking his ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... consistent with the most lax modern notions of decency. The Court of which he was the centre certainly included a good many persons who might have at once dictated Massinger's most dignified sentiments and enjoyed his worst ribaldry. Such, for example, if Clarendon's character of him be accurate, would have been the supposed 'W. H.,' the elder of the two Earls of Pembroke, with whose family Massinger was so closely connected. But it is only right to add that Massinger's ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... unconcerned. Yet life and movement are instinct in every part, for though the action is consigned to but a few,—these form a series of small climaxes through the entire circumference of the group and we feel in another moment that the passive expressions will in their turn be exchanged for the mad ribaldry of laughter which has seized their brethren. The group is a triumph for several aesthetic realities produced and heightened ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... one only fount of quiet left, And that they poisoned! My pure household gods Were shivered on my hearth, and o'er their shrine Sate grinning Ribaldry and sneering Scorn." ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Rhetoric parolarto, retoriko. Rhetorical elokventa, retorika. Rheumatic reuxmatisma. Rheumatism reuxmatismo. Rhinoceros rinocero. Rhomb rombo. Rhombus rombo. Rhubarb rabarbo. Rhyme rimi. Rhythm ritmo. Rib ripo. Ribald malcxasta, dibocxa. Ribaldry dibocxo—ajxo. Ribbon rubando. Rice rizo. Rich, to grow ricxigxi. Rich ricxa. Riches ricxeco. Rid malembarasi, liberigi. Riddle (sieve) kribrilo. Riddle enigmo, logogrifo. Ride rajdi. Ridge supro, pinto. Ridge (agricul.) sulko. Ridicule moki. Ridiculous ridinda. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... to Coupeau just as if her plan of life was well settled. Meanwhile, Coupeau never forgot his desire to possess her. He made a jest of everything she said, turning it into ribaldry and asking some very direct questions about Lantier. But he proceeded so gaily and which such a smile that she never ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... in our own prisons, and he carefully instructs his hopeful pupils in the best ways of avenging their wrongs upon society. Some in the prison are merry, and enjoy a dance, while others are indulging in obscene jests and ribaldry. Still, there are those that find means to labor and to work at repairing shoes or clothes in the midst of this babel of ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... to ribaldry. Number four contains evidence of the distaste for smoking among the beaux in ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... word, is the best, for the variety and the most excellent continuance of the plot to the very end, that ever I saw, or think ever shall, and all possible, not only to be done in the time, but in most other respects very admittable, and without one word of ribaldry; and the house, by its frequent plaudits, did show their sufficient approbation. So home; with much ado in an hour getting a coach home, and, after writing letters at my office, I went home to supper and to bed, now resolving to set up my rest as to plays till Easter, if not Whitsuntide ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... which ran its course in the immediate neighborhood. Just at the corner of the college grounds was a Methodist Episcopal church, the principal one in New Haven, and, a professional revivalist having begun his work there, the church was soon thronged. Blasphemy and ribaldry were the preacher's great attractions. One of the prayers attributed to him ran as follows: "Come down among us, O Lord! Come straight through the roof; I'll pay for the shingles!" Night after night the galleries ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... the Number in Effecte of all the Proverbes in the English Tunge, 1561." There are more editions of this little volume than Warton has noticed. There is some humour in his narrative, but his metre and his ribaldry are heavy taxes on ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... mere abusiveness, in deliberate quaintness of phrase, in fantastic vapourings and promises of the dreadful things that are going to be done to the enemy. They deal some shrewd hits at the glaring faults of their subject, his outrageous abuse of authorities, his profanity, his ribaldry, his irrelevance; but in point of the three last qualities there is not much to choose between him and them. One line of counter attack they did indeed hit upon, which was followed up for generations with no small success against ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... and habits that were anything but temperate. The more he avoided refined society, the more he found pleasure in dissipation of the lowest kind. 'Melancholy' Burton derived relief and amusement listening to the ribaldry of the bargemen. Turner found these and other solaces, it would seem, in his occasional mysterious absences from home, and indecorous ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook |
