"Tartan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... drink claret and champagne as if we were accustomed to it every day. We have wax candles in the schoolroom, and fires to warm ourselves with. Lady Crawley is made to put on the brightest pea-green in her wardrobe, and my pupils leave off their thick shoes and tight old tartan pelisses, and wear silk stockings and muslin frocks, as fashionable baronets' daughters should. Rose came in yesterday in a sad plight—the Wiltshire sow (an enormous pet of hers) ran her down, and destroyed a most lovely flowered lilac ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mountain climbing they were. Each girl was presented with two pairs of thick, high boots and leather leggins. Ruth insisted that her heavy wool dress be made of the Stuart plaid. She then had a tam o'shanter designed from the same Scotch tartan. But Ruth's proudest possession was a short Norfolk jacket made of the same leather as her leggins, and a knapsack to carry over her shoulders. Attired in her woodland costume, she looked not unlike "Rosalind" in Shakespeare's play, when that maid comes into the woods disguised as ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... which extends to close upon two hundred pages more than its predecessor, has an accurate and well-executed plate of the clan tartan, and a life-like portrait of the Author; has been almost entirely re-written; contains several families omitted from the first; has all been carefully revised; and although not even now absolutely perfect, I believe it is almost as near being so as it is possible for any work which contains ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... nurses, and want and misery were his familiar friends. "It is among the earliest of my recollections," wrote he in 1824, "that I lay in bed one morning during the grievous famine in Britain in 1800-1, while my poor mother took from our large kist the handsome plaid of the tartan of our clan, which in her early life her own hands had spun, and went and sold it for a trifle, to obtain for us a little coarse barley meal, whereof to make our scanty breakfast; and of another time during the same famine when she left me at home crying from hunger, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... lemon-colored fine wool cloth, spotted in pink, upon the head. They manifested a great appreciation of color, but none of form, and after the free dress of the Hucal women, these people, mummied in their red tartan shawls—all hybrid Stewarts, they seemed to me—were merely bright bundles in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... best pleases your palate. The Shaw is one of the most esteemed of the early potatoes for field culture; and the Kidney and Bread-fruit are also good sorts. The Lancashire Pink is also a good potato, and is much cultivated in the neighbourhood of Liverpool. As late or long-keeping potatoes, the Tartan or Red-apple ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... our king's to be blessed with a treat, A balleting one if the Scotch have their nacks, For the papers put forth he's at Perthshire to meet, Dressed in tartan and bonnet, a band of all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... but Mother Fetu transformed, magnificent in a clean white cap, a new gown, and tartan shawl wrapped round her shoulders. Her voice, however, still retained its ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... Munro. He had never presided at a dinner before, he said, and he did it in his own way, which certainly was a taking one, suitable to that carefree company and occasion—a real Scotch occasion, with the Munro tartan everywhere, the table banked with heather, and a wild piper marching up and down in the anteroom, blowing savage airs in honor of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... at the mop, and the Cheap Jack's wife saw them all. The travelling wax-works; the menagerie with a very mangy lion in an appallingly rickety cage; the fat Scotchman, a monster made more horrible to view by a dress of royal Stuart tartan; the penny theatre, and a mermaid ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... now in such garb as is worn by the poorest in the Islands: a short gown of hodden gray, coarse-knitted stockings, and stout shoes. Across her shoulder, for a "turn-over," she wore a faded shawl of Tartan pattern. (The Commandant recognised it for a surplus one which Mrs. Treacher kept in the Barracks kitchen, to wear "against the draughts" on occasions when she helped Archelaus with the cooking.) But most wonderful of all was her hair. By some swift art the heavy coil had been drawn ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... tell you! And now I'm going to Scotland, into the Highlands, to paint a prince who, when he's king, will, no manner of doubt, wear the tartan and make every thane of Glamis thane of Cawdor likewise!... One half the creature's body is an old, childish loyalty, and the other half's ambition. The creature's myself. There are also bars and circles and ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... in the pockets of his polo coat. To his relief he found a small package in one of them, pulled it out. It was wrapped with the city jeweler's tartan paper and he handed it to his mother. She said, "Thanks—I've missed ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... sport an enormous plume of black ostrich-feathers, such as never was worn by any Highland chief, and had a huge tiger-skin sporran to dangle like an apron before innumerable yards of plaid petticoat. The tartan cloak was outrageously hot and voluminous; it was the dog-days, and all these things I was condemned to wear in the midst of a crowd of ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... notes, gathering up all the others and fusing them into a pealing strain, it was electin'. Everybody sang. Old voices, that had not sung for a quarter of a century or more, joined in. It was a furor: Dalgetty swung his tartan cap, Sandy his hat; handkerchiefs were waved, staves rang on the floor. The children, half frightened in spite of their pleasure, ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... were spent there, before a fresh start was made for a cruise through the islands in the region which was now exciting Jack's expectations. Soon after they were passing great heavy-looking junks with their Celestial crews, or light Malay prahus with their swarthy, coffee-coloured sailors in tartan skirts, in whose folds at the waist the formidable wavy dagger known as a kris was worn, the handle, like the butt of a pistol in form, carefully covered by the silk or cotton sarong to ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... be, the grandsons of an admiral in the service of George III. According to the information collected by Baron von Reumont, the joint authors of the Tales of the Century had made themselves conspicuous by their affectation of the Stuart tartan, to which, as Hay Allans, they could have no right; by a certain Stuart make-up (by the help of a Charles I. wig which was once found and mistaken for a bird's-nest by an irreverent Highlander) on the part ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... clothes, which were stretched on him tightly, his short trousers showing the tops of his patched boots, which were several sizes too large for him, and gave him a very ungraceful appearance. He had not even a collar, only an old tartan scarf knotted round his neck, and from the shrunk sleeves of the old jacket his hands, red and bony, appeared abnormally large. But when she looked at his face, at the eyes which looked out from the tangle of his hair, she ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... that it had been remarked among a party of Edinburgh masons that, though regarded as the first of Glasgow stone-cutters, he would find in the eastern capital at least his equals, he attired himself most uncouthly in a long-tailed coat of tartan, and, looking to the life the untamed, untaught, conceited little Celt, he presented himself on Monday morning, armed with a letter of introduction from a Glasgow builder, before the foreman of an Edinburgh squad of masons engaged upon one ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... rebellion in 1745, he presided as Lord High Steward with judicial impartiality at the famous trial of the rebel Lords, and was chiefly responsible for the means taken in the pacification of Scotland, the most questionable of which was the suppression of the tartan! Good fortune, as is usually the case when a man rises to great eminence, played its part in his career. He had friends who early recognised his ability and gave him the opportunities of which he was quick to avail himself. He took the tide at its flood and was led on to fortune; ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... coats with aprons before and behind of fantastic outline, resembling the wings of dragons and griffins, and these coats were an incrusted mass of spangles and pieces of coloured glass. Underneath a skirt of tartan silk was fitfully visible. Their brown legs and feet were bare. The expression of their faces was solemn, not to say lugubrious—one performer had a most whimsical resemblance to Mr. Toole when he is sunk in an abyss of dramatic woe. They realised the responsibilities of their ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... different sorts of studs, and a butterfly brooch, made of various coloured glasses, sat in the centre. His cravat was of a yellow silk with a flowered border, confining gills sharp and pointed that looked up his nostrils; his double-breasted waistcoat was of red and yellow tartan with blue glass post-boy buttons; and his trousers, which were very wide and cut out over the foot of rusty-black chamois-leather opera-boots, were of a broad blue stripe upon a white ground. A curly, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... a white scarf, and the white cockade, adorning Alex, who, with a boot-jack under his arm, looked as tall and as rigid as he possibly could, with a very low bow, which was gracefully returned by a royal personage in a Scottish bonnet, also bearing the white cockade, a tartan scarf, and the blue ribbon. Altogether, Prince Charles Edward and the Baron of Bradwardine stood confessed; the character was solemnly read, and the shoe pulled off, or supposed to be, as the lower screen still remained to cut off the view; and then the Baron indulged ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the clatter of knives and forks allowed a new-comer to enter the kitchen without being immediately observed. It was a tall girl of interesting and vivacious appearance; she wore a dress of tartan, a very small hat trimmed also with tartan and with a red feather, a tippet of brown fur about her shoulders, and a muff of the same material on one of her hands. Her figure was admirable; from the crest of her gracefully poised head to the tip of her well-chosen boot she was, in line and structure, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... British tribes, however, almost none, even amongst these wild woodlanders, were the naked savages, clothed only in blue paint, that they are commonly imagined to have been. On the contrary, they could both weave and spin; and the tartan, with its variegated colours, is described by Caesar's contemporary, Diodorus Siculus, as their distinctive dress, just as one might speak of Highlanders at the present day.[33] Pliny mentions that all the colours used were obtained from native herbs and lichens,[34] ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... the circuit of the hall with a noiseless step, like a bird of night flying in a circle. A black hat, of the hue of charred paper, confined her bandeaux of grizzled hair. From her square, high masculine shoulders, hung a sombre-hued Scotch tartan. When she reached the door, she cast a last glance about the hall, that embraced everyone therein, with the eye of a vulture ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... lay damp on their shoulders. One was a very dark man who might have been a Spaniard but for his blue eyes. The second was a mere boy with a ruddy face and eyes full of dancing merriment. The third was tall and red-haired, tanned of countenance and lean as a greyhound. He wore trews of a tartan which Mr. Lovel, trained in such matters, recognised as that ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... transport, dory, galley, cruiser, ship, barge, bark, brig, bucentaur, skiff, caique, drogher, schooner, cockleshell, vessel, tug, towboat, tow, cog, wangan, ferry-boat, dinghey, argosy, oomiac, junk, longboat, catboat, felucca, cutter, frigate, xebec, tartan, una boat, moses, raft, catamaran, sampan, lifeboat, caravel, trekschuit, masoola, argo, coggle. Associated Words: davits, oar, helm, stern, pilot, rudder, flotilla, navy, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the world for us to do and we could be useful men, honored and respected, if we always did what was right. It was a repetition of Helen Macgregor, in her reply to Osbaldistone in which she threatened to have her prisoners "chopped into as many pieces as there are checks in the tartan." But the reason for the outburst was different. It was not because the occupation suggested was peaceful labor, for we were taught that idleness was disgraceful; but because the suggested occupation ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... delight at finding himself in such good quarters. Robert went to a forsaken press in the room, and brought out an ancient cloak of tartan, of the same form as what is now called an Inverness cape, a blue dress-coat, with plain gilt buttons, which shone even now in the all but darkness, and several other garments, amongst them a kilt, and heaped them over Shargar as he lay on the mattress. He then handed him ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... you were going back again, velis et remis, into the old days of Jacobitism. I must speak my plain mind, Mr. Croftangry. I cannot tell what innovations in Kirk and State may now be proposed, but our fathers were friends to both, as they were settled at the glorious Revolution, and liked a tartan plaid as little as they did a white surplice. I wish to Heaven, all this tartan fever bode well to the Protestant succession and the ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... those mechanical and hushed tones that had at first affected him, 'you must go on to Holyhead alone; go on board the steamer; and if you see a man in tartan trousers and a pink scarf, say to him that all has been put off: if not,' she added, with a sobbing sigh, 'it does not matter. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... among the Protestant lords. Mary then showed herself a heroic queen. At the head of a motley band of soldiery who came at her call—half-clad, uncouth, and savage—she rode into the west, sleeping at night upon the bare ground, sharing the camp food, dressed in plain tartan, but swift and fierce as any eagle. Her spirit ran like fire through the veins of those who followed her. She crushed the insurrection, scattered its leaders, and returned in ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... means of his friend the counsellor, contracted an acquaintance with this gentleman, and, being desirous of seeing some parts of Italy, particularly the carnival at Venice, they set out together from Marseilles in a tartan for Genoa, coasting it all the way, and lying on shore every night. Having shown him what was most remarkable in this city, his friend the abbe was so obliging as to conduct him through Tuscany, and ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... to present a drawing, made expressly for the purpose, of the picturesque costume worn by the Royal Company of Archers, or King's Body Guard of Scotland. This is described in Stark's "Picture of Edinburgh" thus:—"Their uniform is 42nd tartan, with green velvet collar and cuffs, and a Highland bonnet, with feathers; on the front of the bonnet is the cross of St. Andrew, and a gold arrow on the collar of the jacket." There is a something in the very idea of an archer, and in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... smoothness of his chestnut-golden hair, and the lively sparkle of his epigrams were counted to him for good, but the restrained sumptuousness of his waistcoats and cravats were as wasted efforts. If he had habitually smoked cigarettes in a pink coral mouthpiece, or worn spats of Mackenzie tartan, the great heart of the voting- man, and the gush of the paragraph-makers might have been unreservedly his. The art of public life consists to a great extent of knowing exactly where to stop and going ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... indistinguishable at a little distance, and the effect of slowly falling is admirably conveyed. In one instance, where the Spiritual garments were not white, but particolored (the Spirit was a Scotch girl and wore the tartan), the effect of de-materializing was capitally given by the Spirit's standing just inside the slightly parted curtains, and then allowing the whole outer costume, even to the head-dress, to fall swiftly to the floor. ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... spottiness, striae. spectrum, rainbow, iris, tulip, peacock, chameleon, butterfly, tortoise shell; mackerel, mackerel sky; zebra, leopard, cheetah, nacre, ocelot, ophite^, mother-of-pearl, opal, marble. check, plaid, tartan, patchwork; marquetry-, parquetry; mosaic, tesserae^, strigae^; chessboard, checkers, chequers; harlequin; Joseph's coat; tricolor. V. be variegated &c adj.; variegate, stripe, streak, checker, chequer; bespeckle^, speckle; besprinkle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... orphan and dragged off to witness the triumph of Isaac and Rebekah. When the geese had been sufficiently admired, and even poor Keturah's small achievement duly noted, the doctor escaped, and making a wide detour of the tartan shawls, found his way to the grand-stand. Here, seated on the dry pine-needles, under a spreading tree, was a group of three: Malcolm Cameron, with his sister and the ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... Scotland—let me see it ere I die! Oh, my heart is sick and heavy—southern gales are not for me; Though the glens are white with winter, place me there, and set me free; Give me back my trusty comrades—give me back my Highland maid— Nowhere beats the heart so kindly as beneath the tartan plaid! Flora! when thou wert beside me, in the wilds of far Kintail— When the cavern gave us shelter from the blinding sleet and hail— When we lurk'd within the thicket, and, beneath the waning moon, Saw the sentry's bayonet glimmer, heard him chant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... the sovereignty over them 140 I set. On my return to the country of Amanus I ascended. Beams of cedar I cut, 141 I removed, to my city Assur[1] I brought. In my 27th year the chariots of my armies I mustered. Dayan-Assur 142 the Tartan,[2] the Commander of the wide-spreading army, at the head of my army to the country of Armenia I urged, 143 I sent. To Bit-Zamani he descended. Into the low ground to the city of Ammas he went down. The river Arzane he crossed. 144 ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... of Lucknow, Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, Breathed the air to Britons dearest, The air of Auld Lang Syne. O'er the cruel roll of war-drums Rose that sweet and homelike strain; And the tartan clove the turban, As ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... he repaired to Harwich, where he embarked for Holland, from whence he proceeded to Brussels, where he procured a passport from the French king, by virtue of which he travelled to Marseilles, and there took a tartan for Genoa. The first letter Sir Everhard received from him was dated at Florence. Meanwhile the surgeon's prognostic was not altogether verified. Mr. Darnel did not die immediately of his wounds, but he lingered a long time, as it were in the arms ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... "Donald Lean," with fillibeg and tartan-skirted knee; There pale was "Cleveland," as he slept by Stromness' howling sea; With faltering step crept "Trapbois" by, with drooping palsied head, More like a charnel truant stray'd from regions of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... sandy waste stretching away to the misty sea at Budden, four men were walking. Two wore uniform—one an alert, grey-haired general, sharp and brusque in manner, with many war ribbons across his tunic; the other a tall, thin-faced staff captain, who wore the tartan of the Gordon Highlanders. With them were two civilians, both in rough shooting-jackets and breeches, one about forty-five, the other a few ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... dawn, I saw Sir John Johnson riding at the head of his men, his pale hair unpowdered, his heavy, colourless face sunk on his breast. After him, in double file, marched his regiment of Greens; then came more Indians—Owagas, I think—then that shameless villain, McDonald, in bonnet and tartan, and the heavy claymore a-swing on his saddle-bow, and his blue-eyed ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... as 1746, a statute was passed to punish with six months' imprisonment, and on a second offense with seven years' transportation, the Scottish Highlanders, men or boys, who wore their national costume or a tartan plaid, it being conceived to be closely associated with a rebellious disposition. After thirty-six years the statute was repealed. While the act was in force it was evaded by people carrying their clothes in a bag over their shoulders. The prohibition was hateful to all, as impeding their agility ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... employed on some plans which he had taken home from Mr Todd's office, when he was aroused by a knock at the door. On opening it he saw standing before him a tall slight young man, whom he knew by his bonnet and tartan coat to be Scotch, "Does one Donald Morrison live here?" asked the stranger, gazing eagerly at his face. The moment he spoke Donald knew the voice; it was David's, and the brothers' hands ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... letter of the 26th of March, and am exceedingly surprised that the Governor of Messina should presume to interfere in the captures made by a British ship of war. Captain Foley is justifiable in taking the French tartan, although she was going into the port, or even in the port. You will, therefore, claim from him the materials of which the vessel has been plundered; and, at the same time, demand from him what he has done ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... And the riders rode, and the summons Came to the western shore, To the land of the sea and the heather, To Appin and Mamore. It called on all to gather From every scrog and scaur, That loved their fathers' tartan And the ancient game of war. And down the watery valley And up the windy hill, Once more, as in the olden, The pipes were sounding shrill; Again in Highland sunshine The naked steel was bright; And the lads, once more in tartan, Went forth ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who, as the reader may have noticed, had no goodwill to the Highland race. "I will wager on Old Nick, of whom I should know something, he being indeed a worker in the same element with myself, against Catharine on that debate: the devil will have the tartan, that ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... five, six, and even seven times a day. The consequence is that it is necessary to have at hand not only a vast number of naval and military uniforms, but also a diversity of shooting suits, hunting suits, civilian clothes, Tyrolese jaeger costumes, and even the kilt, sporran and tartan of a Highlander, for he is very proud of the fact that Stuart blood flows in his veins, and considers that he is quite as much entitled to wear the Stuart tartan as his uncle, the ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... were repairing the trench-wall. The wars of the Middle Ages could have seen no more strangely costumed fighting men. Above their half-puttees showed the brilliantly plaided tops of their stockings. Their kilts of green and blue tartan were protected by khaki aprons. Each man wore one of the recently issued jerkins, a sleeveless and shapeless coat of rough-tanned sheepskin such as was probably worn, in centuries past, by the English bowmen. On their heads were the "tin ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... accomplished fact, I was impressed, sharply enough, and I went nearer to the crescent, drawn by a sort of dreadful fascination. I found that the cottages all had names. One cottage was Mermaid's Rock; another (which had fluttering window-curtains of Stuart tartan), Spray o' the Sea; another, The Nest; another, Brinynook; and yet another had been named, with less fitness, but in an ampler and to me more interesting spirit, Petworth. I looked from them to the not-yet-converted railway-car. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... pouring in the rays of forty-eight eyes through the back and the front door of the dining-room, while Henry and I and the boss pope signed the contract. The second boss (an old man) wore a kilt (as usual) and a Balmoral bonnet with a little tartan edging and the tails pulled off. I told him that hat belong to my country - Sekotia; and he said, yes, that was the place that he belonged to right enough. And then all the Papists laughed till the woods rang; he was slashing away with a cutlass as ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... carcase of beef brings "the bullock" to grief, And the rush of the tartan is ended; When Archer's in trouble—who's that pulling double, And ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... in Westminster has passed his youth, and, in middle age, is astounded by some neighbourly gossip concerning a mysterious personage who has taken up his quarters in an adjacent mansion. This unknown individual is described as wearing the red tartan, and as having that peculiar look of the eye "which was never in the head of man nor bird but the eagle and Prince Charlie." His name also is given as Captain O'Haleran, so that there can be no difficulty in tracing his history back to the time when the commodore and the mysterious infant sailed ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... walked along. In those days Marjolin wore a big scarlet waistcoat which hung down to his knees; it had belonged to the defunct Monsieur Chantemesse, who had been a cab-driver. Cadine for her part wore a white and blue check gown, made out of an old tartan of Madame Chantemesse's. All the canaries in the garrets of the Latin Quarter knew them; and, as they passed along, repeating their cry, each echoing the other's voice, every ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... one of them, there're as gaudy as a salmon-fly," said Drysdale, feeling the stuff which the obsequious Schloss held out. "But it seems nice stuff, too," he went on; "I shouldn't mind having a couple of waistcoats of it of this pattern;" and he chucked across to Schloss a dark tartan waistcoat which was lying near him. "Have you got the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... people these Lowlanders are!" exclaimed the senior lady—"so different from the brave and noble mountaineers. My brother, the chieftain, is lucky in having such a splendid set of retainers, and the tartan he ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... that he had kept before his eyes for years was not at that moment sufficient. He had dressed himself in his full chieftain's suit to meet them. The eagle's feather in his Glengary gave to his great stature the last grace. The tartan and philibeg, the garters at his knee, the silver buckles at his shoulder, belt, and shoon, the jewelled mull and dirk, had all to these poor fellows in this last hour a proud and sad significance. As he stood on the steps to welcome them, the wind ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... little plain cap, very clean, and trimmed with cherry-colored ribbons, which harmonized wonderfully with her jet-black hair, surrounded her pretty face; a very white collar was turned over her long brown tartan. She carried on her arm a straw basket, and, thanks to her neat and graceful manner of walking, her thick-soled boots were of marvelous cleanliness, although she came, alas, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... with wavy, white hair, bright, blue eyes, straight, delicate features, and hands, the shape and slenderness of which at once pronounced her a psychic. She greeted me with all the stately courtesy of the Old School; my portmanteau was taken upstairs by a solemn-eyed lad in the Macdonald tartan; and the tea bell rang me down to a most appetising repast of strawberries and cream, scones, and delicious buttered toast. I fell in love with my hostess—it would be sheer sacrilege to designate such a divine creature by the vulgar term of "landlady"—at once. When one's impressions ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... totally unnecessary to assume the national raiment of a Scotch, unless I am prepared to stalk after a stag. But why should I be deterred by any cowardly fear from pursuing so constitutionally timid a quadruped? I have therefore commissioned him to manufacture me a petticoat kilt, with a chequered tartan, and other accessories, for when we are going to Rome, it is the mark of politeness to dress in ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... of tartan! O for clear, wild grey eyes! For fingers light as violets, 'Neath branches that the blackbird frets; O for a thistly meadow! O For clear, wild ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... and the spacious sleeves were rolled up at the shoulders and tied with string, revealing a pair of skinny arms. Round his middle hung what was meant to be a kilt—a kilt of home manufacture, which may once have been a tablecloth, for its bold pattern suggested no known clan tartan. He had a massive belt, in which was stuck a broken gully-knife, and round his neck was knotted the remnant of what had once been a silk bandanna. His legs and feet were bare, blue, scratched, and very dirty, and this toes had the prehensile ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... somewhat alike in sound, a confusion that is apt to follow some of us through life. "Matins'' has been mixed up with "pattens,'' and described as something to wear on the feet. Nonconformists are said to be persons who cannot form anything, and a tartan is assumed to be an inhabitant of Tartary. The gods are believed by one boy to live on nectarines, and by another to imbibe ammonia. The same desire to make an unintelligible word express a meaning which has caused the ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... Leave his broadsword, as we found it, Bent and broken with the blow, That, before he died, avenged him On the foremost of the foe. Leave the blood upon his bosom— Wash not off that sacred stain: Let it stiffen on the tartan, Let his wounds unclosed remain, Till the day when he shall show them At the throne of God on high, When the murderer and the murdered ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... wrapping-gown and slippers. When halfway down, she heard a step behind her, and looked round. A Highlander was just two stairs above her: another appeared at the foot of the flight; and more were in the hall. She knew the livery. It was Lovat's tartan. They dragged her downstairs, and into her parlour, where she struggled so violently that she fell against the heavy table, and knocked out two teeth. They fastened down her arms by swathing her with a plaid, tied a cloth over her mouth, threw another over her head, and carried ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... fool he felt himself that night, as he confronted his brilliant image in the glass. A Scot of the Scots, kilted in vivid plaid, a rakish cap on his black hair, a tartan draped across his shoulder, short, heavy stockings clasping his legs and low ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... only the shapes of the mountains, but the kilts and hardy forms of the Albanese,—all, as he says, "carried him back to Morven;" and, in his last fatal expedition, the dress which he himself chiefly wore at Cephalonia was a tartan jacket. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... familiar face at each moment, I could not help feeling struck at the evidence of the desperate battle that so lately had raged there. The whole surface of the hill was one mass of dead and dying, the bearskin of the French grenadier lying side by side with the tartan of the Highlander. Deep furrows in the soil showed the track of the furious cannonade, and the terrible evidences of a bayonet charge were written in the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... head-foreman to a firm of stevedores. He was an office-bearer of the local Scottish Society, talked braid Scots on occasions (though his command of Yankee slang when stimulating his men in the holds was finely complete), and wore a tartan neck-tie that might aptly be called a gathering of ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... still; and over her topknot she wore a rusty black cap that enclosed the keen monkeyish face like a ruff. Her every-day gown was one of coarse brown camlet, any number of years old, darned and patched till it was like a Joseph's coat; and the Rob Roy tartan shawl which she pinned across her bosom hid a state of dilapidation which even she did not care should be seen. She wore a black stuff apron full of fine tones from fruit-stains and fire-scorchings; and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... conclusive argument, brilliant with all the exuberance of an imagination which ranged over all nature for illustrations, and yet managed and applied each of them with the same unerring dexterity, as if that single one had been the study of a whole life. "The tartan beats us," said Mr. Canning; "we have no preaching like that ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... gang-plank idlers and porters with great words, put me grandly in the lead, come gasping at a respectful distance behind, modelling his behavior (as he thought) after that of some flunky of nobility he had once clapped eyes on; and as we thus proceeded up the hill—a dandy in tartan kilt and velvet and a gray ape in slops—he would have a quick word of wrath for any passenger that might chance to jostle me. 'Twas a conspicuous progress, craftily designed, as, long afterwards, I learned; we were not long landed, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... Americans as she did meet, and for the purpose of buying mementos for her relations. She was perpetually adding to her store of articles in tortoise-shell, in mother-of-pearl, in olive-wood, in ivory, in filigree, in tartan lacquer, in mosaic; and she had a collection of Roman scarfs and Venetian beads, which she looked over exhaustively every night before she went to bed. Her conversation bore mainly upon the manner in which she intended to dispose of these accumulations. ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... have me swathe the clamorous tartan In lieu of trousers round my waist, Then they evoke the spirit of the Spartan Inherent in my simple taste; Inexorably I decline To drape the kilt on any hips ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... plaid arranged in a manner which seemed to say, 'I have trustworthy information that that is the way they do it in the Highlands'? Was he not exemplary and very poor, so that I supposed he had no overcoat and his tartan was what he slept under at night? Was he not working very hard still, and wouldn't he be in the natural course, not yet satisfied that he knew enough to launch out? He would be a man of long preparations—Miss Mavis's white face seemed to speak to one of that. It appeared ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... popularly known by the name of Old Rag, being indisposed in a hotel in London, the landlord came to enumerate the good things he had in his larder, to prevail on his guest to eat something. The earl at length, starting suddenly from his couch, and throwing back a tartan night-gown which had covered his singularly grim and ghastly face, replied to his host's courtesy; "Landlord, I think I could eat a morsel of a poor man." Boniface, surprised alike at the extreme ugliness of Lord B.'s countenance, and the nature of the proposal, retreated from the room, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... 'Meseglise way,' wrapped up in a huge Highland plaid which protected me from the rain, and which I was all the more ready to throw over my shoulders because I felt that the stripes of its gaudy tartan scandalised Francoise, whom it was impossible to convince that the colour of one's clothes had nothing whatever to do with one's mourning for the dead, and to whom the grief which we had shewn on my aunt's death was wholly unsatisfactory, since we had ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... mess, where they were keeping Hogmenay. They were playing the old year out with "Auld lang syne," and the Highlander beat the tune out with his hand, and his eyes gleamed out of his rugged face in the dim light, as cairngorms glitter in dark tartan. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... of the brightest shade of green. Her shoes, which were highly polished, had aggressively square toes and enormous steel buckles which flashed in the sunlight as she walked. Her skirt reached half way down the calves of her legs. It was of crimson flannel, made very wide. A green and black tartan shawl was fastened round her with a large Tara brooch which also held in its place a trail of shamrock. Underneath the shawl she had a green silk blouse. It showed very little but it exactly matched her stockings. Her hair was brushed ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... now, as clean's a leek, Ye've cherished me since ye began to speak. Sae, for your pains, I'll mak ye a propine (My mother, rest her saul! she made it fine)— A tartan plaid, spun of good hawslock woo, Scarlet and green the sets, the borders blue, With spraings like gowd and siller crossed with black; I never had it yet upon my back: Weel are ye wordy o' 't, what have sae kind Sed up my reveled doubts ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... thrown on the Prince's private affairs (May 12) by Waters's note of his inability to get a packet of Scottish tartan, sent by Archibald Cameron, out of the hands of the Custom House. It was confiscated as 'of British manufacture.' Again, on May 18, Charles wrote to Mademoiselle Luci, in Paris. She is requested 'de faire avoire une ouvrage de Mr. Fildings, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... he thought he was an old farmer, when he first saw him in his tartan shooting-coat and trowsers, with a bonnet on his head, a plaid over his shoulders, and a thick stick in his hand. Old as he was, however, he could walk many a mile over those heathery hills he loved so well, and not only Norman, but Norman's papa, might have had some ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... 've surely heard of famous Neil, The man who play'd the fiddle weel; He was a heartsome merry chiel', And weel he lo'ed the whisky, O! For e'er since he wore the tartan hose He dearly liket Athole brose![63] And grieved he was, you may suppose, To bid "farewell to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... as it is, our men have to put up with a compromise in the matter of kilts which makes their retention almost ridiculous, i.e., in order to screen his gay attire from the keen eyes behind the Mauser barrels every Highlander wears over the tartan a dingy apron of khaki. The war pictures we occasionally see in illustrated papers of Scotch regiments charging with flying sporrans are probably drawn in England. Even when the apron is used, the khaki jacket, the tartan kilt and the white legs offer a good mark when ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... to him. On the 24th of February a French brig fell into his hands. The same fate was shared by another vessel on the 11th of April, by another on the 13th, and by two others on the 15th. He captured a Spanish tartan and a Spanish privateer on the 4th of May; and on the 13th occurred his celebrated victory over the Gamo—carrying four times the tonnage, six times the number of men, and seven times the weight of shot possessed by the Speedy—which ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... nothing, after all, but a Scotch mist. See, I am dressed for it;" and she threw a tartan cloak over her shoulder—a blue-and-green tartan that I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various |
