"Ballad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forth. Not a word written except interlocutors. But this won't do. I have tow on the rock, and it must be spun off. Let us see our present undertakings. 1. Napoleon. 2. Review Home, Cranbourne Chase,[492] and the Mysteries. 3. Something for that poor faineant Gillies. 4. Essay on Ballad and Song. 5. Something on the modern state of France. These two last for the Prose Works. But ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... willow-twig again and began carving a head of Rudolf at the other end, chatting and laughing, and singing a ballad the while. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sang a drawing-room ballad in which the words "dear heart" seemed to occur with astonishing frequency. Then the entertainment took a ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... lived. Seven centuries have not dimmed the memory of them, or of her. The King was away in a distant part of the country when they sent to him in haste with the message that the queen was dying. The ballad tells of his fears as he sees Dagmar's page coming, and they proved only ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... at each gate of the city. The suspension of civic authority during fair-time was for centuries a source of frequent quarrels. As late as the eighteenth century a ballad-singer was punished by ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... and bright, and rich in fruity treasure, I've heard the blackbird with delight repeat his merry measure; The ballad was a lively one, the tune was loud and cheery, And yet with every setting sun I ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... had gone. Never mind. They were here. We heard quite suddenly the familiar accents of English Tommies in provincial towns of France, and came unexpectedly upon khalfi-clad battalions marching and singing along the country roads. For the first time there rang out in France the foolish ballad which has become by a queer freak the war song of the British Army: "It's a long way to Tipperary," learnt with comical accent by French peasants and French girls, who, in those early days, in the first fine thrill of enthusiasm, sang it emotionally as ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... [An ancient Scottish ballad written in America in 1870, to show how much may be said by the judicious and economical use of a very ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... in three sides of the so-called Peckwater Quadrangle of Christ Church, which were erected after his designs. He bore a great reputation for conviviality, and wrote a humorous Latin version of the popular ballad— ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... traced to an earlier source. To the same year belongs the first version of a poem which he himself regarded as his best work, and which still retains something of its former popularity. This was the ballad of 'Edwin and Angelina', otherwise known as 'The Hermit'. It originated in certain metrical discussions with Percy, then engaged upon his famous 'Reliques of English Poetry'; and in 1765, Goldsmith, who through ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... the town full of lampoons and invectives against Dutchmen, only because they are foreigners, and the king reproached and insulted by insolent pedants, and ballad-making poets, for employing foreigners, and for being a foreigner himself, I confess myself moved by it to remind our nation of their own original, thereby to let them see what a banter is put upon ourselves in it; ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... the castle and brought the harp thence, and the Lady Loise took the harp and tuned it and struck it and played upon it. And the lady sang very sweetly a ballad that she knew Sir ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... many as if the poor farmer was never to have any rest; no sooner were the long wars over and pestilences in some sense diminished, than the evils of enclosure and the dissolution of the monasteries came upon him. Many ills were popularly ascribed to the fall of the monasteries; in an old ballad in Percy's Reliques one of the ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... tone of a powerful, fresh, often uncouth, but very tender popular ballad no other writer of the time displayed like Luther. And whilst seeking to compose or re-arrange hymns for congregational use in church, he now busied himself with the Psalter, paraphrasing its contents in an evangelical spirit and ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... so complex naturally necessitated a fellow having to climb up one hatchway and go down another before he could speak to his chum in the next flat, thus causing one to go through 'sich a getting upstairs' like that mentioned in the celebrated negro ballad. The difference of the deck plan of a modern cruiser, as compared with that of my old ship the Active, was not the only thing I had to learn on being drafted to the Mermaid; for the drills were quite as strange to me at first ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... an illegal and forbidden emblem! A conviction in this case would degrade the symbol of nationality into a badge of faction! To every fevered anxious mind at this moment rose the troubled memories of gloomy times—the "dark and evil days" chronicled in that popular ballad, the music and words of which now seemed to haunt ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... antiquarians; and relics of Charlemagne have since poured in in such numbers from all parts of France, Italy, Germany, and even Denmark, that we are here in hope to see one day established a Museum Charlemagne, by the side of the museums Napoleon and Josephine. A ballad, written in monkish Latin, said to be sung by the daughters and maids of Charlemagne at his Court on great festivities, was addressed to Duroc, by a Danish professor, Cranener, who in return was presented, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... may put out my eyes with a ballad-maker's pen, and hang me up for the sign of blind ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from her size and stature you would expect notes to drown the deep organ. The shake, which most fine singers reserve for the close or cadence, by some unaccountable flexibility, or tremulousness of pipe, she carrieth quite through the composition; so that her time, to a common air or ballad, keeps double motion, like the earth,—running the primary circuit of the tune, and still revolving upon its own axis. The effect, as I said before, when you are used to it, is as agreeable as it is altogether new ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... the ship till pumped out, by reason of her flat bottom, which prevents it from going to the well of the pump; it is always (especially if the ship does not leak) of a dirty colour and disgusting penetrating smell. It seems to have been a sad nuisance in early voyages; and in the earliest sea-ballad known (temp. Hen. VI.) it is thus ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... do not really think the waiter meant to be deliberately offensive; for presently, having first served us with beer which for obvious reasons we did not drink, he stationed himself alongside the infirm piano and rendered a little ballad to the effect that all men were spiders and all women were snakes, and all the World was a green poison; so, right off, I knew what his trouble was, for I had seen many persons just as morbidly affected as himself down in the malaria belt of the United States, where everybody ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... experience, and I have told this story often in the German ballad form to girls of ten and twelve in the high schools in England, I have never found one girl who sympathized with the lady or who failed to appreciate the poetic justice meted out to her in the end by the dignified renunciation ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... Round, Soe famous in those dayes; Whereatt a hundred noble knights And thirty sat alwayes; Who for their deeds and martiall feates, As bookes done yett record, Amongst all other nations Wer feared through the world." Legend of King Arthur (Old Ballad). ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... Poetical Remains of Some of the Scottish Kings, containing "Peblis to the Play," "Christ's Kirk on the Green," "The Gaberlunzie Man," and "Ane Ballad of Good Council," ed. ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom
... subject is not only exceedingly interesting to the student of literature, but also to the student of the general history of the west. There is something very curious in the reproduction here on this new continent of essentially the conditions of ballad-growth which obtained in mediaeval England; including, by the way, sympathy for the outlaw, Jesse James taking the place of Robin Hood. Under modern conditions however, the native ballad is speedily killed ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... of water over the trim grass, and far to the rear a man in rubber boots was hosing off a phaeton before a carriage house. On the back porch, an elderly cook was peeling potatoes and gently crooning some old ballad of Erin. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... is Odin. Indeed, it is here suggested that the name Herne may in some way be connected with one of Odin's titles, Hari, the High One. It was the legend of the Wild Huntsman that inspired Sir Walter Scott to write one of his finest ballads of the mysterious. An Edinburgh friend had perused a ballad by Burger, entitled Lenore, but all he could remember of it were the following four lines: Tramp, tramp, across the land they ride; Splash, splash, across the sea. Hurrah! the dead can ride apace, Dost fear to ride ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... Prayer" and the "Liebestod," and when she was recalled at the end of the concert, she sang Senta's ballad as a bonne bouche, something that the audience had not expected, and would send her friends away more than ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Herder, in his Volkslieder, communicated a popular ballad from this dialect. See Literatur und Kunst, Vol. VII. p. ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... daughter, a maiden young and fair, Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and pride of soft brown hair, The master of the village school, sleek of hair and smooth of tongue, To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a husking-ballad sung. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... favorite melodies which we had often sung in camp, when, as on a pleasant Sunday evening, we were met together in little knots, to mingle our emotions in plaintive song, thinking of dear friends at home. One of these was a simple ballad describing the following incident—one of the most touching of the war. A youthful soldier from the state of Maine died in New Orleans, with none but strangers—as has been the lot of many—to watch over him in his dying hours, or to perform the sad rites of burial. ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... convoy in the Mediterranean against seven Sallee rovers, in which, after a hard engagement lasting four hours, the Mary Rose triumphed decisively without losing a single sail of her convoy. A rude song was made about the action, and the two lines of the ballad, summing up the results, ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... street Plant gardens lined with lilac sweet; Let spouting fountains cool the air, Singing in the sun-baked square; Let statue, picture, park, and hall, Ballad, flag, and festival The past restore, the day adorn, And make ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... end, a miniature stage supporting the orchestra and, temporarily, the gyrations of a lady in a vivacious scarlet costume—mistress of the shopworn contralto—who was "vamping with the feet" the interval between two verses of her ballad. ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... still see them in the Tyrol or the Higher Alps, and coming down thence but once a week, never wanted for illusions in the desert. One child had seen this, some woman had dreamed that. A new saint began to rise. The story went abroad in the shape of a ballad with doggrel rhymes. They sang and danced to it of an evening at the oak by the fountain. The priest, when he came on Sunday to perform service in the woodland chapel, found the legendary chant already in every mouth. He said to himself, "After all, history is good, is edifying.... ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... old popular poetry will recognize, in the principal incident of this story, the subject of the well-known ballad, "The Heir of Linne." ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... of the ballad, which was about a recent double suicide: "The sorrowful ditty of Tamayone and Takejiro,— composed by Tabenaka Yone of Number Fourteen of the Fourth Ward of Nippon-bashi in the South District of the City of Osaka." It had evidently been printed ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... Heaven forbid! But who that knows you have been a single Hour in Wilding's Hands, wou'd not swear you have lost your Maidenhead? And back again I'm sure you dare not go unmarried; that wou'd be a fine History to be sung to your eternal Fame in a Ballad. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... one of his great repeal meetings, of his eloquent speech in the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, and his genial letters to Lucretia Mott, in favor of woman's right to vote. After three cheers for O'Connell, they shouted, "Go on, go on." The Hutchinsons then sang their stirring ballad, "The good time coming." The reception at each booth was respectful, and at the end of the speech or song there followed three hearty cheers for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... rhymes of Bjoernson, such as Killebukken, Lokkeleg and Haren og Raeven ("The Hare and the Fox"), are significant because of the masterly security with which they strike the national key and keep it. Not a word is there that rings false. And with what an exquisite tenderness the elegaic ballad strain is rendered in Venevil and "Hidden Love" (Dulgt Kaerlighed), and the playful in the deliciously girlish roguery of Vidste du bare ("If you only knew"), and the bold dash and ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Saxony, though fancy has not gone so far in his case as in that of the French paladin and the Welsh hero of knight-errantry, for, though he and his predecessor Hermann became favorite characters in German ballad and legend, the romance heroes of that land continued to be the mythical Siegfried and his partly fabulous, partly historical companions of the epical song ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... Robin Hood's Bower, where the maidens collected money for the "ales," and "all went merry as a marriage bell"—rather too merry sometimes, for the ale was strong and the villagers liked it, and the ballad-singer was so merry, and the company so hearty—and was it not all for a good cause, the support of the poor? The character of these festivals deteriorated so much, until at last "church ales" were prohibited altogether, on account of the excess ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... work. He was going to write some Biblical plays; one entitled "Pharaoh" first, and then one called "Ahab and Jezebel," which he pronounced Isabelle. Deeper problems, too, were much in his mind: he was already at work on "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," but before coming to that let me first show how happy the song-bird was and how divinely he sang when the dreadful cage was opened and he was allowed to use his wings in ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... sun. The introduction, a bold, exhorting strain, in grandiose style, full of large intervals, was given with a glorious fervor, and no lark ever carolled more blithely or more at ease than her voice as it soared to F in alt! Benedict's English ballad, 'Take this Lute,' she sang with a simplicity and pathos that won the audience completely; and no part seemed more genuine or more expressive than the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... to Burton major. Old Butt grinned like an owl. He didn't know what I was drivin' at; but King jolly well did. That was really why he hove us out. Ain't you grateful? Now shut up. I'm goin' to write the 'Ballad of ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... grasping in each hand a serried pyramid of brass bells, which chimed merrily as he squatted, leaped, and executed eccentric steps with his feet, while his arms beat time and his fine voice rolled out the solo of a rollicking ballad, to which the rest of the company furnished the chorus as well as their laughter and delighted applause of his efforts permitted. His tightly fitting dark green trousers, tall boots, and jacket of white cloth trimmed with yellow set off ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Ponce and figured by Bonet was common in Spanish almanacs hawked by ballad-mongers upon the streets of Madrid in the days of De l'Epee, and although rejected by him, it was adopted by his pupils. This with slight modifications became the French manual alphabet which was introduced ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... Maldon' is a ballad, containing an account of a fight between the Northmen and the East Saxons under the Aldorman, Byrhtnoth. The incident is mentioned in one MS. of the Chronicle under the date of 991; in another, under the date of 993. The poem is exceedingly graphic. The ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... away" Mr Arnold "fully conjugated in his desk." The poem is in theme and scheme purely Romantic, and "nineteenth century" in its looking back to a simple and pathetic story of the Middle Age—love, bereavement, and pious resignation. It is divided into three parts. The first, in trochaic ballad metre, telling the story, is one of the poet's weakest things. You may oft see as good in Helen Maria Williams and the Delia Cruscans. The second, describing the church where the duke and duchess sleep, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... miscellaneous division of Ballads, Songs, etc., is much more fruitful. "The Leaf and the Fountain," beginning "Tell me, kind seer, I pray thee," though rather long, is singularly good of its kind—the kind of half-narrative ballad. So in a lighter strain is "The Indian Bark." Nor is Moore less at home after his own fashion in the songs from the Anthology. It is true that the same fault which has been found with his Anacreon may be found ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... persisted and Billy finally obliged with what the boys called a pathetic little ballad, entitled: "I Didn't Raise My Dog to be ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... participation; in which every one was commanded to seize and punish all Papists, who, contrary to law, pretended either to carry arms or exercise any act of authority. It may not be unworthy of notice that a merry ballad, called Lillibullero, being at this time published in derision of the Papists and the Irish, it was greedily received by the people, and was sung by all ranks of men, even by the king's army, who were strongly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... women screaming, fiddlers playing, pipes squeeling, youngsters, dancing, hammering up of standings and tents, thumping of restive or lazy animals, the show-man's drum, the lottery-man's speech, the ballad-singer's squall, all come upon us; and lastly, the unheeded sweep of the death-bell, as it tells with sullen tongues that some poor mortal has for ever departed from the cares and amusements, the trade and traffic, of this ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Birkenhead. But because in that Mersey town most of the crowd was sure to be English, wi' a sprinkling o' Irish, the management had suggested that I should leave out my Scottish favorites when I made up my list o' songs. So I began wi' a sentimental ballad, went on wi' an English comic song, and finished with "Calligan-Call-Again," the very successful Irish song I had ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... them, he divined them, and these are the only pieces of color which in the least degree suggest the drawings of this, Rossetti's second period. As far as one can gather, his method was, first, to become interpenetrated with the sentiment of some ballad or passage of emotional poetry, then to meditate on the scene till he saw it clearly before him; then—and this seems to have always been the difficult and tedious part—to draw in the design, and then with triumphant ease to fill in the outlines with radiant color. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... certain strains of the Carolina wren's vigorous lays, but this songster's voice was of a finer quality and had less volume than that of the Carolina. The little bird was found flitting among the pines, and continued to sing his gay little ballad with as much vigor as before. Indeed, my presence seemed to inspire him to redouble his efforts and to sing with more snap and challenge. He acted somewhat like a wren, but was smaller than any species of that family with which I was acquainted, and no part ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... herself in matters culinary, Jeremy and I lighted the forge and got us to work. And very often above the ring and clamour of our hammers would rise the wonder of her voice singing some wild air of the Zingari or plaintive old ballad; so often and so gloriously she sang that at last, as I blew the fire for another heat, Jeremy bade me hush, and silent thus we ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Francisco in the sizzling sixties we catch a glimpse of Mark Twain and his buddy, Steve Gillis, pausing in doorways to sing "The Doleful Ballad of the Neglected Lover," an old piece of uncollected erotica. One morning, when a dog began to howl, Steve awoke "to find his room-mate standing in the door that opened out into a back garden, holding a big revolver, his hand shaking with cold and excitement," ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with the remains of a fortification on its summit, said to have been erected by the Picts; the field of Harlaw, famed in song, where the battle was fought in 1411, in which Donald of the Isles was defeated. There are many traditional ballads and stories relating to Benachie and Noth. There is a ballad called "John O'Benachie" and another, "John O'Rhynie, or Jock O'Noth" and they do not appear in any collection of ancient ballads I have seen. It is said that long "before King Robert rang," two giants inhabited these mountains, and are supposed to be the respective ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... the store at the moment; but from the rear the sobbing tones of a violin took up the strains of "Silver Threads Among the Gold." Janice listened. There seemed, to her ear, a sadder strain than ever in Hopewell's playing of the old ballad. For a time this favorite had been discarded for lighter and brighter melodies, for the little family here on the by-street had been ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... as the manifestation of law is essential to an intelligent hearing of music. The listener should have at least a rudimentary knowledge of musical construction from the simplest ballad to the most complex symphony. Having this knowledge it will be possible to receive undisturbed the impressions music has to give, and to distinguish the trivial and commonplace from the ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... of a Scottish ballad, well known to collectors in that department; and the history of the conversion of the murderess, and of her carriage at her execution, compiled apparently by one of the clergymen of Edinburgh, has been lately printed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... melody rose and fell like the waves on the shore; and Rita would curl herself like a panther in the sun, and murmur with pleasure, and call for more. Then, perhaps, Margaret would sing that lovely ballad of Hogg's, which begins, ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... error, has inadvertently committed another. Monsieur de la Palisse is the hero alluded to in the popular song which was written at the commencement of the eighteenth century by Bernard de la Monnoye, upon the old ballad, composed after the battle ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... take heed to my little ballad, which shall lead you into all virtues. My mistakes I submit ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... ballad of Der Zauberlehrling (L'Apprenti Sorcier) which Dukas so cleverly made into music? There, in the absence of his master, an apprentice set working some magic spells, and so opened sluice-gates that no one could shut; and ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... our discourse, but when we were again alone the conversation returned to poetry, and I told Goethe that I had of late been once more studying his little poems, and had dwelt especially upon two of them, viz., the ballad[20] about the children and the old man, and the "Happy Couple" ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Warrington said, "and a great deal too calm; I've tried 'em." "The monotony of that existence must be to a certain degree melancholy—like the tune of a long ballad; and its harmony grave and gentle, sad and tender: it would be unendurable else. The loneliness of women in the country makes them of necessity soft and sentimental. Leading a life of calm duty, constant routine, mystic reverie—a ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... us. Its episodes had to be reduced to the dimensions of a railway accident or a shipwreck before it could produce any effect on our minds at all. To us the ridiculous bombardments of Scarborough and Ramsgate were colossal tragedies, and the battle of Jutland a mere ballad. The words "after thorough artillery preparation" in the news from the front meant nothing to us; but when our seaside trippers learned that an elderly gentleman at breakfast in a week-end marine hotel had been interrupted by a bomb dropping into his egg-cup, their wrath and horror knew no bounds. ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... during the last two generations, and has discovered methods of trivial elegance which were quite unknown to our forefathers. Here must certainly be said a word in favor of those French forms of verse, all essentially lyrical, such as the ballad, the rondel, the triolet, which have been used so abundantly as to become quite a feature in our lighter literature. These are not, or are but rarely, fitted to bear the burden of high emotion; but their precision, and the deftness ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... the footprints they had lately made, watched the lithe figure tripping to and fro, and, as he looked, murmured to himself the last line of a ballad Debby ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... Cornwall, is Pentargain, a headland called after him "Arthur's Head." Other localities take his name in Brittany. In the Middle Ages, in Germany, Arthur's Courts were buildings in which the patricians assembled. One such still remains at Danzig. There was one anciently at Thorn, about which a ballad and legend exist. Milton was meditating an Arthurian epic in 1639; and in our own day the interest of the legends about King Arthur and his knights has been revived by Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" and some of Wagner's operas. We must not omit to note the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... came not here, I thought if we could find the sea We should be sure to meet him there, And once again might happy be.-Ballad. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other men * have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... scattered all too easily; but the new servants, their words and ways, not only kept his hands full, but gave strange food for thought. The silent evenings, timed by the plash of a frog in a pool, a cry from the river, or the sing-song of a "boy" improvising some endless ballad below-stairs; drowsy noons above the little courtyard, bare and peaceful as a jail; homesick moments at the window, when beyond the stunted orangery, at sunset, the river was struck amazingly from bronze to indigo, or at dawn flashed from pearl-gray ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... her piano and struck into a brilliant strain. For a few moments the music was of a forced and defiant character, loud, gay, but with no real or rollicking mirth in it, and it soon ceased. Then in a sharp contrast came a sad, weird German ballad, and this was real. In its pathos her burdened heart found expression, and whoever listened then would not merely have admired, but would have felt. One song followed another. All the pent-up feeling of the day seemed to find natural flow in the plaintive ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... of his mind he realized he ought to adjust his oxygen flow, but before he brought himself to make the adjustment the surplus took its effect. He began to hum, then to dance awkwardly over the sand. A moment later he was singing a wild space ballad that he thought he had forgotten years before. After ten feet he tripped and went sprawling down in the sand. He lay there, trickling the violet sands through the gloves of his spacesuit, feeling very lightheaded and very foolish all at ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... National poetry I ever read was one compiled by Charles Gavan Duffy—"The Ballad Poetry of Ireland." I should say that this has been one of the most popular books ever issued. There are none of his own songs in this volume. The few he did write are in the "Spirit of the Nation" and other collections. These make us regret he did not write more, for, in ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... back, clapping and laughing. This was as it should be. Fun, youth, gaiety. She went to her easel in the north room, humming Joan's old ballad, and never did better work in her life than ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... the doleful and incongruous love ballad of old lands, and old days, for the absurd reason that the youth of the world in his own land beat in his blood, and because in the night time one of the twinkling stars of heaven had dropped down the sky and become a girl of earth who touched a guitar and taught him ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... heavens, and the sun above gives the same warning that is given here on earth by the flowers and the bright insects of the day. There is a tinge of sadness about the radiance of sunset, and the melody was sad. It was a song widely known in the days of yore, a ballad of love and sorrow that once had served to stir a national hatred of France for England. Beaumarchais, in a later day, had given it back its true poetry by adapting it for the French theatre and putting it into the mouth of a page, who pours out ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... has during this little homily), for suddenly Laurie's ghost seemed to stand before her, a substantial, lifelike ghost, leaning over her with the very look he used to wear when he felt a good deal and didn't like to show it. But, like Jenny in the ballad... ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... volume on "Lyric Declamation: Recitative, Song and Ballad Singing," will be discussed the practical application of these basic principles of Style to the vocal music of the German, French, Italian ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... Chaucer prefixed to the Aldine edition of his poetical works, there is published, for the first time, "a very interesting ballad," "addressed to him by Eustache Deschamps, a contemporary French poet," of which I beg leave to quote the first stanza, in order to give me the opportunity of inquiring the meaning of "la langue Pandras," ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... supernatural as at something wild and barbaric. Such ghosts as presume to steal into poetry are amazingly tame, and even elegant, in their speech and deportment. In Mallet's William and Margaret (1759). which was founded on a scrap of an old ballad out of The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Margaret's wraith rebukes her false lover in a long and dignified oration. But spirits were shy of appearing in an age when they were more likely to be received with banter than with dread. Dr. Johnson expresses the attitude of his age when, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... an inexpressible confusion. He saw himself now forsaken not only by those whom he had trusted and favored most, but even by his own children. And the army was in such distraction that there was not any one body that seemed entirely united and firm to him. A foolish ballad was made at that time treating the papists, and chiefly the Irish, in a very ridiculous manner, which had a burden, said to be Irish words, lero, lero, lilibulero, that made an impression on the army that cannot be well imagined by those ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... evening with Cowper and Mrs. Unwin, cheering Cowper greatly by her liveliness. One evening she told the story of John Gilpin's ride in a way that tickled the poet's fancy, set him laughing when he woke up in the night, and obliged him to turn it next day into ballad rhyme. Mrs. Unwin's son sent it to the Public Advertiser, for the poet's corner. It was printed in that newspaper, and thought no more of until about three years later. Then it was suggested to a popular actor named Henderson, who gave ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... mysterious government, recounted, with a rapid utterance, and in language suited to the popular ear, at the foot of the spars which upheld the conquered banners of Candia, Crete, and the Morea, the ancient triumphs of the Republic; while there, a ballad-singer chanted, to the greedy crowd, the glory and justice of San Marco. Shouts of approbation succeeded each happy allusion to the national renown, and bravos, loud and oft-repeated, were the reward of the agents of the police, whenever they most administered ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the lightest tints of mirth to the sombre shades of tender pathos. The variety of feeling awakened by these lyrics is remarkable—and to say that, is to bear sympathetic testimony to the excellence of each separate piece. Even the beautiful ballad of 'Agnes,' chronicling the loves of Sir Harry Frankland and Agnes Surraige of the Hopkinton Frankland mansion, and which will be deemed one of the most perfect of new ballads of the olden school, does ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... regal splendor which he sometimes displayed, dazzled a people who have much in common with children. Even now, after the lapse of more than fifty years, the natives of India still talk of him as the greatest of the English, and nurses sing children to sleep with a gingling ballad about the fleet horses and richly-caparisoned elephants ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... ticketed him with a quiet mind, and gone on his way complacent. As it is, however, the poet has contrived in virtue of this performance not only to defeat classification but to defy it. For the weird ballad abounds in those very qualities in which Coleridge's poetry with all its merits is most conspicuously deficient, while on the other hand it is wholly free from the faults with which he is most frequently and justly chargeable. One ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... pleasure and a pastime for a nation; it is a source of progress; it elevates and develops the moral nature of men at the same time that it amuses them and stirs them deeply. We have just seen what oaths were taken by the knights and administered by the priests; and now, here is an ancient ballad by Eustache Deschamps, a poet of the fourteenth century, from which it will be seen that poets impressed upon knights the same duties and the same virtues, and that the influence of poetry had the same aim as that ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... their departure at the unfashionable hour of nine, and in the interval engaged themselves in dancing, in games, in listening to brilliant executions on different musical instruments and the rich melody of well-trained voices, in ballad and song, clever repartees and intellectual conversation, while the supper table, laden with all the delicacies procurable, was a continual feast from the opening to the close of the entertainment. The guests were escorted down the avenue by ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... somebody else when I'm in fault; but I suppose my master would never think of doing that, else it's a mighty relief. However, he could eat no tea, and was altogether put out and gloomy. And the little faithful imp-lad, perceiving all this, I suppose, got up like a page in an old ballad, and said he would run for his life across country to Comberford, and see if he could not get there before the bags were made up. So my master gave him the letter, and nothing more was heard of the poor fellow till this morning, for ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of Captain Kidd.—"My name was Captain Kidd as I sailed," are famous lines of an old ballad which was once familiar to our grandfathers. The hapless hero of the same was born about the middle of the seventeenth century, and it is thought, near Greenock, Scotland. He resided at one time in New York, near ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... ballad and two lyrics in a measure differing from that of the rest of the poem. The ballad of the Bailiff Suffren has the swing and movement a sea ballad should possess. The stanza is of six lines, of ten syllables each, with the caesura after the ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... that he had been led round in an exact triangle, for through the green meshes of the trees he caught a glimpse of the lake and a thin blue column of fire-smoke, and then in the surrounding silence he heard Kiddie's well-known voice singing a snatch of a Scots ballad— ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... in nearly all the great musical events in this country during the past four years. She has sung everywhere in London—with the Royal Choral Society at the Albert Hall, at the Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace, at the Ballad Concerts, at the Monday Popular Concerts, at Sir Charles Halle's Concerts, and at Bristol, Chester, Leeds, Birmingham, and other leading towns. As seems to have been the case with most well-dowered musicians, ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... proud spirit—change surprising to all, but as natural as any other of the thousand changes which are produced in the progress of moments by the arch-magician, Love. Heretofore, her song had disdained the ordinary topics of the youthful ballad-monger. She had uttered her apostrophes to the eagle, soaring through the black, billowy masses of the coming thunder-storm; to the lonely but lofty rock, lonely in its loftiness, which no foot travelled but her own; to the silent glooms of the forest—to the majesty of white-bearded ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... one service; he turns novelist late in life when the success of his poetry seems to be over. His early experiments in verse are queerly suggested and full of hazard. It needs a foreign language—German—to encourage him to rhyme. The fascination of Buerger's Lenore is a reflection from English ballad poetry; the reflected image brought out what had been less remarkable in the original. The German devices of terror and wonder are a temptation to Scott; they hang about his path with their monotonous and mechanical jugglery, their horrors made all the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... some possibly inoffensive enough person, whose every word, look or action jars on the nerves. It flashes, too, a brilliant comic light on the natural tendencies of asceticism. Side by side with this poem, under the general name of Camp and Cloister, was published the vigorous and touching little ballad now known as Incident of the French Camp, a stirring lyric of war, such as Browning has always been able, rarely as he has cared, to write. The ringing Cavalier Tunes (so graphically set to music by Sir C. Villiers Stanford) strike the same note; so, too, does ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... expect to find him while thinking of your upper C, you will hit him lightly on the shoulder with your sword, and then he can die to his own particular tune. If you have been severely wounded in battle, or in any other sort of row, and have got to sing a long ballad before you finally expire, you don't want to have to think how a man would really behave who knew he had only got a few minutes to live and was feeling bad about it. The chances are that he would not want to sing at all. The woman who really loved him would ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... under their Eyes. He is now laying the same Snares for the present Generation of Beauties, which he practised on their Mothers. Cottilus, after having made his Applications to more than you meet with in Mr. Cowley's Ballad of Mistresses, was at last smitten with a City Lady of 20,000L. Sterling: but died of old Age before he could bring Matters to bear. Nor must I here omit my worthy Friend Mr. HONEYCOMB, who has often told us in ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... stone pitcher from the bench by the wall she went out, and, sheltered by the ridge of rocks behind which the cottage stood, made her way to the spring which dripped from a crack in the cliffs. While she waited for the pitcher to fill, she sang, in sheer lightness of heart, the old ballad which not only floated on the air of Abersethin and its neighbourhood, but which she had heard her mother sing in the far-off land ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... marriage), though of a high order, and exerted to the utmost, failed to please. Miss Pillbody's thorough knowledge of French, and the higher branches of an elegant education, as well as her proficiency on the piano, and her sweet, simple style of ballad singing, were worse than useless acquirements in ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... he, who despises and defies, and has lampooned the Whigs all round, only invented out of wantonness, and for the sake of annoying me—and he has certainly succeeded, thanks to your circulating this filthy ballad. As for his Lordship's vulgar notions about the mob, they are very fit for the Poet of the Morning Post, and for nobody else. Nothing in the ballad annoyed me but the charge about the Cambridge club, because nothing else had the semblance of truth; and I own it has hurt me very much to find ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... in the drawing-room of the Dark House, with her eyes half closed, as if listening to the ballad Lydia was singing in a low tone in the corner of the back room, while Capel stood by ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... an ancient ballad of the time of good King Arthur, called "The Marriage of Sir Gawaine," which you may some time read yourself, in stout English of early times; and as he sang, all listened to that noble tale of noble knight and his sacrifice to his king. But ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... he alleged many a Scripture, but those I valued not; the Scriptures, thought I, what are they? A dead letter, a little ink and paper, of three or four shillings' price.[39] Alas! What is the Scripture? Give me a ballad, a news-book, George on horseback, or Bevis of Southampton; give me some book that teaches curious arts, that tells of old fables;[40] but for the holy Scriptures I cared not. And as it was with me then, so it is with my brethren now, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Kentucky's soldier poet—and a score of others who won fame, even if some of them lost life—on far different fields. There rare "Ran" Tucker—later famed in Congress and law school—told inimitably the story of "The time the stars fell," or sang the unprecedented ballad of "The Noble Skewball," in his ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... lady to take a 'set to' with him; while Bloody Mike stumbled over the prostrate form of the lady's maid, who occupied a temporary bed upon the floor. Forgetting his assumed part, he yelled out for something to drink, and forthwith began to sing in tones of thunder, the pathetic Hibernian ballad ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... and the hopeful mind might have expected to reach somewhere important by nightfall. I did not expect that; neither, on the other hand, did I expect that after we had gone a mile and only four, as the early ballad would say, that we should pull up and anchor against a small village for the night; but this we did, the captain going ashore to see for cargo, and to ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... is still in her chamber, and, as for the waiting maid, I heard her but five minutes since singing away as if there were no music in the world but her own. Truly, it sounded more like a snatch from some profane ballad than a godly hymn. I will tutor her about this levity. Now do not be angry, dear life," added the dame, whose heart was made more tender, and her tongue more communicative, by the anxieties she had suffered ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... modern trash. They are not at all difficult, and the second player has something to employ his mind besides accompanying chords. They are meaty, and effective almost to the point of catchiness. The "Tale of the Knights" is full of chivalric fire and martial swing, while the "Ballad" is as exquisitely dainty as a peach-blossom. The "Hindoo Maiden" has a deal of the thoroughly Oriental color and feeling that distinguish the three solos of "Les Orientales," of which "Clair de ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... which quickened other germs of what was afterwards to be known as romanticism, brought with it a notable renascence of the ballad. By general consent the first place in the balladry of the time belongs to Brger's Lenore (1774). The uncanny supernaturalism and onomatop[oe]ic word-jingles, which had lent a mysterious fascination to many an old ballad, but had virtually disappeared from the lyric ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... following summer. During this second visit (September 1867) that most spirited ballad of French heroism, Herve Riel, was written, though its publication belongs to four ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... songs,—his happy, cheery melody,—all about the earth, the sky, the sun, the tree he and his mate have chosen to build in,—a song of the little brook where he means to get the water to wet the clay to plaster his nest,—a ballad of the blue eggs it will hold, and the greedy little Robins, all eyes and mouth, that will come out of them. But as he sings something frightens him; then he cries, 'quick! quick! quick!' and hurries away in a rather clumsy fashion. If any one could understand the meaning of all that ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... was "Monk" Lewis. As the author of the Monk and the Tales of Wonder, he not only found his way into the best circles, but had gained a high reputation in the literary world. His poetic talent was undoubted, and he was intimately connected with Walter Scott in his ballad researches. His Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene was recited at the theatres, and wherever he went he found a welcome reception. His West Indian fortune and connections, and his seat in Parliament, gave him access to all the aristocratic circles; from which, however, ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... Bottles arose amid a burst of applause, and began to sing a ballad which had been written in Bristol or Bath in celebration of ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... spirit, seemed clad in translucent garments, like the figures in the Nibelungenlied, weird, remote, glorified. I once lived in the street "for which no rhyme our language yields," next door to a pastry shop that claimed to have furnished the mise en scene for the "Ballad of Bouillabaisse," and I often followed the trail of Louis Dominic Cartouche "down that lonely and crooked byway that, setting forth from a palace yard, led finally to the rear gate of a den of thieves." Ah, well-a-day! I have known my Paris now twice as long as Thackeray knew his Paris, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... brilliant incidents for their songs or ballads, which were chanted at the royal festivals and at the table of the Inca. *8 In this manner, a body of traditional minstrelsy grew up, like the British and Spanish ballad poetry, by means of which the name of many a rude chieftain, that might have perished for want of a chronicler, has been borne down the tide of rustic melody ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... A BALLAD, made by a Gentleman in Ireland, who could not have Access to a Lady whom he went to visit, because the Maid the Night before had over-laid her pretty Bitch. To the Tune of, O ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... a twopenny 'bus, as was my mistaken belief, but quite the reverse—that is to say, the "bandy-legged conductor" of the same vehicle. A gentleman in Ireland was even so obliging as to send me another ballad by Harry Clifton, on the front of which is his portrait and on the back a list of his triumphs—and they make very startling reading, at any rate to me, who have never been versatile. The number of songs alone is appalling: no fewer than thirty to which he had ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... blank verse as the most suitable metre for the translation of a long and dignified narrative poem, as the metre which can most nearly reproduce the strength, the nobility, the variety and rapidity of the original. The ballad measure as used by Lumsden in his translation of Beowulf is monotonous and trivial, while the measure used by Morris and others, and intended as an imitation of the Old English alliterative measure, ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... meal was reserved for the present day, and its most hideous concoction for the writer before us,—who is never so much in his favourite element as when he can "on horror's head horrors accumulate." He assimilates the sluggish sympathies of his readers to those of sailors and vulgar ballad readers, who cannot be excited to an interest in the battle of the Arethusa, unless they learn that "her sails smoaked with brains, and her scuppers ran blood;"—a line which threatens him with formidable competitors from before ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... approaching the scullery. I heard a door open, then a man's voice singing. He was warbling in a fine mellow baritone that popular German ballad: ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... ballad: replaced "feats" with "feasts" in "O rich are the feats" — it appears to ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... sing ballad music," she said, loftily. "Indeed I could not do myself justice in anything this evening. I make it a matter of conscience not to attempt a note unless I am in perfect tune throughout—mentally, spiritually and physically. I should consider it an offence against the noblest of ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... toward the sensational part of the ballad, the place where a real gentleman would quit, but Lightfoot only ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... blindness continue, Salemina," I said, searching for a small lump so as to gain time, "I shall write you a plaintive ballad, buy you a dog, and stand you on a street corner! If you had ever permitted yourself to 'get on' with any man as Francesca is getting on with Mr. Macdonald, you would now ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... an angular and hurried little girl: she is all quips and cranks and wreathed smiles now. And meek, humble-minded Martha, in former days so diffident, blushing and taciturn, has found out the value of a deferential demeanor and the knack of being a good listener, and can sing a ballad with a pathos and dramatic effect that eclipse the highly-embellished performances of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... When Desdemona spoke her last words, perhaps that line of the ballad which she sang an hour before her death was ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... night out the boys noted a change in Al Howard; the third night they asked one another 'what had come over the old man.' For whereas formerly his had always been the gayest voice around the camp fire, his the tongue to spin a yarn or start a cowboy ballad, now he withdrew after a silent supper and threw himself down on the ground and stared at the stars, his thoughts his own behind the locked ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... catastrophe which had changed all their lives, had been well taught under their father's influence; and the former, who had inherited much of his talent and poetical nature, had availed herself of every scanty opportunity of feeding her imagination by book or ballad, story-teller or minstrel; and the store of tales, songs, and fancies that she had accumulated were not only her own chief resource but that of her sisters, in the many long and dreary hours that they had to pass, unbrightened save by the inextinguishable buoyancy of ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would you hear of a Spanish lady, How she woo'd an Englishman? Garments gay, as rich as may be, Decked with jewels she had on. Old Ballad. ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had lifted in his arms at Windsor as he rode out in fatal pomp for Ireland. Three years later, when their marriage was real, she died in childbirth, and it is to her I think that he wrote in his prison the ballad ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... ceremonies over Jesse James's remains drew a great concourse of people, and there were many indications of popular sympathy. Stories of his exploits have had an extensive sale, and his name has become a center of legend and ballad somewhat after the fashion of the medieval ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... fields of literature. The facts of the history lesson will be given an additional attractiveness if the pupil is directed to some well-written biography or drama embodying the same facts, or if the teacher reads or recites to the class some spirited ballad, such as Bonnie Dundee, bearing upon the lesson. The interest in the observations made in nature study will be intensified by reading some nature story written in ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Convention" (Vol. vii., p. 596.).—L. EVANS will find the whole of the ballad of "Bonnie Dundee," the first line of which he quotes, in Sir Walter Scott's Doom of Devorgoil, where it is introduced as a song. Singularly enough, his best ballad is thus ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... pipes filled and lighted, some one would strike up a "chantey"—one of those interminable, monotonous ballad-songs which are peculiar to the ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... crocuses." These two incidents are a key to the working of De Quincey's mind. Waking or sleeping, his intellect had the rare power of using the facts of life as the composer might use a song of the street, building on a wandering ballad a whole symphony of transfigured sound, retaining skillfully, in the midst of the new and majestic music, the winning qualities of the popular strain. To such a boy, with an imaginative mind, an impassioned nature, and a memory which retained and developed ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... a cask, when shaken, if the cask be not full;" and to guggle, as a "straight-necked bottle, when it is emptying;" and yet I am inclined to believe that the word also signifies to swallow, as in England. In the humorous ballad of "Rise up and bar the door," clunk seems to be used in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... striking ballad (together with the yet grander one of the "Fight with the Dragon") amongst those designed to depict and exalt the virtue of Humility. The source of the story is in AEgidius Tschudi—a Swiss chronicler—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... state attended by a hastily-summoned physician. In the fifth Act the play breaks with the narrative of Beaumarchais, which does not supply material for the necessary tragic conclusion, and is based on an old German ballad, with an evident recollection of the scene of Hamlet and Laertes at the grave of Ophelia. While stealing from his house under cover of night, as had been arranged with Carlos, Clavigo passes the Guilberts' door, where he sees three mourners standing with torches in their ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... of exaltation and rejoice with the heir when he comes, upon reversion, into the property from which he has been so long excluded? Mr. Blewitt treats this incident with a sense of romance and picturesqueness of language reminiscent of the ballad of "The Lord of Lynn." In its facts the ballad bears a striking resemblance to those so graphically described by our author, but in point of execution lacks the true breath of poetic inspiration which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... the "Guardian" is wonderful. The Gladstonian tee-to-tum cannot have many more revolutions to make. The only thing left for him now, is to turn Agnostic, declare Homer to be an old bloke of a ballad-monger, and agitate for the prohibition of the study ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... waters done in quicksilver. Whether his evil deeds were interred with his bones, who can say?—certainly his living wives were, and the thousands of living workmen who had built the mausoleum. Ts'innish doings, not Chinese. In the Book of Odes, Confucius preserved a Ts'in ballad mourning over men so buried alive with their ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... willing to depict Hotspur as scorning the arts. When Glendower praises poetry, Hotspur vows he'd "rather be a kitten and cry mew ... than a metre ballad-monger. ..." Nothing sets his teeth on edge "so much as mincing poetry": and a little later he prefers the howling of a dog to music. When he is reproved by Lord Worcester for "defect of manners, want of government, ... pride, haughtiness, disdain," ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... instance, he would write a chanson; In England a six canto quarto tale; In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance on The last war—much the same in Portugal; In Germany, the Pegasus he 'd prance on Would be old Goethe's (see what says De Stael); In Italy he 'd ape the 'Trecentisti;' In Greece, he sing some sort of hymn ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Scawen Blunt, poet, patriot, and breeder of Arab horses, who is a descendant of the Gales, has a long poem entitled "Worth Forest," wherein old Leonard Gale is a notable figure. Among other poems by the lord of Crabbet is the very pleasantly English ballad of ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... ever know a person who met Fortune in that way, whom the goddess did not regard kindly? Are not even bad people won by a constant cheerfulness and a pure and affectionate heart? When the babes in the wood, in the ballad, looked up fondly and trustfully at those notorious rogues whom their uncle had set to make away with the little folks, we all know how one of the rascals relented, and made away with the other—not having the heart to be unkind to so much innocence and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Abbotsford, is a piece of pleasantry, which would have formed an excellent pendent to Sir Walter's Study, in our last; Zadig and Astarte, by Delta, are in the writer's most plaintive strain; the recollections of our happiest years, are harmoniously told in "Boyhood;" a ballad entitled "The Captive of Alhama," dated from Woburn Abbey, and signed R——, is a soul-stirring production, attributed to Lord John Russel; and the Pixies of Devon has the masterly impress of the author of Dartmoor. And last ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... attic ladder (they called it the 'mainmast tree' out of the ballad of Sir Andrew Barton, and Dan 'swarved it with might and main,' as the ballad says) they saw a man sitting on Duck window-sill. He was dressed in a plum-coloured doublet and tight plum-coloured hose, and he drew busily in ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... only the fear of impinging on Mr. Young's copyright that prevents me reprinting the graphic ballad of The Wanderer and the prologue of The Strollers, which reads like a page from the prelude to some Old-World miracle play. The setting of these things is frequently antique, but the thought is the thought of today. I think there is ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... The music was first-class in every respect and nearly every piece was encored. Gilder's Galop de Concert and Orlandini's Largo al Factotum most emphatically so. Mrs. Blake distinguished herself as an accomplished vocalist in Millard's song, When the Tide Comes In, and in the favorite old Scotch ballad, John Anderson, My Joe. It was supposed from the low price that these concerts would be beneath the notice of the high toned dilettanti of the city, but the performance last evening has completely disabused ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson |
