"Breton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... taken and retaken seven times by European enemies in one hundred and sixty years—between 1629 and 1789. Day was when Quebec fortifications cost so much that the King of France wanted to know if they were laid in gold. Before the fall of Quebec in 1759, Louisburg—a forgotten fortress of Cape Breton—was considered one of France's strongholds. Have Canadians forgotten the frightful wreck of the British fleet in the St. Lawrence in 1711 under Sir Havender Walker; or the defeat of the admiralty ships manned by the Hudson's Bay fur-traders up off Port Nelson in 1697 by Lemoyne d' Iberville? ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... his first voyage to the St Lawrence, which he ascended as far as the Lachine Rapids. From 1604 to 1607 was actively engaged in the attempt of De Monts to establish a French colony in Acadia, at the same time exploring the seaboard from Cape Breton to Martha's Vineyard. Returned to the St Lawrence in 1608 and founded Quebec. In 1609 discovered Lake Champlain, and fought his first battle with the Iroquois. In 1613 ascended the Ottawa to a point {2} above Lac Coulange. In 1615 reached Georgian Bay and was induced to accompany ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... great stone and began to knock. "Come in," cried a voice that sounded like the roar of a bull. At the same instant the door opened, and the little Breton found himself in the presence of a giant not less than ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... delicate, pale-faced, spectacled Breton; the second, a vivacious individual from Paris, who, like Henri and Jules, had had the misfortune to be in Germany when the war broke out. Their eager questions were followed by the somewhat phlegmatic ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... Brittany, and never experienced any impulse to enter it. Now that I have done so the chances of my route have placed my entry at Nantes, where the contact of neighbouring provinces may well have modified the Breton characteristics. Yet they seem to me quite pronounced, and scarcely affected even by the vigorous and mercantile activity of this large city. A large and busy city, and yet I feel that I am among a people who are, ineradically, provincial peasants, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... 1696, two ships of war, the "Envieux" and the "Profond," one commanded by Iberville and the other by Bonaventure, sailed from Rochefort to Quebec, where they took on board eighty troops and Canadians; then proceeded to Cape Breton, embarked thirty Micmac Indians, and steered for the St. John. Here they met two British frigates and a provincial tender belonging to Massachusetts. A fight ensued. The forces were very unequal. The "Newport," of twenty-four ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... was a good-natured giant, and he strove to do whatever was required of him. He was not quick at repartee, and the men mocked his Breton dialect. He became the butt for all their small and often mean jokes, and from the first he was very miserable, for, added to his yearning for the sea, whose steady roar he heard in his dreams at night, he felt the utter lack of ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... left Plymouth with five vessels in 1583. The ship that Raleigh sent, the best in the fleet, deserted before they were out of sight of England. One was left in Newfoundland. The wreck of the largest ship, with most of the provisions, off Cape Breton, so discouraged the crews that they prevailed upon Gilbert to abandon the plan to settle on such barren and stormy shores, Gilbert attempted to return on the Squirrel, the smaller of the two remaining vessels. This was a tiny vessel of scarcely ten tons burden. What ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... pursuit of the story of a Breton nobleman of hoped-for ancient lineage that I met with the most disheartening set-back of my experience. The setting of the case was most alluring. The old baron—for he was nothing less, though in ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... north and then west. During several weeks they were forced by variable winds to keep an irregular course, although steadily towards the west. At length, after being fifty-two days at sea, at five o'clock on Saturday morning, June 24, they reached the northern extremity of Cape Breton Island. The royal banner was unfurled, and in solemn form Cabot took possession of the country in the name of King Henry VII. The soil being found fertile and the climate temperate, Cabot was convinced he had reached the north-eastern coast of Asia, whence came the silks ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... affecting entirely to exclude our fishermen from great bodies of water like Fundy, Chaleurs, and Miramichi, however far parts of these might be from shore. This was the famous "headland theory" for defining national waters. They also denied our right to navigate the Gut of Canso, which separates Cape Breton Island from Nova Scotia, thus forcing far out of their nearest course our ships bound for the permitted inshore fisheries. United States fishermen on their part persisted in exploiting the great bays, landed upon the Magdalen Islands, pushed through the Gut, and were ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... degrading action. I was even wretch enough to advise him to break off the match, if that were still possible. My brother, like the honourable man he was, wedded the girl he loved. My sister-in-law, who was a high-spirited Breton, never forgot my letter, and despised its writer. When she lost her husband, and found herself in need, it was long ere she could bring herself to apply to me. But the sight of her only child wasting away from sheer want, had at ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... was a son of the Revolution. He was born, as it were, between the two camps, at a moment when France was the theatre of the greatest popular struggle in modern history, of a mother who was a Breton and a Legitimist, and a father who was a Republican general—an extraordinary combination. This does not seem, however, to have made, as we might think, family life impossible, for Madame Hugo and her children followed the drum, and, notwithstanding ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... and then go to Algeria, are struck with the resemblance between the ancient Armoricans (the Bretons) and the Cabyles (of Algiers). In fact, the moral and physical character is identical. The Breton of pure blood has a long head, light yellow complexion of bistre tinge, eyes black or brown, stature short, and the black hair of the Cabyle. Like him, he instinctively hates strangers; in both are the same perverseness and obstinacy, same endurance of fatigue, same love of independence, same ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... the Franch brigue of war Vestale; and I am Jules Le Breton, her first leeftant, at your serveece. Are you le capitaine ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... billiard-room, a handsome apartment. Its walls were covered with beautiful frescoes, betraying the French school of art in the delicate colours, and in the Norman, Basque, Breton, and Kabyle scenes and types represented. Of Hungary I could see nothing. The Hortobagy herdsman's hovel, of which my host had spoken, ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... [Footnote 1: Gwask, in Breton, is contraction, and at Tarascon the river is drawn together by the opposed points of Beaucaire and Tarascon. This may perhaps ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... cases it has been found possible to confine and cultivate coast sand-hills, even without preliminary forestal plantation. Thus, in the vicinity of Cap Breton in France, a peculiar process is successfully employed, both for preventing the drifting of dunes, and for rendering the sands themselves immediately productive; but this method is applicable only in exceptional cases of favorable climate ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... Island of Cape Breton, the North American Squadron in 1746 lost so many men through the seductions practised by New England skippers frequenting that port, that Townsend, the admiral in command, indited a strongly worded protest to Shirley, then Governor of Massachusetts; but the latter, though deploring the "vile behaviour" ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... ordinary Spaniard of to-day speaks a Romance dialect, he is mainly of Celto-Iberian blood; and though most Mexicans and Peruvians speak Spanish, yet the great majority of them trace their descent back to the subjects of Montezuma and the Incas. Moreover, exactly as in Europe little ethnic islands of Breton and Basque stock have remained unaffected by the Romance flood, so in America there are large communities where the inhabitants keep unchanged the speech and the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... in his mouth, began to chew it as leisurely as though he were walking the quarter-deck. The cool insouciance of such a proceeding amused me much, and I resolved to draw him out a little. His strong, broad Breton features, his deep voice, his dry, blunt manner, were all in admirable keeping with ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... accounted for his so doing by remarking that he had not come to sea till he was nearly grown up, and had during peace time served on board a French merchant vessel. "We Jersey men," he added, "though our sympathies are thoroughly English, yet retain, as you know, the language and customs of our Breton ancestors." ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... and bird's-eye views of Caen, which I saw in the collection of DE BOZE at the Royal Library at Paris, there is one accompanied by three pages of printed description, which begins with the lines of Guillaume Breton "Villa potens, opulenta, situ spatiosa decora." See First Edition, vol. i. p. 274. Evelyn, in 1644, thus describes the town of Caen. "The whole town is handsomely built of that excellent stone so well knowne by that name in England. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... coverts;—but when now Their cheeks were flush'd, and over each hot brow, Under the feather'd hats of the sweet pair, In blinding masses shower'd the golden hair— Then Iseult call'd them to her, and the three 35 Cluster'd under the holly-screen, and she Told them an old-world Breton ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... Henry II. and Fair Rosamond, and he certainly deserves the gratitude of the literary world for discovering and fostering her wonderful talent. Born probably in Brittany, her life and works identified her with the English. She was familiar with the Breton tongue, and also with Latin. Her first production was a set of lays in French verse, that met with instant popularity throughout England. The courts of the nobles reechoed with her praises, and ladies as well as knights were never weary of listening to her songs. Twelve of them are now in ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... thoughts wandering among caverns whose walls blaze with ragged masses of virgin silver? What was it in the roar and turmoil of Broadway at six o'clock that flashed before my eyes the picture of a still Breton forest where sunlight filtered through spring foliage and Sylvia bent, half curiously, half tenderly, over a small green lizard, murmuring: "To think that this also is ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... wondered very much who he was. His good looks had almost startled her. She began also to wonder what Garstin had thought of him. Garstin seldom painted men. But he did so now and then. Two of his finest portraits were of men: one a Breton fisherman who looked like an apache of the sea, the other a Spanish bullfighter dressed in his Sunday clothes with the book of the Mass in his hand. Miss Van Tuyn had seen them both. She now found herself wishing that Garstin ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... Africa, Asia, the isles of the Pacific, were the usual scenes of his dramas. Finally from France itself, and from the oldest provinces of France, he drew subject-matter for two of his novels, An Iceland Fisherman and Ramuntcho. This proved a surprise. Our Breton sailors and our Basque mountaineers were not less foreign to the Parisian drawing-room than was Aziyade or the little Rahahu. One claimed to have a knowledge of Brittany, or of the Pyrenees, because one had visited Dinard or Biarritz; while in reality neither Tahiti nor the Isle of ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... the subterranean passage, and reappeared a couple of minutes later leading a man easily recognized by his costume as a peasant, and by his square head with its shock of red hair for a Breton. He advanced in the centre of the circle without appearing in the least intimidated, fixing his eyes on each of the monks in turn, and waiting until one of these twelve granite statues should break silence. The president was the first to speak ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Breton, and Norman, fishermen are believed to have made their voyages as early as the year 1504, just 100 years before Champlain entered the mouth of the St. John river. But these early navigators were too intent upon their own immediate ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... thought my godfather, kind Master Breton," said Annis, thoughtfully. "For he hath written that it is the duty of Christians to rejoice for the remembrance of Christ and for the maintenance of good-fellowship. 'I hold it,' he hath said, 'a memory of the Heaven's love ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... (No. 19. p. 302.).—"My mind to me a kingdom is" will be found to be of much earlier date than Nicholas Breton. Percy partly printed it from William Byrds's Psalmes, Sonets, and Songs of Sadnes (no date, but 1588 according to Ames), with some additions and improvements (?) from a B.L. copy in the Pepysian collection. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... enjoining him at the same time to observe the liberties and customs of the citizens, and for the next thirteen years (1285-1298) the city continued to be governed by a warden in the person of Sandwich or of John le Breton, whilst the sheriffs were sometimes appointed by the Exchequer and sometimes chosen by ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... New Jersey, the Norwegian, the Swede, and the Transvaal Boer, are generalized about, for example, as Teutonic, while the short, dark, cunning sort of Welshman, the tall and generous Highlander, the miscellaneous Irish, the square-headed Breton, and any sort of Cornwall peasant are Kelts within the meaning of this oil-lamp anthropology.[44] People who believe in this sort of thing are not the sort of people that one attempts to convert by a set argument. One need ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... my young cousin (or aunt, after the Breton fashion), Edmee de Mauprat, the daughter of M. Hubert, my great-uncle (again in the Breton fashion), known as the Chevalier—he who had sought release from the Order of Malta that he might marry, though already somewhat advanced in years. My cousin was the same age as myself; at least, there ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... 1878, colt 206 ff., M. Luzel gives a Breton version, under the title of "Les Trois Filles du Boulanger; ou, L'Eau qui dense, la Pomme qui chante, et l'Oiseau de Verite," which does not appear to have been derived from Galland's story, although it corresponds with it closely ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... in the Isle of Cape Breton, at the habitation of Monsr. Denier, where wee delivered some merchandizes for some Originack skins; from thence to Camseau where every day wee were threatned to be burned by the french; but God be thanked, wee escaped from their hands by avoiding ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... the smackmen. Lobsters ought not to be kept in a well longer than a few days. A friend of mine started out from Halifax with ten thousand pounds of Cape Breton lobsters. He got caught in a gale of wind and lost forty-seven hundred pounds before he landed in Boston. Some years ago a Maine dealer put one hundred and five thousand lobsters in a pound during May ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... superiority of taste and intelligence which it was the fashion to ascribe to the inhabitants of that city were wholly imaginary; and that the nation would never enjoy a really good government till the Alsatian people, the Breton people, the people of Bearn, the people of Provence, should have each an independent existence, and laws suited to its own tastes and habits. These communities he proposed to unite by a tie similar to that which binds together the grave Puritans of Connecticut and the dissolute slave-drivers ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Vikings to harry other lands in like manner drove the Normans to piratical plundering up and down the English Channel, and, when they had settled in England, led to continual sea-fights in the Channel between English and French, hardy Kentish and Norman, or Cornish and Breton, sailors, with a common strain of fighting blood, and a common love of ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... Charleville, Ardennes, in 1878. Pupil of Gabriel Thurner, Benjamin-Constant, Jean Paul Laurens, and Victor Marec. Her principal works are "Maree"—Fish—1899, purchased for the lottery of the International Exposition at Lille; "Breton Interior," purchased by the Society of the Friends of the Arts, at Nantes; "Mother Closmadenc Dressing Fish," in the Museum of Brest; "Interior of a Kitchen at Mont," purchased by the Government; "Portrait of my Grandmother," which obtained honorable mention; "At the Corner of ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... Britain from America and from India; and the exhaustion of both had led to a perfunctory compact, in which the underlying contention was substantially ignored in order to reach formal agreement. That the French conquest of Madras, in India, was yielded in exchange for Louisburg and Cape Breton Island, which the American colonists had won for England, typifies concisely the status quo to which both parties were willing momentarily to revert, while they took breath before the inevitable renewal of the strife, with added fury, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... said: "Know ye my faithful servants, wherefore I weep thus bitterly? I fear not these wretched pirates, but I am afflicted that they should dare to approach these shores, and sorely do grieve when I foresee what evil they will work on my sons and on my people." His courtiers deemed they were Breton or Saracen pirates, but the emperor knew better. They were the terrible Northmen, soon to prove a bloodier scourge to Gaul than Hun or Goth or Saracen; and to meet them Charlemagne left an empire ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... cleared her throat and produced a reassuring smile. "Didn't Herve tell you the story of Kerfol? An ancestor of his was mixed up in it. You know every Breton house has its ghost-story; and some of ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... French sailor who did not look more than seventeen, and was splashed all over with blood from having fallen in one of the worst places, kept striking them two and three at a time, and cursing them in fluent Breton, in the hope of bringing them to reason. "Eh bien, mes belles! Vous ne finissez pas," he ended despairingly, and rushed off again to see whether he could ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... sat with Mrs. Bargrave, which was some hours, she recollected fresh sayings of Mrs. Veal. And one material thing more she told Mrs. Bargrave, that old Mr. Breton allowed Mrs. Veal ten pounds a year; which was a secret, and unknown to Mrs. Bargrave, till Mrs. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... even to-day, a girl-baby is often looked upon with disfavor. This has been true in all times, and there are numerous examples to show that this aversion existed in ancient India, in Greece and Sparta, and at Rome. The feudal practices of mediaeval Europe were certainly based upon it, and the Breton peasant of to-day expresses the same idea somewhat bluntly when he says by way of explanation, after the birth of a daughter: Ma femme a fait une fausse couche. Conscious as all must be of this widespread sentiment at the present time, it will not be difficult to imagine what ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... when they separated jerkily and became the hazy but definable figures of men in rough seaman's clothes. Johnny had never heard Breton French before; in his dazed condition the apparently insane gabble might well have been the tongue of another world and gave him little assurance. He hurt so badly and so generally that he could not have determined that he was ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... humpback in our story may be some saint in disguise, though the narrator does not say so. The gold-producing animal is not always an ass, either: it may be a ram (as in the Norse and Czech versions), a sheep (Magyar, Polish, Lithuanian), a horse (Venetian), a mule (Breton), a he-goat (Lithuanian, Norwegian), a she-goat (Austrian), a cock (Oldenburg), or a hen (Tyrolese, Irish). ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... had been pointed out to him as an able nurse, and placed their charge in her care—the ex-convict obeying her lightest sign and giving little trouble, suffering himself to be led to some nook or other at the foot of the high cliffs, where he would sit down, watched by his attendant—the Breton woman—while Brettison busied ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... unless one has the figure——" she glanced at Fouchette doubtfully. "I'm getting too stout for anything but Roman mothers, Breton peasants, etc. You're too thin even for ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... could have brought that ship through those rocks like that. I wonder who it is? A Guernsey man for sure!" [A very similar story is told of Sir James Saumarez in the Crescent off Vazin Bay in Guernsey. His pilot was Jean Breton, who received a large gold ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... however, was opposed alike to the interests of Maximilian, of the Spanish monarchs, and of England. To the former two, any further acquisition of power by France was a possible menace. To the last, France was traditionally the enemy, and if Breton ports became French ports, the strength of France in the Channel would be almost doubled. Henry personally was under great obligations both to France and to Brittany, especially to France; but political exigencies ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... is not too faulty so that recovery may be expected, good results are obtained by line-firing the tendons and allowing the subject a few months' rest. In some cases median neurectomy is advisable. This is recommended by Breton[25] as being productive of good results even where contraction of tendons exists ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... accompanied by Madame Le Breton, Metternich and Nigra started for the Pavilion de Flore, passing through the Galerie de Musee and the Galerie d'Apollon, finally leaving by the gate of the Louvre, which is opposite Saint ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... under Mount Royal, an entrance was secured into the heart of Montreal. Nova Scotia did its part by lending money to another Mackenzie and Mann enterprise, the Halifax and South-western. The Inverness Railway in Cape Breton and the Nova Scotia Central with minor lines were built or acquired, giving the {189} Canadian Northern first place in ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... rapidly declining regional dialects and languages (Provencal, Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... M. le Breton has suggested that Madame de Berny is Catherine in La Derniere Fee, Madame d'Aiglemont in La Femme de trente Ans, and Madame de Beauseant in La Femme abandonnee, and has strengthened this last statement by pointing out that Gaston de Nueil came to Madame ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... across the Breton country, Fabled centuries ago, Riding from the black sea border, Came the squadrons of ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... an unusual thing to see birds in the Breton churches; many live there and fasten their nests to the stones of the nave; they are never disturbed. When it rains, they all gather in the church, but as soon as the sun pierces the clouds and the ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... to Matthieu de Mauny, Abbe des Noyers. Address to the reader. Belleforest's continuation begins with head-title at sig. t 6, preceded by commendatory verses by Belleforest 'Au seigneur de Launay Breton' (i.e. Boisteau). Epistle dedicatory by Belleforest to Charles Maximilian, due d'Orleans. Table of the whole eighteen histories at the end. The six novels translated by Boisteau appeared in 1559, and the same year saw the publication of the continuation ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... tropical world that it is high time we should begin in return to learn somewhat about fetiches and fustic, Jamaica and jaggery, bananas and Buddhism. We know too little still about our colonies and dependencies. 'Cape Breton an island!' cried King George's Minister, the Duke of Newcastle, in the well-known story, 'Cape Breton an island! Why, so it is! God bless my soul! I must go and tell the King that Cape Breton's an island.' That was a hundred years ago; but only the other day the Board of Trade placarded ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... turn would the war take then? Would the French and Russians carry it on without her? The King of Prussia, and the Prince of Brunswick, would soon sweep them out of Germany. By this time, too, I believe, the French are entertained in America with the loss of Cape Breton; and, in consequence of that, Quebec; for we have a force there equal to both those undertakings, and officers there, now, that will execute what Lord L———never would so much as attempt. His appointments were too considerable to let him do anything ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... invading force. Nay, once on a time the French had actually forced this very spot. A short way up the valley behind the cove stood a mill; and of that mill this story was told. About the time of the Wars of the Roses, the miller there gave entertainment to a fellow-miller from the Breton coast opposite, who had crossed over—or so he pretended— to learn by what art the English ground finer corn than the French. Coming by hazard to this mill above Talland, he was well entertained ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... know a novel of Balzac, belonging to the "Celibataires" series, called Pierrette? It is not one of Balzac's masterpieces, but it has points of much interest for us. It is the story of an orphaned Breton girl, a sweet, innocent child, who is suddenly snatched away, by her evil star, from the grandparents who adore her, and transferred to the care of an aunt and uncle. Monsieur Rogron and his sister Sylvia. A hard, ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... accurately, had he written it. He had in fact patched together a few artless scenes from an old Miracle Play— The Life of Saint Meriadoc—discovered by him in the Venables Library; and had tinkered out some rhymes (the book being a prose translation from the Breton original). "A poor thing," then, and very little of it his own—but Miss Champernowne opined that it would be a novelty, while the children enjoyed the rehearsals, and looked forward to the ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... absorbed in the Scots; and unfortunately, through the fact that no written literature survived to preserve it, that language has almost entirely disappeared. The better opinion is that it was more closely akin to Welsh and Breton than to Erse or Gaelic, the Welsh and the Picts being termed "P" Celts, and the other races "Q" Celts, because in words of the same meaning the Welsh used "P" where the Gaelic speaking Celt used the hard "C". For ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... German trenches when the explosion of a German mine between the lines cut their gallery, leaving them imprisoned in a space eight feet long. This happened at ten in the morning. They determined to dig toward the surface and encouraged each other by singing Breton songs in low tones while they worked. The air became foul and they were almost suffocated. Their candles went out and left them to burrow in absolute darkness. After hours of intense labor the appearance of a glowworm told them that they were ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... exceptionally capable of producing a true and vivid description of Brittany. He has lived and painted there for many years. Every aspect of the country has been faithfully depicted by him; every mood of Breton life, every trait of character. Whether it is a pig-market that is portrayed, or a dignified Breton surrounded by his household gods of oak and blue china in the atmosphere of his own home—whether it is a fleet of fishing boats hung with cobalt-blue nets, or group of mediaeval houses in ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... when Tebets, an American, and Gisborne, an English engineer, formed the Electric Telegraph Company of Newfoundland, and laid down twelve miles of cable between Cape Breton and Nova Scotia. This company was shortly afterward dissolved, and its property transferred to the Telegraphic Company of New York, Newfoundland and London, founded by Cyrus W. Field, and who in 1854 obtained an extension of the monopoly from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... most terrible chapters in the book of Job as intended for a description of the Flood, which in all probability Job had from Noah himself. Again, Rowland Jones tried to prove that Celtic was the primitive tongue, and that it passed through Babel unharmed. Still another effect was made by a Breton to prove that all languages took their rise in the language of Brittany. All was chaos. There was much wrangling, but little earnest controversy. Here and there theologians were calling out frantically, beseeching the Church to save the old doctrine as "essential to the truth of Scripture"; ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... to him the enigma. Falgier communicated the information he had received to the English Government, but represented the situation of the island so erroneously, that it passed for a new discovery, till the English frigate Breton, in the year 1814, on her voyage from the Marquesas to the coast of Chili, also touched at the Pitcairn Island, which from the account of its discoverer Carteret, they considered uninhabited. The ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... widespread popularity. It was four times within the same century translated into French verse, the most famous of these renderings being the version of Wace, called Le Brut, which makes some addition to Geoffrey's original, gathered from Breton sources. In the same century, too, Chretien de Troyes, the foremost of Arthurian poets, composed ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... of Goidelic speech—Irish, Manx, Gaelic, and that of the continental Goidels—preserved the q sound; those of Gallo-Brythonic speech—Gaulish, Breton, Welsh, Cornish—changed q into p. The speech of the Picts, perhaps connected with the Pictones of Gaul, also had this p sound. Who, then, were the Picts? According to Professor Rh[^y]s they were pre-Aryans,[29] but they must ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... consisted of six thousand provincials, and eight hundred seamen, and a combined naval force of near seven hundred guns. The troops landed, and laid siege to the town. The garrison of the fortifications of Louisburg consisted of six hundred regulars and one thousand Breton militia, or, according to some writers, of only twelve hundred men in all. The armament of these works was one hundred and one cannon, seventy-six swivels, and six mortars. Auxiliary to the main works were an island-battery of thirty twenty-two-pounders, and a battery on the main land armed with ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... lashed out at the Breton squire, and Sholto's axe striking fair on his steel cap, Poitou fell senseless across the ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Breton? The lord of the eastern mountain-chain, And the good late duke of Alencon? Even with ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... replaced his son in the command of the brig. None of the comrades of Louis Cornbutte failed to respond to his call, and there were hardy tars among them,—Alaine Turquiette, Fidele Misonne the carpenter, Penellan the Breton, who replaced Pierre Nouquet as helmsman, and Gradlin, Aupic, and Gervique, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... suspected of highway robberies; particularly on one occasion, when his associate, F—, was shot dead by Col. P— on his return from the Curragh races to the town of Naas. The Marquis of Hertford, Lords Derby and Cremorne, Colonels Bishopp and Wollaston, and Messrs Whitbread, Breton, &c., ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... learn other tales of their favourite knights, for Normandy bordered on Brittany, the home of the Bretons, who, being of the same race as the Welsh, honoured the same heroes in their legends. So in return for Geoffrey's tales, Breton stories, perhaps, found their way into England; at all events, marvellous romances of King Arthur and his Round Table were soon being told in England, in France, in Germany ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... "received the name of Chancellor's Lane in the time of Edward I. The way was so foul and miry that John le Breton, Custos of London, and the Bishop of Chichester, kept bars with staples across it to prevent carts from passing. The roadway was repaired in the reign of Edward III., and acquired its present name under his ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... tell the story of a Frenchman, which I think will interest the party," said the professor. "Claude Martine was a Breton soldier who went with his regiment to Pondicherry, the principal French settlement in India, which has been tossed back and forth between the English, Dutch, and French like a shuttlecock, but has been in possession of my country ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... heard her stepfather declaim two stanzas of poetry in Welsh, to the grinning astonishment of a small group of English tourists and the great interest of a Welshman, who asked Borrow if he were a Breton. ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... majestic stream which Jacques Cartier, sixty-eight years before, christened in honour of the grilled St. Lawrence. The vessels are of French build, and have evidently just arrived from France. They are of very diminutive size for an ocean voyage, but are manned by hardy Breton mariners for whom the tempestuous Atlantic has no terrors. They are commanded by an enterprising merchant-sailor of St. Malo, who is desirous of pushing his fortunes by means of the fur trade, and who, with that end in view, has already more than once navigated the St. Lawrence ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... clearing the land; with intent, as I suppose, to make one of the Breton ports. But about six leagues from the French coast a tempest overtook us from the north-east and drove us beyond Channel, and lasted with fury for twelve days, all of which time we ran before it, until on the fourteenth day we sighted land where never we looked to find any, and came ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... to their seaside home at Sainte-Marie, near Pornic—the Breton "wild little place" which Browning knew and loved so well. "Close to the sea—a hamlet of a dozen houses, perfectly lonely—one may walk on the edge of the low rocks by the sea for miles. I feel out of the earth sometimes as I sit ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... contempt of the Saxons. His father's marriage had been viewed as a MESALLIANCE, and though the knight of Maisonforte had been honourable and kindly, and the Lady Elftrud had fared better than many a Saxon bride, still the French and the Breton dames of the neighbourhood had looked down on her, and the retainers had taught her son to look on the English race as swine, boors, and churls, ignorant of all gentle arts, of skill ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his day, was forty years old when the "Vie de Jesus," his most popular book, appeared as the first volume of a "History of the Origins of Christianity." He was born at Treguier in Brittany, France, Feb. 27, 1823, a Breton through his father and a Gascon through his mother. Educated for the Church, under priestly tutelage, he specialised in the study of Oriental languages, with the result that he found it impossible to accept the traditional view of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... might manage to hobble down to the shore, and sit on the sun-baked rocks. Even Mademoiselle could surely find no fault with this. And she might possibly find someone to talk to. She was so fond of talking, and it was a perpetual regret to her that she could not understand the speech of the Breton fishermen. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... was soon replaced by a Breton gentleman, with whom Mimi was soon rapidly smitten, and she had no need to pray long before becoming ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... science, the cases of tetanus are few in this war, but there are many deaths from gangrene, because, with no truce for the removal of the wounded, so many lie for days before receiving medical aid. Abbe Klein tells of one Breton boy, as gentle a soul as his sister—"my little Breton," he always calls him, affectionately—and comments again and again upon the boy's patient courage amid sufferings that could have but one end. The infection spread in spite of all that science could do, and even amputation ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... word!" But no such word Was ever spoke or heard; For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these —A Captain? A Lieutenant? A Mate—first, second, third? 40 No such man of mark, and meet With his betters to compete! But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville for the fleet, A poor coasting-pilot he, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... running out. Take Labrador cod for export to the Mediterranean lands or to Porto Rico via New York. Take herrings brought to this port from Iceland, from Holland, and from Scotland; mackerel from Ireland, from the Magdalen Islands, and from Cape Breton; crabmeat from Japan; fishballs from Scandinavia; sardines from Norway and from France; caviar from Russia; shrimp which comes from Florida, Mississippi, and Georgia, or salmon from Alaska, and Puget Sound, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... which she used at every court in Europe, and finally at the Court of Rome, that the world owed the use of Peruvian bark, and consequently of quinine. Its early name, "Jesuit's Bark," showed one step of her process. (See "Anastasis Corticis Peruviani, Seu China Defensis.") Madame Breton patented a system of artificial nourishment for infants, in use in ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... collected books of characters and books printed at Oxford or just before the Great Fire of 1666; Bandinel, who was smitten by the charms of the Civil War literature; Corser, whose bibliographical sweethearts were Nicholas Breton and Richard Brathwaite; and Rimbault, who had two, Old Music and Old Plays. Mr. G. L. Gomme is similarly situated: anthropology and folklore are his foibles. It goes without saying that the Shakespearian and ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... we of gentle quality may not lightly follow our own inclinations. Happiness is a luxury which the great can very rarely afford. Granted that you have an aversion to this marriage. Yet consider this: Arnaye and Puysange united may sit snug and let the world wag; otherwise, lying here between the Breton and the Austrian, we are so many nuts in a door-crack, at the next wind's mercy. And yonder in the South, Orleans and Dunois are raising every devil in Hell's register! Ah, no, ma mie; I put it to you fairly is it of greater import that a girl have her callow ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... Trojans; and that it was he mainly who was responsible for floating the Arthurian Legend on to the wide waters of European literature. What percentage of history there may be in his book; how much of it he did not "make out of whole cloth," but founded on genuine Welsh or Breton traditions, is at present unknowable;—the presumption being that it is not much. But here is a curious fact that I only came on this week. The Romans were expelled from Britain in 410, remember. Arthur passed from the world of mortals on the night ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... English voices told us some of the villa residents had come down to the pier, moved by the beauty of the night. Groups of sailors, with tanned faces and punctured ears hooped with gold rings, sat on the broad stone parapets, talking unintelligible Breton patois. The pier ran far out, almost to the Havre cliffs, it seemed to us, as we walked along in the dusk of the young night. The sky was slowly losing its soft flame. A tender, mellow half light was stealing over the waters, making the town a rich mass of shade. Over the top of the low hills ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... in all lands, a being of a race apart, holding all land-folk in contempt. This one happened to be a bas-Breton, who saw but one thing in ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... their coats, which were too big and too long. Their sleeves hung down over their hands, and they found their enormous red breeches, which compelled them to waddle, very much in the way. Under their stiff, high helmets their faces had little character—two poor, sallow Breton faces, simple with an almost animal simplicity, and with gentle ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... Tristan myth is lost in antiquity. The Welsh Triads, of unknown date, but very ancient, know of one Drystan ab Tallwch, the lover of Essylt the wife of March, as a steadfast lover and a mighty swineherd. It is indubitably Celtic-Breton, Irish, or Welsh. There were different versions of the story, into the shadowy history of which we need not enter; the only one which concerns us is that of a certain "Thomas." Of his French poem fragments alone ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... growled, "if only I were twenty years younger I would nearly kill him! I have my Breton's hot head still, but my confounded legs ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... enterprise, he had failed to appropriate a goodly share of that pride which had both descended by inheritance, and been liberally instilled into his mind by education. His character was strongly stamped with the Breton traits of obstinacy and perseverance, and he was gifted with an unaristocratic amount of energy. When an idea once took possession of his brain, he patiently and diligently brought the embryo thought to fruition, in spite of all disheartening obstacles. He was narrow-minded and selfish when ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Crown and all the British colonies upon this continent."[175] His protest was fruitless. The fleet retraced its course to the gulf, and then steered for Spanish River,—now the harbor of Sydney,—in the Island of Cape Breton; the Admiral consoling himself with the reflection that the wreck was a blessing in disguise and a merciful intervention of Providence to save the expedition from the freezing, starvation, and cannibalism which ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... inaugurated the Atlantic period of history, the western front of Europe superseded the Mediterranean side in the historical leadership of the continent. The Breton coast of France waked up, the southern seaboard dozed. The old centers in the Aegean and Adriatic became drowsy corners. The busy traffic of the Mediterranean was transferred to the open ocean, where, from Trafalger to Norway, the western states ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... years before this, the French government had been compelled to give up the possession of Acadie to the English, and to retire to the Island of Cape Breton. Here they had built a stronghold at Louisbourg, which they were enlarging and strengthening every year, to the great disgust and alarm of the New England colonies. But though Acadie had been given up to the English, it could hardly be said to be held ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... said, centuries of noble ancestors, among the greatest in France; and she was kin, near or remote, to every great name in the land of her birth. All, however, that is known of this Queen of intrigantes is that she had for father a worthy, unassuming Breton merchant, who had made a sufficient fortune in the wool-trade to take his ease, as a country gentleman, for the latter part of his days, and whose only ambition was to bring up his son and two daughters respectably, and to dispense a modest hospitality among ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... as he said, left Paris for England. On receiving the news that the Breton leader was in London, Louis XVIII. wrote him ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... historique sur la vie et les Le Breton Paris, 1810 ouvrages de Haydn" in the Moniteur. This was reprinted in the "Bibliographie Musicale," Paris, 1822. It was also translated into Portuguese, with additions by Silva-Lisboa. Rio ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... stage in the history of this legend shows it to belong to the world's collection of folk-tales. There is, however, a preliminary fact of great significance to note, namely that two non-British versions refer to London Bridge. Thus a Breton tale refers to London Bridge, and the interest of this story is sufficiently great to quote it here from its recorder straight from ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... appears to have been the policy adopted by this kingdom. And many persons of rank and substance here are proceeding to carry into execution the plan which your Majesty (pursuing the same principles of commercial policy) has approved for the settlement of the islands of St. John and Cape Breton, and of the new established colonies to the south. And, therefore, as we are fully convinced, that the encouraging settlements upon the sea coast of North America is founded in the true principles of commercial policy; as we find upon examination, that ...
— Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates • Great Britain Board of Trade
... thus eluded his pursuer, Jones skirted the coast of Cape Breton, and put into the harbor of Canso, where he found three British fishing schooners lying at anchor. The inhabitants of the little fishing village were electrified to see the "Providence" cast anchor in the harbor, and, lowering her boats, send two crews of armed sailors to seize ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... to Duke William that either Louis or Alan are not exiles still. Now we shall see whose gratitude is worth most, the Frank's or the Breton's. I suspect the Norman valour will be the best ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... owner of vast domains, who was about to forfeit several thousands a year. But on August 4 the first to speak was Noailles; then d'Aiguillon, followed by a deputy from Brittany. You cannot repress violence, said the Breton, unless you remove the injustice which is the cause of it. If you mean to proclaim the Rights of Man, begin with those which are most flagrantly violated. They proposed that rights abandoned to the State should be ceded unconditionally, and that rights abandoned ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... dining-room in the Colony Club An old painted bed of the Louis XVI period Miss Crocker's Louis XVI bed A Colony Club bedroom Mauve chintz in a dull green room Mrs. Frederick Havemeyer's Chinoiserie chintz bed Mrs. Payne Whitney's green feather chintz bed My own bedroom is built around a Breton bed Furniture painted with chintz designs Miss Morgan's Louis XVI dressing-room Miss Marbury's chintz-hung dressing-table A corner of my own boudoir Built-in bookshelves in a small room Mrs. C.W. Harkness's cabinet for objets d'art A banquette of the Louis XV period covered ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... chestnuts can hurt a Perigordin or a Lucchese, or milk and cheese the mountain people? We enjoin them not only a new, but a contrary, method of life; a change that the healthful cannot endure. Prescribe water to a Breton of threescore and ten; shut a seaman up in a stove; forbid a Basque footman to walk: you will deprive them of motion, and in the end of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... of the Pope, and the various expeditions mentioned above. England claimed it in right of the discoveries of Cabot; while France could advance no better title than might be derived from the voyage of Verazzano and vague traditions of earlier visits of Breton adventurers. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... another. But, quite early, Philarete Chasles hit the white by calling him a voyant (a word slightly varying in signification from our "seer"), and recently a critic of less repute than Brunetiere, but a good one—M. Le Breton—though perhaps sometimes not quite fair to Balzac, recognises his Romanticism, his frenesie, and so the Imagination of which the lunatic and the lover are—and of which the devotee of Romance in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... quietly, and that night we were relieved by the 25th Canadians and marched to Aix Noulette, where we embussed and went to Monchy Breton for a rest. ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... certainly Old Worldish. We speak with Father Laity who, all unconscious of the commotion around him, marches up and down the trail and reads his breviary. He tells us he is a Breton and that in an age that is past he served as a drummer-boy in the Prussian war. The Father came to this ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... assigned to 'the undistinguished space'—the boundless range—'of woman's will.' Similarly, Sir Philip Sidney apostrophised lust as 'thou web of will.' Thomas Lodge, in 'Phillis' (Sonnet xi.), warns lovers of the ruin that menaces all who 'guide their course by will.' Nicholas Breton's fantastic romance of 1599, entitled 'The Will of Wit, Wit's Will or Will's Wit, Chuse you whether,' is especially rich in like illustrations. Breton brings into marked prominence the antithesis which was familiar in his day between 'will' in its sensual meaning, and 'wit,' the Elizabethan ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... wiseacre,' said he, 'is still abed; and I think the best thing he can do is to sleep on till Christmas; for when he gets up he does nothing but expose his own folly. In the beginning of the war he told me in a great fright that thirty thousand French had marched from Acadia to Cape Breton. Where did they find transports? said I.—Transports! cried he, I tell you they marched by land.—By land to the island of Cape Breton!—What, is Cape Breton an island?—Certainly.—Ha! are you sure of that?—When I pointed it out on the map, he examined it earnestly with ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman |
