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Forefather   Listen
noun
Forefather  n.  One who precedes another in the line of genealogy in any degree, but usually in a remote degree; an ancestor. "Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taught to respect yourselves."
Forefathers' Day, the anniversary of the day (December 21) on which the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts (1620). On account of a mistake in reckoning the change from Old Style to New Style, it has generally been celebrated on the 22d.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Forefather" Quotes from Famous Books



... old Viking blood begins to stir! Surely it must linger in all of us, for no man who dwells in an island but had an ancestor in longship or in coracle. Still more must the salt drop tingle in the blood of an American when you reflect that in all that broad continent there is not one whose forefather did not cross 3000 miles of ocean. And yet there are in the Central States millions and millions of their descendants who have ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... did, it was in the immediate neighbourhood of his lodge, never moving unless at the call of hunger, and then according to his nature he satisfied his appetite upon whatever was nearest at hand, rather than take the chance of faring better by going further. And thus lived our great forefather, the snail. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... tree! Touch not a single bough; In youth it sheltered me, And I'll protect it now. 'Twas my forefather's hand That placed it near his cot; There, woodman, let it stand; Thy ax ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... do not take so enthusiastically to monkeys as his junior readers, Mr. Darwin has provided a rather less gymnastic ancestry. How would you like to have a fish for your forefather? If it were one of Neptune's noble tritons, or the Philistine fish-god, Dagon, or a mermaid, it might not be so repulsive as the ape; or even a twenty-pound salmon, flashing its silver and blue in the sunlight as it spins the line off the reel, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... centuries of Pagan warfare. To facilitate the execution of the laws he enacted the general use of surnames, obliging the clans to take the name of a common ancestor, with the addition of "Mac," or "O"—words which signify "of," or "son of," a forefather. Thus, the Northern Hy-Nials divided into O'Neils, O'Donnells, McLaughlins, &c.; the Sil-Murray took the name of O'Conor, and Brian's own posterity became known as O'Briens. To justice he added munificence, and of this the Churches and Schools of the entire Island were the recipients. ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... said, "you know best whether I am more common than you are. Let that be. At least I hold in my hand the sword of one who begat my forefather hundreds of years ago, a certain Thorgrimmer who was great in his time. Now I have had my fill of fighting to-day, and you, doubtless through no fault of your own, have had none; you also are clad in mail and I, a common fellow, have none. Deign then ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard

... standing and age as the speaker. The children of the same parents speak of themselves collectively as PANAK; this term also is sometimes used loosely and metaphorically. A step-father is TAMAN DONG; father-in-law is TAMAN DIVAN; forefather is SIPUN, a term used of any male or female ancestor more remote than the grandparents; but these are merely descriptive and not terms of address. A man of the upper class not uncommonly has a favourite companion of the middle class, who ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... you not endure your own brother, that has God to his forefather, even as a son sprung from the same stock, and of the same high descent as yourself? And if you are stationed in a high position, are you therefor forthwith set up for a tyrant? Remember who you are, and whom you rule, that ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus

... rivulet, stream. arroyuelo (dim.) brooklet. arruga wrinkle. arruinar to ruin, demolish. arrullo cooing. arte m. f. art, artfulness; malas artes evil practices. articular to articulate. artista m. artist. asador m. turnspit. asalto assault, storm. ascendiente forefather. ascetico ascetic. asco nausea. asegurar to secure, assure. asemejar vr. to be like. asasinar to assassinate. asesinato assassination. asesino assassin. asesor assessor, counselor. asestar to aim. asfixiar to asphyxiate. asi ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... his opponent's constitution, he suspected much would be of little avail to him—I say, in the absence of any other weapon, he sheathed the biodag three times in the ghost of Bogandoran's body. And what was the consequence? Why, to the great astonishment of my courageous forefather, the ghost fell down cold dead at his feet, and was never ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... Strawberry Hill was a mere plaything, and he would not have wished to be taken too seriously; as his romance of the Castle of Otranto was a literary squib at which he laughed himself, though it became the forefather of a great literary school. The process may be regarded as logical: the previous generation, rejoicing in its own enlightenment, began to recognise the difference between present and past more clearly than its ancestors had done; but generally inferred that the men of old had been ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... common ancestor; and the whole nation of the Jews is Israel, to the end. And if I be told this is true of the Old Testament, but not of the New: I must answer,—What? Does not St Paul hold the identity of the whole Jewish race with Israel their forefather, as strongly as any prophet of the Old Testament? And what is the central historic fact, save One, of the New Testament, but the conquest of Jerusalem; the dispersion, all but destruction of a race, not ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... of the inhabitants were more youthful and perfect; that these primitive men had gigantic size, incredible strength, and most astonishing duration of life. It is to this tendency that we are indebted for the origin of many romantic tales. Some have not hesitated to ascribe to our forefather Adam the height of 900 yards and the age of almost a thousand years; but according to Hufeland acute theologians have shown that the chronology of the early ages was not the same as that used in the present day. According to ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... talked of the marriage customs of old times. One described the "pay-weddings," where the hat went round, and every guest gave something towards the cost of the breakfast and the expenses of beginning housekeeping—rude forefather of the practice of the modern wedding present. Another pictured the irregular marriages made in public-houses in the days when the island had three breweries and thirty drinking shops to every thousand of its inhabitants. The publican ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... spare that tree! Touch not a single bough; In youth it shelter'd me, And I'll protect it now; 'Twas my forefather's hand, That placed it near his cot, There, woodman, let it stand, Thy axe shall ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston

... the Jews out of Egypt? God Himself told them why. To fulfil the promise which He made to Abraham, their forefather, that of his children He would ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... anything but the pale neo-Platonism that has run like a thread through the thinking of the Western world since the days of the Christian Fathers. From Plato, to be sure, he got what all of us must get, but his real forefather was Heraclitus. It is in Heraclitus that one finds the germ of his primary view of the universe—a view, to wit, that sees it, not as moral phenomenon, but as mere aesthetic representation. The God that Nietzsche imagined, in the end, was not far from the God that such an artist as Joseph ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche

... the death penalty; they volunteer. "Then it is not deterrent," mutters the gentleman whose rude forefather pelted the hangman. Well, as to that, the law which is to accomplish more than a part of its purpose must be awaited with great patience. Every murder proves that hanging is not altogether deterrent; every hanging that it is somewhat deterrent—it deters the person hanged. A man's first ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... not in August, but in Oghpaho pesim, "The month when birds begin to fly." When called upon they could give their Christian names and answer to William or Magloire, to Mary or Madaline, but, in spite of priest or parson, their home name was a Cree one. In many cases the white forefather's name had been dropped or forgotten, and a Cree surname had taken its place, as, for example, in the name Louis Maskegosis, or Madeline Nooskeyah. Some of the Cree names were in their meaning simply grotesque. Mishoostiquan meant "The ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... Noon, by Charles Harpur, 'the grey forefather of Australian poetry,' is pretty and graceful, and Thomas Henry's Wood-Notes and Miss Veel's Saturday Night are worth reading; but, on the whole, the Australian poets are extremely dull and prosaic. There seem to be no sirens in the New World. As for Mr. Sladen himself, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... ventured to meet her candid gaze after thus lamely libelling his forefather, he was horrified to observe that she had already recoiled some feet away from him, and seemed still to be ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... these genealogical lists differs from the latter in being much longer, and in carrying the pedigree several generations beyond the great Teutonic leader Woden, backwards to his eastern forefather, Geat, whom Mr. Kemble and others hold to have been probably the hero Woden, whose semi-divine memory the northern tribes worshipped. Both genealogical lists agree in all their main particulars back to Woden—and ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... ALCOHOL. The forefather of a hold-over. Boozerine, in the raw state. From the Latin words alco and haul, meaning "he is soused to the booby hatches, haul him to the alcove." (See Lord Macaulay's Jags of ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott

... them again their heritage, and confirmed them in their fiefs and rents. Now there were three brethren of right good birth and high peerage, kin to many a fair family, having to name Lot, Aguisel, and Urian. The forefather of these lords was the earl of that great country beyond the Humber; and these in their turn held justly their father's lands, doing wrong to none. Arthur rendered these brothers their own, and restored them ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... in the adult, each part generates the same part for the next generation. Inheritance must be looked at as merely a form of growth, like the self-division of a lowly-organised unicellular plant. Reversion depends on the transmission from the forefather to his descendants of dormant gemmules, which occasionally become developed under certain known or unknown conditions. Each animal and plant may be compared to a bed of mould full of seeds, most of which soon germinate, some lie for a period dormant, whilst others perish. When we hear it said ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... considering the bare barbaric basis upon which it rests. For it is as true of the Japanese as of the proverbial Russian, though in a more scientific sense, that if you scratch him you will find the ancestral Tartar. But it is no less true that the descendants of this rude forefather have now taken on a polish of which their own exquisite lacquer gives but a faint reflection. The surface was perfected after the substance was formed. Our word finish, with its double meaning, expresses both the process and ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... few, and of their wonted texture; The Sun will rise upon the Earth's last day As on the fourth day of creation, when God said unto him, "Shine!" and he broke forth Into the dawn, which lighted not the yet Unformed forefather of mankind—but roused Before the human orison the earlier 290 Made and far sweeter voices of the birds, Which in the open firmament of heaven Have wings like angels, and like them salute Heaven first each day before the Adamites: ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... contemporaries had finished the thinning of the central forest of the Shield, leaving the land as it is to-day, a rolling prairie with remnants of woodland like that crowning the hilltop near this house. This immediate forefather bore the countenance that began to develop in the Northerner and in the Southerner after the Civil War: not the Northern look nor the Southern look, but the American look—a new thing in the American face, ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen

... wife, he moved to Edgefield District, and there married Sophie Smith, who was the mother of the subject of this sketch. She was the daughter of Jacob Smith and his wife, Sallie Butler, who was a sister of that Captain James Butler who was the forefather of the illustrious family of that name in this State, and who with his young son, also named James, was cruelly massacred along with others at Cloud's Creek, in Edgefield ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... you, yf you tell can, Declare to me, when God made man, (I meane by our forefather Adam) Whyther he had a berde than; And yf he had, who dyd hym shave, Syth that a barber he coulde not have. Well, then, ye prove hym there a knave, Bicause his berde he dyd so ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... known that they were all dead, the natives who had followed them from the south, and who wanted blood and revenge, not gold, which was of no use to them, went away; but the old priest's forefather who knew the secret entrance to the place, and who had been friendly to the Portuguese, forced his way in and there, amidst the dead, found one woman living, but mad with grief—a young and beautiful girl, the daughter of the Portuguese lord or captain. ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... True, and Ineffable. Of these faces one gazes upon the external aeons without the gate; another beholds Setheus, and the third looks upward to the Sonship contained in every Monad. There it is that Aphredon is discovered with his twelve Holy Ones and the Forefather, and in that Space abides also Adam, the Man of the Light, with his three hundred aeons. There also is the Perfect Mind. All these surround a Basket (9) that knows no death. The Ineffable face of the Overseer, who is the Warden of the ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh

... Dec. 21.—Forefather's Day was appropriately celebrated in many places. At Plymouth, addresses were delivered by Hon. Thomas Russell, President of the Pilgrim Society, James Russell Lowell, Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D., Dr. Henry M. Dexter, Judge Charles ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... of Rollo is especially interesting to us, because Rollo was the forefather of that famous Duke of Normandy who, less than a hundred and fifty years later, conquered England and brought into that country the Norman nobles with ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.

... of Wesley and Watts were generally sung in the public service of the Sabbath, when the preacher gave out the hymns from the book; yet these simpler and ruder strains were the greater favourites at the revival meeting. By these the godly forefather's of Methodism in Canada nourished their souls and enbraved their spirits for the heroic work in which they were engaged, of consecrating the ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... show. I've bo't a collection of life size wax figgers of our prominent Revolutionary forefathers. I bo't 'em at auction, and got 'em cheap. They stand me about two dollars and fifty cents (2 dols. 50 cents) per Revolutionary forefather. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne

... laughing, "no doubt that accounts for it. Some forefather of yours may have heard the song of the Over-Lord, perhaps from the lips of some foremother of mine. So, of course, you ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... to me? No. As a friend to General Darrington and his adopted son Prince? Yes. Oh, Tiberius! Your rosy apples are flavored like those your forefather ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... that we had all met before, in Africa at some time when men used matchlocks that were fired with a fuse—that is to say, about the year 1700, or earlier. Reflection, however, showed me the interpretation of this nonsense. Obviously this old priest's forefather, or, if one put him at a hundred and twenty years of age, and I am sure that he was not a day less, perhaps his father, as a young man, was mixed up with some of the first Europeans who penetrated to the interior of Africa. Probably these were Portuguese, ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... of common morality is put to the highest test. The king—the tyrant as we should call him—the Herod of the day, an usurper, neither a son of David, nor a king chosen by the people, tries to patronize him. The old spirit of his forefather Aaron, of his forefather Phineas, the spirit of Levi, which (rightly understood), is the Spirit of God, flashes up in the young priestly prophet, in the old form of common morality. "It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife." We know the ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... Jarl ran swiftly across the chamber, and struck old Jarl's knees, crying, "Wake, Jarl! or the castle will be taken!" But the sleeper did not stir. Then he climbed the iron bars of the Duke's chair, and reaching high, caught hold of the red beard. "Forefather!" he cried, "wake, or the castle will ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman

... cannon-ball is, they say, 'vinous and pleasant' when fresh; but those who are mindful of what befell our forefather Adam from eating strange fruits, will avoid it, as they will many more fruits eaten in the Tropics, but digestible only by the dura ilia of Indians and Negroes. Whatever virtue it may have when fresh, it begins, as soon as ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... Neva's flood thou saw'st me sit at home: Thy great forefather called me to his side— And there I built for him a second Rome; Through me it grew to be an empire's pride. A paradise of stately pleasure-grounds Arose beneath the magic of my wand; And now the busy hum ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... and even thou wouldst not have been deemed worthy to run before my father's chariot as a courier. Had he lived, I should never have been given unto thee for wife. Not even those who suffered the death penalty during the reign of my forefather Nebuchadnezzar were stripped bare of their clothing, and thou demandest that I appear naked in public! Why, it is for thine own sake that I refuse to heed they order. Either the people will decide that I ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... proved to be those of a gigantic turtle that must have measured across its back from flipper to flipper fifteen feet, while its entire length must have been twenty feet or more. The name of this giant is the Protostega gigas, a fitting forefather for the great leather turtle of to-day. In some parts of the West the hardened shells of other and smaller turtles are scattered about in great confusion. Nearly all have been turned to stone, and, thus preserved, form a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... buried. Sir R. Torkington, who published a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1517, says that "under the Mount of Calvary is another chapel of our Blessed Lady and St. John the Evangelist, that was called Golgotha; and there, right under the mortise of the cross, was found the head of our forefather, Adam." [176] Golgotha, it will be remembered, means, in Hebrew, "the place of a skull;" and there may be some connection between this tradition and the name of Golgotha, by which the Evangelists inform us, that in the time of Christ Mount ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... drink no wine. For, Jonadab, our father, commanded us: 'Ye shall never drink wine, neither ye nor your sons. And we have obediently done just as Jonadab, our forefather, commanded us.'" ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman

... Ishmael, says the legend, were asked to accept the law. "What does it contain?" they asked. "Thou shalt not steal," was the answer. "How can we then accept it," they returned, "when thus was our forefather blessed, 'Thy hand shall be against ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... son Khafra stood forth and said, "I will tell thy Majesty a tale of the days of thy forefather Nebka, the blessed; of what came to pass when he went into the ...
— Egyptian Literature

... it. Felices nimium, bona si sua norint, Angligenae! And yet there are not wanting malcontents among us, who, surfeiting themselves on too much happiness, would persuade the people that they might be happier by a change. It was indeed the policy of their old forefather, when himself was fallen from the station of glory, to seduce mankind into the same rebellion with him, by telling him he might yet be freer than he was; that is more free than his nature would allow, ...
— All for Love • John Dryden

... to the second series this answer is plain and decisive. The descendants of Cain were necessarily out of the pale of the Hebrew world. The curse of God, in consequence of which their forefather is said to have gone "out of the presence of the Lord," at once and forever separated them from the posterity of the pious son, from those who "walked with God." The writer of Genesis tells us that they lived ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... little song Goes ringing in my head, I know that he, My luckless lone forefather, dust so long, Relives his life ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... in one change more, a whimsical half concession of a syllable, by putting a sign of contraction in its place, and thenceforth calling this part of his Review, Advice from the Scandal Club. Nothing can be more evident than the family likeness between this forefather of the 'Tatler' and 'Spectator' and its more familiar descendants. There is a trick of voice common to all, and some papers of Defoe's might have been written for the 'Spectator'. Take the little allegory, for instance, in No. 45, which tells of a desponding young ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... society. The family in the narrower sense, the children of one father in one house, grew into a more extended family, the gens. Such were the Alkmaionidai, the Julii, or the Scyldingas, the real or artificial descendants of a real or supposed forefather. The nature of the gens has been set forth often enough. If it is a mistake to fancy that every Julius or Cornelius was the natural kinsman of every other Julius or Cornelius, it is equally a mistake to think that the gens Julia or Cornelia was in its origin a mere artificial association, ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... there lived a forefather of the Prince of Tosa who went by the name of Yamanouchi Kadzutoyo. At the age of fourteen this prince was amazingly fond of fishing, and would often go down to the river for sport. And it came to pass one day that ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... of the woof. May it be braver than ours, To encounter the rattle of hostile bolts, To look on the rising of Stranger Powers. May it know how the mind in expansion revolts From a nursery Past with dead letters aloof, And the piping to stupor of Precedents shun, In a field where the forefather print of the hoof Is not yet overgrassed by the watering hours, And should prompt us to Change, as to promise of sun, Till brain-rule splendidly towers. For that large light we have laboured and tramped Thorough forests and bogland, still to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... These are the medicine bags of our forefather, Mukataquet, who was the father of the Sac nation. They were handed down to the great war chief of our nation, Nanamakee, who has been at war with all the nations of the plains, and have never yet been disgraced! I expect you all to ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk

... little harbour, but even these are hardly enough in times of tempest, and heavy baulks of wood are let down into grooves, further to break the force of the waves. The sea has played a deadly part to Polperro folk in the past, and is ready to do so again. Old Jonathan Couch, the forefather of our present "Q," gives a striking picture of what Polperro used to be like in a storm during the days when he was doctor here, a century since:—"The noise of the wind as it roars up the coomb, the hoarse rumbling of the angry sea, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... be well to pause here and remember the annoyances connected with life as a forefather. Possibly the reader has considered the matter already. Imagine how nervous one may be waiting in the hall and watching with a keen glance for the approach of the physician who is to announce that one is a forefather. The amateur forefather of 1620 must have ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... interrupted Jaekel, "and your mother got it from her father, and he from his, and so all thy ancestors one from the other, back to the forefather who marched under King Saul against the Philistines, and was the first to take to his heels. But look! Oxheady is all ready—he has bowed his head for the fourth time; now he is jumping like a flea at the Holy, Holy, Holy, and feeling ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... you! Though this reply will not reach you for a long time, perhaps, I desire to express to you my deep appreciation of your kindness, and, though I can hardly be regarded as a forefather myself, I assure you that I ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... forefather's lair The instinct comes of feeding there; And still unmoved by progress high We eat ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... Mrs. Senegar, a fine hearty old lady, and a Strict Baptist. She said to me, 'Sir, excuse the vanity of an old woman, but I will show you how I sometimes spend a very pleasant half-hour.' She took down a portrait on canvas of her great forefather, and propped it up on the table with a writing-desk, with a looking-glass by its side. 'There, Sir, I look at the portrait, and then at myself, and can trace every feature; we resemble each other like two pins.' 'Excepting the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... said Frederick William, with a faint smile; "it will be seen whether Hercules was perhaps my forefather. I shall speak to the ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... descendant, Constantine, Count Sobieski, who, in a comparatively private station, as Palatine of Masovia, and the friend rather than the lord of his vassals, evinced by his actions that he was the inheritor of his forefather's virtue as well ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... Kootenies, the Rocky Mountain Assineboines, the Crees, the Plain Assineboines, the Minnitarrees, all are and have been the inveterate enemies of the five confederate nations which form together the great Blackfeet tribe. Long years ago, when their great forefather crossed the Mountains of the Setting Sun and settled along the sources of the Missouri and the South Saskatchewan, so runs the legend of their old chiefs, it came to pass that a chief had three sons, ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... greeting to-day. Europe and Asia are here— Shining they enter our ports! She that is half of the sphere Beams like a sun in our courts. Children of elders whose day Shone to the planet's white ends, Meet, in the noble old way, Sons of your forefather's friends. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... minstrel to his harp, whose frame was the curved black horn of a deer—"in an hour thy forefather strode from this spot whereon we sit to the summit of yon blue hill; and there, as the sinking sun would bend to caress his feet (as grovels a vanquished foe), he would touch its face with his hand in token of friendliness. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... deserves some special notice. The sermon is in no sense "Emersonian" except in its directness, its sweet temper, and outspoken honesty. He argues from his comparison of texts in a perfectly sober, old-fashioned way, as his ancestor Peter Bulkeley might have done. It happened to that worthy forefather of Emerson that upon his "pressing a piece of Charity disagreeable to the will of the Ruling Elder, there was occasioned an unhappy Discord in the Church of Concord; which yet was at last healed, by their calling in the help ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... the world did I purchase this, with the title-page showing Quevedo asleep, and all his seven visions floating round him in little circles like soap-bubbles? Probably because the book was published by Clement Malassis, and perhaps he was a forefather of that whimsical Frenchman, Poulet Malassis, who published for Banville, and Baudelaire, and Charles Asselineau. It was a bad reason. More likely the mere cheapness ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang

... Battle Abbey roll—and side by side the almost ubiquitous Brown, whose ancestor was probably some Danish or Norwegian housecarle, proud of his name Biorn the bear, and the ubiquitous Smith or Smythe, the smiter, whose forefather, whether he now be peasant or peer, assuredly handled the tongs and hammer at his own forge. This holds true equally in New England and in Old. When I search through (as I delight to do) your New England surnames, ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley

... well," say they. "Our ancestors were worthy folk enough; they did the best they could in their time. But the world moves, and wise birds will move with it. Why should we make a fetish out of some dead forefather's example? We are alive now. To refuse to take advantage of increased light and improved conditions may look like filial piety in the eyes of some: to us such conduct appears nothing better than a distrust of the Divine Providence, a subtle form of atheism. What are ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... body was covered with hair; so that Tubal, seeing him in the distance among the trunks of the trees and the brushwood, was deceived, and mistook him for a beast of chase. But when Tubal saw what had happened, he was terrified, and ran back to Lamech, crying out, "You have slain our forefather Cain!" And Lamech also was struck with horror, and raised his hands and smote them together with a mighty blow. And in so doing he struck the head of Tubal with his full strength, and Tubal fell down dead. ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James

... perceive the school in which you have been brought up, young man, even if there was not evidence on this paper that your forefather served under the Cavalier Colonel Beverley, and has brought you up to his way ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... west wing was built by the first Cecil to take possession. The early Stuart kings were frequent visitors, and Charles I stayed in the house just before the fight at Newbury in 1644. At Rushay Farm, near the lonely hamlet of Pentridge, William Barnes, the Dorset poet, was born, and a forefather of Robert Browning was once footman and butler to the Banks family who lived at Woodyates. A tablet in Pentridge church commemorates his death in 1746, but, needless to say, it has only been erected since his great descendant became famous. A ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... ([a]tm[a]dhina). Every man goes to heaven or to hell, as he is sent by the Lord's will. God himself, occupied with noble or with wicked acts, moves about among all created things, an unknown power (not known as 'this one'). The blessed God, who is self-created, the great forefather (prapit[a]maha), plays with his creatures just as a boy plays with toys, putting them together and destroying them as he chooses. Not like a father is God to His creatures; He acts in anger. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... verse, but that is all. Poetry is, as Plato says, a divine sort of experience, some strange blending of inherited characteristics, perhaps the fierce emotion of some dumb ancestress combining with the verbal skill of some unpoetical forefather. The receipt ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... hard," Masters added. "If we're going to be rabbits, human values will change. Men who run into holes will live to eat turnips, those who bare their teeth won't. Orkins might be the forefather of a new race—a helluva race. Come on, Orkins. Get out. Hurry up, Father Abraham, or I'll drag ...
— The Whispering Spheres • Russell Robert Winterbotham

... linen cover for the water glass; a soft shade on the window instead of the glaring white-and-gold-striped affair; exile for that ubiquitous spaniel; home cooking, with old-fashioned milk toast and real coffee of a forefather's day. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... feather dress occur; yet it has left reminiscences which are unmistakable. The variants hitherto cited have all betrayed these reminiscences as articles of clothing, or conveyance, or in the pardonable mistake of the Bantik forefather at the time of capture. I shall refer presently to cases whence the plumage has faded entirely out of the story—and that in spite of its picturesqueness—without leaving a trace. But let me first call attention to the fact ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... Mahometans "Adam's, foot." He pretends, in his narrative, that this impression measures eleven hands in length, a very different account from that of an historian of the ninth century, who declared it to be seventy-nine cubits long! This historian also adds that while one of the feet of our forefather rested on the mountain, the other was in the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... Ligures or Cymri? was Henry Martin right in ascribing to the Cimerii of Scandinavia the erection in the Bronze age of the megaliths of Ireland? Was it the Turanians, with their worship of ancestor's, their respect for the tombs of their forefather's, and their desire to perpetuate their memory to eternity, who set up the dolmens of Brittany? Was it not perhaps rather the Iberians, whose descendants still people Spain and the north of Africa? According to Maury, the distribution of the megalithic monuments of Europe ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... months—he was about to abandon the spot and pursue the exploration elsewhere, when accident led him to discover, in the enormous trunk buried in creepers against which he had built his cabin, a Cinchona nitida, the forefather of all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... embroidered. On the walls are suspended silk tassels, handkerchiefs, ostrich eggs, camel halters, bridles, &c. the offerings of the Bedouins who visit this tomb. I could not learn exactly the history of this Sheikh Szaleh: some said that he was the forefather of the tribe of Szowaleha; others, the great Moslem prophet Szaleh, sent to the tribe of Thamoud, and who is mentioned in the Koran; and others, again, that he was a local saint, which I believe to be ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... no poet, that I know of," said Donatello, "but yet, as I tell you, I have been very happy here, in the company of this fountain and this nymph. It is said that a Faun, my oldest forefather, brought home hither to this very spot a human maiden, whom he loved and wedded. This spring of delicious water ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and, when recording this fact and the putting out of the fire, he summarizes the temple's history in a long parenthesis, as will be seen from the following translation of the extract: "When E-kharsag-kurkura, the temple of Ashur, my lord, which Ushpia (variant Aushpia), the priest of Ashur, my forefather, had built aforetime,—and it fell into decay and Erishu, my forefather, the priest of Ashur, rebuilt it; 159 years passed by after the reign of Erishu, and that temple fell into decay, and Shamshi-Adad, the priest of Ashur, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... read that "The King of Glory stretched out his right hand, and took hold of our forefather Adam, and raised him: then, turning also to the rest, he said, 'Come with me as many as have died through the Tree which he touched, for behold I again raise you all up through the Tree of the Stauros.'"[14] Some ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... dissuasions I reply. Blood-founded thrones, thou say'st, are insecure; Our father's kingdom, because pure, is safe. True; but what cause to our Arcadia gives Its privileged immunity from blood, But that, since first the black and fruitful Earth In the primeval mountain-forests bore Pelasgus, our forefather and mankind's, Legitimately sire to son, with us, Bequeaths the allegiance of our shepherd-tribes, More loyal, as our line continues more?— How can your Heracleidan chiefs inspire This awe which guards our earth-sprung, lineal kings? What ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... smirched with gore and sweat, His hair torn and tossed wild, came from the strife A terrible vision, even to compatriots His hand had rescued; milder thou by far, And fairer to behold, in white array Shalt issue presently to bless the eyes Of thy fond country, which the mighty arm Of thy forefather and thy heavenly smile Equally ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... and everything in it—He being Lord of heaven and earth—does not dwell in sanctuaries built by men. Nor is He administered to by human hands as though He needed anything—but He Himself gives to all men life and breath and all things. He caused to spring from one forefather people of every race, for them to live on the whole surface of the earth, and marked for them an appointed span of life, and the boundaries of their homes; that they might seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him. Yes, though He is not far from any one of us. For it is in closest ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... wanted, and there we settled. Janet was afraid I would not be satisfied, because it is not exactly part of Croftangry; but I stopped her doubts by assuring her it had been part and pendicle thereof in my forefather' time, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... distance was left open. Here, amid surroundings which lent a sombre realism to the pretence, Charlemagne could carve out a kingdom, Roland sound the horn of Roncesvalles, or the Maid herself win back to France the crown the boy's forefather had lost. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... will do no more than must be done. I swear by my throne and by all the Gods of Egypt that not one hair of thy aged father's head shall be harmed by me; and, if it be not too late, I will also spare thy uncle Sepa, ay, and the others. I will not do as did my forefather, Epiphanes, who, when the Egyptians rose against him, dragged Athinis, Pausiras, Chesuphus, and Irobasthus, bound to his chariot—not as Achilles dragged Hector, but yet living—round the city walls. I will spare ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... thou'lt greet, Who thy forefather [58] blest Will think of, whilst his waters fleet In ocean's ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the Mason, whose words struck Pierre more and more by their precision and firmness. "No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone with the cooperation of all, by the millions of generations from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple reared which is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great God," he added, and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... THOU! who rollest in yon azure field, Round as the orb of my forefather's shield, Whence are thy beams? From what eternal store Dost thou, O Sun! thy vast effulgence pour? In awful grandeur, when thou movest on high, The stars start back and hide them in the sky; The pale Moon sickens in thy brightening blaze, And in the western ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... yonder churchyard, among dust of thy ancestry, with the English violets growing over thee there, and the green, sweet grass, which thou wilt not scorn to associate with thy dissolving elements, remembering that thy forefather owed a debt, for his own birth and growth, to this English soil, and paid it not,— consigned himself to that rough soil of another clime, under the forest leaves. Pay it, dear friend, without repining, and leave ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... green banks of the castle-crowned Rhine, Where the grapes drink the moonlight and change into wine, But my heart would still yearn for the sound of the waves That sing as they flow by my forefather's graves. ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... grew up among them, she was tended with royal honors, by command of the conjuror of the tribe, that so her forefather the Sun might be propitious to them, and the Incas might show favor to the poor ruined Omaguas, in the day of their coming glory. And as she grew, she had become, it seemed, somewhat of a prophetess among them, as well as an object of fetish-worship; ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... in the diocese of Seez. This act, of somewhat doubtful justice, is noteworthy on two grounds. First, the accuser of the banished count was one who was then a poor serving-knight of his own, but who became the forefather of a house which plays a great part in English history, Robert surnamed the Bigod. Secondly, the vacant county was granted by William to his own half-brother Robert. He had already in 1048 bestowed the bishopric of Bayeux on his other half-brother ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... "For our forefather Adam?" suggested Tom, laughing. "I am inclined to think the old gentleman in question hadn't clothes enough to fill a trunk as ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger

... interpreter of the modern world; he is a brilliant soldier in the liberation war of humanity.' And future generations may remember him as the poet who passed on to them the message of his spiritual forefather, Shelley: ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... age that the covenant was made between God and Abraham which was sealed with the institution of circumcision. Circumcision had been practised in Egypt from the earliest days of its history; henceforth it also distinguished all those who claimed Abraham as their forefather. With circumcision Abraham received the name by which he was henceforth to be known; he ceased to be Abram, the Hebrew from Babylonia, and became Abraham the father of Ishmael and Israel. The new rite and the new name were alike the seal and token ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce

... upward through the solid earth With its dim sounds, potential rage and mirth, I faced the dim Forefather of my birth, ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee

... "whom you can never reach, genial men with a ready smile and a prompt cheque-book, whose selfishness is an armour more potent than the armour of my forefather there, Sir Ronald Kingston of Arranmore. And, after all, why not? The thoroughly selfish man is the only person logically who has the slightest ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the house of the family called Turrifs; whose present head, being the second of his generation on the same farm, held a position of loosely acknowledged pre-eminence. Turrif was a Frenchman, who had had one Scotch forefather through whom his name had come. This, indeed, was the case ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... Plymouth at the place of their disembarkation. A portion of the granite rock on which the Pilgrim Fathers first set foot has since been removed from the coast, and placed in front of' 'The Pilgrim's Hall,' enclosed in an iron railing; and the anniversary of their landing, afterwards called Forefather's-day, has ever since been observed by their descendants as a day of solemn festivity, in remembrance of the mercy of Providence, which led them safely through so many difficulties and dangers; and permitted them to find a new home, and a new country, and to bring their ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... within was not, indeed, a task suitable to Hawthorne's powers. Carlyle has done that for us with more congenial sentiment than could have been well felt by the gentle romancer. Hawthorne fancies the grey shadow of a stern old forefather wondering at his degenerate son. 'A writer of story-books! What kind of business in life, what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation, may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!' And yet ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... see why structure is common in certain countries when we can hardly believe necessary, but if it was necessary to one forefather, the result would be as it is. Hence antelopes at Cape of Good Hope; ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... not backward shall your nobility gaze, but OUTWARD! Exiles shall ye be from all fatherlands and forefather-lands! ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... this war, very singular skill is manifested. A keen observer of all that passed before him, aided by a most retentive memory, and a fertile imagination, enabled our pilgrim forefather to gain much knowledge in a short time. He had been engaged, as a private soldier, in the Civil war; and was at the siege of Leicester, when it was taken by Prince Rupert. This gave him a knowledge of the meaning of trumpet or ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Hiel the Bethelite, in the days of Ahab. 2dly, Public vows: Jacob's vow, Gen. xxviii. 21, did oblige all his posterity, virtually comprehended in him, Hos. xii. 4. The Rechabites found themselves obliged to observe the vow of their forefather Jonadab, Jer. xxxv. 6, 14, for which they were rewarded and commended. Public oaths do oblige posterity: Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, to carry up his bones to Canaan, Gen. i. 25, which did oblige posterity some hundred ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery

... should be present at knightly combats, and no true warrior of the north will fail to respect the place whence beams the light of their eyes. Unless, indeed," continued he with an inquiring look at Biorn, "unless Jarl Eric is not worthy of his forefather?" ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... young man on the whole. He knew his duty, and did it with a steady industry, working off his dances in the spirit of his navvy forefather. But he returned between each duty dance to the young lady in black, who was always distinguishable among so many young ladies in white, and pink, and green, and blue. The Miss Dorsets and Ursula looked with interest and something like envy at that young lady ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... demanded your bow and therefore a bow must be sent to him. But there is no need for it to be that with which you shot the lions, which, too, you value above anything you have, seeing that it came down to you from your forefather who was a Pharaoh of Egypt, and has been your companion from boyhood ever since you were strong enough to draw it. As you may remember I copied that bow out of a somewhat lighter wood, which I could ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... his forefather, Judas of old. The desire to enrich himself. For every hitherto unsuspected rebel that shall be brought to justice and whose treason shall be proven by his agency, he claims the half ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... fire of pine logs high heaped, and we feasted while the scalds, as they call their gleemen, sang the deeds of the heroes of old. And some of those of whom they sang were men of the Angles of the old country; and one was my own forefather, and for that I gave the scald my gold bracelet, and thereafter he sang lustily in my praise as ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... less: conceit is still deriv'd From some forefather grief; mine is not so, For nothing hath begot my something grief, Or something hath the nothing that I grieve: 'Tis in reversion that I do possess; But what it is, that is not yet known; what I cannot name; ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... full; then, if condemned by her look, he would publish his crime to the world, and suffer its penalty. But should her eyes absolve him, then was crime an illusion, evil but undeveloped good, the stain of blood a prejudice, and Cain no outcast, but the venerable forefather of true freedom. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... of the Guernsey family of this name was John Tupper, who settled in the island about the year 1592. He was an English gentleman, of German, extraction, his forefather, it appears, having, about the year 1525, fled from Cassel during the religious persecution in the reign of Charles the Fifth. The elder son of this John Tupper married Elizabeth, daughter of Hilary Gosselin,[164] procureur du roi, or ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... with her blooming procession of bridesmaids; and half an hour later, when the Princess of Wales came forth from the chapel, her husband by her side robed in the purple mantle of the famous Order which his forefather established here five hundred years ago. We were to see her yet once again, when her open carriage passed out of the Castle gate to the station of the near railway which was to ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the singular illumination adorning the sixth page, which represents the birth of Eve. Adam is asleep, reclining on the grass, which is depicted as so many inverted cones; and, if we may judge from the appearance of our venerable forefather, he could not have enjoyed a very comfortable repose on that memorable occasion, and the grass which grew in the Garden of Paradise must have been of a very stubborn nature when compared with the earth's verdure of the present day; for the weight ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... that these natives worshiped directly their ancestors. Thus, Mr. Markham writes: "The Incas worshiped their ancestors, the Pacarina, or forefather of the Ayllu, or lineage, being idolized as the soul or essence of his descendants."[1] But in the Inquiry above quoted it is explained that the belief, in fact, was that the soul of the Inca went at death to the presence of the deity Viracocha, and its emblem, the ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... York city, son of a native of Stornoway, Hebrides. Alonzo Barton Hepburn (b. 1847), descendant of Patrick Hepburn who came from Scotland in 1736, President of the Chase National Bank, a distinguished New York banker, has written much on financial subjects. Thomas William Lamont (b. 1870), whose forefather came from Argyllshire, is a member of the firm of J.P. Morgan & Co., and prominent in international finance. Walter Edwin Frew, President of the Corn Exchange Bank, New York, and President of the New York Clearing House is ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black

... I went to the prophet, who told me not to be afraid. They only wanted to frighten us, and get our land without paying for it. I had a talk with the great chief. He said if I would go, well. If I would not, he would drive me. 'Who is Black Hawk?' said he. 'I am a Sac,' said I; 'my forefather was a Sac; and all the nation call me a Sac.' But ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge

... egg bright as gold, blazing like the luminary with a thousand beams, and in that egg he was born himself, in the form of Brahma, the great forefather of all spirits. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... Henry stood and waited for the enemy on foot. So did Randolf of Bayeux and the younger William of Warren; so did the wary counsellor who had little love for Englishmen, Robert of Beaumont, Count of Meulan, and presently to be Earl of Leicester, forefather in the female line of another Earl who loved them well. Seven hundred horsemen only kept the two flanks of the infantry. The main body of the horse, Breton and Mansel, stood apart. King Henry's footmen, perhaps with some little advantage of the ground, stood as firm in their ranks as the fathers ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... but it must not be forgotten that the Archduke of Austria and Lord of Trieste reigns at Trieste by a far better right than that by which he reigns at Cattaro and Spizza. The present people of Trieste did not choose him, but the people of Trieste five hundred years back did choose the forefather of his great-grandmother. Compared with the grounds of which kingdoms, duchies, counties, and lordships, are commonly held in that neighborhood, such a claim as this must be allowed to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... and his head as high as were his Viking forefather's when the worm-riddled galley went to her grave with more than half her crew, three hundred and forty years before. In the little silence which followed the fire crackled and whistled, the gusty rain-drenched wind beat upon the little hut. And then Nils repeated musingly the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... hue and cry about her, and so many witnesses to testify the harm she had done, that all men held the case proven, and she was burnt in the sight of all the village out upon the common yonder by order of our forefather, whose office it was to see the law enforced. There were then many of these gipsy folk scattered about the common and forest, and this old witch belonged to them. They mustered strong upon the heath, and it was said that if the villagers had not been too strong ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... from him who held it in his day; he won it by fraud. For when the axe had fallen on him but lightly, he fell over, feigning death. Then the owner of the axe laughed, and turned to walk away. But the forefather of Jikiza sprang up behind him and pierced him through with a spear, and thus he became chief of the People of the Axe. Therefore, it is the custom of Jikiza to hew off the heads of those whom he kills with ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard

... his speech was to him a very important one, being the day on which he planted Caresfoot's Staff, the great oak by the water yonder, to mark the founding of a house of country gentry. Some centuries have elapsed since my forefather stood where I stand, most like with his hand upon this board as mine is now, and addressed a company not so fine or so well dressed, but perhaps—I mean no disrespect—on the whole, as good at heart as that before me now. Yes, the sapling oak has grown into the biggest ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... the attack from himself to his brother—a feat wherein every son of Adam is as clever as his forefather—effected the end which Master ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... Peterborough, and a few more of the court, besides myself. Ethelred had hoped to gain some help from the duke; but he could only give us shelter in our need, for he had even yet to hold the land that Rolf, his forefather, had won against his neighbours, and could spare us not one of ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... mountains, as well as in the Gaels of the Scottish Highlands and the Erse of Ireland. Their very speech is blended with our own. Does the country labourer go to the Horncastle tailor to buy coat and breeches? His British forefather, though clad chiefly in skins, called his upper garment his "cotta," his nether covering his "brages," scotice "breeks." Brewer, Introduction to ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... that this head and a crown will come close together," and she kissed him and named him Rames after her royal forefather, the founder ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard

... heart he looked down on this dignified knot,— For why, the forefather of one of these senators, A rascal concern'd in the Gunpowder Plot, Had been barber-surgeon ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker

... long after that, thought Langdon, that the first bear came to replace the mammoth, the mastodon, and the monstrous beasts that had been their company. And that first bear was the forefather of the grizzly he and Bruce were setting forth to kill the ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... Commonwealth wars, in which, as he knew well, his ancestors had taken a loyal and distinguished part. Within the altar-rails was the effigy of the Esmond of the time of King James the First, the common forefather of all the group assembled in the family pew. Madame de Bernstein, in her quality of Bishop's widow, never failed in attendance, and conducted her devotions with a gravity almost as exemplary as that of the ancestor yonder, in his square beard and red gown, for ever kneeling ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Fergus, in a low voice, "were you so long about Glennaquoich and yet never heard of the Bodach Glas? The story is well known to every son of Ivor. I will tell it you in a word. My forefather, Ian nan Chaistel, wasted part of England along with a Lowland chief named Halbert Hall. After passing the Cheviots on their way back, they quarrelled about the dividing of the spoil, and from words came speedily to blows. In the fight, the Lowlanders were cut off to the last ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... whence he came and what had brought him to Tanis; for the rescued youth's features gave no clue to his race. He might readily have declared himself an Egyptian, but he frankly admitted that he was a grandson of Nun. He had just attained his eighteenth year, his name was Ephraim, like that of his forefather, the son of Joseph, and he had come to visit his grandfather. The words expressed steadfast self-respect and pride ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... to perceive that while certain forces of nature made always for growth, still others, equally powerful, made for destruction. Between the warring forces stood the Man of the Soil, puny, insignificant, matching his own hardly won and his forefather's harder-won knowledge against the elements; bending some to his advantage, minimizing the effects of others, openly defying those he could neither control nor avoid. And she partly realized his triumph in having ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... own." [313] Moses further said to God: "O Lord of the world! To our father Abraham Thou made the following promises: 'And I will make thy seed as the stars in the heavens,' but now Thou biddest me number Israel. If their forefather Abraham could not count them, how, then, should I?" But God quieted Moses, saying: "Thou needest not actually count them, but if thou wouldst determine their number, add together the numerical value of the names of the tribes, and the result will be their number." ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... life and his cue at Copper Creek Camp, there was born on a firth of Coronation Gulf a dog who was named Wapi, which means "the Walrus." Wapi, at full growth, was a throwback of more than forty dog generations. He was nearly as large as his forefather, Tao. His fangs were an inch in length, his great jaws could crack the thigh-bone of a caribou, and from the beginning the hands of men and the fangs of beasts were against him. Almost from the day of his birth ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... sailing in his bark, engraved the figures of the moon and the sun on the Painted Rock (Tepumereme) of Encaramada. Some blocks of granite piled upon one another, and forming a kind of cavern, are still called the house or dwelling of the great forefather of the Tamanacs. The natives show also a large stone near this cavern, in the plains of Maita, which they say was an instrument of music, the drum of Amalivaca. We must here observe, that this ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... fraud, and I am nothing but a fraud. [Laughter.] The truth is, gentlemen (I say this as I am sitting down), I have no business to be here at all. I am not a Pilgrim, nor the son of a Pilgrim, nor the grandson of a Pilgrim; there is not one drop of Pilgrim blood in my veins. I am a "forefather" myself (for I have six children), but I am not the son of a forefather. I had one father; most men have [laughter]; I have two grandfathers, I have four great-grandfathers, but I have not four-fathers. [Laughter.] I want to explain, now, how all this happened, because something is due to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... December 11th, O. S., a landing was effected upon Forefather's Rock. The site of this stone was preserved by tradition, and a venerable contemporary of several of the Pilgrims, whose head was silvered with the frost of ninety-five winters, settled the question of its identity in 1741. Borne in his arm-chair by a grateful ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... make their own laws. That year marked the beginning of civil liberty in America; but what it had taken the Jamestown colonists twelve weary and disastrous years to attain, was claimed by the pious farmers of Plymouth before ever they set foot on Forefather's Rock. Willingness to labor, zeal for the common welfare, indifference to wealth, independence, moral and religious integrity and fervor—these were some of the traits and virtues whose cultivation ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... champion's flight! How Drances will insult and point them to the sight! Is death so hard to bear? Ye gods below, (Since those above so small compassion show,) Receive a soul unsullied yet with shame, Which not belies my great forefather's name!" ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... who appears —like the spirit of his forefather) was with him at the time he was killed; but escaped, and after much hardship and suffering, was at last captured at Mini Wakan (Devil's Lake, in North Dakota). From him personally I obtained much information in regard to Little Crow's participation in the "Sioux ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... and dacently buried, but here I am for my sins turned into a sale as other sinners are and will be, and if you put an end to me and skin me maybe it's worser I'll be, and go into a shark or a porpoise. Lave your ould forefather where he is, to live out his time as a sale. Maybe for your own sakes you will ever hereafter leave off following and parsecuting and murthering sales who may be nearer to yourselves nor you think." The story is universally believed, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... make the most abiding forefather, because his doctrinal convictions are so strong they prenatally crimp the morals of those who come after him; and it may be that a Methodist ancestor counts for less in the third and fourth generation because his theology is too genially elastic to take a Calvinistic grip upon ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... doors of their palaces. Not content with a lineage extending over long centuries, and with a score of strains of undoubted blue blood, many of our greatest nobles and oldest gentle families strain after an ancestry which is not theirs, and throw overboard some obscure forefather to find room for a mythical Norman marauder, who in many cases exists nowhere but in the place of honour on their ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... there was no stream of money passing through his hands, and it would be hard and vile indeed for him to fall into any dishonest trickery. But it might be that his children, Alice's children, might tread in the steps of their forefather, Roland Sefton, and pursue the same devious course. Thieves breed thieves, it was said, in the lowest dregs of social life. Would there be some fatal weakness, some insidious improbity, in the nature of ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... given her these, and it was said that they had first of all belonged to one who had fought as a shield maiden at the great battle of Dunheidi, by the side of Hervoer, the sister of the mighty hero Angantyr. His forefather had won them at that time, and now they were worn by one who was surely like the Valkyries, for no fairer or more wondrous to look on in war gear could they be than our ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler

... blackness of darkness beyond. Amid the wildest excitement the men of the Wollunqua totem now ranged themselves in single file on their knees beside the mound which bore the red image of their great mythical forefather, and with their hands on their thighs surged round and round it, every man bending in unison first to one side and then to the other, each successive movement being accompanied by a loud and simultaneous shout, or rather yell, while the other men, who were not of the Wollunqua totem, stood ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... of the army of Rama's allies, who are nothing more than troops of monkeys under the leadership of Hanuman—the soldier, statesman, dramatist, poet, god, who is so celebrated in history (that of India s.v.p.). The oldest and best of all Sanskrit dramas, Hanuman-Natak, is ascribed to this talented forefather ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... 'No offer from your uncle, but a simple request from you;' but he thought in time of the absurdity of returning without them, and merely answered, 'I have no right to yield them, fair lady. They are the witness to my forefather's fame and prowess.' ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge



Words linked to "Forefather" :   father, antecedent, root, predecessor, patriarch, ascendent



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