"Murrain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my brother!"—"Good health to thee also!" replied the rich man, "why hast thou come hither? Has thy plough broken, or thy oxen failed thee? Perchance thou hast watered them with foul water, so that their blood is stagnant, and their flesh inflamed?"—"The murrain take 'em if I know thy meaning!" cried the poor brother. "All that I know is that I thwacked 'em till my arms ached, and they wouldn't stir, and not a single grunt did they give; till I was so angry that ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... the slow mists of the evening dropped, Dropped as a cloth upon the dead, and rose Above the roofs, and by the Unlighted Shrine Lay as the slimy water of the troughs When murrain thins the cattle of Er-Heb: And through the mist men ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... ye PRELATES! is your light withdrawn? Where now the lustral influence of your lawn?[A] Where the meek crosier, and the crook of fleece, That guard the fold (not reckless of the peace)? Is there no wolf in all your pastur'd plains? No murrain rankling in your lambkins' veins? No lurking thief, by whom they nightly bleed? No arid spots refreshing streams that need? O why, forgetful of your solemn call, Sit ye, unmindful where the victims fall, ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous
... Pox and Pestilence, With divers more, work deadly consequence: Whereof such multitudes have di'd and fled, The living scarce had power to bury the dead; Yea so contagious countryes have we known That birds have not 'Scapt death as they have flown Of murrain, cattle numberless did fall, Men feared destruction epidemical. Then of my tempests felt at sea and land, Which neither ships nor houses could withstand, What wofull wracks I've made may well appear, If nought were known but that before Algere, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... the youth, "and he that has taken a falcon's nest in the Scaurs of Polmoodie, has done something to brag of, my fair sister.—But that is all over now—a murrain on the nest, and the eyases and their food, washed or unwashed, for it was all anon of cramming these worthless kites that I was sent upon my present travels. Save that I have met with you, pretty sister, I could eat my dagger-hilt for vexation at my ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Has it ever leapt in transport, recognizing a long-lost friend? Importunate woman, take your fee, basely extracted from me in a moment of weakness. O, heel of Achilles! O, locks of Samson! Go to, Delilah, and henceforth for this may a murrain light ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... incidental meeting at Mr. Luff's. It was not so easy to get invited to Long Meadows, the residence of the Palfreys; for though Mr. Palfrey had been losing money of late years, not being able quite to recover his feet after the terrible murrain which forced him to borrow, his family were far from considering themselves on the same level even as the old-established tradespeople with whom they visited. The greatest people, even kings and queens, must visit with somebody, ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... buffalo, and drove it across the Ganges, or into some other village. This latter course frequently caused fighting between the villagers. It was also found that a similar transmission of cakes had taken place on a former occasion, when a murrain attacked the cattle of the districts bordering Oude, and the disease was supposed to be stayed as soon as the said cakes reached the holy fanes of Hurdwar. The agitation was fostered, and false rumours founded thereon, prejudicial to government, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the little flies that swarmed from out the earth and air! And the murrain of the camels, and cattle in the field! She prayed the king for love of her to hear the people's prayer And send the slaves far hither;—but for love he ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... come from our dragoon friends,' remarked Decimus. 'A murrain on them! how came they to guess our true character; or was it on the score of some insult to the regiment that that young Fahnfuhrer has set them on our track? If I have him at my sword's point again, he shall not come off so free. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the persecution of this very year, hated him with a deadly hatred. His French alliances, his declaration of war with the Emperor, hindered the trade with Flanders and secured the hostility of the merchant class. The country at large, galled with murrain and famine and panic-struck by an outbreak of the sweating sickness which carried off two thousand in London alone, laid all its suffering at the door of the Cardinal. And now that Henry's mood itself became uncertain Wolsey knew his hour was come. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... and misconduct: suppose I were now to retort the imputation, and ask how a man of your profound sagacity could leave your fortune at the discretion of ignorant peasants? How could you be so blind as not to foresee the necessity of repairs, together with the danger of bankruptcy, murrain, or thin crop? Why did you not convert your land into ready money, and, as you have no connections in life, purchase an annuity, on which you might have lived at your ease, without any fear of the consequence? Can't you, from the whole budget of your philosophy, cull one ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... day, he who would study the character and habits of these children of Nature must travel far away beyond the Rocky Mountains, where the murrain of perverted civilization has not yet spread. There he may still find the virtues and vices of the savage, and lead among those wild tribes that fascinating life of liberty which few have ever been known to abandon willingly for the restraints and ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... base-born dotard that did deride me and steal away unto his castle this very night when I did supplicate him to regale me with goodly viands around the board of that noble host, the gracious Sir Wralsy of Murdough. I would to heaven a murrain would seize the hearts of all such craven caitiffs who hath not in them the sweet courtesy and generous hospitality that doth so well become thee, O glorious and ever-to-be-mulcted Sir Knight of the well-stored wallet. I do beseech ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... citizens and peasants fell back at the signal; while Lambourne, who had his eye upon his superior's deportment, repelled the services of those who offered to assist him, with yet more discourtesy—"Stand back, Jack peasant, with a murrain to you, and let these knave ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... proper line of his boundary, and thus add half an acre of Barkhara to his own little tenement, which was situated in Bedu. That very night his only son was bitten by a snake, and his two bullocks were seized with the murrain. In terror he went of to the village temple, confessed his sin, and vowed, not only to restore the half-acre of land to the village of Barkhara, but to build a very handsome shrine upon the spot as a perpetual ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... a certain number of maladies that seem as if they must be due to the Bacteriace, although a demonstration of the fact by the method of cultures and inoculation has not as yet been attempted. Among such, we may cite typhoid fever, diphtheria, murrain, tuberculosis (Fig. 4), malarial fever (Fig. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... is that "time will show." As to the present causes of past effects, it is now seen that the late swindling telegrams account for the last year's cattle plague—which is a refutation of philosophy falsely so called, and justifies the compensation to the farmers. My own idea that a murrain will shortly break out in the commercial class, and that the cause will subsequently disclose itself in the ready sale of all rejected pictures, has been called an unsound use of analogy; but there are minds that will not hesitate ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... by sending a plague of insects which the small birds, if alive, would have eaten. Gamekeepers ruthlessly shoot hawks and kites, or snare stoats and polecats, with the result that their game grows up too thick for its feeding ground, sickly specimens are allowed to linger on, and a destructive murrain follows. The rook, no doubt, is fond of eggs; but nevertheless he does the farmer good service when he devours the grubs which are turned up by the plow; and as the salmon disease, which of late has proved so destructive, is attributed by the best authorities to overcrowding, that glossy-coated ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... possessions, from the machinations of the devil and his agents. Every calamity that befell him he attributed to a witch. If a storm arose and blew down his barn, it was witchcraft; if his cattle died of a murrain—if disease fastened upon his limbs, or death entered suddenly and snatched a beloved face from his hearth—they were not visitations of Providence, but the works of some neighbouring hag, whose wretchedness or insanity caused the ignorant to raise their finger and point at her as a witch. The ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... yet; that the enchanter, in fleeing, has not wrung your neck as he went out, or cast a spell on you, which will fire your barns, lame your geese, give your fowls the pip, your horses the glanders, your cattle the murrain, your children the St. Vitus' dance, your wife the creeping palsy, and yourself the ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... other breaking, and therefore have no paces or action to the eye, but their speed and endurance are wonderful. There is no such thing as a cock-tail in the country, and the waggon teams of wiry little thoroughbreds, half Arab, look very strange to our eyes, going full tilt. There is a terrible murrain, called the lung-sickness, among horses and oxen here, every four or five years, but it never touches those that are stabled, however exposed to wet or wind on ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... vengeance for the transgression of arbitrary laws which they have not revealed, and who must be propitiated by public sacrifice, lest some collective punishment fall on the tribe, blighting its crops and smiting its herds with murrain, or giving it over into the hand of its enemies. This religion makes very little attempt to correct the current standard of values. Its rewards are wealth and prosperity; its punishments are calamity in this world and perhaps torture in the next. It is not, however, incapable of moralisation. The ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge |
