"Ribald" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... town-slave and the like of him, antic-jesters, [Footnote: [Greek: Mimous geloion], players of drolls, mimes, or farces. Our ancient word droll signifies, like [Greek: mimos], both the actor and the thing acted.] and composers of ribald songs to lampoon their companions, such persons Philip caresses and keeps about him. Small matters these may be thought, Athenians, but to the wise they are strong indications of his character and wrong-headedness. Success perhaps throws a shade over them now; prosperity is a famous hider ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... discovered in Stowe's "Survey," that Walworth was the landlord of the stews on the Bank-side, which he farmed out to the Dutch vrows, and which Wat had pulled down, I am inclined to suspect that private feeling first knocked down the saucy ribald, and then thrust him through and through with his dagger; and that there was as much of personal vengeance as patriotism, which crushed the demolisher of so much ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... I," returned Ebbo; "didst not see, Friedel, how he kept his eyes on her in church? My uncle says the Bohemians are mere deceivers. Depend on it the woman had spied his insolent looks when she made her ribald prediction." ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her skirt-band and smoothed out the wrinkles, she put her hand to the latch. Her attention was caught by certain sunlit inscriptions on the pine siding—verses signed by the pencil of Pete Harding, Paducah, Kentucky. Mr. Harding showed that he had a large repertoire of ribald rhyme. And he had chosen this bright spot whereon to immortalize his name. She opened the door and ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... had fallen into her midnight nap. Since Howe's time there had been a more decorous rule, and the taverns closed early. There were no roystering soldiers flinging their money about and singing songs in King George's honor, or ribald squibs about the rebels, and braggart rhymes as to what they would do with them by and by. Everything, this October night, was soft and silent. Even party people had gone home long ago, and heard the watchman sing out, "Twelve o'clock and all is well!" Only ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... we find, in the half-random and wholly scurrile slander of womankind, a touch of real humour, of the humour that has feeling behind it, as here, where a sufficiently ribald variation on the theme of the "Ephesian ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the terrible brute round the cage. She seemed to glory in her triumph, and when Mahdi butted into a corner and refused to stir, she took him by one leg, and towed him twice round the cage, and the tittering the crowd swelled to yells of derisions and ribald laughter, while Professor Thunder pranced about and cursed furiously. To save his show from being ruined with ridicule, he rushed in, seized the woman, and bundled her ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... out an arm to drag forward her son. "Is he to waste his youth here in softness and idleness? But yesternight that ribald mocked him with his lack of scars. Shall he take scars in the orchard of the Kasbah here? Is he to be content with those that come from the scratch of a bramble, or is he to learn to be a fighter and leader of ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... not be," he answered. "My lot henceforth is to flee the touch of the world, the unsympathetic eye, the ribald tongue of those like my ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... is much love lost between them. He hath never forgotten the day when they pelted the Queen with rotten eggs, and sang their ribald songs; nor they the day he rode them down at Lewes ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... contrasted with the whiteness of her powdered countenance. She leaped from joy to dejection without transition. She could not smile. Her face was as soon darkened by stupidity as it was illuminated by a ribald ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... muddy light; girls in white aprons and with their hands full of beer glasses, passed in and out among the tables, flirted with the drinking men and flung cynical remarks and answers at those who accosted them. Ribald laughter and coarse jokes flew around like fire-works and were immediately ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... to as we bow to saints In window'd shrines; and, far from all attaints Of ribald passion, thou, as seemeth good, Wilt smile serenely in thy virginhood. Nor shall I know, of mine own poor accord, Which thing in all the world is best to hoard, Or which is worst of all the things that slay: A woman's ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... province, and from town to town' of France, while on England fell the Wars of the Roses. But how can the dramatist make the dealer with fiends speak as the Maid, in effect, did speak at her trial? He adds the most ribald ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... always chose for their dances was the churchyard; and unluckily the songs they sang as they danced in a ring were old pagan songs of their forefathers, left over from old Mayday festivities, which they could not forget, or ribald love-songs which the Church disliked. Over and over again we find the Church councils complaining that the peasants (and sometimes the priests too) were singing 'wicked songs with a chorus of dancing women,' or holding 'ballads and dancings and evil and wanton songs ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... it now, if you please. What is this? How does he dare send his ribald jokes to me in such a matter? No, I do not suppose I ever shall like Dr. Proudie; I have never expected it. A matter of conscience with him! Well—well, well. Had I not read it myself, I could not have believed it of him. I would not positively have believed it. 'Coming from my ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... thrilled through my very boots, causing a passing butcher's boy, awed by its important sound, to inquire, with the cynical empressement of his race, whether I thought myself the "Emperoar of Rooshia." I turned my back on him with contempt; but, his ribald remark made me ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... noble coadjutor and successor to the rustic bard in renovating the national minstrelsy. Possessing a fine musical ear, she adapted her lyrics with singular success to the precise sentiments of the older airs, and in this happy manner was enabled rapidly to supersede many ribald and vulgar ditties, which, associated with stirring and inspiring music, had long maintained a noxious popularity among the peasantry. Of Burns' immediate contemporaries, the more conspicuous were, John Skinner, Hector Macneill, John Mayne, and Richard Gall. Grave as a pastor, Skinner ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... painful narrative to a close, dismissing with merely a few lines those facts that in a garbled form have already reached the public eye through the medium of a ribald and disrespectful press—how my youthful companions, returning betimes to our camping place and finding me gone, and finding also abundant signs of a desperate struggle, hastened straightway to return home by the first train to spread the tidings that ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Widow Weatherwax had assumed the centre of the ring. The sanctified were without sense of humor, but the unregenerate onlookers were not proof against the comic aspects of emotional religion, and from the dark outskirts rang a ribald laugh. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... character of a prisoner, was the signal for a great yell of ferocious delight on the part of the outlaws, immediately followed by a brisk fusillade of scurrilous, ribald jests concerning the sport that they would have with me upon their return to their mountain stronghold; and so bloodcurdling were the suggestions thrown out by some of those fiends that I confess a qualm of fear surged ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... firing amain, though for the most part their shooting was very wild; but presently, finding we made no reply, they grew bolder, hallooing and shouting blithely and taking better aim, so that their shot hummed ever nearer and once or twice the boat was struck. And as I hearkened to their ribald shouting and the vicious hiss of their bullets, fierce anger took me and I began to curse Sir Richard's delay; then came the roar of his piece and as the smoke cleared I saw a man start up in the bows of the pursuing boat and tossing up his arms, fall backwards upon the ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... Dick—" Then to the boy: "Well, Mugs, how are you?" He spoke to the others, Casper and Barney and Evans and Hugh and Bill and Dan and Tom and Lew and Gomer and Mike and Dick—excepting Casper Herdicker, mostly Welsh and Irish, and they passed around some more or less ribald greetings. Then they all stepped upon the soft ground and stood in the light of the flickering oil torches that hung suspended ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Fables, who was ass enough to think of fondling his master in the same manner as his favourite lap-dog, and was well basted for his pains. I understood that fable to signify, that what is graceful and comely in some is not so in others. Let the ribald flout and jeer, the mountebank tumble,—let the common fellow, who has made it his business, imitate the song of birds and the gestures of animals, but not the man of quality, who can deserve no credit or renown from any ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... sleep in splendid isolation under the verandah of an empty house, but awoke among some Munsters, who greeted dawn with ribald songs. Harnessed up after breakfast, and marched off through the town, past the head-quarters, where Roberts reviewed us and the 38th. He was standing with a large Staff at the foot of the steps. The order "eyes right" gave us a good view of him, and ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... those days was not what it is in these advanced times. Then, it meant that one was possessed of all the evil habits that fall to the lot of man. David Cable was more or less contaminated by contact with his rough, ribald companions of the rail, and he glided moderately into the bad habits of his kind. He drank and "gamboled" with the rest of the boys; but by nature not being vicious and low, the influences were not hopelessly deadening to the better qualities ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... hungry penniless army had been thrown upon the citizens of Plymouth. An enormous debt had been created in equipping it, and the soldiers' allowances were hopelessly inadequate to provide them with a proper supply of food or clothes. 'A more ragged, ribald, and rebellious herde never gathered on the eve of an important expedition. Mutiny was common in the town, and the ringleaders were tried at Drum-head, and shot in the nearest open space.... Incensed at the disregard of their appeals, the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... the sturdy citizens of New York come down to see the hated British evacuate the city, forced out by the troops of Gen. Washington (plain Mr. Washington, the British liked to call him)? The ragged gamins scurried here and there, yelling ribald jests at the departing soldiers; and the scarlet-coated troopers had hard work keeping down their rising anger, as suggestive cries of "boiled lobsters" rose on every side. Even the staid citizens could hardly conceal their exultation, as ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... enforce, prohibited the sale of intoxicating liquors; prohibited gambling and games of chance; interdicted the operation of immoral resorts—put a lock and key in his hand, in short, that would shut up the ribald pleasures of Ascalon like a tomb. As for the ordinances of the city, which he also had obligated himself to apply, Morgan had not found time to work down to them. There appeared to be authority in the thick volume Judge Thayer had lent him ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... conversation. The two youths looked down. The deck plan of the tug lay flat and empty save for the inert form of Gaskin. The noise came from inside the cabin and arose to a shouting. It was a drunken ribald sound. A suspicion flashed ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... into the cut. As they approached the shanties, a woman's voice was heard, raised in ribald song. ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... an eye. But the prisoner did not move or raise a hand in protest, even when he was bared to his under-clothing in front of fraeulein, who signalled her appreciation of the sight by wildly clapping her hands, laughing merrily, and giving expression to ribald jokes. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... dead—that this sweet clay, That even from her picture breathes perfume, Was carried on a fiery wind away, Or foully locked in the worm-whispering tomb; This casket rifled, ribald fingers thrust 'Mid all ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... of the lubbers who turn out something different from their promise. Clumsy strength and good-nature make one of the most elementary compounds, and may easily be misused (as in Rainouart) where the author has few scruples and no dramatic consistency. Galopin is a more singular humorist, a ribald and a prodigal, yet of gentle birth, and capable of good service when he can be ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... passion for everything English, had advised him to go as an Ancient Briton, with a coat of blue paint. Scorning such ribald chaff, he had ordered a magnificent costume of chain armour. Greatly to his satisfaction he had persuaded Hereford Vaughan to go as Shakespeare, Valentia and Daphne respectively as Portia in scarlet and Rosalind ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... Lives in the mouth of men, and distant climes Re-echo his wide glory; where the brave Are honoured, where 'tis noble deemed to save A prostrate nation, and for future times Work with a high devotion, that no taunt, Or ribald lie, or zealot's eager curse, Or the short-sighted world's neglect can daunt, That name is worshipped! His immortal verse Blends with his god-like deeds, a double spell To bind the coming ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... her skirts and fled, whirling up the veranda steps and into the house like a small cyclone, never pausing until a locked door lay between her and a ribald, unfeeling world. ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... letting him know how mightily a "Harold" like himself would be offended at being holden of the condition of so base a thing as False Semblance? Perhaps the more so from a half-consciousness that the glory of the office was declining, and that if the smallest opening were given, aribald wit might create terrible havock amongst his darling idols. How delicately he snubs Master Speight for not calling on him at Clerkenwell Green (How would Speight have travelled the distance in 1598? It was a long uphill walk for an antiquarian, ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... that it seemed to them all the most fitting and natural thing that she and Father Antoine should stand side by side speaking to the people, should walk away side by side in earnest conversation with each other. If any man had ventured upon a jest or a ribald word concerning them, a dozen quick hands would have given him a plunge head-foremost into the great stone basin, which was the commonest expression of popular indignation in St. Mary's; a practice which, strangely enough, did ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... I was happy. True, that when the uncouth gendarme finally slammed to the door of our carriage and we restarted on our way, my ears had been unpleasantly tickled by the sound of prolonged and ribald laughter—laughter which sounded strangely and unpleasantly familiar. But after a few seconds' serious reflection I dismissed the matter from my thoughts. If, as indeed I gravely suspected, it was Fernand Rochez ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... watch-dogs. Glaucon knows all about dogs; we don't differentiate in the case of males and females; the latter hunt with the pack. If women are similarly to have the same employments as men, they must have the same education in music and gymnastic. We must not mind ribald comments. But should they share masculine employments? Do they differ from men in such a way that they should not? Women bear children, and men beget them; but apart from that the differences are really only in degrees of capacity, not essential distinctions ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... wrath that oft destruction calls On cities, and invites the foe To drive his plough o'er ruin'd walls. Then calm your spirit; I can tell How once, when youth in all my veins Was glowing, blind with rage, I fell On friend and foe in ribald strains. Come, let me change my sour for sweet, And smile complacent as before: Hear me my palinode repeat, And give me ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... mildly: 'So romantic—a young girl giving up all for God;' and Caroline gave the ribald laugh on which she prided herself— a shocking sound. 'Rose Mallett,' Sophia went on, so lost in her vision that the jarring laughter was not heard, 'such a pretty name—a nun! She would never be forgotten: people would ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... policy and justice? Were we to wait for the profound lectures on the reason of state, ecclesiastical and political, which the Protestant Association have since condescended to read to us? Or were we, seven hundred peers and commoners, the only persons ignorant of the ribald invectives which occupy the place of argument in those remonstrances, which every man of common observation had heard a thousand times over, and a thousand times over had despised? All men had before heard what they dare to say, and all men at this day know what they dare ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with its hundred-foot oval windows all aglow with light. Music floated out—a distant blare of musical sounds, and the ribald laughter of giant voices. I had seen no women among these giants of the islands. But now a huge face was at one of the ovals. A dissolute, painted woman of Earth, staring out at Polter as he passed. It was like the enormous close-up image on ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... of an approaching car. Dave was able to switch his own lights on again only in time to avoid a collision. The on-coming car lurched and passed by furiously, but not before Dave had recognized Conward as the driver. Back on its trail of dust floated the ribald ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... food would not have dishonoured a gentleman's table. Parrots, too, gave a sense of colour and companionship to her house; and it was in this love of pets, and her devotion to cleanliness, that she showed a trace of dormant womanhood. Abroad a ribald and a scold, at home she was the neatest of housewives, and her parlour, with its mirrors and its manifold ornaments, was the envy of the neighbours. So her trade flourished, and she lived a life of comfort, of plenty even, until the Civil ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... deeper and deeper into degradation day by day, and when the press universally exerts such power as it possesses to direct the feeling of the nation more completely to all that is theatrical, affected, and false in art; while it vents its ribald buffooneries on the most exalted truth, and the highest ideal of landscape, that this or any other age has ever witnessed, it becomes the imperative duty of all who have any perception or knowledge of what is really great in art, and any desire for its advancement ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... lit his pipe and pulled out the previous day's Coast newspaper. He was tired from his all day's running around after Jim. It was a raw evening out-of-doors, but it was cosy in there. The popping of corks, the clinking of glasses, the hum of voices and the occasional burst of ribald laughter, even the quarrelsome argument; all had more or less a soothing effect, which began to make Phil feel at harmony with the world at large. He looked at his watch. It was eight o'clock. He stretched his legs, ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... old carousal, and with eyes A hard, hot blue; her hair a frowsy flame, Bold, dowdy-bosomed, from her widow-frame She leans, her mouth all insult and all lies. Or slattern-slippered and in sluttish gown, With ribald mirth and words too vile to name, A new Doll Tearsheet, glorying in her shame, Armed with her Falstaff now she takes the town. The flaring lights of alley-way saloons, The reek of hideous gutters and ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... is no contest of life against life. Could I bare to all the world my wrongs for their ribald laughter, I should only give to my foe the triumph to pity my frenzy, to shun the contest; or grant it, if I could find a second—and then fire in the air. And all the world would say, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Bonnet with his own hand bent the "Jolly Roger" to the lanyard and sent the great black flag with its skull and crossbones to fly from the masthead. The grog was served out. No man would have believed that the roaring, rollicking gang of cutthroats who tossed off their liquor in cheers and ribald laughter was identical with the grumbling, sour-faced crew of twenty hours before. As they finished, something came skipping over the water astern and the first echoing report followed close. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... attribution of his authorship—there is a singular echo in it from the opening of Jonson's "Poetaster," the furious dramatic satire which blasted for upward of two centuries the fame or the credit of the poet to whose hand this masque has been hitherto assigned. In it, after a full allowance of rough and ribald jocosity, the presence of a poet becomes manifest with the entrance of an allegoric figure whose declamatory address ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... This is because, when ingested in any amount, its absorption produces changes in the flow of thought, in the attitude toward life, in the mood, the emotions, the purposes, the conduct,—in a word, in character. One sees the austere man, when drunk, become ribald; the repressed, close-fisted become open-mouthed and open-hearted; the kindly, perhaps brutal; the controlled, uncontrolled. In the change of character it effects is the regret over its passing and the greatest ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... do it as breadwinners, Mr. Morelock, and the most ribald one of them wouldn't laugh at you. I wouldn't be afraid to promise that you could fill St. John's, forbidding as its atmosphere is to the average working-man, the very next Sunday ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... wealth. Its walls were like costly confectionery, its ornaments insolent, its waste criminal. Every decorative feature was hot, restless, irreverent, and cruel, quite the sort of avenue one might expect to find in his walk towards the glittering woman of the false and ribald drama. ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... read chapters in the Bible for the edification of the worthy Ocracoke pilots, who probably had not heard a chapter of Scripture recited for years. The prophecy had taken a deep hold on the minds of some; and ribald jests and disgusting oaths were seldom heard in the neighborhood ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... product of an Alchemy of such virtue that he who is able to practise it, will turn her into pure gold of inestimable worth. He that possesses her must keep her within bounds, not permitting her to break out in ribald satires or soulless sonnets. She must on no account be offered for sale, unless, indeed, it be in heroic poems, moving tragedies, or sprightly and ingenious comedies. She must not be touched by the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the "Welshman's house" all alone one dark and threatening night.[11] This house stood half-way up Holliday's Hill ("Cardiff" Hill), and its sole occupants were a poor but quite respectable widow and her young and blameless daughter. The invading ruffian woke the whole village with his ribald yells and coarse challenges and obscenities. I went up there with a comrade—John Briggs, I think—to look and listen. The figure of the man was dimly risible; the women were on their porch, but not ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Python at Delphi, and one in Crete recounting the saving of the new-born Zeus by the Curetes. In the chorus sung in honour of Dionysus the ancient Greek drama had its birth. From that of the winter festival, consisting of the [Greek komos] or band of revellers, chanting the "phallic songs," with ribald dialogue between the leader and his band, sprang "comedy," while from the dithyrambic chorus of the spring festival came "tragedy." For the history of the chorus in Greek drama, with the gradual subordination of the lyrical to the dramatic side in tragedy and its ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... felt that to account for a world of unutterable strangeness they had invented a God far too cheaply simple. His mood was certainly not one of ribald easy scoff. It was they (he assured himself) whose theology was essentially cynical; not he. He was a little weary of this just, charitable, consoling, hebdomadal God; this God who might be sufficiently honoured by a decorously memorized ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... beating), and picked up a letter lying on the ground—a letter that had dropped out of M. de Poissy's pocket—a letter from his wife, full of tender words of endearment and pretty babblings of love. This was read aloud, with coarse ribald comments on every sentence, each trying to outdo the previous speaker. When they came to some pretty words about a sweet Maurice, their little child away with its mother on some visit, they laughed at M. de la Tourelle, and told him that he would be hearing ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... the flash of triumph in his ribald eyes and broke off. There was no need to ask him ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... converse in the mines, and as a result of this almost necessary rule, every convict has an opportunity to listen to the vilest obscenity that ever falls upon human ears. At times, when some of these convicts, who seem veritable encyclopedias of wickedness, are crowded together, the ribald jokes, obscenity and blasphemy are too horrible for description. It is a pandemonium—a miniature hell! But worse than this horrible flow of language are the horrible and revolting practices of the mines. Men, degraded to a plane lower ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... families—for they have none, nor among their neighbours, who may esteem and respect, but will scarce unbend before men who are become masters of their most secret thoughts. They therefore betake themselves to the pot-house, and in drinking and ribald conversation, look for that amusement which, under a better state of things, the Reformed pastor is sure to find in the bosom of his own family, and among his friends. I do not mean to justify the individuals, who, on the contrary, deserve utter ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... was a town founded on excitement. Counting its numerous shootings and consequent lynchings, and proportioning them to its population, White Lodge had experienced more thrills than the largest of Eastern cities. Some ribald verse-writer, seizing upon White Lodge's weakness as a theme, had ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... others. You are perfectly correct in your statement, that this charming young person, who day after day parades the streets with a barrel-organ and a monkey,—the last unhappily indisposed at present,—listening to the degrading jokes of ribald boys and depraved men,—you are quite correct, Sir, in stating that she is not my daughter. On the contrary, she is the daughter of an Hungarian nobleman who had the misfortune to incur my displeasure. I had a son, crooked spawn of a Christian!—a son, not like you, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... accusations were regarded at Rome as mere matter for laughter. The traditions of the old Fescennina locutio survived, and with the decay of private morality its obscenity increased. Caesar's veterans could sing ribald verses unrebuked at their general's triumph, verses unquotably obscene and casting the foulest aspersions on the character of one whom they worshipped almost as a god. Caesar could invite Catullus to dine in spite of the fact that such accusations formed the matter of his ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Miser A Swearer The Luxurious An Ungrateful Man A Squire of Dames An Hypocrite An Opinionater A Choleric Man A Superstitious Man A Droll The Obstinate Man A Zealot The Overdoer The Rash Man The Affected or Formal A Flatterer A Prodigal The Inconstant A Glutton A Ribald A Modern Politician A Modern Statesman A Duke of Bucks A Fantastic An Haranguer A Ranter An Amorist An Astrologer A Lawyer An Epigrammatist A Fanatic A Proselyte A Clown A Wooer An Impudent Man An Imitator ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... supporters to greater enthusiasm and greater zeal. When his fresh step began to be understood, when Lady Mildmay came with him no more, and it dawned upon Henstead that Sir Winterton would not bring her, the very supporters felt themselves offended. Were a few ribald cries and the folly of a wrong-headed old Japhet Williams to outweigh all their loyalty and devotion? Was the town to be judged by its rowdies? They could not but remember that Lady May Quisante sat smiling through the ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... Had raised the Table Round again, But that a ribald king and court Bade him toil on, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Mayor, "d'ye think I brook Being worse treated than a Cook? Insulted by a lazy ribald With idle pipe and vesture piebald? You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst, Blow your pipe ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... and watermen at the cabstand knew him and passed their comments upon him: the policemen gazed after him and warned the boys off him, with looks of scorn and pity; what did the scorn and pity of men, the jokes of ribald children, matter to the General? He reeled along the street with glazed eyes, having just sense enough to know whither he was bound, and to pursue his accustomed beat homewards. He went to bed not knowing how he had reached it, as often as any man in London. He woke and found himself there, and asked ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... surface of the newly-fledged banker. "Talk as little as you can," he said to him. "No banker ever gabbles; he acts, thinks, reflects, listens, weighs. To seem like a banker you must say nothing, or, at any rate, mere nothings. Check that ribald eye of yours, and look serious, even if you have to look stupid. If you talk politics, go for the government, but keep to generalities. For instance: 'The budget is heavy'; 'No compromise is possible between the parties'; 'The Liberals are dangerous'; ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... closed by the police, but Davenant found a public in London to applaud an "entertainment by declamations and music, after the manner of the ancients" (1656). The press began timidly to venture on books of amusement, in a style of humour which seemed ribald and heathenish to the staid and sober covenanter. Something of the jollity and merriment of old Elisabethan days seemed to be in the air. But with a vast difference. Instead of "dallying with the innocence of love," as in England's Helicon (1600), or The Passionate ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... would have sailed right in and made Dan eat his words with bitter sauce. Ritchie Warren would have overwhelmed Dan with worse "names" than Dan had called Faith. But Walter could not—simply could not—"call names." He knew he would get the worst of it. He could never conceive or utter the vulgar, ribald insults of which Dan Reese had unlimited command. And as for the trial by fist, Walter couldn't fight. He hated the idea. It was rough and painful—and, worst of all, it was ugly. He never could understand Jem's exultation in an occasional conflict. But he wished he COULD fight Dan Reese. He ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... attacked the gate of St. Denis, was sentenced only to a month's imprisonment, bread and water, and a flogging. He was marched through the city in a night-man's cart; and the king, meeting the procession, called out, as he passed, to the executioner, "Strike hard, and spare not that ribald; he ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... he rises to the fullest height of his judicial manner. Still, pretty well just now. A little embarrassed at the outset by consciousness that his postal address at Leeds is "Swillington House." Afraid some ribald person will remember this, and vulgarly connect it with the discussion. Delightful to observe the way in which he reproved GEORGE CAMPBELL for language unbecoming the precincts of the Court. CAMPBELL had lightly spoken about "Members requiring a pick-me-up." "Persons ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... me a brief respite, had enabled me to collect my thoughts, and, disregarding the ribald interruptions, which at first were frequent, I began as follows: 'I am no Rabelais, sire,' I said, 'but droll things happen to the most unlikely. Once upon a time it was the fortune of a certain swain, whom I will call Dromio, to arrive ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... demented. The occasion was the fast-day at Tilliedrum; when its inhabitants, instead of crowding reverently to the kirk, swooped profanely down in their scores and tens of scores on our God-fearing town, intent on making a day of it. Then did the weavers rise as one man, and go forth to show the ribald crew the errors of their way. All denominations were represented, but Auld Lichts led. An Auld Licht would have taken no man's blood without the conviction that he would be the better morally for the bleeding; ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... place, while he gave orders to his gardeners, builders, and workmen. Whenever they tried to put forward their arguments, he would rush ahead, enjoying the fright and dismay of his helpless victims. At times he would stop to make some ribald and jeering remark, as, "Why don't you eat pork, you fools?" at which the Egyptians following loudly applauded. Philo and his comrades, half-dead with agony, could only pray; and in response to the prayer, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... doors, thronged with brilliantly dressed ladies, and watched to see if his little sister might not dash up in one of those satin-lined coaches and take him where he would be warm and safe and would sleep undisturbed by drunken, ribald songs and loathsome surroundings. There were days when he almost forgot his name, and, striving to remember, would lose his senses for a moment and drift back to the harmonious solitudes of the North and breathe the resin-scented frosty atmosphere. He grew terrified ...
— A Michigan Man - 1891 • Elia W. Peattie
... servants who lingered talking, and asked them what some carriages were still waiting for at the door of the station, and one of them answered with a lightness you do not expect in England, "Oh, Lord This, and Lady That, and the Hon. Mr. I-don't- know-what's-his-name." The others laughed at this ribald satire of the upper classes, and I thought it safer to follow the King to the races lest I should ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... Dusk settles down over the valley. An engine near by begins to throb and electric lights spring up here and there. All over the town the flames of the great bonfires leap out of the gloom. From the camps of the workmen come ribald songs and jests, The presence of death has no ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... The blasphemies and ribald jokes with which this good-for-nothing young man adorned his speech made it sound tenfold more hideous than I can do. Even his mother shrank away from him, in terror and amaze at his levity, and cried aloud in her fear so that instantly the door opened, and ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to Cebu the prisoners were allowed to be on the upper deck, and Mrs. Wilson was permitted to use an armchair. The soldiers insulted them, and, leaning their backs against Mrs. Wilson's chair, some sang ribald songs, whilst others debated whether their captives would be shot on the beach or at the Cotta in Cebu. Sometimes they would draw their swords and look viciously towards them. At last, after a series of intimidations, they reached Cebu, where, after being detained ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... "Thou slanderous ribald! quoth the miller, hast! A traitor false, false lying clerk, quoth he, Thou shalt be slain by heaven's dignity Who rudely dar'st disparage with foul lie My daughter, that is come of lineage high! And by the throat he Allan grasp'd amain, And caught him, yet more furiously again, And ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... children violently struggled, and that the round hard head of one of them butted him in the stomach. He divined that sounds of ribald laughter, in the distance, proceeded from the driver of the Marychurch station fly. He knew two small figures raced whooping down the lane attended by squelchings of mud and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the priests with the other prisoners cast suspicious glances towards him; but he continued to walk on, speaking so low that no one else but the unhappy lady could hear him; and thus the band of prisoners arrived at Smithfield. Here they were saluted by the ribald shouts of the populace, who seemed to delight in hurling all sorts of abusive epithets on their heads. A'Dale wanted to remain, but I kept to my purpose. My chief interest was with the unhappy lady. I rejoiced, however, to see that her countenance ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... class I have described. Professors, teachers, musicians, all drift at times down the river; and one is often startled at finding in the apparently rough crew men who seem worthy of a better fate. To these the river experiences are generally new, and the ribald jokes and low river slang, with the ever-accompanying cheap corn-whiskey and the nightly riots over cutthroat euchre, must be at first a revelation. Hundreds of these low fellows will swear to you that the world owes them a living, and that they mean ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... would you seek to make sport of me, your governor? Thanksgiving for the breaking up of school! Out on you for a set of malapert young knaves! Do you think the world goeth but for your pleasures alone? Why, this is ribald talk! I made no Thanksgiving for your convenience, rascals, but because that the Lord in His grace hath relieved the ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... the abbey are foregone. The reverend stillness of the cloisters, scarce broken by the quiet tread of the monks, is now disturbed by armed heel and clank of sword; while in its saintly courts are heard the ribald song, the profane jest, and the angry brawl. Of the brethren, only those tenanting the cemetery are left. All else are gone, driven forth, as vagabonds, with stripes and curses, to seek refuge where ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... water a seed that shall sprout and bloom and flourish, and ended in producing a surprising fruitage—in the fields of war. The history of man is full of such accidents. The accident of a broken leg brought a profane and ribald soldier under religious influences and furnished him a new ideal. From that accident sprang the Order of the Jesuits, and it has been shaking thrones, changing policies, and doing other tremendous work for two hundred years—and will go on. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had come afoot, despite the knowledge that she would have suffered many inconveniences, accidental and intentional jostling, insolence and ribald jest. The Cantonese, excepting in the shops where he expects profit, always resents the intrusion of the fan-quei—foreign devil. The chair was torture. It hung from the centre of a stout pole, each end of which rested upon the calloused shoulder of a ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... of damage suits for fright and delay, laughable stories of the mistakes of the volunteer crew of the Noa-Noa; discussions of the price of copra, mingled with the chants of the native feasters and ribald tales. The Tiare girls, all color and sparkle, exchanged quips with the male diners, patted their shoulders, and gigglingly fought when they tried to take ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... only 500 was published; but it achieved a success which Wordsworth had neither anticipated nor desired. There was a general guffaw of laughter, and all the copies were immediately sold; within a month a ribald public received a third edition, only to discover, with disappointment, that the ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... glanced round. Her first impulse was to speak; her second to remain silent. For the Arkansan was not looking at her. His mocking ribald ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... is illustrated, however, most pointedly in what he had to say regarding the charge of polygamy: "The remaining charge connects itself with that unmixed outrage, the spiritual wife story; which was fastened on the Mormons by a poor ribald scamp whom, though the sole surviving brother and representative of their Jo. Smith, they were literally forced to excommunicate for licentiousness, and who therefore revenged himself by editing confessions ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... New Learning upon Europe awoke men and unsealed men's eyes—unsealed the eyes of Englishmen in particular—to discover a literature, and the finest in the world, which habitually philosophised life: a literature which, whether in a chorus of Sophocles or a talk reported by Plato, or in a ribald page of Aristophanes or in a knotty chapter of Thucydides, was in one guise or another for ever asking Why? 'What is man doing here, and why is he doing it?' 'What is his purpose? his destiny?' 'How stands he towards those unseen powers—call them the gods, or whatever you will—that ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... that wearers of the long robe never reach paradise per saltum, but 'by slow degrees;' and an irreverent ballad supports the vulgar belief that the only attorney to be found on the celestial rolls gained admittance to the blissful abode more by artifice than desert. The ribald broadside runs in the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... go," he answered; "he would not go. He sent a ribald message to the poor soul—cursing the child she had brought into the world, and then he rode away. The servants say that the old woman had left her mistress alone in her chamber and came down to eat and drink. When she went back to her charge ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... recently invited the surviving Union and Confederate officers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each during the Civil War. Colonel Thomas W. Higginson said that at a dinner at Beaufort, S. C., where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied, Dr. Miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that he could not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song. He replied: "I cannot sing, but I will give a toast, although I must drink it in water. It is 'Our Mothers.'" The men were ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... abuse of their private lives, and with sardonic humour, with blasphemous and obscene detail, attacked the legitimacy of their births and the purity of their conjugal relations: he used an Oriental imagery and an Oriental emphasis to accentuate his ribald scorn. Nor did he conceal his contempt for the students whose work he examined. By them he was hated and feared; the women by his brutal sarcasm he reduced often to tears, which again aroused his ridicule; and he remained at the studio, notwithstanding the protests of those who suffered ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... to do?' quoth he. 'I have made an ill bargain. Oh, perverse heart, that turneth from doctrine.' So I bade him keep his breath to cool his broth, ne'er would I shame my folk with singing ribald songs. 'Then,' says he sulkily, 'the first fire we light by the wayside, clap thou on the music box! so 'twill make our pot boil for the nonce; but ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the ear of Ernest. Meantime joke followed jest, among Polydore and the rest of the gay youths, in riotous and ribald succession, which, however characteristic of the rude speakers, may as well be omitted here. Their effect was to shake in some degree the fortitude of the Saxon maiden, who had some difficulty in mustering courage to address ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... vagrant people, from whom she had often received food and comfort; and her worst danger, as he learned with shame, had come from the girovaghi or wandering monks, who are the scourge and dishonour of Christendom; carrying their ribald idleness from one monastery to another, and leaving on their way a trail of thieving, revelry and worse. Once or twice the Wild Woman had nearly fallen into their hands; but had been saved by her own quick wit and skill in woodcraft. Once, so she ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... oath we heard, and foul words, as is customary in a camp. Verily I saw well that this was not the army of men clean confessed and of holy life who had followed the Maid from Blois to Orleans. In place of priests, here were harlots, and, for hymns, ribald songs, for men had flocked in from every quarter; soldiers of the robber companies, Bretons, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, all talking in their own speech, rude, foul, and disorderly. So we took our way, as best we knight, through the press, hearing oaths enough if our horses trod ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... have caught a note of ribald scorn in Mr. Doolittle's drawl, as he quoted from his candidate's statement, ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... You're too early if you got a jane in your eye, bo," was the ribald reply. "The boss is a good guy." He sneered in the direction of the black-haired, coarse-looking man in the cashier's cage. "He hires them girls for five dollars less a week than he'd have to pay union waiters, and he asks no questions." He closed his recital with a wink so full of meaning that ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... accepted and adopted. Hidden under theological and cosmological doctrines it contained an ancient stock of very primitive and coarse religious ideas, such as the worship of trees, stones and animals. Besides this superstitious fetichism it involved ceremonies that were both sensual and ribald, including all the wild and mystic rites of the bacchanalia which the public authorities were to ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... our downfall. The next day the Statesman wrote a burning editorial denouncing us "for an utter lack of all sense of common decency" that permitted us "to violate the sacredest feeling known to the human heart for the sake of getting a ribald laugh from the unthinking." We were two weeks explaining that the error was not the boy's fault. People assumed that the mistake could not have occurred in any well-regulated printing office, and it didn't seem probable that it could occur—yet there it was. But Jimmy wasn't to blame. He suffered ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... great strength and physical endurance had pulled him out of the arms of violent death. There had been no shot fired from the shops. The strikers saw the utter futility of forcing armed men, so they had hung about with gibe and ribald jeer, waiting for some one careless enough to pass them alone. This Bennington did. His men had forgotten him. Bennington's injuries had been rather trivial; it had been his personal appearance that had terrified the women. He had fallen asleep half an hour after reaching home, and ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... True to their Virginian instincts as she came near, they formed in line across the narrow bridge, and prepared to seize her. Seeing escape impossible in that quarter, she stopped suddenly, and turned upon her pursuers. On came the profane and ribald crew, faster than ever, already exulting in her capture, and threatening punishment for her flight. For a moment she looked wildly and anxiously around to see if there was no hope of escape. On either hand, far down below, rolled the deep foamy ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... and into the shadow of a cliff where the morning sun, searching and fervid, did not reach, and threw themselves to the ground, resting their backs against the foot wall, and trying patiently to await the appearance of their guides. The steady, hurried clink of glass and bottle on bar, the ribald shouts and threats of the crowd that filled the road house, the occasional burst of a maudlin song, all told the condition of the ejected placer men who had stopped here on ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton |
