"Celtic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the glee maiden, her Southern tongue in vain attempting the Celtic accentuation. "I am told my poor plays will not be understood if I go nearer to yon dreadful ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... tradition preached throughout the globe is as uniform as if the Church consisted of one family, possessing one soul, one heart, and as if she had but one mouth. For, though the languages of the world are dissimilar, her doctrine is the same. The churches founded in Germany, in the Celtic nations, in the East in Egypt, in Lybia, and in the centres of civilization, do not differ from each other; but as the sun gives the same light throughout the world, so does the light of faith shine everywhere the same and enlighten all men ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... Hindostan, seem alike to have placed the cow amongst their deities; and, judging by her usefulness to all classes, no animal could perhaps have been selected whose value to mankind is greater. The traditions, indeed, of every Celtic nation enroll the cow among the earliest productions, and represent it as a ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... time of the Roman conquest, one language, the Celtic, under two principal dialectical divisions, the Cymric and the Gaelic, was spoken throughout the British Islands. Cymric was spoken ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... But if during the period of the war there were any particular use for lawyers—[laughter]—if you find that upon lawyers depended the success of the war, and it requires a good deal of imagination; even my Celtic imagination will hardly attain to the exalted height—[more laughter]—but if that were possible for a moment, do you suppose that even the Incorporated Law Society, the greatest and narrowest of all trade unions, could stand in the way of bringing in outside ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... contemporaries, and of posterity;—he who destroys, or heedlessly neglects it, deserves the reprobation of the civilized world. As Dr. Stukely indignantly hung, in graphic effigy, the man who wantonly broke up the vast and wondrous Celtic Temple of Abury, so every other similar delinquent should be condemned to the literary gibbet. The miserable fanatic who fired York Cathedral is properly incarcerated for life, and thus prevented from doing further public mischief; but there are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various
... eyes went to "Wedded," and then to the sister's dress and close-fitting headgear which disguised Rosamund. And suddenly the impulsiveness which was her inheritance from her Celtic and Latin ancestors took complete possession of her. She got up swiftly ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... been suppressed but which the old people still wear. Well! These men of the past are ugly with their home-spun trousers, their long hair, their jackets with pockets under the arms, their sottish air, half drunkard, half saint. And the Celtic relics, uncontestably curious for the archaeologist, have naught for the artist, they are badly set, badly composed, Carnac and Erdeven have no physiognomy. In short, Brittany shall not have my bones! I prefer ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... one finds in slang, below the old popular French, Provencal, Spanish, Italian, Levantine, that language of the Mediterranean ports, English and German, the Romance language in its three varieties, French, Italian, and Romance Romance, Latin, and finally Basque and Celtic. A profound and unique formation. A subterranean edifice erected in common by all the miserable. Each accursed race has deposited its layer, each suffering has dropped its stone there, each heart has contributed ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and her Celtic voice rose shrilly, "it is with great pleasure I make you acquainted with Freda Moloof, Miss Freda ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... to the right and left, several of the rude erections, resembling the Celtic cromlechs, or cist-vaens, above alluded to, from ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... other languages. German or Low Dutch is its mother, and the Scandinavian group—Swedish, Danish, and so forth—may be termed its aunts. It belongs mostly to what is called the Teutonic group; but there are in it traces of Celtic, and though more dimly perceptible, even of Latin and Oriental tongues. We are altogether a made-up nation—to which fact some say that we owe those excellences on which we are ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... drama of hopeless struggle. The "second sight"—called "the gift" in Campbell of Kilmhor, and an incident also in The Riding to Lithend—was a sort of prophetic vision altogether credited among Celtic peoples, as among those of Scott's Lady of the Lake. When the mother sees the "riders to the sea,"—her drowned son and her living son riding together,—she feels convinced that he must soon die. The sharp cries of her ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... in the Celtic nature, some beast in the blood, which, when aroused, is exceedingly helpful in matters of this kind. In less than sixty seconds, I had demonstrated to the onlookers, and particularly to my opponent, that I had been to school since last meeting him. I had not been particular ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... honoured—to-morrow despised—now a goddess—and anon a slave! Viewing heathen countries in the most favourable aspect in which history presents them, and admitting to the fullest extent the correctness of those details of virtue and valour which she has transmitted to us, the conduct of the Celtic and Scandinavian nations, and instances deduced from cultivated and classic regions, or from modern times, can only be considered as exceptions which do not impugn the general alignment, corroborated as it has been ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... street. She was passionate, she was vain, she was wayward, she was fierce as a little velvet leopard, as a handsome, brilliant plumaged hawk; she had all the faults, as she had all the virtues, of the thorough Celtic race; and, for the moment, she had in instinct—fiery, ruthless, and full of hate—to draw the pistol out of her belt, and teach him with a shot, crash through heart or brain, that girls who were "unsexed" could keep enough of the woman in them not to be ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the Age of Stone in Lyell's 'Elements of Geology,' C. X., p. 113, as compared with the Dolichocephalic type of the beginning of the Age of Iron, correspondent with that now so prevalent amongst us, and called the Celtic type. It has the same comparative massiveness of forehead, not receding like the Celtic—the same even roundness in the frontal organs; but it is far loftier in the apex, and far less pronounced in the hinder cranial hemisphere where phrenologists place the animal organs. To speak ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Its limits and its very existence as a separate shire were predetermined for it by the shape and consistence of the mud or sand which gathered at the bottom of the great Wealden lake, or filled up the hollows of the old inland cretaceous sea. Paradoxical as it sounds to say so, the Celtic kingdom of the Regni, the South Saxon principality of AElle the Bretwalda, the modern English county of Sussex, have all had their destinies moulded by the geological conformation of the rock upon which they repose. Where human annals ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... to the Christian community (ecclesia) itself. Similarly the Greek word ecclesia ([Greek: ekklesia]), "assembly," was very early transferred from the community to the building, and is used in both senses, especially in the modern Romance and Celtic languages (e.g. Fr. eglise, Welsh ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... the late Lord Wimborne, was a distinguished Welsh scholar, whose translation of the Mabinogion gave an extraordinary impulse to the study of Celtic literature and folk-lore in England. She was twice married, her first husband being Sir J. J. Guest, and her second Mr. Schreiber, member of ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... Norwegian and Celtic (Scottish and Irish) immigrants during the late 9th and 10th centuries A.D., Iceland boasts the world's oldest functioning legislative assembly, the Althing, established in 930. Independent for over 300 years, Iceland was subsequently ruled by Norway and Denmark. Fallout from the Askja volcano ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... active years, when he was exposed to the greatest dangers and hardships, and when he became perfected in the military art, as in the case of Caesar amid the marshes and forests of Gaul and Belgium. The fame of Caesar rests as much on his conquests of the Celtic barbarians of Europe as on his conflict with Pompey; but whether Cyrus obtained military fame or not in his wars against the Turanians, he doubtless proved himself a benefactor to humanity more in arresting the tide ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... at Australia." I have tried to give the young readers some little indication of what features of Australian life will most interest them. The picture is of a land which appeals very strongly to the adventurous type of the Anglo-Celtic race. I have never yet met a British man or boy who was of the right manly type who did not love Australian life after a little experience. The great distances, the cheery hospitality, the sunny climate, the sense of social freedom, the generous ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... Continent," said Holmes, after a while, filling up his old brier-root pipe. "I was consulted last week by Francois Le Villard, who, as you probably know, has come rather to the front lately in the French detective service. He has all the Celtic power of quick intuition, but he is deficient in the wide range of exact knowledge which is essential to the higher developments of his art. The case was concerned with a will, and possessed some features of interest. I was able to refer him to two parallel cases, the one at Riga ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to see your back," the man repeated, while his companions looked down at the Colonel with a strange fixedness. The Celtic nature, prone to sudden rage, stirred in them. The stranger who an hour before had been indifferent to them now wore the face of an enemy. The lake and the bog—ay, the secret grave yearned for him: the ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... vainly to keep back this crowd of relatives and friends. The Celtic blood was up, and the Celtic faction spirit ran high. The air was filled with cries of cheer, advice, warning, and threat. Many elected to leave the side of their own team and go to the side of the other ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... pristine glories, Finlagan? The voice of mirth has ceased to ring thy walls, Where Celtic lords and their fair ladies sang Their songs of joy in Great Macdonald's halls. And where true knights, the flower of chivalry, Oft met their chiefs in scenes of revelry— All, all are gone, and left thee to repose, Since a new race and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... execution, the Earl wrote such touching verses; the quaint old kitchen-garden; the ruins of the ancient Castle, where worthy Major Dalgetty is said to have passed such uncom- fortable moments;—the Celtic cross from lone Iona:—all and everything I showed off with as much pride and pleasure, I think, as if they had been my own possessions; and the more so as the Icelander himself evidently ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... access to the most authentic documents from which to study the ancient religion of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, and the Buddhists, but by discovering the real origin of Greek, Roman, and likewise of Teutonic, Slavonic, and Celtic mythology, it has become possible to separate the truly religious elements in the sacred traditions of these nations from the mythological crust by which they are surrounded, and thus to gain a clearer insight into the real faith ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Penelope never forgot the kiss in the vestibule. She never recalled it without a sense of loss that she was too young to understand and with a look in her eyes that did not belong to her youth but to her Celtic temperament. ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Game of Piquet, Sixteenth Century Carlovingian King in his Palace Carpenter, Fifteenth Century Carpenter's Apprentice working at a Trial-piece, Fifteenth Century Cast to allure Beasts Castle of Alamond, The Cat-o'-nine-tails Celtic Monument (the Holy Ox) Chamber of Accounts, Hotel of the Chandeliers in Bronze, Fourteenth Century Charlemagne, The Emperor " Coronation of " Dalmatica and Sandals of " receiving the Oath of Fidelity from one of his great Barons " Portrait of Charles, eldest Son of King Pepin, receiving ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... Narbonne, the Celtic Venice, as it rises above the level landscape. The great seaport described by Greek historians six centuries before our own era, the splendid capital of Narbonese Gaul, rival of the Roman Nimes and of the Greek Arles, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... great antiquity, and probably the custom had its origin as far back as the feast of Flora, when pagan rites were performed in the country, or, perhaps, it originally was instituted to celebrate a victory over the Saxons; or it may be a remnant of some old Celtic observance. ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... thirteenth century. In that group, and on the adjacent coasts of Caithness and Sutherlandshires, the appearance of the people, the names of places, and the tangible monuments, speak strongly of a Scandinavian infusion into the population. Sometimes, between the early Celtic people still speaking their own language, and the descendants of the Norwegians, a surprisingly definite line can be drawn. The island of Harris is possessed for the most part by a set of Celts, 'small, dark-haired, and in general very ugly;' but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... festivals were held between March and June, frequently culminating in a great orgy on Midsummer's Eve. The next great season of festivals in Europe was in autumn. The beginning of August was a great festival in Celtic lands, and the echoes of it, Rhys remarks, have not yet died out in Wales.[148] The beginning of November, both in Celtic and Teutonic countries, was a period of bonfires.[149] In Germanic countries especially there was a great festival at the time. The Germanic ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... over joint-houses of monks and nuns. This custom accompanied Celtic monastic missions to France and Spain, and even to Rome itself. At a later period, A.D. 1115, Robert, the founder of Fontevraud, committed the government of the whole order, men as well as women, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... statements, was that his English friends invariably spoke of him as "a typical Irishman." They looked upon him as so much comic relief to the more serious things of their own lives, and seemed constantly to expect him to perform some amusing antic, some innately Celtic act of comic folly. At such times, Mr. Quinn felt as if he ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... used to make, and they are full of symbolism. When Charles Harley made them he knew just what he was doing. The male figure in 'The Triumph of the Fields' takes us back to the time when harvesting was associated with pagan rites. The Celtic cross and the standard with the bull on top used to be carried through the field in harvest time. The bull celebrates the animal that has aided man in gathering the crops. The wain represents the old harvest wagon. That head down there typifies the seed of the earth, symbol ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, "Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate as the great ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the heath alone, when the past seized upon him with its shadowy hand, and held him there to listen to its tale. His imagination would then people the spot with its ancient inhabitants: forgotten Celtic tribes trod their tracks about him, and he could almost live among them, look in their faces, and see them standing beside the barrows which swelled around, untouched and perfect as at the time of their erection. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... other malady. They who were thus studied were of four classes: (a) those who were by race distinctly Saxon; (b) those who were of mixed race, or whose race could not be determined; (c) those who were distinctly Celtic; (d) those who ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... effected, had taken a grand position among the powers of the world. But it is nevertheless clear at first sight that the constituent elements of the population were far from being completely fused. In many places in the two great islands the old Celtic stock still existed with its original character unaltered. The Germanic race, which certainly had an indubitable preponderance and was sovereign over the other, was split into two different kingdoms, which, despite the union of the two crowns, still remained distinct. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... we think, must have been the exception which proved the rule that all servants prior to the late Celtic invasion were models of deportment. Accordingly, we are not surprised to find that Betsey was a handmaiden held in high estimation, and that "old Jack" was a servant whose shortcomings were offset by his general good conduct and affectionate heart. But we find also ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... oldest known branch is the Sanskrit, the language in which the ancient books of the Hindus, the Vedas, were written. With the Sanskrit belong the Iranian or Persian, the Greek, the Latin or Italic, the Celtic, the Germanic or Teutonic (under which are included the Scandinavian tongues), the Slavonian or Slavo-Lettic. 2. The Semitic, embracing the communities described in Genesis as the descendants of Shem. Under this head are embraced, first, the Assyrian and Babylonian; ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... is not the only species of these trees found in North America. The genus Betula (so called from the Celtic word batu, which means birch) has at least half-a-dozen other known representatives in these parts. There is the "white birch," a worthless tree of some twenty feet in height, and less than six inches ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Mr. Miller, or "Old Red," as he was familiarly named by his scientific friends, will not be forgotten by any who have seen him. A head of great massiveness, magnified by an abundant profusion of sub-Celtic hair, was set on a body of muscular compactness, but which in later years felt the undermining influence of a life of unusual physical and mental toil. Generally wrapped in a bulky plaid, and with a garb ready for any work, he had the appearance of a shepherd from the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... can learn, had no Celtic blood; none, at least, of traceable infusion: he was more purely Lowland than Sir Walter Scott. His paternal line could be traced back to a West Country Stevenson of 1675; probably a tenant farmer, who was contemporary with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and a Cornish," said my father. "Some derive it from the Romans,—Vivianus; others from a Celtic ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a reason for at least suggesting to those who concern themselves, for good or evil, with Celtic literature, what Celtic literature really is when it is finest; what a 'reaction against the despotism of fact' really means; what 'natural magic' really means, and why the phrase 'Celtic glamour' is perhaps the most unfortunate that could well have been chosen to express the character ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Peshawar, and Umballah, and Korti and Fort Pearson that the youngsters die, leaving only a precedent and a brass behind them. But if every man had his obelisk, even where he lay, then no frontier line need be drawn, for a cordon of British graves would ever show how high the Anglo-Celtic ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... remind those who may be forgetting that Tir-na-n'Og is the land of eternal youth and joyousness—the Celtic "Land of Heart's Desire." It is a country which belongs to us all by right of natural heritage; but we turned our backs to it and started journeying from it almost the instant we ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... from the Pantheons of Greece and Rome, the whole synod of which was supposed to consist of demons, who were still actively bestirring themselves to delude mankind. But in the west of Europe, a host of other demons, far more formidable, were brought into play, who had their origin in Celtic, Teutonic, and even in Eastern fables; and as their existence, as well as influence, was boldly asserted, not only by the early christians, but even by the reformers, it was long before the rites to which they were accustomed ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... children—the stature of the people seemed dwarfed by the poverty in which they have so long lived, and the jet-black hair and broad faces which I saw around me, instead of the light hair and oval countenances so general a few miles back, showed me that I was among the pure Celtic race. ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... that soothed to rest. Far in the green isle of the west, The Celtic warrior's parted shade; Such are the lonely sounds that sweep O'er the blue bosom of the deep, Where ship-wrecked mariners ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... under the colonial porte-cochere of Hollywood Inn and were welcomed by the genial Moriarty himself, his Celtic countenance a mirror ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... work," exclaimed Macnab with a Celtic sigh, as he sipped his tea that night in the mellow light of ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... been a spontaneous growth arising from a natural human pleasure in similar sounds. "It lies deep in our human nature and satisfies an universal need." It is an established phenomenon in Sanskrit and Persian prosody, in Arabic, in Chinese, in Celtic, in Icelandic. Greek prosody, and Latin, which was based upon Greek, rejected it, partly perhaps because it was too simple an ornament for the highly cultivated Greek taste, especially on account of the great frequency of ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... was not without interruptions. Mr. Callahan's was the most dramatic. When announcement was made of his five thousand dollar windfall his Celtic fervor got the better of him and he broke loose with a tangled mass of tearful ejaculations and prayers, a curious mixture of glories to the saints and demands for blessings upon the soul of his benefactor. Mrs. Tidditt was as greatly moved ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... subjects and of allegory were so different their pictures were often hung side by side in exhibitions and their names were coupled together in the current talk of the time. Burne-Jones was markedly Celtic in his love of beautiful pattern, in the ghostly refinement of his figures, in the elaborate fancifulness of his imagery. Watts had more of the full-blooded Englishman in his nature, and his art was simpler, grander, more universal. If we may compare them with the great men of the ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... turf and other pursuits, with regret, no doubt, and yet with a fine rakish defiance of destiny. Twiddel's face cleared, and he began to show something of the same gallant spirit. He brought out a tall bottle with a Celtic superscription; Welsh half filled his glass, poured in some water from a dusty decanter, and proposed the toast of "Luck to the two ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... called up Macgillivray. For ten minutes I had an exciting talk, for I had had no news from that quarter since I left England. I heard that the Portuguese Jew had escaped—had vanished from his native heather when they went to get him. They had identified him as a German professor of Celtic languages, who had held a chair in a Welsh college—a dangerous fellow, for he was an upright, high-minded, raging fanatic. Against Gresson they had no evidence at all, but he was kept under strict observation. When I asked about his crossing to France, Macgillivray ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... not probable that the islanders were, at any time, generally familiar with the tongue of their Italian rulers. From the Atlantic to the vicinity of the Rhine the Latin has, during many centuries, been predominant. It drove out the Celtic—it was not driven out by the Teutonic—and it is at this day the basis of the French, Spanish, and Portuguese languages. In our island the Latin appears never to have superseded the old Gaelic speech, and could not stand its ground before the German.' ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... "The Celtic Dragon Myth," with the "Geste of Fraoch and the Dragon," translated with Introduction by George Henderson, Edinburgh, ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... of the glass, of which alone he had been thinking. This was a damage not to be repaired: as for the scratch that accompanied it, its scar was of no great consequence, as even when mounting the 'cat-dath, or battle-garment' of the Celtic Club, he adhered, like his hero, ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... bigger table than ever the Yukon had supplied. Allied with him, on a splendid salary, with princely pickings thrown in, was a lawyer, Larry Hegan, a young Irishman with a reputation to make, and whose peculiar genius had been unrecognized until Daylight picked up with him. Hegan had Celtic imagination and daring, and to such degree that Daylight's cooler head was necessary as a check on his wilder visions. Hegan's was a Napoleonic legal mind, without balance, and it was just this balance that Daylight supplied. Alone, the Irishman was doomed to ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... "Criffens! Fechars!" said Swipey for a twelvemonth after, stunned by the mere recollection of that home of the glories of the earth. And then he would begin to expatiate for the benefit of young Gourlay—for Swipey, though his name was the base Teutonic Brown, had a Celtic contempt for brute facts that cripple the imperial mind. So well did he expatiate that young Gourlay would slink home to his mother and say, "Yah, even Swipey Broon has been to Fechars, though my faither 'ull no allow me!" "Never mind, dear," she would soothe him; "when ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... vitality, and has a sweep of line and noble beauty of expression that is only equalled in the supreme efforts of genius, such as Beethoven's Appassionata sonata for instance. It is a most superb poetical romance, full of the passion and heroic fervour of the Celtic strain in MacDowell's own nature. It searched out his finest and deepest inspiration when he wrote it and it grew to be part of his very being afterwards. The whole thing is a reflection of the heroic and stirring ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... denied, an immaterial world which they mystically apprehended, which eluded direct description, frustrated rhetoric, and was only to be come at by the magical suggestion of colour, music, and symbol. It is most familiar to us in the 'Celtic' verse of ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... and 3rd vols. of these Memoires, which contain the Celtic Dictionary, afford a ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... Thene, in the northern angle of the lake of Neufchatel, a great many articles of iron have been obtained, which in form and ornamentation are entirely different both from those of the bronze period and from those used by the Romans. Gaulish and Celtic coins have also been found there by MM. Schwab and Desor. They agree in character with remains, including many iron swords, which have been found at Tiefenau, near Berne, in ground supposed to have been a battle-field; and their date appears to have been anterior to the great Roman invasion of Northern ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... obligations had grown apace. Nevertheless, for a lifetime of rough service had brought about an immunity that belied his Celtic blood, his brain remained clear, his step steady and his eye unbleared. Thus it happened that when, cut off from grazing, it was necessary for the Shanty Town teams to be returned at once to Clark's, Old Michael was on hand and in condition to take them, and, by ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... animosities incident to neighborhood too close; secondly, the difference of bodily constitution consequent upon a radically different descent. The blood was different; and by a wider difference, perhaps, than that between Celtic and Teutonic. The garrulous Athenian despised the hesitating (but for that reason more reflecting) Boeotian; and this feeling was carried so far, that at last it provoked satire itself to turn round with scorn upon ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... more keenly appreciated the company of Terry, who, in spite of a Celtic pedigree, was not enjoying this ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... force, the Celtic fire, These are thy manhood's heritage! Why rest with babes and slaves? Seek higher The ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Germans, [Footnote: The Cimbri, who formed a portion of this invading body, had their original home in the modern peninsula of Jutland, whence came also early invaders of Britain, and they were probably a Celtic people.] had gathered a mass comprising, it is said, more than three hundred thousand men capable of fighting, besides hosts of women and children, and were marching with irresistible force towards the Roman domains. Nine years before (B.C. 113), ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... excursions may be made. To Kells, twelve statute miles, where there are the ruins of an important twelfth century priory. Two miles from Kells is Kilree, where are situate a ruined church, Round Tower, and Celtic cross, and a remarkable tomb slab in the church, on which is an ancient symbolic sculpture of a cock-in-a-pot crowing. Three miles from Kilree is Aghavillar, with ruined church, attached castellated house, and Round Tower. ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... drowned glens. Dying Ravens hide themselves from daylight in burial-places among the rocks, and are seen hobbling into their tombs, as if driven thither by a flock of fears, and crouching under a remorse that disturbs instinct, even as if it were conscience. So sings and says the Celtic superstition—muttered to us in a dream—adding that there are Raven ghosts, great black bundles of feathers, for ever in the forest, night-hunting in famine for prey, emitting a last feeble croak at the blush of dawn, and then ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... his Celtic timbre pitched to the sky, "if I could be shtayin' a day or two longer I'd finish ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... consider the heat of the sun which is experienced here, and the sparkling of the sandy downs which compose the coast, we cannot help remarking that Arguia in Phenician means what is luminous and brilliant, and that in Celtic, Guin signifies ardent. If this name comes from the Carthaginians, who may have frequented these coasts, they must have been particularly struck with their resemblance to the famous Syrtes in their own neighbourhood, which mariners took so ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... larger than Plymouth, which he must regard with some awe, as the Central Babylon of the world. Again, I should expect the Prince of Wales always to be full of the mysticism and dreamy ardour of the Celtic fringe. ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... the difficulty that Shakspere's line had been satisfactorily traced to AElian's[65] story of the Celtic practice of rushing into the sea to resist a high tide with weapons; and the matter must, I think, be left open until it can he ascertained whether the statement concerning the Celts was available to Shakspere in ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Kenney, while the older chesnai appears in Chesney. Houssaie, from hoax, holly, gives Hussey; chastenai, chestnut grove, exists in Nottingham as Chastener; coudrai, hazel copse, gives Cowdrey and Cowdery; Verney and Varney are from vernai, grove of alders, of Celtic origin, and Viney corresponds to the French name Vinoy, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... archaeology has come to throw more and more light on the early civilisations of Celtic lands that it has become possible to interpret Celtic religion from a thoroughly modern viewpoint. The author cordially acknowledges his indebtedness to numerous writers on this subject, but his researches into ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... Gwenwyn was clad in a simple tunic of white linen cloth, a remnant of the dress which the Romans had introduced into provincial Britain; and he was distinguished by the Eudorchawg, or chain of twisted gold links, with which the Celtic tribes always decorated their chiefs. The collar, indeed, representing in form the species of links made by children out of rushes, was common to chieftains of inferior rank, many of whom bore it in virtue of their birth, or had won it by military ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... which service is no longer said, and archives that are incomplete. Even the very cemetery of Maguelonne has vanished, as though Death had feared to encounter himself in this desert, where naught remained save the skeleton of a cathedral. Yet what dust is here! Phoenician, Greek, Celtic, Roman, Christian, Mahomedan, French: A few tombs escaped the observation of the stone collectors of 1708, and even fewer inscriptions, excepting such as are found within the church, that is all! What a realization is this ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... government and administration. They should leave such cares to the stolid, practical English, and devote the leisure they would thus obtain to the further exercise and development of what someone had called "the starfire of the Celtic nature." Ireland should look upon England as her working-housekeeper. And as for the addition of Irish saints to the Calendar, the stumbling-block was their excessive number. "'T is an embarrassment of riches. If we were once to begin, we could never leave off till we had canonised ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... research and investigation might be employed. But there is no need why these researches should be extended to the region of fancy. Gargantua has been proved by some to be of Celtic origin. Very often he is a solar myth, and the statement that Rabelais only collected popular traditions and gave new life to ancient legends is said to be proved by the large number of megalithic monuments to which is attached the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... they said, "business." This movement <was suppressed, driven under the surface, but only to break out more appallingly than ever some ten or twelve years later, in brutal assassinations, which have curdled the blood of the world. Ah, must it always be so? Will this tiresome old Celtic Enceladus never lie quiet, and be dead, though the mountain sit upon him ever so solidly, and smoke ever so placidly ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... these Saxon and Celtic societies persecute an Arabian race, from whom they have adopted laws of sublime benevolence, and in the pages of whose literature they have found perpetual delight, instruction, and consolation? That is a great question, which, in an enlightened ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... the words "Celtic London" at the head of a chapter we naturally feel inclined to ask, "Was there such a place? Was there any Celtic London?" Although it is almost impossible to answer such a question by either "yes" or "no," it may be worth while to examine it briefly before passing ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... may have had a Gallic or Celtic origin, and an analogy only with the Roman clientship. The German comitatus, which seems to have ultimately merged its existence in one or other of these developments, is of course to be carefully distinguished in its origin from them. The tie of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... the word Iawbei being made up of 'iaw, short for kiaw (grandmother), and bei, mother. Ka Iawbei is the primeval ancestress of the clan. She is to the Khasis what the "tribal mother" was to old Celtic and Teutonic genealogists, and we have an interesting parallel to the reverence of the Khasis for Ka Iawbei in the Celtic goddess Brigit, the tribal mother of the Brigantes. Later on, like Ka Iawbei, she was canonized, and ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... same hall to threaten Tilden with similar treatment. This was their only mission. Humiliation did not possess them, however, until John B. Haskin reported that the regulars refused to recognise their existence. Then John Kelly threw off his muzzle, and with the Celtic-English of a Tammany brave exhibited a violent and revolutionary spirit. "Tilden was elected by the votes of the people," said Kelly, "and he had not sufficient courage after he was elected to go forward, as a brave man should ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... questions left me with three very antagonistic questions. The average sceptic wanted to know how I explained the namby-pamby note in the Gospel, the connection of the creed with mediaeval darkness and the political impracticability of the Celtic Christians. But I wanted to ask, and to ask with an earnestness amounting to urgency, "What is this incomparable energy which appears first in one walking the earth like a living judgment and this energy which can die with a dying civilization and ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... Celtic base (with French and German blend), Portuguese, Italian, and European (guest and ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... common to all artists of the second rank, and people will say that business men have the biggest ideals after all. All his schemes have ended in smoke; he has touched nothing that he did not confuse. About his figure there is a Celtic pathos; like the Gaels in Matthew Arnold's quotation, "he went forth to battle, but he always fell." He is a mountain of proposals, a mountain of failures; but still a mountain. And ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Their father and mother, dead some ten or a dozen years, had left them joint proprietors of a small property that gossip had magnified to three thousand. They were known as the heiresses of Kinvarra; snub noses and blue eyes betrayed their Celtic blood; and every year they went to spend a month at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, returning home with quite a little trousseau. Gladys and Zoe always dressed alike, from the bow round the neck to the bow on the little shoe ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... you not select some dusky-haired, dusky-eyed, olive-tinted oriental type, instead of a blonde who might safely venture into Valhalla as a genuine Celtic Iduna?" ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... fishing villages, which are beaten about by the winds the whole year through till of the colour of the rocks. In one of these hamlets, where the path narrows suddenly between dark walls, and between the whitewashed roofs, high and pointed like Celtic huts, a tavern sign-board made her smile. It was "The Chinese Cider Cellars." On it were painted two grotesque figures, dressed in green and pink robes, with pigtails, drinking cider. No doubt the whim of some old sailor who had been in China. She saw all ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... that the close imitation of Nature is a disturbing element in imaginative art. The visible aspect of modern life disturbs him not; rather is it for him to render eternal all that is beautiful in Greek, Italian, and Celtic legend. To Morris we owe poetry whose perfect precision and clearness of word and vision has not been excelled in the literature of our country, and by the revival of the decorative arts he has given to our individualised romantic movement the social idea ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... For those are not qualities they neglect in their other masters. How, valuing singleness of heart in the sixteenth century, splendour in the seventeenth, composure in the eighteenth; how, with a spiritual ear for the note—commonly called Celtic, albeit it is the most English thing in the world—the wild wood note of the remoter song; how, with the educated sense of style, the liberal sense of ease; how, in a word, fostering Letters and loving Nature, shall that choice nation within England long disregard these ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... to a small moss-grown cairn, probably the resting-place of some Celtic chief of other times, and the call of "Officers to the front," soon ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... than 392,878,125. It follows, therefore, from calculating according to the specific gravity of stone of its kind, that it cannot weigh less than 30 tons 7 hundreds. The engraving is copied from "The Celtic Druids," by Godfrey Higgins, Esq. F.S.A. 4to, 1827, one of the most valuable antiquarian volumes it has ever been our good fortune to secure; and by the aid of an esteemed correspondent, we hope shortly to introduce a few of its curiosities ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various |
