"Fife" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... field, was instantly aware of the enemy's manoeuvre. His people were employed rifling the pockets of the National Guard, and had made a tolerable booty, when the great Duke, taking a bell out of his pocket, (it was used for signals in his battalion in place of fife or bugle,) speedily called his scattered warriors together. "Take the muskets of the Nationals," said he. They did so. "Form in square, and prepare to receive cavalry!" By the time Concombre's regiment arrived, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... percession, hove in site, headed by a drum and fife. Their onsartin way of marchin, by gettin their legs mixed all up together, made me think that by the time they got up to my house, the painful duty would devolve on to me of goin down and getten their ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... voss all ashleep, 'Pap-a, Mr. Richlun sayss you shouldt come into teh offuss.' I kumpt in. Mr. Richlun voss tare, shtayndting yoost so—yoost so—py teh shtofe; undt, Toctor Tseweer, I yoost tell you te ectsectly troot, he toaldt in fife minudts—six minudts—seven minudts, udt may pe—undt shoadt me how effrapotty, high undt low, little undt pick, Tom, Tick, undt Harra, pin ropping me sindts more ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... will you marry me, With the bagginet, fife and drum?' 'Oh, no, pretty miss, I cannot marry you, For I've got no ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content! Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars, That make ambition virtue! O farewell! Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... order introducing the bugle as a minor badge for the light infantry is under date 28th of December 1814. In 1856 the popularity of the keyed or Royal Kent bugle in the army had reached its height. A bugle-band was formed in the Royal Artillery as a substitute for the drum and fife band.[15] The organization and training of this bugle-band were entrusted to Trumpet-major James Lawson, who raised it to a very high standard of excellence. Major Lawson was a fine cornet player, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... for Master Hal; they say that all the young gentlemen who have archery uniforms are to walk together in a body, I think they say, Sir; and they are to parade along the Well-Walk, they desired me to say, Sir, with a drum and fife, and so up the hill, by Prince's Place, and all to go upon the Downs together, to the place of meeting. I am not sure I'm right, Sir, for both the young gentlemen spoke at once, and the wind is very high ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... I expected. The improvements in the new edition are very great, and they are in the two poems which were most deserving of improvement, as being the most impressive and the most original. Each is excellent in its way, but 'Kilmeny' is of the highest character; 'The Witch of Fife' is a real work of fancy—'Kilmeny' a fine one of imagination, which is a higher and rarer gift. These poems have given general pleasure throughout the house; my eldest girl often comes out with a stanza or two of 'The Witch,' but she ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... through the window the light fading off the Fife Lomonds, and the long line of the shore darkening under the night into ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... murky!—Fie, my lord! a soldier, and afear'd? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?—The Thane of Fife had a wife; Where is she now?—What, will these hands ne'er be clean?—No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that; you mar all with this starting.—Here's the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! oh! oh!—Wash your hands, put on your ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... interview with Bolivar, at Guayaquil, and shortly after his return to Lima, in 1822, he resigned his high post of Protector and General-in-chief, and embarked for Europe. On his arrival in Europe, after a short visit to the East of Fife, San Martin passed his time chiefly in Brussels and Paris, so much respected by all who knew him, and so esteemed for his probity, that Sor Aguado, the rich Spanish Banker, on his death-bed, named San Martin ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... and held by an inevitably thrilling sound—the sound of feet tramping to a martial tune. The touch had been given: the vague visions of tradition and history crystallized into a picture, and his heart leaped to the pulsing, steady tramp, to the clash of fife and drum ringing out upon the ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the sail—all sail that she can bear, And out across the little frightened bar Into the fearless seas alone with her, The great sail humming to the straining spar, Curved as Love's breast, and white as nenuphar, The spring wind singing like a happy fife, The keen prow cutting like a scimitar: O how I long to run away ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... strange and wonderful things whereof Lorenzo Surprenant had told, with others that she pictured to herself confusedly: wide streets suffused with light, gorgeous shops, an easy fife of little toil with a round of small pleasures and distractions. Perhaps, though, one would come to tire of this restlessness, and, yearning some evening only for repose and quiet, where would one discover the tranquillity of field and wood, the soft touch of that cooler air ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... went to the Eastern Shore. In Annapolis fife and drum had taken the place of fiddle and clarion; militia companies were drilling in the empty streets; despatches were arriving daily from the North; and grave gentlemen were hurrying to meetings. But ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... about the age of sixteen he perverted a romance of his own making, "Hackston of Rathillet" (a fanatic of Fife), into a treatise: "The Pentland Rising, a Page of History," published in 1866. One would rather have possessed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there came marching a regiment of men, without fife or drum, moving to the music of a refrain which lifted and fell on the quiet air. It was the Battle Hymn of the Republic,—and the two listeners presently ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... OF FIFE Being the Chronicle written by Norman Leslie of Pitcullo, concerning marvellous deeds that befell in the realm of France, in the years of our redemption, MCCCCXXIX-XXXI. Now first done into English out of the French by ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... A small binnacle with a single compass, usually placed before the other. In line-of-battle ships it is generally placed on the fife-rail in the centre and ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of July was celebrated in military fashion; the train-band marched to the music of drum and fife accompanied by a procession of urchins. The crowning exercise was the firing of a salute by the whole company. It made every boy wish to be a soldier as soon as possible. Then the muskets were stacked under a great elm tree from a limb of which swung the sign, "E. Thayer, Inn" and we all ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... we left the grove and entered the village with fife and drum, attracting auditors, and held a torchlight meeting in the market-place. There was preaching, and the chanting, in rhythm but not rhyme, of a versified story of the life of Christ. The missionaries make much of this sort of Telugu singing. There was ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... Look Out Mountain, Of Corinth and Donelson, Of Kenesaw and Atlanta, And tell how the day was won! Hush! bow the head for a moment— There are those who cannot come. No bugle-call can arouse them— No sound of fife or drum. ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Fife, withouten strife, He bound him over Solway; The great would ever together ride That race they may ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... the fiddle, fife, and drum were put in requisition, and a dance got up to amuse them. The women could not be persuaded to join, but two of the men treated us to one of their own dances, each having been previously furnished ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... on the ridge between Holyrood and the Castle, its streets reddened with feud at intervals, and its merchants clustering round the Cathedral of St. Giles like bees in a honeycomb; and the king, when he looked across the faint azure of the Forth, beheld the long coast of Fife dotted with little towns, where ships were moored that traded with France and Holland, and brought with them cargoes of silk and wines. James was a popular monarch; he was beloved by the nobles and by the people. He loved justice, he cultivated his marine, and he built the Great ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... that people were accused of witchcraft and executed; ill or well made little difference. In Edinburgh in 1623 it was charged against Thomas Grieve that he had relieved many sicknesses and grievous diseases by sorcery and witchcraft. "He took sickness off a woman in Fife, and put it upon a cow, which thereafter ran mad and died." He also cured a child of a disease "by straiking back the hair of his head, and wrapping him in an anointed cloth, and by that means putting him asleep," and thus through his devilry and witchcraft, cured the child. Other charges of a similar ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... recruiting and drilling of soldiers, there was now nothing but warlike bustle in the streets of Boston. The drum and fife, the rattle of arms, and the shouts of boys, were heard from morning till night. In about a month, the fleet set sail, carrying four regiments from New England and New York, besides the English soldiers. The whole army amounted to at least seven thousand men. They steered for the mouth of the ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... when other birds have mostly become silent, he is sometimes the only songster in the wood. There is a liquid sound in his tones that slightly resembles that of a glassichord; though in some parts of the country he has received the name of Fife-Bird, from the clearness of his intonations. By many persons this species is called ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... cause on earth To many a battle growing, Of music God has thought them worth, A gift of His bestowing. It came through Jubal into life; For Lamech's son inventing The double sounds of drum and fife, They both became consenting. For music good Wakes manly mood, Intrepid goes Against our foes. Calls stoutly, "On! Fall on! fall on! Clear field and street Of hostile feet, Shoot, thrust them through, and cleave, Not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... fact that the yield of wheat in Minnesota was far beneath that in the neighbouring States. The local varieties were Fife and Blue Stem. They gave him, on inspection, some better specimens, "phenomenal yielders" as he called them. These were simply isolated and propagated, and, after comparison with the parent-variety and with some other selected strains of less value, were judged ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... in certain places, particularly about Newhaven, the most perfect evidence of a sea bank, where the washing of the sea had worn the land, upon a higher level than the present. The same appearance is to be found at Ely upon the Fife coast, where the sea had washed out grottos in the rocks; and above Kinneel, there is a bed of oyster shells some feet deep appearing in the side of the bank, about 20 or 30 feet above the level of the sea, which corresponds with the old sea banks. I ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... exposure, whom since I have seen perfectly content to obtain a few pine boughs to keep him from being submerged in an abyss of mud. Many, alas! have gone to a couch where their sleep will be no more broken by the reveille of drum and fife and bugle—in the trenches of Yorktown, in the thickets of Williamsburg, in the morasses of the Chickahominy, on the banks of the Antietam, at the foot of those fatal heights at Fredericksburg, in the wilderness of Chancellorsville, on the glorious ridge of Gettysburg. Comrades of the bivouac ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Indostan and of Europe. And "the Highlander has the same warlike ideas annexed to the sound of a bagpipe (an instrument which an Englishman derides), as the Englishman has to that of a trumpet or fife," (Dr. Brown's Union of Poetry and Music, p. 58.) So "the music of the Turks is very different from the Italian, and the people of Fez and Morocco have again a different kind, which to us appears very rough and horrid, but is highly pleasing ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... horn at the old back-door Tel the echoes all halloo, And the childern gethers home onc't more, Jest as they ust to do: Blow fer Pap tel he hears and comes, With Tomps and Elias, too, A-marchin' home, with the fife and drums And the ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... supplied him with provisions. Strong intrenchments defended his front; and it was in vain that Cromwell made every attempt to bring him to an engagement. After losing much time, the English general sent Lambert over the Frith into Fife, with an intention of cutting off the provisions of the enemy. Lambert fell upon Holborne and Brown, who commanded a party of the Scots, and put them to rout with great slaughter. Cromwell also passed over with his whole army; and lying at the back of the king, made it impossible for ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... and curious hats of black glazed leather, of a shape which was a cross between a fireman's helmet and the cap of a Norman man-at-arms. They were armed indiscriminately with long pikes and ancient flint-locks, and marched to the music of fife and drum. The leader of the band danced a sort of shimmy as he marched, at the same time tootling on a flute. He looked like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Perhaps the most curious feature of the procession was provided ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... tested as in the "Katia Stunt" for the weather was so much more favourable. On the morning of December 3rd, having reduced our stores to mobile column dimensions, we loaded up the long suffering, but grousing camels, and marched forth to the cheery strains of a drum and fife band, kindly provided by the 10th Middlesex. We plugged steadily on through the soft sand and finally camped for the night inside the outpost line in front of Bir el Abd. Next day the march continued and we reached ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... the holders of a few volumes or so up and down the country. The names of which we think are Devonshire, Bute, Bath, Dysart, Bridgewater (Earl of Ellesmere), Britwell, Huth, Aldenham (H. H. Gibbs), and Acton (or Carnegie). The Duke of Fife is believed to possess some curious books inherited from Skene of Skene. The Duke of Northumberland owns a few, and a few are in the possession of Lord Robartes at Llanhydrock, near Bodmin, Lord Aldenham, and Mr. Wynn of Peniarth. All these centres affect the book-collector ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... stepmother. And thus it came to pass that, early one morning, before the household was awake, Emilia slipped stealthily away with a few shillings, all her worldly possessions, in her pocket. Walking a few miles along the shore, she took the packet-boat, and crossed to the Fife coast, thus placing a broad arm of the sea between herself and the house of misery and oppression she had ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... with the plumb-line in his hand, traversed the environs of the bay. He met only a few natives, with whom he had little intercourse. But one family becoming somewhat familiarized, established itself a hundred yards from the landing-place. Cook gave a concert for them, in which the fife and cornet were lavished on them in vain, the New Zealanders awarded ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... incident occurred during this little voyage on the schooner, which was managed by the French traders who had threatened my life two days before. The wind was light, and the sailors amused themselves with music—one of them playing on a fife. He was attempting to play a tune which he had not properly learned. I was walking the deck, and told him to give me the fife, when I played the tune. The Frenchmen gathered around my feet, and looked with astonishment and delight. From that hour ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... 30th 1917, Lieut. D. Marshall (Fife & Forfar Yeomanry), arrived from the 4th "M.G." Company. He had been "posted" as Commanding Officer, and "took over" from Lieut. Cazalet; shortly afterwards he was promoted ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... had on board a miscellaneous lot of passengers, including a bird-study club, a fife and drum corps, and two scissors-grinders. It wasn't until the boat was wrecked in a thick fog, and they tried to exist on Pelican Point for four days,—foggy all the time—that they found out what ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... friction between John Appleman and his more business-like wife getting somewhat more vigorous and emitting more domestic sparks, until there came a change to every one. The farmer, who had read of martial music, heard with his own ears the roll of the drum and the shrieking, encouraging call of the fife. War was on, and good men abandoned homes and families and surroundings because of what we call patriotism and principle. As for John Appleman, he was among the very first to enlist. He went into the army blithely. It is to be feared that John Appleman, like many ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... army had always been my home; I loved it as such. I love it still, and it is a comfort to me in my old age to know that I am not far away from a fort, that I can almost see the beautiful flag, as it sways in the breeze, can almost hear the drum and fife, the music of my childhood, and can feel that they are near me, in dear old ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... their solemn music throbbed and throbbed with the double drum-beat at the finish of each line. The tune was called "Funeral Thoughts." They changed to "Roslyn Castle" as they crossed the bridge; yet an hour had scarce passed when I heard their volley-firing not very far away, and back they came, the Fife-Major leading, drums, fifes, and light-infantry horns gaily sounding "The Pioneer," and the men swinging back briskly to fall in with the Church details, now marching in from every direction to the admonitory timing ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... clash and clang excitedly in the general badinage. Loaded with a pyramid of glistening cups and saucers, she would improvise a gallant line of march from the kitchen table to the pantry, heading an imaginary procession, and whistling a fife-tune that would stir your blood. Then she would trippingly return, rippling her rosy fingers up and down the keys of an imaginary portable piano, or stammering flat-soled across the floor, chuffing and tooting ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... the long period of hardship which the missionaries experienced in the conversion of England, a snow-storm drove Cuthbert's boat on the coast of Fife. "The snow closes the road along the shore, mourned his comrades, the storm bars our way over sea." "There is still the pathway of heaven that lies open," said Cuthbert. It is even so with us. Can we regret it? Surely the problem is greatly simplified. ...
— A Comparative Study of the Negro Problem - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 4 • Charles C. Cook
... depicts a real face, that of Sir Nicholas Bacon, eldest son of the Lord Keeper, from a contemporary portrait by Zucchero, lately in the Duke of Fife's Collection. This shews by contrast the difference between the portrait of a living man, and the drawing of a lifeless mask with the double line from ear to chin. Again examine Plates 8, Pages 20, 21, the complete portrait ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... enjoyed when newly formed regiments arrived. They usually came with the glowing colors of new equipments, and the vigorous zeal of newly organized drum and fife corps, if not, indeed, of a full band. A richly dressed drum-major generally marched at the head of these displays, and his gaudy uniform, bearskin shako with its plume, glittering baton, with its incessant twirling and rhythmical movement, excited the greatest ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... for the battle, that proclaim the obsequies of a chief. We are not ashamed to confess that the tear has been wrung from our eye by the plaintive notes of the few rude instruments that alone lament over the poor private's simple bier—the inharmonious fife, and the measured beats of the muffled drum; while the dull tramp of the appointed mourners following a comrade to his obscure resting-place falls chilly on the heart. Though even he, lowly in death as in life, shares with his leader ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... without eyes?" and Lizzie proudly produced a very one-sided pear with a long straw for a stem. "I don't expect he will ever be a sculptor, but I hope he will do something with music he loves it so, and is already piping away on a fife very cleverly. Whatever his gift may prove, if he lives, he will be taught to be a useful, independent man, not a helpless burden, nor an unhappy creature sitting alone in the dark. I feel very happy about my lads, and am surprised to find how well ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... Sound the fife, and cry the slogan— Let the pibroch shake the air With its wild triumphal music, Worthy of the freight we bear. Let the ancient hills of Scotland Hear once more the battle-song Swell within their glens and valleys ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... the ball. The fife and the fiddle all merrily sound, Thy twine, and they glide, and with nimbleness bound, Thy whisper, and chatter, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... from the untamed barbarians who roved the Cheviots and the Pentlands. He was not merely a conqueror, but an explorer and discoverer, in Scotland. In A.D. 83 he passed beyond the Frith and fought a great battle with the Caledonians near Stirling. The Roman entrenchments still remaining in Fife and Angus were thrown up by him. In 84 he fought another battle on the Grampians, and sent his fleet to circumnavigate Britain. The Roman vessels at all events for the first time entered the Pentland Frith; ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... particular instance of evolution, though it has meant much to our race. We wish, however, following Professor Buller's Essays on Wheat (1919), to explain the method by which this good seed was discovered. From one we may learn all. The parent of Marquis Wheat on the male side was the mid-Europe Red Fife—a first-class cereal. The parent on the female side was less promising, a rather nondescript, not pure-bred wheat, called Red Calcutta, which was imported from India into Canada about thirty years ago. The father was part of a cargo that came from the Baltic to Glasgow, and was happily included ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... company to which the bridegroom belonged, seized upon him, and putting a couple of bayonets out of the two corners of his hat, to represent horns, it was placed on his head, the back part foremost. He was then hoisted on the shoulders of two strong fellows, and carried round the arms, a drum and fife beating and playing the pioneers call, named Round Heads and Cuckolds, but on this occasion styled the Cuckold's March; in passing the colours, he was to take off his hat: this, in some regiments, was practised by the officers on their brethren, Hoisting, among pickpockets, is, setting ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... gate out of the fife-rail, at the foot of the mainmast, sawing off the stanchions for that purpose. With a little alteration it answered perfectly, being made to swing from a post that was wedged into the arch, by cutting it to the proper length. As this was the first attack upon the Rancocus that had yet been made, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... Beneath a cloudless moon; You hear a sound, that seems to wear The semblance of a tune, As if a broken fife should strive To ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... brings me directly to a brace of the most finished little fiends that ever banged drum or tootled fife in the Band of a British Regiment. They ended their sinful career by open and flagrant mutiny and were shot for it. Their names were Jakin and Lew - Piggy Lew and they were bold, bad drummer-boys, both of them frequently birched by the Drum-Major of ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... boat has reached the sloop. Oh! they are going to burn her. Where is that drum? I've a great mind to go down and beat it. We could hide behind the sandhills and bushes." As flames began to rise from the sloop the ardor of the girls increased. They found the drum and an old fife, and, slipping out of doors unnoticed by Mrs. Bates, soon stood behind a row of sandhills. "Rub-a-dub-dub, rub-a-dub-dub," went the drum, and "squeak, squeak, squeak," went the fife. The Americans in the town thought that help had come from Boston, and rushed into boats to attack the redcoats. The ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... national event. It seems peculiarly necessary and proper, however, in this work, to give a very curious unpublished record respecting the miserable fate of the Spanish armada, as written by a contemporary, the Reverend James Melville, minister of Anstruther, a sea-port town on the Fife, or northern, shore of the Frith ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... sacred Blue Blanket, under which every liege burgher of the kingdom is bound to answer summons! The bale-fires are gleaming, giving alarm to Hume, Haddington, Dunbar, Dalkeith, and Eggerhope. Rise, Stirling, Fife, and the North! All Scotland will be under arms in two hours. One bale-fire: the English are in motion! Two: they are advancing! Four in a row: they are of great strength! All men in arms west of Edinburgh ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... dried leaves; the cannon-balls do not intrude too much, but have subsided into the shade; the awkward squads are in bed; even the loungers are gone, the fan-flirting Spanish ladies, the sallow black-eyed children, and the trim white-jacketed dandies. A fife is heard from some craft at roost on the quiet waters somewhere; or a faint cheer from yonder black steamer at the Mole, which is about to set out on some night expedition. You forget that the town is at all like Wapping, and deliver yourself up entirely to romance; ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... condition of the yeoman farmer in Norway is strongly attested by his heavy and growing indebtedness. He may now, in fact, be classed with the proverbially derided Fife laird, owning 'A wee bit of land, a great lump of ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... friend, the candidate, into the town. Of this party was the yeomanry-band of which Tom Durfy spoke, though, to say the truth, considering Tom's apprehensions on the subject, it was of slender force. One trumpet, one clarionet, a fife, a big drum, and a pair of cymbals, with a "real nigger" to play them, ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... presiding. This tribunal decided that Church's acts had been criminal, but remanded him for the decision of the General Court, of which he was a member. He was taken in a chaise, escorted by General Gates and a guard of twenty men, to the music of fife and drum, to Watertown meeting-house, where the court sat. "The galleries," says an old writer, "were thronged with people of all ranks. The bar was placed in the middle of the broad aisle, and the doctor arraigned." His defence at the trial was ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... chap, Bill," said another. "Talk about yer Syety for Cruelty to Hanimals! Why, yer orter be fined. It's all I can do to keep wind enough to climb up here, let alone having to blow a brass traction-engine, or even a fife." ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... watch his bearing in the battle-field may know who sent him there, may thrill his heart with memories of her who stands alone of her ancestral line, that though he bears the name of Comyn, the blood of Fife flows ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... been household words for weeks, while their supposed merits are open secrets, the jockeys are personal friends, the weather is bright and warm, the ladies wear their smartest dresses, the course is kept and order maintained with the aid of bluejackets from the gun-boat in port, while her drum and fife band or nigger troupe renders selections of varied merits. A race over, the successful owner and jockey are seized and carried shoulder high to the bar behind the grand-stand, where winners and losers alike have preceded ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... for myself, though only a silent spectator of the debate, all my wishes were with the count. Prom my earliest boyhood a military life had been my strongest desire; the roll of the drum, and the shrill fife that played through the little village, with its ragged troop of recruits following, had charms for me I cannot describe; and had a choice been allowed me, I would infinitely rather have been a sergeant in the dragoons than one of his Majesty's learned in the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... fortifications there proved stronger than was expected. And not merely were their assaults on Leith repelled, but the Lords soon saw themselves driven from their strongest positions, for instance from Stirling; their possessions were wasted far and wide; the war, which was transferred to Fife, took an unfortunate turn for them; to all appearance they were lost if they did not obtain ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... dreary lay the town, Lights out and never a glint o' moon: Weary lay the stragglers, half a thousand down, Sad sighed the weary big Dragoon. "Oh! if I'd a drum here to make them take the road again, Oh! if I'd a fife to wheedle, Come, boys, come! You that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load again, Fall in! Fall in! Follow ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... five and twenty years are gone, and lo, to-day they come, The Blue and Gray in proud array with throbbing fife and drum; But not as rivals, not as foes, as brothers reconciled; To twine love's fragrant roses where the thorns ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... Down, Dungannon, Fermanagh, Larne, Limavady, Lisburn, Londonderry, Magherafelt, Moyle, Newry and Mourne, Newtownabbey, North Down, Omagh, Strabane; Scotland - 9 regions, 3 islands areas*; Borders, Central, Dumfries and Galloway, Fife, Grampian, Highland, Lothian, Orkney*, Shetland*, Strathclyde, Tayside, Western Isles*; Wales - 8 counties; Clwyd, Dyfed, Gwent, Gwynedd, Mid Glamorgan, Powys, South ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica: Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum, And the vile squealing of the wry-neck'd fife, Clamber not you up to the casements then, Nor thrust your head into the public street To gaze on Christian fools with varnish'd faces; But stop my house's ears- I mean my casements; Let not the sound of shallow fopp'ry ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... the place began to strike us: there was no sign of the Oriental crowd that usually springs out of the dust at the approach of strangers. But suddenly we heard close by the lament of the rekka (a kind of long fife), accompanied by a wild thrum-thrum of earthenware drums and a curious excited chanting of men's voices. I had heard such a chant before, at the other end of North Africa, in Kairouan, one of the other great ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... being well fixed as regards this world's goods. "Perhaps I'm doin' wrong, but I would like my darter to know as much as those that's likely to come arter. But if the world keeps on its progress so bewild'rin' and they put some more 'ologies into the schools together with cabinet organs and fife and drum, I'm afraid it will cost my darter more than it did me ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... of danger, and before the pain brought him partially to his senses, his leg was so badly burned that it had to be amputated. There were no anaesthetics in those days, but while the leg was being removed, a fife and drum corps played its hardest at the bedside, and the doughty old warrior kept time to the music ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... Farewel the tranquil mind. Farewel content; Farewel the plumed troops and the big wars, That make ambition virtue! Oh farewel! Farewel the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war: And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... soldiers, from some proper eminence, see shirts waving upon lines, and here and there a plump landlady hurrying about with pots in her hands. When they are sufficiently animated to advance, lead them in exact order, with fife and drum, to that side whence the wind blows, till they come within the scent of roast meat and tobacco. Contrive that they may approach the place fasting about an hour after dinner-time, assure them that there is no danger, and command ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... for change, an ardent disposition to visit foreign countries. Passing through the streets of Toulouse one bright morning in spring, the lively drum and fife broke on my ear, as I was counting my gains from a day's marketing. A company of soldiers neatly dressed, with white cockades, passed me with a brisk step; I followed them through instinct—the sergeant ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... Arthur Sullivan has replaced it in the score of "Ivanhoe" by a high G flute. The piccolo is exactly an octave higher than the flute, excepting the two lowest notes of which it is deficient. The old cylindrical ear-piercing fife is an obsolete instrument, being superseded by a small army flute, still, however, called a fife, used with the side drum in the drum ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... cane for loading, bullet molds and wadding, but bravely arrayed in home-spun of blue, and belted with cutlass and broadsword by the side, cockade on the hat and courage in the heart, her revolutionary soldiers marched to the music of fife and drum into battle for freedom against the power and might ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... come over here on Sunday morning, bringing no brass band, fife or drums, I will tell you ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... prevailing in the Scottish seas. But a group of marine shells, indicating a still greater excess of cold, has been brought to light since 1860 by the Reverend Thomas Brown, from glacial drift or clay on the borders of the estuaries of the Forth and Tay. This clay occurs at Elie, in Fife, and at Errol, in Perthshire; and has already afforded about 35 shells, all of living species, and now inhabitants of arctic regions, such as Leda truncata, Tellina proxima (see Figures 113 and 114), Pecten Groenlandicus, Crenella laevigata, Crenella nigra, and others, some of them first brought ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... manner of Albany. It was an evil day for Scotland when our good king, who was then but prince, lamed himself for life; and so was forced, on his accession, to leave the conduct of affairs to Albany, then Earl of Fife. The king, as all men know, is just and good, and has at heart the welfare of his subjects; but his accident has rendered him unfit to take part in public affairs, and he loves peace and quiet as much as Albany loves ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... takes off the hat. "I beck your bardon, ma'am," says he. "Have you fife bet-rooms?" etc. The doctor has cured the German of an illness, as well as his employers, and especially recommended Miss Honeyman to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... former Rum Alley environment and turned to regard Pete's strong protecting fists. She thought of the collar and cuff manufactory and the eternal moan of the proprietor: "What een hell do you sink I pie fife dolla a week for? Play? No, py damn." She contemplated Pete's man-subduing eyes and noted that wealth and prosperity was indicated by his clothes. She imagined a future, rose-tinted, because of its distance from all that she previously ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... sleep—dear father! in his normal condition he sleeps like a bag of corn-meal—who was there in all the house to keep those boys quiet? Nobody but me. When they organized a military company in our back yard directly under father's windows—two drums, a fish-horn, a jews-harp, a fife, and three tin pans—was there anybody but me to put a stop to it? It was on this occasion that the pet name Moolymaria, afterward corrupted into Messymaria, and finally evolved into Meddlymaria, ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... went for! The arms were divided among the people. There was a drum and a fife also found with them, and some one made us very excellent music to step to. As we returned up Broadway, the congregation were just coming out of Trinity. Upon my word, I think we ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... now fife years vill pe done Since ve march into Belgium von day, But since den some beeg rifers have run Troo de pridges, I tink all de vay, Den already de tings seemed so blain, Ven ve shtart oudt to lick de whole vorld Ve vas sure dat us Shermans vould reign ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... MAGNIFICISSIMUS, who has given opera-goers this new and rare edition of Les Huguenots. The gloved hand and the lorgnette of H.R.H. are visible in the omnibus-box, where our music-loving Prince is happily congratulating himself on another little FIFE being added to the harmonious Royal Band, while the loyal public is mightily pleased thus to have it proved to ocular demonstration, that the subtle villain, Influenza, has been baulked in his traitorous attempt on the Royal Personage, and they sincerely hope that the insidious ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... merry fife, with a rhythmical tune, and tramp, tramp, tramp went a hundred and twenty feet round and round, and, with brawny chests pressed tight against the capstan bars, sixty fine fellows walked the ship up to her anchor, drowning the fife at intervals ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... JEFFREY! Heaven preserve his life, 460 To flourish on the fertile shores of Fife, And guard it sacred in its future wars, Since authors sometimes seek the field of Mars! Can none remember that eventful day, [xxxv] [61] That ever-glorious, almost fatal fray, When LITTLE'S leadless pistol met his eye, [62] And Bow-street Myrmidons stood laughing by? Oh, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... and, placing his fife to his lips, played the "Flowers of Edinburgh," one of the most difficult things to follow with the drum. And nobly did the little fellow follow him, showing himself to be master ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... the world, the greatest man of this age, will be compelled, in order to give a faithful delineation, to take for his model the portrait which I, better than any one else, have been able to draw from fife. I think that no one has done this as yet; certainly ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... friend of poets. Born half a man and half a goat. Took after the latter. Studied music under the old masters and outfluted Apollo. Was also a sheep fancier. Fathered fife and drum corps. Ambition: A pair of shoes or a goat's appetite. Recreation: Hunting and falling in ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... street—was it Stanley? Sounds of music reached her, the rumble of marching feet; dark, massed figures were in the distance swimming toward her along the glistening line of the car tracks, and she heard the shrill whistling of the doffer boys, who acted as a sort of fife corps in these parades—which by this time had become familiar to the citizens of Hampton. And Janet remembered when the little red book that contained the songs had arrived at Headquarters from the west and had been distributed by ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hour, in every house of the neighbourhood, sounded the fife and lute, while the inmates indulged in music and singing. Above head, the orb of the radiant moon shone with an all-pervading splendour, and with a steady lustrous light, while the two friends, as their exuberance increased, drained their cups dry ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... an important principle in regard to the stimulation of activity by the rapid movements or sounds of machinery, which influence every workman within their sight or hearing. We all know the influence of a quick merry air, played by fife and drum, upon the step and marching of a regiment of soldiers. It is the same with the quick movements of a steam-engine upon ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, The Scottish Borders, Clackmannanshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Dundee City, East Ayrshire, East Dunbartonshire, East Lothian, East Renfrewshire, City of Edinburgh, Falkirk, Fife, Glasgow City, Highland, Inverclyde, Midlothian, Moray, North Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire, Orkney Islands, Perth and Kinross, Renfrewshire, Shetland Islands, South Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire, Stirling, West Dunbartonshire, Eilean Siar (Western ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... clarichord[obs3], manichord[obs3]; clavier, spinet, virginals, dulcimer, hurdy-gurdy, vielle[obs3], pianino[obs3], Eolian harp. . organ[Wind instruments]; harmonium, harmoniphon[obs3]; American organ[obs3], barrel organ, hand organ; accordion, seraphina[obs3], concertina; humming top. flute, fife, piccolo, flageolet; clarinet, claronet[obs3]; basset horn, corno di bassetto[obs3], oboe, hautboy, cor Anglais[Fr], corno Inglese[obs3], bassoon, double bassoon, contrafagotto[obs3], serpent, bass clarinet; bagpipes, union pipes; musette, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... say that the offer of the kind-hearted trapper was accepted with the utmost enthusiasm. Mickey and Ethan were more anxious to go out upon the prairies than they had been a year and a half before, when they started so full of fife and hope for that vast wilderness, and had come back with such discouragement ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... voters of all ages and classes, lawyers and clergymen being packed together with grooms and brown Alpine herdsmen; and, after the government had been solemnly escorted to its private chamber, four musicians in antique costume announced, with drum and fife, the speedy opening of the Assembly. But first came the singing societies of Herisau, and forced their way into the centre of the throng, where they sang, simply yet grandly, the songs of Appenzell. The people listened with silent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... instrument sometimes proved as fatal to one's liberty as inability to handle a ship. Queen Anne was directly responsible for this. Almost immediately after her accession she signed a warrant authorising the pressing of "drummers, fife and haut boys for sea and land." [Footnote: Home Office Military Entry Books, clxviii, f. 406.] Though the authorisation was only temporary, the practice thus set up continued long after its origin had been relegated to the scrap-heap of memory, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... remember. The day's proceedings are indelibly fixed upon my memory. We went down to the place where the ship was built, accompanied by our friends. We made quite a little procession, headed by a drum and fife. My father and mother walked first, leading me by the hand. I had new clothes on, and I firmly believed that the joy bells were ringing solely because our ship was to be launched. The Mary Ellen was launched from a piece of open ground just beyond the present Salt-house ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... disorder; yet, intermittently, there rose a great murmur, such as the waves make or the leaves, the muttering of a multitude. Jamie turned his face homeward, and edged along by the wall, where there was most room. And now the mutter rose and swelled, and above it he heard the noise of fife and drum and ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... my peace-abiding feet Go marching with the marching street, For yonder, yonder, goes the fife, And what care I for human life! The tears fill my astonished eyes And my full heart ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes
... deception with skill, you will be set down for a man of wonderful capacity. But if you knew what a miserable thing it is to be a critic, you would, I knew, say a man had better follow the devil with a fife and drum than depend on the tricks of booksellers for his bread, which is come the fashion ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... your thoughts of meat and drink! Bertrand the fifer!—you were shepherd once,— Draw from its double leathern case your fife, Play to these greedy, guzzling soldiers. Play Old country airs with plaintive rhythm recurring, Where lurk sweet echoes of the dear home-voices, Each note of which calls like a little sister, Those airs slow, slow ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... and falls, swells and dwindles away in chords and harmonies, until presently every amphibian is alert and tremulous with emotion and emulation. If an attempt is made to analyse the music, you may discover sounds sharp as those of the fife, deep and hollow as drum-beats, sonorous and ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... that voice of the unknown troublemaker, sneeringly shrill, the senseless, passion-provoking common, human fife of the mob spirit, persistently present and consistently cowardly in concealment. "Of course you don't promise anything to the people! Dudes stand together! Go back ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... breasts, their nostrils distended, the corners of their mouth forcibly drawn back, and the expulsion of their breath most laborious. Each time they draw their breath they utter an articulate cry of "ay-ay," which ends in a sound rising from deep in the chest, but shrill like the note of a fife. After staggering to the pile of ore, they emptied the "carpacho;" in two or three seconds recovering their breath, they wiped the sweat from their brows, and apparently quite fresh descended the mine again at a quick pace. This appears to me a wonderful instance of the amount of labour which ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... shooting of some of their pieces. They thus gone, and he being returned unto us again, but nothing knowing of their flight from their fort, forthwith came a Frenchman, [Nicolas Borgoignon] being a fifer (who had been prisoner with them) in a little boat, playing on his fife the tune of the Prince of Orange his song. And being called unto by the guard, he told them before he put foot out of the boat what he was himself, and how the Spaniards were gone from the fort; offering either to remain in hands there, or else to return to the place with them that would ...
— Drake's Great Armada • Walter Biggs
... there masques? Hear you me, Jessica: Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum, And the vile squeaking of the wry-neck'd fife,[66] Clamber not you up to the casements then, Nor thrust your head into the public street, To gaze on Christian fools with varnish'd faces: But stop my house's ears, I mean my casements; Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter My sober ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... Frenchmen might be dying, whom they would otherwise have saved! For the nursing of soldiers was the old nun's specialty; she had been in the Crimea, in Italy, in Austria; and as she told the story of her campaigns she revealed herself as one of those holy sisters of the fife and drum who seem designed by nature to follow camps, to snatch the wounded from amid the strife of battle, and to quell with a word, more effectually than any general, the rough and insubordinate troopers—a masterful woman, her seamed and pitted face ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Faunes, and O ye pleasaunt Springs 145 Of Tempe, where the countrey nymphs are rife, Through whose not costly care each shepheard sings As merrie notes upon his rusticke fife As that Ascraean bard*, whose fame now rings Through the wide world, and leads as ioyfull life; 150 Free from all troubles and from worldly toyle, In which fond men doe all their dayes turmoyle. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... come to his assistance, and pacify the people. It would not have been proper in me to have refused; so out I went in the very nick of time: for when I got to the door, there was the soldiers in battle array, coming marching with fife and drum up the gait with Major Blaze at their head, red and furious in the face, and bent on some bloody business. The first thing I did was to run to the major, just as he was facing the men ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... array of six men. A salute of six muskets was fired in honor of the regal visit. Advancing a little farther, Governor Carver met them with his reserve of military pomp, and the monarch of the Wampanoags and his chieftains were escorted with the music of the drum and fife to a log hut decorated with such embellishments as the occasion could furnish. Two or three cushions, covered with a green rug, were spread as a seat for the king and the governor in this formal and most important ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... crowd grew in volume. Some satirical wit started whistling an imitation of an advancing fife and drum band; others took it up and the air resounded with the shrill music of a phantom army on the march. The mock throbbing of drum and squealing of fife rose and fell above the packed masses of spectators, but no answering echo came from beyond the distant trees. ...
— When William Came • Saki
... troops could scarcely be kept in their places as, with the stirring strains of lively fife and rattling drum, they went rushing and pouring along on their way ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... have me imitate Nicostratus (1) the actor, reciting his tetrameters (2) to the music of the fife? Must I discourse to you in answer to ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... and when those hunters were asked of whose company and household they were, they replied "of Arthur's".' We hear of him again in The Complaynt of Scotland, that curious composition attributed by some to Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount in Fife, and of Gilmerton in East Lothian, pp. 97, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... of St. Nicholas that the boat which contained Wallace drew near to the coast of Fife. A little of the right towered ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... discredit upon that style of composition. 'Robin Gray,' 'Oh no we never mention her,' 'The Soldier's Tear,' and such compositions, are a description of ballads, of which, with the Irish, Scotch, and Welsh melodies, we are proud; but if we admit that the drum and fife compositions of Mr. Lee and others, such as 'Bonnets of blue,' 'Blue bonnets,' 'Charley's over the water,' and 'Over the water to Charley,' are other than trash, fit only to amuse the gentlemen and ladies of colour in the gallery, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... who had bestowed some cost upon his education, hoping to see him one day arrive at the dignity of an exciseman, or at least of a parish clerk. The lad grew up, however, as idle and musical as his father; and, being captivated by the drum and fife of a recruiting party, he followed them off to the army. He returned not long since, out of money, and out at elbows, the prodigal son of the village. He remained for some time lounging about the place in half-tattered ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... around the room in a circle. The leader assigns to each some imaginary musical instrument—horn, fife, drum, trombone, violin, harp, flute, banjo, etc. Some well known, but lively air is given out and the band begins to play, each player imitating as nearly as possible the instrument he has been assigned. All goes well until the leader suddenly drops his instrument and begins playing on that of ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... hear; so goes to die in youth in a foreign land. Thank God, I let Walter take his own way; and I trust he will be a useful, honoured soldier, being, for his time, high in the service; whereas at home he would probably have been a wine-bibbing, moorfowl-shooting, fox-hunting Fife squire—living at Lochore without either aim or end—and well if he were no worse. Dined at home with Lady S. and Anne. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... one particle of his dignity. He thus takes off some of that solemn formality which belongs to such meetings, and, by his easy, and graceful familiarity, imparts to them somewhat of the pleasing character of a private entertainment. Near Sir W. Scott sat the Earl of Fife, Lord Meadowbank, Sir John Hope of Pinkie, Bart., Admiral Adam, Baron Clerk Rattray, Gilbert Innes, Esq., James Walker, Esq., Robert Dundas, Esq., Alexander Smith, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... war swept through the land— I somehow thought, because I loved you so, That you would stay. I did not understand That something stronger than my love could come, To draw you, half-reluctant, from my heart; I never thought the call of fife and drum Would rend ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... five winters ago we had a storm-stead show on a small scale; but nowadays the farmers are less willing to give these wanderers a camping-place, and the people are less easily drawn to the entertainments provided, by fife and drum. The colony hung together until it was starved out, when it trailed itself elsewhere. I have often seen it forming. The first arrival would be what was popularly known as "Sam'l Mann's Tumbling-Booth," with its tumblers, ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... distinguished those whom he employed were flattering: they were not gaolers and turnkeys, but captains of divisions and delegates. He delivered lectures upon geography and astronomy: those who could play instruments, such as clarionet, fife, and violin, were stationed on the deck, while the rest marched in ranks. He instituted a court of enquiry, consisting of five persons, of which his clerk was the recorder, who examined witnesses, and disposed of trivial offences, by exhortation, warning, and reproof; ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... me the connection with that branch of George Robertson, of St. Anne's, Soho, who lived in the middle of the last century, and married Elizabeth Love, of Ormsby, co. Norfolk. He was uncle, I believe, to Mr. Robertson Barclay (who assumed the last name), of Keavil, co. Fife, and nearly related, though I cannot say in what degree, to William Robertson, of Richmond, whose daughter Isabella married David Dundas, created a baronet by George III., and one of whose granddaughters was married to Sir James ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... Bagnet, turning about from her saucepans (for she is cooking dinner) with a bright flush on her face. "Would you believe it? Got an engagement at the theayter, with his father, to play the fife ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the wrestling was ended, and the tongues going over it all again, and throwing the victors; the greasy pole, with leg of mutton attached by ribbons, was being hoisted, and the swings flying, and the lads and lasses footing it to the fife and tabor, and the people chattering in groups; when the clatter of a horse's feet was heard, and a horseman burst in and rode recklessly through the market-place; indeed, if his noble horse had been as rash as he was, some would have been trampled under foot. The rider's face ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... Sweet fife an' piccalo, Bofe warblin' sof an' lo' Slide ho'n an' saxophones, Jazz syncopated tones, Snare drum an' lead cornet, Alto an' clarinet, Las', but not least, dar cum Cymbals an' big bass drum— ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson |
