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Fife   Listen
verb
Fife  v. i.  (past & past part. fifed; pres. part. fifing)  To play on a fife.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fife" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 with a native drum or baiatu. ...
— 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

... the table, then Foster said: "That was a great voice of Weatherbee's. I've seen it hearten a whole crowd on a mean trail, like the bugle and fife of ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... 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 ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... He'll be true to you if you try honestly to be true to Him," said the boatswain, as he wrung his son's hand, and stepped down the side of the fine frigate to which Pearce through the interest of his late captain had been appointed. The crew went tramping round the capstan to the sound of the merry fife, the anchor was away, and under a wide spread of snowy canvas the dashing "Blanche" of thirty-two guns, commanded by the gallant Captain Faulkner, stood through the Needle passage between the Isle of Wight and the main, on her way down channel, bound out to the West Indies. ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... in fighting mood; they had been whetted by provocation to a keen edge for war. They understood the meaning of "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights," if the landsmen did not. There were strapping sailors in every deep-water port to follow the fife and drum of the recruiting squad. The militia might quibble about "rights," but all the sailors asked was the weather gage of a British man-of-war. They had no patience with such spokesmen as Josiah Quincy, who said that Massachusetts ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... spirits, which were three. And the first arose in the likeness of an armed head, and he called Macbeth by name and bid him beware of the Thane of Fife; for which caution Macbeth thanked him; for Macbeth had entertained a jealousy of Macduff, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... 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, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... the clarion! fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth a ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... fife, and drum, He claims and wins his own; When o'er the deluge drifts his ark, To rest upon ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Carrickfergus, Castlereagh, Coleraine, Cookstown, Craigavon, 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 Glamorgan, West Glamorgan note: England may now have 35 ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... slowly, Play the fife lowly, Sound the dead march as you bear me along. Take me to Boot-hill, and throw the sod over me— I'm but a poor cow-boy, I know ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... costume of the officers consists of as rich military suits as can be procured. The soldiers should wear a showy military suit and bearskin hats. The muskets must be furnished with bayonets, and a thin smoke should be made to float over the scene. The roll of the tenor drum, the shrill music of the fife, the rattle of musketry, and the booming of cannon, should be heard in the distance. A red light must be thrown upon all the figures; if this is not sufficient to light up the piece, the footlights fronting Napoleon can be lighted. The person who takes the part ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... the flames, the throb of drum, the scream of fife, the crash of martial music, and the shouts of marching hosts, was added now the deep thunder of exploding ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... near their house, I saw at one end of it, in the direction of the parade ground, something very huge and black, and I heard sounds of fife and drum proceeding from it. My heart had been full of song, and I had heard in imagination the tune of the mazurka, but this was very harsh music. It ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... the sound," he cried. "I see it all again. Look, can't you see them? It's Massachusetts soldiers marching South to the war—can't you hear the beating of the drums and the shrill calling of the fife—the regiments from the North, the first to come. I saw them pass, here where we are ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... 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 ...
— A Comparative Study of the Negro Problem - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 4 • Charles C. Cook

... the lines & every regt. in the brigade on Long Island, exclusive of their quarter & rear guards, are to mount a picket every evening at retreat beating at sun set, consisting of one Capt. 2 Subs, 1 drum & 1 fife & 50 rank & file—they are to lay upon their arms, & be ready to turn out ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... of British authority avoid the extremity by concession? Boston, indeed America, had seen no hour of intenser interest, of deeper solemnity, of more instant peril, or of truer moral sublimity; and as this assembly deliberated with the sounds of the fife and drum in their ears, and with the soldiery in their sight, questions like these must have been on every lip,—and they are of the civil-war questions that cause an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... wounded, and the rest were either killed or swept away by the tide and drowned. The privateers actually had more prisoners than they had men of their own. Some of the prisoners were kept towing in a launch at the stern, and, by way of strategy, Captain Ordronaux set two boys to playing a fife and drum and stamping about in a sequestered part of his decks as though he had a heavy force aboard. Only by sending the prisoners ashore under parole was the danger of an ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... skinning specimens) with an unusual development of the trachea and vocal organs, to which the bird doubtless owes its singularly deep, loud, and long-sustained fluty note. The Indian name of this strange creature is Uira-mimbeu, or fife- bird, [Mimbeu is the Indian name for a rude kind of pan-pipes used by the Caishanas and other tribes.] in allusion to the tone of its voice. We had the good luck, after remaining quiet a short time, to hear its performance. It drew itself up on its perch, spread widely the umbrella-formed ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... this leads up to my tale O' what befell puir Tam MacPhail, A dacent miner chiel in Fife Wha led a maist exemplar' life, An' ne'er abused himsel' wi' liquor, But took it canny-like an' siccar. Aye when he cast his wet pit-breeks, Tam had a gless that warm'd his cheeks; For as it trickled owre his craigie, He held it wardit aff lumbaigy. It wasna that he liked the ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie

... prevail on them to put along-side the ship, and at last was obliged to leave them to follow their own inclination. At length they put ashore in a little creek hard by us; and afterwards came and sat down on the shore a-breast of the ship, near enough to speak with us. I now caused the bagpipes and fife to play, and the drum to beat. The two first they did not regard; but the latter caused some little attention in them; nothing however could induce them to come on board. But they entered, with great familiarity, into conversation (little understood) ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... sound the clarion, fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz

... sound shall reach thine ear, Armour's clang, or war-steed champing, Trump nor pibroch summon here Mustering clan, or squadron tramping. Yet the lark's shrill fife may come At the daybreak from the fallow, And the bittern sound his drum, Booming from the sedgy shallow. Ruder sounds shall none be near, Guards nor warders challenge here, Here's no war-steed's neigh and champing, Shouting clans ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... Webb—the nephew of the famous old General under whom my grandfather Esmond served in the great wars of Marlborough. Mr. Webb met us at our uncle's, accosting us very politely, and giving us an invitation to visit him at his regiment. Let my poor brother go and listen to his darling music of fife and drum! He bade me tell the ladies that they should hear from him. I kiss their hands, and go to dress for dinner, at the Star and Garter, in Pall Mall. We are to have Mr. Soame Jenyns, Mr. Cambridge, Mr. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Amazon, a singularly deep and long-sustained flute-like sound is often heard. It might be supposed that it was produced by the pan-pipes used by the natives of that region. It is, however, the note of a bird, named by the Indians uira mimbeu, or fife-bird, from the peculiar tone of its voice. It is, from the ornament on its head—consisting of a crest, with long curved hairy feathers, having long bare quills; which, when raised, spread themselves out in the form of a fringed sunshade over the head—called the umbrella-bird (Cephalopterus ornatus). ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... Scottish archers fought on Joan's side; the only portrait of herself that Joan ever saw belonged to a Scottish man-at-arms; their historians praised her as she deserved; and a Scottish priest from Fife stood by ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... scowled and interjected, "Ay, ay, and you'll make all the fraca that need be about the lads, and cock your hat to the fife, and march and act the veteran as if you were Moore himself, but you'll be far away from knowing what of their pomp and youth is stirring the hearts of your brother Dugald and me. The Army is all bye for us, Jock, Boney's ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... unmoor! unmoor Hark to the hoarse, but welcome sound, Startling the seaman's sweetest slumbers. The groaning capstan's labouring round, The cheerful fife's enliv'ning numbers;. And ling'ring idlers join the brawl, And merry ship-boys swell the call, All hands, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... wrong," she said. "And I deserve it. But it all hurts. It hurts dreadfully. Can't you see? The awful pity of it? You of all men to be condemned to a fife like this. And you suffer ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... central Scotland over the lowlands bordering the Moray Firth. Interbedded lavas and tuffs are found in the island of Hoy. An interesting feature of this series is the occurrence of great crowds of fossil fishes in some localities, notably at Dura Den in Fife. In the north of England this series rests unconformably upon the Lower ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... 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! ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... Borderers, the Cameron Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers standing to attention, keep back the crowd. Boys from High school are perched on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the cloud appears. A fife and drum band is heard in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... 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 enter My sober house. By Jacob's ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... spell-bound by the magic name of Peace Dream golden dreams. Go, warlike Britain, go, For the grey olive-branch change thy green laurels: Hang up thy rusty helmet, that the bee 5 May have a hive, or spider find a loom! Instead of doubling drum and thrilling fife Be lull'd in lady's lap with amorous flutes: But for Napoleon, know, he'll scorn this calm: The ruddy planet at his birth bore sway, 10 Sanguine adust his humour, and wild fire His ruling element. Rage, revenge, and cunning Make up the temper of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... 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 ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... robin his fife will trill, And the wood-piper beat his drum; And out of their tents on the hill The ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various

... intention had been to march to the windmill to the music of fife and drum, flute and harmonicon, but he had given up part of this plan; chiefly, he said to himself, on account of his father's advice not to make any disturbance in a strange place; but also because he could not get a drum, and Feklitus would ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri

... moving! Hark to the mingled din Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum And roaring culverin! The fiery duke is pricking fast Across St Andre's plain, With all the hireling cavalry Of Gueldres and Almayne. 'Now by the lips of those ye love, Fair ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... drum and the fife, War's rattling throng, And a wandering life The world along! Swift steed—and a hand To curb and command— With a blade by the side, We're off far and wide. As jolly and free, As the finch in its glee, On thicket or tree, Under heaven's wide ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the names most frequently mentioned in her Diary as visiting or corresponding with her after her return from Italy: Lord Fife, Dr. Moore, the Kembles, Dr. Currie, Mrs. Lewis (widow of the Dean of Ossory), Dr. Lort, Sir Lucas Pepys, Mr. Selwin, Sammy Lysons (sic), Sir Philip Clerke, Hon. Mrs. Byron, Mrs. Siddons, Arthur Murphy, Mr. and Mrs. Whalley, the Greatheads, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... saw, boldly answered, "Where are they? let me see them." And they called the spirits, which were three. And the first arose in the likeness of an armed head, and he called Macbeth by name, and bid him beware of the thane of Fife; for which caution Macbeth thanked him: for Macbeth had entertained a jealousy of Macduff, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... starting up as the sound of drum and fife broke on his ear. Mrs. Harmar went to the front window, and reported that a Volunteer company of soldiers was coming down the street. The old men instantly crowded round the window, and expressed their gratification at ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... the summer sweeter to you. Every June morning when you go out to the field, Oriole and Blackbird and Bobolink will fly after you and make the day more delightful to you; and when you go home tired at sundown, Vesper Sparrow will tell you how grateful we are. When you sit on your porch after dark, Fife Bird and Hermit Thrush and Wood Thrush will sing to you; and even Whip-poor-will will cheer up a little. We know where we are safe. In a little while all the birds will come to live in Massachusetts again, and everybody who loves music will like to make a summer home ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... 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 ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... and now feels the good effects of it. His defence of M. de Portes is worthy of Demosthenes. He came every year within a quarter of a league of the Hermitage to pass the vacation at St. Brice, in the fife of Mauleon, belonging to his mother, and where the great Bossuet had formerly lodged. This is a fief, of which a like succession of proprietors would ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... the uneven Muses loves, Will fire his dizzy brain with three times three; Three once told the Grace approves; She with her two bright sisters, gay and free, Shrinks, as maiden should, from strife: But I'm for madness. What has dull'd the fire Of the Berecyntian fife? Why hangs the flute in silence with the lyre? Out on niggard-handed boys! Rain showers of roses; let old Lycus hear, Envious churl, our senseless noise, And she, our neighbour, his ill-sorted fere. You with your bright clustering ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... perhaps, the artist who will attempt to restore to life, and hold up to the view of 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 not so ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... stood looking on, that day, must have felt the impressiveness of the long line as it slowly filed down the broad street under the graceful arches of the tall old elms, in the cold light of the cloudy afternoon. First came the drum corps, with wailing fife and muffled drum; next appeared the gray uniforms of the company who marched two by two, with bowed heads and reversed arms, to escort the hearse in their midst. Directly behind the hearse trotted a small, yellow figure, at sight ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray

... hardly be said to have gone in search of him: all in their power was to seek the parts where he was occasionally seen, in the hope of chancing upon him; and they wandered in vain about the woods of Fife House all that week, returning disconsolate every evening to the little inn on the banks of the Wan Water. Sunday came and went without yielding a trace of him; and, almost in despair, they resolved, if unsuccessful the next day, to get assistance and organize a search for him. Monday passed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... years old when a great excitement arose among the colonists in Virginia, and the fife and drum were heard, to announce that England, ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... musical instrument maker, 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 love. Address: ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous

... Tyrone**; Scotland - 32 council areas; 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 Isles), West Lothian; Wales - 11 county boroughs, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... know, of any marks of marine bodies. But, on each side of this great alpine ridge, we find the hard country skirted with one which is lower, flatter, or of a softer nature, in which coal is found, upon the one side, in the shires of Fife, Clackmannan, and Stirling; and, on the other, in that hollow which runs from the Murray Frith south-west, in a straight line, directed upon the end of Mull, and composed, for the most part, of water very little above ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... off the poop to the quarter-deck, and in a minute the drum and fife struck up the air which is known all over the civilized world as the call to arms. In most services this summons is made by the drum alone, which emits sounds to which the fancy has attached peculiar words; those of the soldiers of France ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... were slaine of men of estimation, sir Iohn Swinton, sir Adam Gordon, sir Iohn Leuiston, sir Alexander Ramsie of Dalehousie, [Sidenote: Prisoners taken.] and three and twentie knights, besides ten thousand of the commons: and of prisoners among other were these, Mordacke earle of Fife, son to the gouernour Archembald earle Dowglas, which in the fight lost one of his eies, Thomas erle of Murrey, Robert earle of Angus, and (as some writers haue) the earles of Atholl & Menteith, with fiue hundred other of meaner degres. After this, the lord Persie, [Sidenote: The ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed

... 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 acrid, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... Julian," the doctor went on in a gentler tone, "it was customary to associate valor with the clang of arms and the pomp and circumstance of war. But the echo of the fife and drum comes very faintly up to us, and moves us not at all. The soldier has had his day, and passed away forever with the ideal of manhood which he illustrated. But that group yonder stands for a type of self-devotion that appeals to us profoundly. ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... parades. My early letters to my Russian friends were filled with boastful descriptions of these glories of my new country. No native citizen of Chelsea took such pride and delight in its institutions as I did. It required no fife and drum corps, no Fourth of July procession, to set me tingling with patriotism. Even the common agents and instruments of municipal life, such as the letter carrier and the fire engines, I regarded with a measure of respect. I know what I thought ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... studies were finished, and I had occasion to visit a Fife laird near the East Neuk. The gentleman was notable for his taste in kitchen-gardening; and having a particularly fine bed of Jerusalem artichokes which I must see, he conducted me to the scene of his triumphs, when, hard at work with the rake and hoe, whom should I find ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various

... hearing a fife, denotes that there will be an unexpected call on you to defend your honor, or that of some ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... The Earl of Fife, withouten strife, He bound him over Solway; The great would ever together ride That race they may ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards

... devotion excessive: But the King, who's been bored by that song From his cradle - each day - all day long - Who's heard it loud-shouted By throats operatic, And loyally spouted By courtiers emphatic - By soldier - by sailor - by drum and by fife - Small blame if he thinks it the plague of his life! While his subjects sing loudly and long, Their King - who would willingly ban them - Sits, worry disguising, anathematising ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... 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 by the clowns, both men and women—an interesting survival ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... had taken two days to it, sleeping—that is, attempting to sleep—at York. What a pity it is that Scotland is so far off! all the good one has gained there gets shaken off one in the terrific journey home again, and then the different atmosphere is so trying to one fresh from the pure air of Fife—so exhausting and depressing. If it hadn't been that I had a deal of housemaiding to execute during the week I was here before Mr. C. returned, I must have given occasion for newspaper paragraphs under the head of 'Melancholy Suicide.' But ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... he 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, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... authorities unitary authorities: Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Clackmannanshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Dundee City, East Ayrshire, East Dunbartonshire, East Lothian, East Renfrewshire, City of Edinburgh, Eilean Siar (Western Isles), 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, The Scottish Borders, West Dunbartonshire, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... 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 of a ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... 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 ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... Wheeling [Footnote: Fort Henry. For an account of the siege, see De Haas, pp. 223-340. It took place in the early days of September.] was attacked by two or three hundred Indians; with them came a party of Detroit Rangers, marshalled by drum and fife, and carrying the British colors. [Footnote The accounts of the different sieges of Wheeling were first written down from the statements of the pioneers when they had grown very aged. In consequence, there is much uncertainty ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... 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 As the clansmen march along! Never from the field of combat, Never ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... sight was frequently 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 enthusiasm ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... the steward came and beckoned me to follow him down to his cabin, remarking that nobody would see me. I saw the captain, and told him what I knew of the matter. The robbery continued to be the sole topic of talk the rest of the journey. Clearing the coast of Fife, we soon came in sight of Edinburgh, and, sailing up the Forth, we finally landed at Leith. It was Sunday afternoon, and there were large numbers of people about to watch us land. The majority of the people ran for the first pier, but the captain ordered the vessel to land at ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... cities were the 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 that ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon

... 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 ...
— Drake's Great Armada • Walter Biggs

... each one a tomb for himself. Years had passed since Jasper, a battle-smoked and bleeding soldier, had trod up to that lofty pile of rock to receive his discharge from the ranks; and desolate, with no drum and no fife to march back to his wretched home. To him the scene was heart-heavy with memories, but to the boys it was the first glimpse of that great and mysterious life lying far beyond their ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read

... place that Cyril had only heard of. Samuel talked of the games played in the Five Towns in his day, of the Titanic sport of prison-bars, when the team of one 'bank' went forth to the challenge of another 'bank,' preceded by a drum-and-fife band, and when, in the heat of the chase, a man might jump into the canal to escape his pursuer; Samuel had never ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... 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, 98, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... of Lord Fife[33] and Lord R. Grosvenor being made Peers, and of an offer being made to Mr Macaulay, although she believes he will decline ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... highway. A clatter and bang, a sweet droning and shrill scraping, and then an old man proudly limped through the gateway of the Great Clock. This was the conjurer, this white-haired fellow, who, with fife, cymbals, bells, concertinas,—he wore two strapped under either arm,—at times fiddler, made epileptic music as he quivered and danced, wriggled, and shook his venerable skull. The big drum was fastened to his back, upon its top were placed cymbals. On his ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... more unctuous than 50 ever he preached." Noon strikes—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart! Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife; No keeping one's haunches still; it's the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... 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 fine ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... coal-field, including those of Fife, Stirling, and Ayr in Scotland; Cumberland, Newcastle, and Durham in England; ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin

... upbraid the sun for shining so brightly. Lengthened and repeated rounds of cannon rolled along the air. The solemn march of the dead was moaning from the muffled drum, interrupted at measured pauses by the shrill tremor of the fife. The troops, preceded by their general, moved forward with a decent and melancholy step. The Bishop of Warsaw followed, bearing the sacred volume in his hands; and next, borne upon the crossed pikes of his soldiers, and supported by twelve of his veteran companions, appeared the body ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... Lieutenant Little, Second Lieutenant Waddell, Second Lieutenant Cockerell, and Lieutenant Struthers, surnamed "Highbrow." Bobby we know. Waddell was a slow-moving but pertinacious student of the science of war from the kingdom of Fife. Cockerell came straight from a crack public-school corps, where he had been a cadet officer; so nothing in the heaven above or the earth beneath was hid from him. Struthers owed his superior rank to the fact that in the far back ages, before the days of the O.T.C., he had held a commission ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... work was over, the colored people would gather in the little hamlet and march to the music of a drum and fife, and under the command of Nimbus, whose service in the army had made him a tolerable proficient in such tactical movements as pertained to the "school of the company." Very often, until well past midnight the fife and drum, the words of command, and the rumble of marching ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... Margaret Christie, and he went far afield for a wife, namely from Newbiggin in Forfar, where for fourteen years he had his one and only charge, to Strathmiglo in Fife. The marriage was fruitful and a happy one, although there is a hint in the record of some religious difference upon which one would like to dwell if the subject were not too esoteric for this generation. ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae

... of the British Association, Mr. Russell, farmer, Kilwhiss, Fife, read a paper on "The Action of the Winds which veer from the South-west to West, and North-west to North." This he wound up by a reference to Shakspeare, which may ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various

... 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 ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... away. One morning Theodore was on his way from one office to another when he heard the sound of drum and fife and saw a body of the strikers marching up Washington street. Every boy within sight or hearing at once turned in after the procession, and Theodore followed with ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... greyer leaden sea, the whirling flight of wild sea birds white against the dark horizon, the little boat, kept with difficulty from dashing against the cliffs and rocky boulders, the attendant ship, driven up and down by the waves, and distant Fife, with its low hills in tones of neutral tint upon the horizon—would all increase the sadness of the parting: but no doubt there was a long breath of relief breathed by everybody about when the vessel continued its course, and slowly disappeared ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... I vorked at making brooms—me und my vife—from fife in the morning until six at night, und I loose mine fingern trying to save enough money to puy a house that we could call our own. Then when we saved eight hundred dollars this man come to us und sold us a lot. We were very happy. Yesterday anoder man served me mit ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... the North has again invaded the South but not with drum and fife and armed hosts and has been met not with shot and shell but with a genuine southern welcome and from this commingling of northern capital and energy with southern soil and sunshine has sprung a new industry of such roseate promise ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various

... 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 ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and saw white flags fluttering before a drum and fife band and a knot of youths in sweaters gathered round the dummy breech of a four-inch gun which they ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... at the weather earring! Cheery, my boys! Let go the sheet, now! Stand by at the braces, you! With a will, aloft there! Belay, starboard watch! Fifer! Come aft, fifer, and give 'em a tune! Forthwith, springs up fifer, fife in hand—smallest boy ever seen—big lump on temple, having lately fallen down on a paving- stone—gives 'em a tune with all his might and main. Hoo-roar, fifer! With a will, my lads! Tip 'em a livelier one, fifer! ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... 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 ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... not seem quite a brilliant anticipation of the success awaiting me in my legal career. As 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

... north, ridge on ridge, rose the mountains, the rosy morning light bathing their sides in floods of sunshine, and turning each heather bell at their feet into an amethyst. Yonder could be seen the shores of Fife, nearer Preston Bay and Berwick. Between them rolled the broad Firth, islands floating on its bosom like emeralds ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins

... reaching the village, they met a party of boys playing at soldiers. They had their drum, and fife, colors, and wooden guns, and tin swords, and flourished away in all the "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton

... said the captain, twinkling for an adversary among the males, too distant or too dull to distinguish a note of challenge. 'You'd be having to mount your drum and fife in their places, ma'am.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... lee, ye lee, ye ill womyn, Sae loud I hear ye lee; The ill-faured'st wife i' the kingdom of Fife ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... the nation came To fight our country's foe, Who would follow our Old Glory, Where her stars and stripes might go; To the battle cry of Freedom, All our men would surely come, And fight for world-wide Victory At the call of fife and drum. We have proved to all creation That our boys are real true blue, And we've shown those fiendish Prussians, ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... the men were going round the capstan to the sound of the merry fife, when a messenger from the Admiralty arrived in hot haste, directing the captain to carry out despatches to the governor of Cape Coast Castle, instead of proceeding direct to the Pacific, ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... Fife are expected here every day from Spa; but we hear nothing certain yet of their graces of Richmond, for whom I am a little impatient; and for pam too, who I hope comes with them. In French houses it is impossible to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... and Commercial Journal,' of January 20, 1838, published at Elizabeth City, devotes a column and a half to a description of the lynching, tarring, feathering, ducking, riding on a rail, pumping, &c., of a Mr. Charles Fife, a merchant of that city, for the crime of 'trading with negroes.' The editor informs us that this exploit of vandalism was performed very deliberately, at mid-day, and by a number of the citizens, 'THE MOST ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... less than certain sound— "He jests at scars who never felt a wound." So runs his word! Yet on the verge of strife, They jest not who have never known the knife; They tremble who in the waiting ranks are found, While those scarred deep on many a battle-ground Sing to the throbbing of the drum and fife. They laugh who know the open, fearless breast, The thrust, the steel-point, and the spreading stain; Whose flesh is hardened to the searing test, Whose souls are tempered to a high disdain. Theirs is the lifted brow, the gallant jest, The long last breath, that ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... possible that the war is over, and that General Lee has really surrendered. [Fife and drum, without.] There is music in the streets nearly all the time, now, and everybody looks so cheerful and bright. [Distant fife and drums heard playing "Johnnie Comes Marching Home." EDITH springs up and runs up to window, looking out.] More troops returning! The old tattered battle-flag is waving in the wind, and people are running after them so merrily. [Music ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard

... the wild news came, Far flashing on its wings of flame, Swift as the boreal light which flies At midnight through the startled skies. And there was tumult in the air, The fife's shrill note, the drum's loud beat, And through the wide land everywhere The answering tread of hurrying feet; While the first oath of Freedom's gun, Came on the blast from Lexington; And Concord, roused, no longer tame, ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... be seen the soft outlines of the county of Fife, while beneath the spectator stretched the yellow ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne

... I came to the Veglia!" he said, and all seemed explained. Another lad, returning from working in the vineyards near Marseilles, was walking up to his native village, high in our hills, one moonlight night. He heard sounds of fiddle and fife from a roadside barn, and saw yellow light from its chinks; and then entering, he found many women dancing, old and young, and among them his affianced. He tried to snatch her round the waist for a waltz (they play Mme. Angot at our rustic balls), ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee



Words linked to "Fife" :   transverse flute



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