"Minstrel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a voice, And sing a strain to me; I know where I would place my choice, Which my delight should be. I would not choose the lily tall, The rose from musky grot; But I would still my minstrel ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... in the belief that you had already disposed of it in the manner and for the purpose I have shown you. As I still believed you capable of remorse and confession, I twice allowed you to see I was on your track: once in the garb of an itinerant negro minstrel, and the second time as a workman looking in the window of the pawnshop where you pledged ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... it were, through a language he knew not, who shall say? He did divine him by a natural sympathy of excellence, and his chapters on the "Ulysse" of Ponsard are worth a wilderness of notes by learned and most un-Homeric men. For, indeed, who can be less like the heroic minstrel ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... lottery tickets—tragedy. Fountains, with groups of peasantry drinking, or watering horses and donkeys—pantomime. Priests, in crow-black raiment, and canal-boat or shovel hats—mystery. Strangers from Rome, in the negro-minstrel style of costume, if young men; or in the rotund-paunch and black-raiment dress, if elderly men; or in the chiffonee style, if Roman women attempting the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the hall the din of voices and the sound of song; the instruments also were brought out and Hrothgar's minstrel sang a ballad for the delight of the warriors. Waltheow too came forth, bearing in her train presents for Beowulf—a cup, two armlets, raiment and rings, and the largest and richest collar that could be found in ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... by no means was the rule. The host might wish first to call out more of his own intellectual treasures. This he would do by having other occupants of the castle speak further words of welcome, or would call upon a minstrel to sing a song or relate some deed ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... the taverns of the Main. He gave a verse of it, a wild, sad thing, with tears in it and the joy of battle. After that we all sang, all but me, who have no voice. Bertrand had a lay of Normandy, about a lady who walked in the apple-orchards and fell in love with a wandering minstrel; and Donaldson sang a rough ballad of Virginia, in which a man weighs the worth of his wife against a tankard of apple-jack. Grey sang an English song about the north-country maid who came to London, and a bit of the chanty of the ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... — N. musician, artiste, performer, player, minstrel; bard &c (poet) 597; [specific types of musicians] accompanist, accordionist, instrumentalist, organist, pianist, violinist, flautist; harper, fiddler, fifer^, trumpeter, piper, drummer; catgut scraper. band, orchestral waits. vocalist, melodist; singer, warbler; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... lilies on biers— Let them say! For we are swift to enchant and tire Time's will! Our feet are wiser than all desire, Our song is better than faith or fame; To whom it is given no ill e'er came, Who has it not grows chill! Who has it not grows laggard and lame, Nor knows that the world is a Minstrel's lyre, Smitten and never still!... Last night on ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... been buried in the gardens. Sometimes they confiscate a house, and then re-sell it to the proprietor. Sometimes they cart off the furniture. Pianos they are very fond of. When they see one, they first sit down and play a few sentimental ditties, then they go away, requisition a cart, and minstrel and instrument disappear together. They are a singular mixture of bravery and meanness. No one can deny that they possess the former quality, but they are courageous without one spark of heroism. After fighting ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... with stern regard Upon the gentle minstrel bard, And said in tones abrupt, austere— "Why, Bracy? dost thou loiter here? "I bade thee hence!" The bard obey'd, And turning from his own sweet maid, The aged knight, Sir Leoline Led forth ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... adventures. Cherubina determines to live in an abandoned castle, and gathers a band of vassals. These include Jerry, the lively retainer, inherited from a long line of comic servants, of whom Sancho Panza is a famous example, and Higginson, a struggling poet, who in virtue of his office of minstrel, addresses the mob, beginning his harangue with the time-honoured apology: "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking." The story ends with the return of Cherubina to real life, where she is eventually restored to her father and to Stuart. The incidents, which follow one another in rapid succession, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... action as well as in this, and has left behind him one of the purest of names, encountered the rebels with a considerable force, composed entirely of his own men; these the rebels were the less able to withstand, as they knew that still more troops were on the march. As the ballad of a northern minstrel says, the gold-horned bull of the Nevilles, the silver crescent of the Percies, vanished from the field: the chiefs themselves fled over the Scotch border, their troops dispersed, their declared partisans underwent the severest punishments. Many who knew themselves guilty passed over to the ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... grown cold and his body ached with all the strain and exertion it had so recently undergone. Slowly he moved off towards his own sleeping apartment, in case the Queen, when she awoke, should send to inquire after him. And on his way, as a short cut, he crossed the minstrel gallery, which divided one from the other the two state drawing-rooms,—a broad half-story colonnade, with central opening ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... his silence was eloquent of the inherent generosity of the man, even as his poetic outburst of a few minutes before had been eloquent of the minstrel in him. She rode in silence, regarding him critically from time to time, and when they came to the tree where the panther hung he gave her the calf to hold while he deftly skinned the dead marauder, tied the pelt behind his saddle, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Missouri the cook's duties began with building a fire in the morning. Thurston waked reluctantly, shivered in anticipation under the blankets, gathered together his fortitude and crept out of his bunk. While he was dressing his teeth chattered like castanets in a minstrel show. He lighted the fire hurriedly and stood backed close before it, listening to the rage of the wind. He was growing very tired of the monotony of winter; he could no longer see any beauty in the high-turreted, snow-clad hills, nor the bare, ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... on their last legs, plied their trades. One artist, giving out under the physical labor of mining, built up a remarkably profitable trade in sketching portraits. Incidentally he had to pay two dollars and a half for every piece of paper! John Kelly, a wandering minstrel with a violin, became celebrated among the camps, and was greeted with enthusiasm wherever he appeared. He probably made more with his fiddle than he could have made with his shovel. The influence of the "forty-two caliber whiskey" was dire, and ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... stopping the dog was to spill blood upon the track, which destroyed the discriminating fineness of his scent. A captive was sometimes sacrificed on such occasions. Henry the Minstrel tells us a romantic story of Wallace, founded on this circumstance. The hero's little band had been joined by an Irishman named Fawdon, or Fadzean, a dark, savage, and suspicious character. After a sharp skirmish at ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... "We must listen to this." Suddenly he chuckled to himself: "And do you think he really imagines he is doing any good to his form by giving that nigger minstrel entertainment ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... most valiant of these he was taking counsel the following morning how best to track the outlaws, who had dared to commit this insolent deed, when Etienne appeared to announce that several of their people had not returned home from the fire, and amongst them his own fellow page, the minstrel of the ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... paper. Everybody laughed at the rumour; but everybody remembered it. The land was infinitely remote; and then, as now, romance increases as the square of the distance. There might well be gold there; but more authentic were the reports of fleas, rawhides, and a dried-up coast. Minstrel shows made a good deal of fun of it all, I remember. Then, when we were of a broad grin, came the publication of the letter written by Governor Mason to the War Department. That was a sober official document, and had to be believed, but it ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... upon the blessed calm,— Deep dying melodies of even,— Those Nyack Bells; like some sweet psalm, They float along the fields of heaven. Now laden with a nameless balm, Now musical with song thou art, I tune thee by an inward charm And make thee minstrel of ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... conditions of life becoming strangely confused. And then men of more thought or intelligence, looking more deeply into it, began to consider that the phrase did in very truth express far more serious facts. As in an old Norman tale, he who had entered as a jester or minstrel in comic garb, laid aside his disguise, and appeared as a wise counsellor or brave champion who had come to free the ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... so, Pope Innocent III. ordered a Crusade, and John de Montfort not only opened up the Mediterranean ports for Philip, but brought Toulouse, the greatest of the remaining feudal states, into subjection to the King of France; at the same time forever silencing the voice of the heretic, of the minstrel, and of the harp; even the speech, with its delicate inflections and musical intonations, disappeared, to be heard nevermore. Such, in brief, is the story of the "Albigensian War," so called on account of the heresy having been brought into Provence ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... all the copies of Milton's Paradise Lost were to be destroyed, he could reproduce the book complete, from memory. In early life he was a great admirer of Walter Scott's poetry, and especially the "Lay of the Last Minstrel", and could repeat the whole of that long poem, more than six hundred lines, from memory. And at the age of fifty-seven he records—"I walked in the portico, and learned by heart the noble fourth act of the Merchant of Venice. There are four hundred lines. I made ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... destiny of the outlawed and ruined Westmorland, and the untimely end of Northumberland through the perfidy of the false friend in whom he had put his trust, were long remembered with pity and indignation, and many a minstrel "tuned his rude harp of border frame" to the fall of the Percy or the wanderings of the Nevil. There was also an ancient gentleman named Norton, of Norton in Yorkshire, who bore the banner of the cross and the five wounds before the rebel army, whose tragic ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... ascended the ducal throne. In 1615, not long after his accession, as the chronicles relate, in passing through a chamber of the palace he saw a young girl playing upon a cithern, and being himself young, and of the ardent temper of the Gonzagas, he fell in love with the fair minstrel. She was the daughter of a noble servant of the Duke, who had once been his ambassador to the court of the Duke of Savoy, and was called Count Ardizzo Faa Monferrino di Casale; but his Grace did not on that account hesitate to attempt corrupting her; indeed, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... happened to wander down there this morning, never thinking to run across a surprise, when what did I see but a long crate, and inside that a splendid eight-oar shell, just what we ordered with that money we earned in the winter, giving minstrel shows and gymnastic performances. It's a great day for Riverport school, fellows; and well have a dandy time this ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... the Church councils had sometimes even to rebuke abbots and abbesses for listening to their songs. And the worst of it was that the great emperor himself, the good Charlemagne, loved them too. He would always listen to a minstrel, and his biographer, Einhard, tells us that 'He wrote out the barbarous and ancient songs, in which the acts of the kings and their wars were sung, and committed them to memory';[17] and one at least ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... of enjoyment that did one good to look at. And there was a friend to share his pleasure: a Turk dressed in scarlet, and covered all over with daggers and pistols, sat leaning forward on his little stool, rocking about, and grinning quite as eagerly as the black minstrel. As he sang and we listened, figures of women bearing pitchers went passing over the Roman bridge, which we saw between the large trunks of the planes; or grey forms of camels were seen stalking across it, the string ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... celebrated minstrel, led away by an exaggeration of healthy human desires, has left his friends and gone to live with Venus in the Hoerselberg. He soon tires of her; she tries to keep him; he calls on the Virgin; the hallucinatory dream is shattered, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... line of breakers, without the necessity of making detours to avoid fruit-stalls and bathing-saloons. Fortunately the fine sands around Newquay have not yet become a mart for sweetmeats and cocoanuts, nor are they the happy hunting ground of the negro minstrel and other troupes of ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... demands. [4] All they prove is that the Roman aristocracy, like that of all other warlike peoples, listened to the praises of their class recited by minstrels during their banquets or festive assemblies. But so far from the minstrel being held in honour as in Greece and among the Scandinavian tribes, we are expressly told that he was in bad repute, being regarded as little better than a vagabond. [5] Furthermore, if these lays had possessed any merit, they would ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... and village of Ellaville were located on the river-bank opposite Columbus, and this lumber establishment is the only place of importance between it and Cedar Keys. This far-famed river, to which the heart of the minstrel's darky "is turning eber," is, in fact, almost without the "one little hut among de bushes," for it is a wild and lonely stream. Even in the most prosperous times there were but few plantations upon its shores. ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... you long, Although for bread the Minstrel sings, Ah, still for you he pipes the song, And thrums upon ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... (1) Aminstrel flees from plague-stricken Heorot, sails to the Geatish land, and sings the terror wrought by Grendel, urging Beowulf to come and save ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... There was a minstrel out in the crowd, and pretty soon he struck up his fiddle and his lay, and he did not exactly sing the virtues of Billy Bayhone. Evidently some partisan thought he ought, for he smote him on the thigh with the toe of his boot and raised such a stir as a rude stranger might had he smitten ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... the State election in Arkansas in 1872 was that Brooks got the votes and Baxter the office, whereupon a contest was inaugurated, terminating in civil war. The Baxter, or Minstrel, wing of the party, with the view of spiking the guns of the Brindles, had, in their overtures to the Democrats during the campaign and in their platform at the nominating convention declared in favor of enfranchising the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... display. There dwells the chief we all extol In timber house on lightsome knoll; Upon four wooden columns proud Mounteth his mansion to the cloud; Each column's thick and firmly bas'd, And upon each a loft is plac'd; In these four lofts, which coupled stand, Repose at night the minstrel band; Four lofts they were in pristine state, But now partitioned form they eight. Tiled is the roof, on each house-top Rise smoke-ejecting chimneys up. All of one form there are nine halls Each with nine wardrobes in its walls ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... deemed of heavenly birth, Muse, formed or fabled at the minstrel's will! Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth, Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill: Yet there I've wandered by thy vaunted rill; Yes! sighed o'er Delphi's long-deserted shrine Where, save that feeble fountain, all is still; ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... me in the clear air of that declining day. I stood a while at the end of the "Bull" gateway. There was a comical-looking little knock-kneed fellow in the middle of the street —a wandering minstrel, well known in Preston by the name of "Whistling Jack." There he stood, warbling and waving his band, and looking from side to side,—in vain. At last I got him to whistle the "Flowers of Edinburgh." He did it, vigorously; and earned his penny well. But even "Whistling Jack" complained ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... golden crown to crown him. While the empyrean minstrels rising, All in flowing garments vested, Some with harps and some with timbrels, Some with lutes and some with trumpets, All in goodly order mingled, In the skill of gay perfection; Far the minstrel band extendeth Like a wilderness of grandeur. As a sea of flowing white waves Mingled up with diamond ripples; As the moon on sparkling waters, Comes the light from glowing beacons, Dancing on their crowns ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... admiration. She is not faultless in her method, but she differs from other great American prime donne in the important particular of possessing voice enough to fill an auditorium larger than the average minstrel hall. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... remember, in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, the song of Albert Graeme, which has something about Carlisle's wall ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... around, and saw the world he left When to that visionary realm of song His spirit fled from bonds of flesh bereft; And on the vision he lay musing long, As o'er his soul rude minstrel-echoes throng, Old measures half-disused; and grasp'd his pen, And drew his cottage-Christ for ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... out the coach, sharply. "This is training work. You'll find the minstrel show, if that's what you want, at the ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... the Boy), whom Austin, de civ. Dei, lib. 17. cap. 14. so much commends for it. Who hath not heard how David's harmony drove away the evil spirits from king Saul, 1 Sam. xvi. and Elisha when he was much troubled by importunate kings, called for a minstrel, "and when he played, the hand of the Lord came upon him," 2 Kings iii. Censorinus de natali, cap. 12. reports how Asclepiades the physician helped many frantic persons by this means, phreneticorum mentes morbo turbatas—Jason ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... dip the taper wing— The pilgrim there his thirst assuage, The wandering minstrel sit and sing, Or muse ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... darkened. Thee, now, methinks, I see, O bard divine! Where ripen no fair joys that are not thine, And God's full love is pleased on thee to shine, Still by the heavenly Muses fired, And starred among the angelic minstrel band, The sacred lyre thou sway'st with sovereign hand, While seraphs, in awed rapture, round thee stand, As ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... notes the Mantuan minstrel owns Long lur'd her Trojan from the main: And bleeding Arria, in such tones, Assur'd her ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... photographed as a prattling, bald-headed baby, absolutely destitute of eyes, but making up for this deficiency by a wealth of mouth that would make a negro minstrel olive green with envy. We often wonder what has given the average photographer that wild, hunted look about the eyes and that joyless sag about the knees. The chemicals and the indoor life alone have not done all this. It is ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... encounter, hand to hand, with his formidable battle-axe. The ground around Cuzco became a battle-field, like the vega of Granada, in which Christian and Pagan displayed the characteristics of their peculiar warfare; and many a deed of heroism was performed, which wanted only the song of the minstrel to shed around it a glory like that which rested on the last days of the Moslem ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Feb. 10. Hans von Buelow's symphonic poem, "The Minstrel's Curse," given by the Symphony Society, in ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... is going to be paid. When we open our new and wonderful gym, containing all sorts of up-to-date appliances for physical development, there will be no debt hanging over our heads. We figured on having to give all sorts of entertainments the coming winter, from basket-ball matches to minstrel performances, in order to raise funds to help out; but now we can devote our time to having all the fun going. You also remember the big promise several of the mill- owners made, led ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... as close as we can," said Bunny. "Maybe if it's Fred we can tell, no matter if he is blacked up like a minstrel." ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... the summer-time when days are long, I will come hither with my paramour, And with the dancers, and the minstrel's song, We will make merry ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... the legislature was a minstrel show. It was worse than a minstrel show; it was profoundly corrupt. Lobbyists openly paid legislators, black and white, for their votes. And what is more, the money was parceled out to each one on the very floor of the Senate and House. This ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... come home, the wife is set at the upper end of the table, and the husband next unto her. They fall then to drinking, till they be all drunk; they perchance have a minstrel or two. And two naked men, who led her from the church, dance naked a long time before all the company. When they are weary of drinking, the bride and the bridegroom get them to bed (for it is in the evening always when any of them are married); and when they are going to bed, the bridegroom ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... we find an increasing admixture of buffoonery, without which no Interlude could be regarded as complete. Herein we see the influence of certain farcical entertainments brought over by the Norman jongleurs (or travelling minstrel-comedians). Just as the French fabliaux inspired Chaucer's coarser tales, so the French farce stimulated the natural inclination of the English taste to broad humour and rough-and-tumble buffoonery on the stage. Held in some restraint by the dominant religious element, it grew stronger ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... old English and German carols, which seem to grow only sweeter, more mellow, more perfectly expressive of the love and good-will that inspired them, as the years go by. Yet always at Christmas time there is with me the memory of one carol sweeter than all, which was sung to me alone by a little minstrel from the far north, with the wind in the pines humming ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... that helped to make this common subject and spirit of mediaeval literature was the minstrel, who was attached to every well-appointed castle. This picturesque poet—gleeman, trouvere or troubadour sang heroic stories and romances of love in the halls of castles and in the market places of towns. He borrowed from and copied others and helped to make the common method ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... lay long by me, till the applause of some friends whose judgement I valued induced me to resume the poem; so on I wrote, knowing no more than the man in the moon how I was to end. At length the story appeared so uncouth, that I was fain to put it into the mouth of my old minstrel—lest the nature of it should be misunderstood, and I should be suspected of setting up a new school of poetry, instead of a feeble attempt to imitate the old. In the process of romance the page, intended to be a principal person in the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... city dwelling. The furniture was scant but neat, and so daintily arranged. The bright cooking-stove, the bird-cage, the little round work-stand, above all, the handsome, cheerful woman, with her household love and genial benevolence, Isabel Chester's mother—how vividly the sight of that young minstrel brought all this to ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... have caused to flow, come from other eyes than his own. And so, with gratulation void of all regrets, let us drink to the continued years, service, happiness of our strong and tender-hearted elder comrade, our white-haired minstrel, Richard Henry Stoddard. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... them many such tales which Stevenson wove into stories. The "Beach of Falesa" and the "Isle of Voices" are probably the two most famous, while "the strange story of the loss of the brigantine Wandering Minstrel and what men and ships do in that wild and beautiful world beyond the American continent" formed a plot for the story called "The Wrecker," which he and Lloyd ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... and the Comet, The. Magic Mirror, The. Meeting of the Ships, The. Meeting of the Waters, The. Melologue. Memorabilia of Last Week. Merrily Every Bosom boundeth. Millennium, The. Mind Not Tho' Daylight. Minstrel-Boy, The. Missing. Morality. Moral Positions. Mountain Sprite, The. Mr. Roger Dodsworth. Musical Box, The. Musings of an Unreformed Peer. Musings, suggested by the Late Promotion of Mrs. Nethercoat. My Birth-Day. My Gentle ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... influences of his age—left him unsophisticated, free to find in all things matter for wonder, and to work out his mental processes unprejudiced by a restraining knowledge of other men's past achievements. In his eighteenth year he taught himself to read, choosing as his text-books Henry the Minstrel's Life and Adventures of Sir William Wallace and the Gentle Shepherd of Allan Ramsay. Not until his twenty-sixth year did he acquire the art of penmanship, which he learned "upon the hillside by copying the Italian alphabet, using his knee as his desk, and having the ink-bottle ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... and when I walked along behind dad, and got a rear view of his silk hat, it seemed as though I would sink through the asphalt pavement, for he had on an old silk hat that he wore before the war, the darnedest looking hat I ever saw, the brim curled like a minstrel show hat, the fur rubbed off in some places, and he looked like one of these actors that you see pictures of walking on the railroad track, when the show busts up at the last town. I think a man ought to dress so his young son won't have a fit. I tried to get dad to go and buy a new hat, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... A minstrel's fire within me burn'd, I'd sing, as one whose heart must break, Lay upon lay: I nearly learn'd To shake. All day I sang; of love, of fame, Of fights our fathers fought of yore, Until the thing ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... the multitude, And yet more joyous rose, and shriller, I saw the minstrel where he stood At ease against a Doric pillar: One hand a droning organ played, The other held a Pan's-pipe (fashioned Like those of old) to lips that made The reeds give out that ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... time that George Washington told the truth, a word must be said, of course. It is the principal jewel in the crown of America, and it is but natural that we should work it for all it is worth, as Milton says in his 'Lay of the Last Minstrel.' It was a timely and judicious truth, and I should have told it myself in the circumstances. But I should have stopped there. It was a stately truth, a lofty truth —a Tower; and I think it was a mistake to go on and distract attention from ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... together: the man holding down his head as he struck the chords of his harp with a bold and vigorous hand. I learnt that they were uncle and niece. I shall not readily forget the effect of these figures, or of the songs which they sang; especially the sonorous notes of the mastersinger, or minstrel. He had a voice of most extraordinary compass. I quickly perceived that I was now in the land of music; but the guests seemed to be better pleased with their food than with the songs of this old ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... love," he said, in, answer to her inquiry. "I should deem him minstrel by his garb, or seer, or both perchance, as is sometimes the case, conjoined. I will speak with him when my present ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... accustom'd place That minstrel ply'd his art, Though its soft symphony of words Convulsed with pain the broken chords ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... victory won by her ancestor over the Duke of Mayenne. A little later, Madame is conducted to the foot of an ancient tower, whence there is a view of immense extent. Here she is arrested by the songs of an ancient minstrel, whose voice is accompanied by mysterious music hidden in the hollows ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... hear any more about them—seems to be a secretary. Think of having the run of a house where a social secretary is required! I'm sure she sends out the invitations and keeps the engagement- book. Besides all that, she writes poetry—she is the minstrel of the court. She does verses about her chatelaine—is quite the mistress of self- respecting adulation. She would know the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... minstrel reached the ears of the Queen of Ireland, a lady deeply versed in the art of healing. She was, indeed, "the best Couthe of Medicine"[56] Tristrem had seen, and in order to heal his wound she applied to it "a plaster kene." Later she invited him to the Court, where his skill in chess ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... minstrel swept, The king of men, the loved of Heaven, Which Music hallowed while she wept O'er tones her heart of hearts had given,— Redoubled be her tears; ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... such an accomplished poet as Raymond of Toulouse must be admitted to the contest. "But, at all events," she told her sisters, "that renowned minstrel shall bring no polished work of long study to match against the untutored outpourings of my favourite's heart. Already have I ordained, with my assistant judges, that since some one of the contestants may be tempted to present a poem not his own, plagiarism shall be counted the one unpardonable ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... after many adventures by the way, we arrived at the Moon, and not only got into the middle of it, but made acquaintance with the inhabitants, none of whom appeared to be over two feet high, or to have anything to speak of between their chins and their toes. After that experience, minstrel shows and concerts, and persons who told your fortunes with snakes, or ate glass, were rather an anticlimax; still, I enjoyed them all so much that I was incapable of extreme annoyance when we discovered that The Evening Bat had an "impressionist ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... clothes and smiling, blue-eyed indifference. And every time that he shrugged his shoulders or crossed his knees he jingled and jangled incongruously among his coil-boxes and insulators, like some splendid young Viking of old, half blacked up for a modern minstrel show. ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... minstrel old, had set me dreaming Of a sweet bow'd down face with yellow hair; Betwixt green leaves I used to see it gleaming, A half smile on the lips, though ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... same piece and material with their religion. Here, it is true, were none of the appliances which popular merriment would so readily have found in the England of Elizabeth's time, or that of James—no rude shows of a theatrical kind; no minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman with an ape dancing to his music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps a hundred years old, but still ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... children are present, the two elder crying for sympathy, the youngest sitting in a crib or cradle and amusing himself with some toy, in apparent unconsciousness of his father's approaching departure. Soft blue light from left. Music, "The Minstrel Boy." ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... drawbridges, and so narrow is every street of the town that no wagon is allowed to cross, for if it made the passage of the bridge it would be caught hard and fast between the houses. As the traveller put foot on the drawbridge he felt as though he were a petty trader or wandering minstrel, or some other figure of the Middle Ages, entering for a few hours' traffic or a noon-day's rest, and when he paused under the low arch of the portcullis-gate, people stared at him as they do at a stranger in little far-off towns. Once inside, he turned into a street, and was immediately obliged ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... they now? Earth yields them naught: the imprisoned worm is safe Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs Lie covered close, and berry-bearing thorns That feed the thrush (whatever some suppose), Afford the smaller minstrel no supply. The long-protracted rigour of the year Thins all their numerous flocks. In chinks and holes Ten thousand seek an unmolested end, As instinct prompts, self-buried ere they die. The very rooks and daws forsake the fields, Where neither grub nor root nor earth-nut now Repays their ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... 'That's mere minstrel leasing, Malcolm,' said Patrick. 'I have both seen and heard the bird in France—Rossignol, as we call it there; and were I a lady, I should deem it small compliment to be likened to a little russet-backed, ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was a pitiful-looking object after the young men had plastered his face and hands with lampblack and oil, and yet his appearance bore a certain queer relation to the humorous exhibitions one sees on the negro minstrel stage. Particularly was this the case when he smiled ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... said Brother Pratt to me, "go in front of the curtain and make a rip-staving speech—I know you can do it. Say that at the urgent solicitation of the manager, you have consented to appear to-morrow night as Jem Baggs, in the Wandering Minstrel." ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... * *, on my first visit, I have a habit, in passing my time a good deal alone, of—I won't call it singing, for that I never attempt except to myself—but of uttering, to what I think tunes, your 'Oh breathe not,' 'When the last glimpse,' and 'When he who adores thee,' with others of the same minstrel;—they are my matins and vespers. I assuredly did not intend them to be overheard, but, one morning, in comes, not La Donna, but Il Marito, with a very grave face, saying, 'Byron, I must request you won't sing any more, at least ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... effect of a blizzard. They were in the smaller compartment of the main hut completing a set of pendulum observations, while Royds was in the larger compartment—the hut was used for many and various purposes—rehearsing his nigger minstrel troupe. Either because nigger minstrelsy and scientific work did not go hand in hand, or because their work was finished, Bernacchi and Skelton, soon after the rehearsal began, left the hut to return to the ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... the baron bold, the minstrel tender, Not with the ringing sound of shield and lance, Not with the Field of Gold in all its splendor, Died out the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... up a guitar, and lolling against the old marble fireplace, in an attitude which I am half inclined to suspect was studied, began the little French air of the Troubadour. The Squire, however, exclaimed against having anything on Christmas eve but good old English; upon which the young minstrel, casting up his eye for a moment, as if in an effort of memory, struck into another strain, and, with a charming air of gallantry, gave ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... with them, but Nicolette assures them she will never be happy until she rejoins Aucassin. Meantime she learns to play on the viol, and, when she has attained proficiency on this instrument, sets out in the guise of a wandering minstrel to seek her beloved. Conveyed by her brothers to the land of Biaucaire, Nicolette, soon after landing, hears that Aucassin, who has recently returned, is sorely bewailing the loss of his beloved. Presenting herself before ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... night and felt all the desolateness of the world, all the exiledom of man upon it. There was no lure, no temptation in that. The Aeolian harp of the heart does not always discourse battle music, and on this night it was as if an old sad minstrel sat before me and played unendingly one plaint, the story of a lost throne, of a lost family, lost children, a lost world. Thus a thought came to me: "We are all the children of kings; on our spiritual bodies are royal seals. Sometime or other ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... your hands kind of poised halfway, and your lips sort of parted, and your eyes just gazing away somewhere off in the distance for fifteen minutes at a stretch. And out there in the shipping-room Henry's singing like a whole minstrel troupe all day long, when he isn't whistlin' so loud you can hear him over 's far as Eighth Avenue." Then, as the red surged up through the girl's fair skin, "Well?" drawled old Pop Henderson, and the dry chuckle ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... in a servile position. Pottery was manufactured of excellent but simple patterns. Metal work was, of course, thoroughly understood, and the Anglo-Saxon swords and knives discovered in barrows are of good construction. Every chief had also his minstrel, who sang the short and jerky Anglo-Saxon songs to the accompaniment of a harp. The dead were burnt and their ashes placed in tumuli in the north: the southern tribes buried their warriors in full military dress, and from their tombs much of the little knowledge which we ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... looked interested. "You don't say so," he ejaculated. "Give me a good minstrel show,—that's what I like. Haverly's or Barlow, Wilson, Primrose & West, or Billy Emerson's or—say, did you ever see Luke Schoolcraft? Well, sir, there was the funniest end man I ever see. There ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... Maryland," was another travesty, of about the same literary merit, or rather demerit, as "The Bonnie Blue Flag." Its air was that of the well-known and popular negro minstrel song, "Billy Patterson." For all that, it sounded very martial and stirring when played ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... and tears, in sun and showers, The minstrel and the heather, The deathless singer and the flowers He sang of ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various |
