"Ribald" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and his assiduous attentions to her father, made a deep impression on the girl. Jenkins soon became the friend, the confidant, a vigilant and gentle guardian. Sometimes in the studio, when some one—the father himself most frequently—made a too equivocal remark or a ribald jest, the Irishman would frown and make a little noise with his lips, or else would divert Felicia's attention. He often took her to pass the day with Madame Jenkins, exerting himself to prevent her from becoming once more the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... centre of the ring. The sanctified were without sense of humor, but the unregenerate onlookers were not proof against the comic aspects of emotional religion, and from the dark outskirts rang a ribald laugh. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... by sound depends upon the setting may be illustrated by the bagpipes. The bagpipes in a London street is a thing for ribald laughter, but the bagpipes in a Highland glen is a thing to stir the blood, and make the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... Such ribald nonsense, however, was unfair to a navy which had done magnificently well until smothered and suppressed by sheer weight of numbers. It was in January, 1815, that Captain Decatur finally sailed out of New York harbor in the hope of taking ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... a procession of about two thousand who came in from a near-by forest carrying tremendous bundles of faggots for firewood. As they marched they were singing, with a good deal of spontaneous gusto, a ribald French song. We considered their condition a great credit ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... liest', and some, 'he dreams': and then Some hands uplifted certain bowls they bore To lips that writhed but drank with eagerness. And some played curious viols, shaped like hearts And stringed with loves, to light and ribald tunes, And other hands slit throats with knives, And others patted all the painted cheeks In reach, and others stole what others had Unseen, or boldly snatched at alien rights, And some o' the heads did vie in a foolish game OF WHICH COULD HOLD ITSELF THE HIGHEST, and OF WHICH ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... age. She had set her mark indelibly on his speech, his manners, and his habits. When ten years old he had learned to aspirate his initial vowels; when twelve he had mastered the whole theory and practice of eating cheese with his knife; at seventeen his mind was saturated with ribald ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... we call Fatherland social currents begin to filter. There remains only one ideal in presence of which the most hardened sceptic raises his hat,—the People. But on the base of this statue mischievous spirits are beginning already to scribble more or less ribald jokes, and, what is still more strange, the mist of unbelief is rising from the heads of those who, in the nature of things, ought to bow down reverently. Finally there will come a gifted sceptic, a second Heine, to spit and trample on the idol, as in his time did Aristophanes; he will not, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... There was a smile on the face of the maid, which was explained a minute later when, in accordance with her mistress's order, the visitor was shown into the drawing-room, for his presence was of an elegance so extraordinary as to attract attention anywhere—and mirth as well from ribald observers. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... touches as her London sitting-room. The view from the windows, of the formal garden outside, with its rows of white statues, leading to a winding lake, and parklike slopes beyond it, was certainly cheerful. Coryston particularly disliked it, and had many ribald things to say about the statues, which in his mad undergraduate days he had more than once adorned with caps of liberty, pipes, mustaches, and similar impertinences. But most people were attracted by the hard brightness of the outlook; and of light and sunshine—on ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... peevishness, too closely pressed down upon them, the complexion is dark, the figure tall and graceful; altogether the likeness of a wise and gallant gentleman, lovely to all good men, awful to all bad men; in whose presence none dare say or do a mean or a ribald thing; whom brave men left, feeling themselves nerved to do their duty better, while cowards slipped away, as bats and owls before the sun. So he lived and moved, whether in the Court of Elizabeth, giving ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... runaway slave. True to their Virginian instincts as she came near, they formed in line across the narrow bridge, and prepared to seize her. Seeing escape impossible in that quarter, she stopped suddenly, and turned upon her pursuers. On came the profane and ribald crew, faster than ever, already exulting in her capture, and threatening punishment for her flight. For a moment she looked wildly and anxiously around to see if there was no hope of escape. On either hand, far down below, rolled the deep foamy waters of the Potomac, ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... on MASTERMAN, Dear DAVID'S henchman leal, Whose piety and "uplift" Make ribald Tories squeal; In every public function Displaying the conjunction Of perfect moral unction With ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... was not what it is in these advanced times. Then, it meant that one was possessed of all the evil habits that fall to the lot of man. David Cable was more or less contaminated by contact with his rough, ribald companions of the rail, and he glided moderately into the bad habits of his kind. He drank and "gamboled" with the rest of the boys; but by nature not being vicious and low, the influences were not hopelessly ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... on dole! For, when the fair entreats her lover foul, * Sighs rend his bosom and bespeak his soul By charms of thee and whitest cheek I swear thee, * Pity a heart for love lost all control Bend to him, be his stay 'gainst stress of love, * Nor aught accept what saith the ribald fool.'" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... wearing. He was considered to have gotten much the worse of the treaty of Peronne with Charles the Bold, and he had a mistress named Perrette, so that the Parisians trained their parrots, magpies, and other speaking birds to ask Perrette to give them a drink, among other ribald phrases. Consequently, the king issued a royal commission "to a young man of Paris named Henry Perdriel, in the said city of Paris" to take and seize "all magpies, jays, and chevrettes being in cages or otherwise, and being private property, in order to bring them all ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... gathered up her skirts and fled, whirling up the veranda steps and into the house like a small cyclone, never pausing until a locked door lay between her and a ribald, unfeeling world. ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... friend; of being laughed to scorn by them all of being chased by US troops at the very commencement of his enterprise; of being severely wounded, rescued, and carried off during the flight by Buck Tom, and then—a long blank, mingled with awful dreams and scenes, and ribald songs, and curses—some of all which was real, and some the ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... that he was in an advanced state of intoxication. As I entered he rose unsteadily, and addressing me declared that life in the Spasso-Preobrazhensky was most pleasant, and at once began singing a ribald song. ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... children violently struggled, and that the round hard head of one of them butted him in the stomach. He divined that sounds of ribald laughter, in the distance, proceeded from the driver of the Marychurch station fly. He knew two small figures raced whooping down the lane attended by squelchings of mud and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... house, and is reached by a well-drained gravel path; so that in any weather one may walk, alone or in company, dry shod to its brink, and estimate roughly how many inches of rain have fallen in the night. The ribald call it the hippopotamus pond, tracing a resemblance between it and the bath of the hippopotamus at the Zoo, beneath the waters of which, if you particularly desire to point the hippopotamus out to somebody, he always lies hidden. To the rest of us it is known simply ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... stared and murmured, for by those words, wittingly or unwittingly, their general had confessed his faith, and that day they made ribald songs about him in the camp. But on the morrow when they learned how that the man whom the prince spared had been seized by a lion and taken away as he sat at night with his companions in the bivouac, his mouth full of boasting of his own courage in offering insult to the prince and ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... "Thou slanderous ribald! quoth the miller, hast! A traitor false, false lying clerk, quoth he, Thou shalt be slain by heaven's dignity Who rudely dar'st disparage with foul lie My daughter, that is come of lineage high! And by the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... you both dull as yon withered moon in the sunshine." Loud laughed the listening group at the insolent gibe of the poet, Stirring the gall to its depths in the bitter soul of their master, Who with his tremulous fingers tapped the hilt of his poniard, Answering naught as yet. Anon the glance of the ribald, Carelessly ranging from Pordenone's face to the picture, Dwelt with an absent light on its marvellous beauty, and kindled Into a slow recognition, with "Ha! Violante!" Then, erring Wilfully as to the subject, he cackled his ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... The blasphemies and ribald jokes with which this good-for-nothing young man adorned his speech made it sound tenfold more hideous than I can do. Even his mother shrank away from him, in terror and amaze at his levity, and cried aloud in her fear so that instantly ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Bec, what is to do?' quoth he. 'I have made an ill bargain. Oh, perverse heart, that turneth from doctrine.' So I bade him keep his breath to cool his broth, ne'er would I shame my folk with singing ribald songs. 'Then,' says he sulkily, 'the first fire we light by the wayside, clap thou on the music box! so 'twill make our pot boil for the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... make sport of me, your governor? Thanksgiving for the breaking up of school! Out on you for a set of malapert young knaves! Do you think the world goeth but for your pleasures alone? Why, this is ribald talk! I made no Thanksgiving for your convenience, rascals, but because that the Lord in His grace hath relieved the town ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... together with such persons as may in other years have extended civilities to either of us; but we pledge ourselves to you most sacredly that no invitation can be bought with money. Permit us to say further, that as we would most gladly escape from the insulting jeers, and ribald sneers and coarse ridicule of the unthinking multitude without, we pray you to allow us, at our own proper charges, so to guard the avenues of access from the street, as to prevent all unseemly ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... bound and hustling together in the narrow channel of Chepe. The imprecations of the charioteers were terrible. From the noble's broidered hammer-cloth, or the driving-seat of the common coach, each driver assailed the other with floods of ribald satire. The pavid matron within the one vehicle (speeding to the Bank for her semestrial pittance) shrieked and trembled; the angry Dives hastening to his office (to add another thousand to his heap,) thrust his head over the blazoned panels, and displayed an eloquence of objurgation which ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to warn her lover of another attempt on the life of Washington, who must pass her father's house on his return from a distant settlement. The Tory knows nothing of this; but he starts whenever the men in the next room rattle the dice or break into a ribald song, and a frown of apprehension crosses his face as the foragers crunch by, half-barefoot, through the snow. The hours go on, and the noise in the next room increases; but it hushes suddenly when a knock at the door is heard. The Tory opens ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... out of his nether garments, cursing bitterly as the wind caught his bare legs, and hung suspended between earth and water, amid ribald comments from above. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... laugh, but I managed to kick him beneath the table and he turned it into a sneeze. This was fortunate, as such ribald merriment would have hurt the old man's feelings terribly. After all, also, as Leo himself had once said, surely we were not the people to mock at the theory of re-incarnation, which, by the way, is the first article of faith ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... If religion was honoured in the age of faith, the bourgeois spirit found matter of mirth in the adventures of dissolute priests and self-indulgent monks. Not a few of the fabliaux are cynically gross—ribald but not voluptuous. To literary distinction they made small pretence. It sufficed if the tale ran easily in the current speech, thrown into rhyming octosyllables; but brevity, frankness, natural movement are no slight or common merits in mediaeval poetry, and something ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... aunt "very troublesome and conceited." It is not improbable that Belinda was both flattered and offended. Delighted with the praise of her beauty she may none the less have felt called upon to play the part of the offended lady when the poem got about and the ribald wits of the day began to read into it double meanings which reflected upon her reputation. To soothe her ruffled feelings Pope dedicated the second edition of the poem to her in a delightful letter in which he thanked her for having permitted the publication of the first edition ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... the examination began, there was a strange commotion in GORTON's College. GORTON, who was supposed to have been reading hard, was found at about twelve o'clock in the quad in his nightgown. He was on all fours, and was engaged in eating grass and roaring out ribald snatches of Latin songs in a shrill voice. When the porter approached him he said he was a hippogriff, and that in another ten minutes he intended to fly to Iffley and back in half a second. He was carried ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... sand-hill and told her: about the long low-ceiled room in the quadrangle of the Bodleian, the old marbles which lined the walls, the examiner at the blue baize table, and the little deal tables (all scribbled over with names and dates and verses and ribald remarks) at which the candidates wrote; also of the viva voce examination in the antechamber of the Convocation House, He told it all as if it were the great event he honestly felt ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... next care, for hangings were in that day, alas! of weekly occurrence. Instead of the ribald scenes and unseemly jokes which accompanied the progress of the unfortunate wretches to Tyburn, Mr. Sewell insisted that a solemn decency should now mark these processions. He had his watchmen dressed in long cloaks, with crape on their hats, which he provided at his own expense; and then, as they ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... his rough-running, irregular rhythmic rather than strictly metrical verses ... mad and ribald ... often tedious ... but with wild flashes of beauty interwoven through his poems ... the poem about his mistress's sparrow ... the elegy on its death ... where he prayed God to give it the little wren of the Virgin Mary, as a wife, in ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... young man, whose life had been none of the most righteous, judging from the revelations made by his unconscious lips; since more than once Robert authoritatively silenced him, when my gentler hushings were of no avail, and blasphemous wanderings or ribald camp-songs made my cheeks burn and Robert's face assume an aspect of disgust. The captain was a gentleman in the world's eye, but the contraband was the gentleman in mine;—I was a fanatic, and that accounts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Mayor, "d' ye think I brook Being worse treated than a Cook? Insulted by a lazy ribald With idle pipe and vesture piebald? You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst, Blow your pipe there ...
— The Pied Piper of Hamelin • Robert Browning
... were all, his verse would have perished with that of Macer and Gallus. But it is not all. These love-poems of a private gentleman of the Augustan time, show a delicacy of sentiment almost modern. Of the ribald curses which Catullus hurls after his departing Lesbia, there is nothing. He throws the blame on others: and if, just to frighten, he describes the wretched old age of the girls who never were faithful, it is with a playful tone and hoping such bad luck will never befall any sweet-heart of his. ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... was so sudden that the people naturally abused it. Henry became vexed because the sacred words "were disputed, rimed, sung, and jangled in every ale-house." There had grown up a series of wild ballads and ribald songs in contempt of "the old faith," while it was not really the old faith which was in dispute, but only foreign control of English faith. They had mistaken Henry's meaning. So Henry began to put restrictions ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... particular—to discover a literature, and the finest in the world, which habitually philosophised life: a literature which, whether in a chorus of Sophocles or a talk reported by Plato, or in a ribald page of Aristophanes or in a knotty chapter of Thucydides, was in one guise or another for ever asking Why? 'What is man doing here, and why is he doing it?' 'What is his purpose? his destiny?' 'How stands he towards those unseen powers—call them the gods, or whatever you will—that guide ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... "Stop your ribald talk," said Alan in a stern voice. "It would be better if instead of making jokes you gave thanks to Providence for bringing both of us alive and well out of very dreadful dangers. Now I am going to dress for dinner," and with an anxious glance seaward into the gathering darkness, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... man of huge stature, pressing onward, like some bulky ship, casting the noisy waves right and left from its prow, "this is hot work; but for what, in the holy Mother's name, do ye crowd so? See you not, Sir Ribald, that my right arm is disabled, swathed, and bandaged, so that I cannot help myself better than a baby? And yet you push against me as if ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the surviving Union and Confederate officers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each during the Civil War. Colonel Thomas W. Higginson said that at a dinner at Beaufort, S. C., where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied, Dr. Miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that he could not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song. He replied: "I cannot sing, but ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... always, and I descended to the earth and read Voltaire, and laughed and sneered at all the old forms and superstitions of man. But this does not afford me any enjoyment now—the unhappy do not feel like laughing at a ribald wit; but, alas! this rubbish is stored here, and here I must live with it. It blackened and blurred the pictures of the angels, that adorned my childish memories. It wiped out all heavenly visions, and left ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... These factions were continually plotting and counter-plotting one against the other. At Gloucester, to which the duke had brought the parliament in 1378, in the hope of escaping from the interference of the "ribald" Londoners,(630) Brembre was arraigned on a charge of having connived during his recent mayoralty at an attack made on the house of the duke's younger brother, Thomas of Woodstock, Earl of Buckingham, and although he succeeded in proving his ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... ran high. Maria, seconded by the Abbe Vermond, took the part of her brother. This greatly offended many of the highest nobility of the realm. It became a family quarrel of great bitterness. A thousand tongues were busy whispering malicious accusations against Maria. Ribald songs to sully her name were hawked through the streets. Care began to press heavily upon the brow of the dauphiness, and sorrow to spread its pallor over her cheek. Her high spirit could not brook the humility of endeavoring the refutation of the ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Suffolk youths broke into a church at Dovercourt, tore down a wonder-working crucifix, and burned it in the fields. The suppression of the lesser monasteries was the signal for a new outburst of ribald insult to the old religion. The roughness, insolence, and extortion of the Commissioners sent to effect it drove the whole monastic body to despair. Their servants rode along the road with copes for doublets or tunicles for saddle-cloths, and scattered panic among ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... ribald doggerelist has it. Sounds a little "predatory," perhaps, as SALISBURY would say. But quite capable of being "spiritualised" into a sound Liberal policy, directed against the purblind Poluphemos of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... Within a week fifty thousand women in forty counties had pictured to themselves this osculation of intellects, and shrugged their shoulders, and decided once more that men were incomprehensible. These great ones in London, falling in love like the rest! But no! Love was a ribald and voluptuous word to use in such a matter as this. It was generally felt that the Reverend Archibald Jones and Miss Chetwynd the elder would lift marriage to what would now be termed an ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the French call "Glacidas"—commanded the English post at the Tourelles, and he and another English officer replied by bidding her go home and keep her cows, and by ribald jests that brought tears of shame and indignation into her eyes. But, though the English leaders vaunted aloud, the effect produced on their army by Jeanne's presence in Orleans was proved four days after her arrival, when, on the approach of reenforcements ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... ribald laughter cut me short, and laying his hand on my shoulder, he looked me full in the face, while, with a struggle to recover ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Pisga, pined to its cone point, and a race-track, with a saloon, at its foot. I ran away out there once at a big Fourth of July barbecue. It rained like the devil and I lounged in the bar with jockeys and sporting girls, listening to their ribald talk. ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... was a racking pain in his head, a weakness in his limbs that alarmed him. Once, in his callow days, he had been intoxicated. He recalled feeling pretty much the same as he felt now, the day after that ribald supper party at Maxim's. Moreover, he had a vague recollection of iron bars but no such bed ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... A ribald face, sullen as a dean's, Buck Mulligan came forward, then blithe in motley, towards the greeting of their ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... to look at will upon what he wished. He saw these other scenes through drifting vapors and swirls of sullen fog dissolving before shafts of red and garish light. He saw cowboys at the bar, drinking fierce whiskey, the air filled with obscenity and ribald language, and he saw himself with them drinking and cursing with the wildest, or sitting at table with them, under smoking kerosene lamps, while the chips clicked and clattered and the cards were dealt around. He saw himself, stripped ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... shamefully. When they were well on the voyage to Cebu the prisoners were allowed to be on the upper deck, and Mrs. Wilson was permitted to use an armchair. The soldiers insulted them, and, leaning their backs against Mrs. Wilson's chair, some sang ribald songs, whilst others debated whether their captives would be shot on the beach or at the Cotta in Cebu. Sometimes they would draw their swords and look viciously towards them. At last, after a series of intimidations, they reached ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... cushion. The dragon looked rather like a frog rampant, and the crowned cushion bore a singular resemblance to a mushroom with an angry ladybird on its apex. How this family insignia had been obtained Peter did not know. His ribald questions had been treated by his sister with silent scorn. He would not be surprised if Ena had designed ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... the arena a cabin-boy from a British merchant ship, and the tender-hearted lion some genius from the "halls." Even after months of this sodden camp it was possible to find a youth to play Lavinia, with so pretty a face, such a velvet voice, such a pensive womanliness that the flat-capped, ribald young cockneys in the front row blushed with embarrassment. A professor of archaeology, or something, said that he had never seen more accurate reproductions of armor, though this was made but of gilded and silvered cardboard—in short, if Mr. Shaw's fun was ever better brought out by professional ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... seemed to reach out their mossy arms with their myriad of little, cool, green hands, to welcome him back. They knew nothing of his failures and disappointments, and were more sympathizing than the coarse and ribald men whose rude taunts he had just heard, and to whose admiration he was as indifferent as to their sarcasm. These were grand and beautiful maple woods, free from tangling underbrush, and standing thick and stately on wide, gentle slopes; and to-night the lisping breath of the ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... ——'s place." Just behind, upon a sorry mule, escorted by a mixture of negroes and Yankees riding his own fine horses, came Colonel M——, his head erect, his eyes blazing scornfully, glancing from side to side, or drawing a sharp, hard breath between his clinched teeth as he overheard some ribald jest. His house and gin-house had been burned, his fields laid waste; he had left his young daughters without protection and without shelter. What the ladies felt as they saw this sad cavalcade pass out of sight may not be ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... spoke to the others, Casper and Barney and Evans and Hugh and Bill and Dan and Tom and Lew and Gomer and Mike and Dick—excepting Casper Herdicker, mostly Welsh and Irish, and they passed around some more or less ribald greetings. Then they all stepped upon the soft ground and stood in the light of the flickering oil torches ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... valley. An engine near by begins to throb and electric lights spring up here and there. All over the town the flames of the great bonfires leap out of the gloom. From the camps of the workmen come ribald songs and jests, The presence of death has ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... deck—to get anywhere where they were not. Still, so persistent are depraved human beings under the influence of Satan, in showing their enmity to those who love God, and to God Himself, that they often followed him with their ribald shouts, and kept him ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... laugh'd to death. This is the traditional end of l'unico Aretino. On hearing some ribald jest he is said to have flung himself back in a chair and expired of sheer merriment. Later days elucidate his fate by declaring that overbalancing himself he broke his neck on the marble pavement. Sir Thomas Urquhart, the glorious translator of Rabelais, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... and the love of innocent delights and gaieties, which are a part of human nature: as much a part of it as any other love or hope that is our common portion: let them, for me, stand openly revealed among the ribald and licentious; the very idiots know that THEY are not on the Immortal road, and will despise ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... thin And the noise, like a garment outworn, Falls from the night, The tattered and shivering night, That thinks she is gay; When the patient silence comes back, And retires, And returns, Rebuffed by a ribald song, Wounded by vehement cries, Fleeing again to the stars— Ashamed of her sister the night; Oh, then they steal home, The blinded, the pitiful ones With their gew-gaws still in their hands, Reeling ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... attack; and as she saw no signs that the English had taken heed of her letter, she finally mounted the walls of the town, and in a loud voice warned the English to depart before overtaken with the shame and disaster in store for them. To this the English responded with insults and ribald words, and told her to "Go home and keep her cows." Joan wept at their insults to her modesty, and would have at once opened an attack, had she not been dissuaded by her generals, who begged her to await the arrival ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... repair-shop merely laughed at him, however. Hradzka became more insistent in his manner, making signs to indicate his hunger and willingness to work. The other men in the shop left their tasks and gathered around; there was much laughter and unmistakably ribald and derogatory remarks. Hradzka was beginning to give up hope of getting employment here when one of the workmen approached the master and whispered something ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper
... fiercely, flinging out an arm to drag forward her son. "Is he to waste his youth here in softness and idleness? But yesternight that ribald mocked him with his lack of scars. Shall he take scars in the orchard of the Kasbah here? Is he to be content with those that come from the scratch of a bramble, or is he to learn to be a fighter and leader of the Children of the Faith that himself he may ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... of the Hind did almost fail; For well she mark'd the malice of the tale;[127] 640 Which ribald art their Church to Luther owes; In malice it began, by malice grows; He sow'd the Serpent's teeth, an iron-harvest rose. But most in Martin's character and fate, She saw her slander'd sons, the Panther's hate, The people's rage, the persecuting state: Then said, I take ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... worn threadbare. A similar kind of fun, with local differences, prevails in the States, but is wonderfully mixed up with scriptural and religious jokes. To us sober Britons, whatever our opinions, these latter japes appear more or less ribald, though they are ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... Her. Thy ribald questions were best unanswered. Yet thus much thou shalt know.—All that was Amphitryon in Heracles, is dead; I am that mortal part. The Zeus in him lives, and is with the ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... whatever he is after, Makes the woods ring with ribald laughter; "Hee, hee, ha, ha," he says, and then "Ha, ha, hee, hee, ha, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... kisses and caresses, and the delightful coolness of her thin and supple hands. His mad infatuation for her made him oblivious to the taunts and jeers of the villagers, who seldom saw him without making ribald ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... no scandalous liver, but he would fain stifle all the voices that call for better things. Ay, you look back at yon ballad- monger! Great folk despise the like of him, never guessing at the power there may be in such ribald stuff; while they would fain silence that which might turn men from their evil ways while yet there ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in anger than in fear. The long line of prisoners filed through the city between ranks of armed guards. None looked like begging for mercy. With sad, set faces they remained sternly indifferent to the applause or the mockery of the ribald crowd. A few tried to break away, but were surrounded and overpowered. The rest were put in prison. Not one of them gave vent to any unseemly complaint. Through all their misfortunes they preserved their reputation for courage. Lucius Vitellius was then ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Normans filled the place of the English gleeman, tumbled, sang, and balanced knives in the hall; or, out in the bailey of an afternoon, displayed the acquirements of his trained monkey or bear. The fool, too, clad in coloured patchwork, cracked his ribald jests and shook his cap and bells at the elbow of roaring barons, when the board was spread and the ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... and ripened scholar who wastes his effort," was the dry comment. "Most of the lads of the town are coarse louts who pattern after their ribald elders, Jack. They will lead ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... feet, forgot his wrath on the instant, and began to sing drunkenly the words of a ribald air. I took him by both shoulders and pushed him back ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that the busy day, Wak'd by the lark, hath rous'd the ribald crows, And dreaming night will hide our joys no longer, I ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... Rathbawne Mills. Meetings became more frequent and more turbulent; drinking and disorder were observably on the increase; and at the end of another four weeks one of the gates of the mills was beaten down, and several hundred men and boys paraded around shop after shop, breaking windows and singing ribald songs. It was not a very serious demonstration in itself. Its ominous feature lay in the fact that the police made no attempt to check it. There was something else about it, to the thinking of McGrath. It was not so much that events were moving too fast, but that ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... triple crown in honour of Jesus, Maria, and Joseph. The annual visits of the Company's ships from France, however, temporarily disturbed the calm of the monastic city. The genuflexions of drunken sailors were seldom in honour of St. Joseph; and the ribald humours of visiting mariners profaned for a season the quiet rock ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... otherwise they would meet with shame and woe. Sir William Gladsdale (whom the French call GLACIDAS) commanded the English post at the Tourelles, and he and another English officer replied by bidding her go home and keep her cows, and by ribald jests, that brought tears of shame and indignation into her eyes. But though the English leaders vaunted aloud, the effect produced on their army by Joan's presence in Orleans, was proved four days after her arrival; when, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... A ribald cuckoo clamoured, And out of the copse the stroke Of the iron axe that hammered The iron heart of ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... on horseback, with shouts and ribald songs, rode four rough men, too drunk to know where they were going. The little schoolhouse seemed to attract their attention as they passed, and just for deviltry they shouted out a volley of oaths and vile talk to the worshippers within. One in particular, the leader, looked straight into the ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... Herod had often witnessed in the shameless court of Tiberius, and in which luxury and appetite reached their climax, was in mid-current. The strong wines of Messina and Cyprus had already done their work. The hall resounded with ribald joke and merriment. Towards the end of such a feast it was the custom for immodest women to be introduced, who, by their gestures, imitated scenes in certain well-known mythologies, and still further inflamed ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... "Hold thy base ribald tongue!" said his father, Lord Huntinglen, who had kept in the background during the ceremony, and now stepping suddenly forward, caught the lady by the arm, and confronted her unworthy husband.—"The Lady Dalgarno," he continued, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... allowed to go where he liked, and even his mother sometimes felt relieved by his absence; so that he was continually in the men's huts, listening to their yarns—sometimes harmless bush adventures, sometimes, perhaps, ribald stories which he could not understand; but one day Tom Troubridge coming by the hut looked in quietly, and saw master Charles smoking a black pipe, (he was not more than fourteen,) and heard such a conversation going on that he advanced suddenly ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... severe boats, who endure cold, exposure, wet, and monotony almost as heavy as their responsibilities. Charge them with heroism—but that needs heroism, indeed! Accuse them of patriotism, they become ribald. Examine into the records of the miraculous work they have done and are doing. They will assist you, but with perfect sincerity they will make as light of the valour and fore-thought shown as of the ends they have gained for mankind. The Service takes all work for granted. It knew ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... strong waters now pervaded the atmosphere, mingled with that close sickly odor which is felt where great numbers of uncleanly human beings are closely packed together; and from some distance was heard the sounds of riotous merriment, ribald song, and hoarse, unfeeling laugh, with curses and execrations not a few. It was a time when the abominations of the prison system were ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... a little ribald, its talk a shade high-pitched, drifted towards the street, or was wafted up in elevators. The throng thinned to an occasional group. Then these became rarer and rarer. The revolving door admitted one man, or two, perhaps, who lingered not ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... please the antiquaries of his own day. George Chalmers, in Constable's "Life and Correspondence" (i. 431), sneers at his want of learning. "His notes are loose and unlearned, as they generally are." Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, his friend in life, disported himself in jealous and ribald mockery of Scott's archaeological knowledge, when Scott was dead. In a letter of the enigmatic Thomas Allen, or James Stuart Hay, father of John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart, this mysterious ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... and spirit had the latter played, a queenly figure in that ribald, gross gathering. She had reached the scene where the actress turns upon her tormentors, those noble ladies of rank and position, and launches the curse of a soul lashed beyond endurance. Sweeping forward to confront her adversaries, about to face them, her troubled glance ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... way to carry writs to the bailiffs and petitions to the Courts. He is akin to the street boy in his habits, and to the pettifogger by fate. The boy is almost always ruthless, unbroken, unmanageable, a ribald rhymester, impudent, greedy, and idle. And yet, almost all these clerklings have an old mother lodging on some fifth floor with whom they share their pittance of thirty or ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... pursued, Laughed, jested, swore, drank, danced, and even wooed; No tongue more prone to questionable wit, Nor chaste, when time and place demanded it; His basso voice, both voluble and strong, Excelled in wassail mirth and ribald song; He swore with oaths most impious and unblest; Ate much, drank more, on these lines did his best; Caroused by day, caroused by candle light, In fact ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... eight. You're too early if you got a jane in your eye, bo," was the ribald reply. "The boss is a good guy." He sneered in the direction of the black-haired, coarse-looking man in the cashier's cage. "He hires them girls for five dollars less a week than he'd have to pay union waiters, and he asks no questions." ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... did," he answered, "but think you that the ribald jests of mortal men can touch one of the angels of God? She stood for a moment framed in the doorway, and I tell you I lie not when I declare that it seemed to all present as though a halo of pure white light encircled her. Where the light came from I know not; but many there were, like myself, ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse. Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the fangs with which they were wont to tear my zebra, and backward curled in ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... the doll Beautiful by chance fell into the fish-pond, and was not rescued therefrom until one of her beauteous eyes had been devoured of the envious water; so that ever thereafter the doll Beautiful had but one eye, and that, forsooth, was grievously faded. And on another evil day came a monster ribald dog pup and seized upon the doll Beautiful whilst she reposed in the arbor, and bore her away, and romped boisterously with her upon the sward, and tore off her black-thread hair, and sought to destroy her wholly, which surely he would have done but for the Queen of Sheba, who made haste to rescue ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... cogimur,'' and the rest; which is all very pretty and mighty consoling. The fact is, the poets are the only people who score by the present arrangement; which it is therefore their interest to maintain. While we are doing all the work, these incorrigible skulkers lounge about and make ribald remarks; they write Greek tragedies on Fate, on the sublimity of Suffering, on the Petty Span, and so on; and act in a generally offensive way. And we are even weak enough to buy their books; offer them drinks, peerages, ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... shutters he was in the act of retiring when a door near at hand—on the farther side of the passage if the sound could be trusted—flew open with a clatter. Its opening let out a burst of laughter, nor was that the worst: alas, above the laughter rang an oath—the ribald word of some one who had caught his ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... I was happy. True, that when the uncouth gendarme finally slammed to the door of our carriage and we restarted on our way, my ears had been unpleasantly tickled by the sound of prolonged and ribald laughter—laughter which sounded strangely and unpleasantly familiar. But after a few seconds' serious reflection I dismissed the matter from my thoughts. If, as indeed I gravely suspected, it was Fernand Rochez who had ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... ever failed for dastard fear! Shut fast the palace-gates! ... close every barrier! ... search every court and corner, lest haply this base false Prophet be still here in hiding,—he that blasphemed with ribald tongue the High Priestess of our Faith, the holy Virgin Lysia! ... Are ye all turned renegades and traitors that ye will suffer him to go free and triumph in his lawless heresy? Ye shameless knaves! Ye milk-veined rascals! ... What abject terror ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... who, sorely-pressed, would stay The rising tide of Revolution, check Disintegration, of the claws who'd peck At our political sleeves and platform hearts Must not be frightened. "Rummiest of starts," The ribald Cockney cries; to see at length, "The Tory seeking to recruit his strength Prom those he dubbed, in earlier, scornfuller mood The crowing hens, the shrieking sisterhood!" Shade of sardonic SMOLLETT, haunt no more St. Stephen's precincts; list not to the roar Of the mad Midland ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... indelibly impressed itself upon those rough, boisterous Western spirits out in front. Before her parting lips uttered a line she had thoroughly mastered them, the innate purity of her perfected womanhood, the evident innocence of her purpose, shielding her against all indecency and insult. The ribald scoffing, the insolent shuffling of feet, the half-drunken uneasiness, ceased as if by magic; and as her simple act proceeded, the stillness out in front became positively solemn, the startled faces picturing an awakening to higher things. It was ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... Johnny proceeds to shut and lock the tavern door. Soon after the windows of the Choctaw Chief show lightless, its interior silent, the moonbeams shining upon its shingled roof peacefully and innocently, as though it had never sheltered robber, and drunken talk or ribald blasphemy been ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... the quiet and happy circle of their own families—for they have none, nor among their neighbours, who may esteem and respect, but will scarce unbend before men who are become masters of their most secret thoughts. They therefore betake themselves to the pot-house, and in drinking and ribald conversation, look for that amusement which, under a better state of things, the Reformed pastor is sure to find in the bosom of his own family, and among his friends. I do not mean to justify the individuals, who, on the contrary, deserve ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... affording me a brief respite, had enabled me to collect my thoughts, and, disregarding the ribald interruptions, which at first were frequent, I began as follows: 'I am no Rabelais, sire,' I said, 'but droll things happen to the most unlikely. Once upon a time it was the fortune of a certain swain, whom I will call Dromio, to arrive in a town not a hundred ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... petticoats, gave them a grotesque, antiquated air, altogether irreconcilable to an Englishman's taste. They were, however, wonderfully clean, and civil and honourable in their traffic, compared with the filthy, ribald, over-reaching hucksters who infest our markets; and it was gratifying to hear that the Jersey people encouraged their visits, and treated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... parolarto, retoriko. Rhetorical elokventa, retorika. Rheumatic reuxmatisma. Rheumatism reuxmatismo. Rhinoceros rinocero. Rhomb rombo. Rhombus rombo. Rhubarb rabarbo. Rhyme rimi. Rhythm ritmo. Rib ripo. Ribald malcxasta, dibocxa. Ribaldry dibocxo—ajxo. Ribbon rubando. Rice rizo. Rich, to grow ricxigxi. Rich ricxa. Riches ricxeco. Rid malembarasi, liberigi. Riddle (sieve) kribrilo. Riddle enigmo, logogrifo. Ride rajdi. Ridge supro, pinto. Ridge (agricul.) sulko. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... patriotism and his skill as a condottiero should render it one of the great Italian powers—the rival of Florence, of Venice or Milan. He had a vision of widened territories, and of neighbouring lords becoming vassals to his might. He saw himself wresting Romagna mile by mile from the sway of the ribald Borgia, hunting him to the death as he was wont to hunt the boar in the marshes of Commachio, or driving him into the very Vatican to seek shelter within his father's gates—the last strip of soil that he would leave him to lord it over. He dreamt of a Babbiano courted by the ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... young girl giving up all for God;' and Caroline gave the ribald laugh on which she prided herself— a shocking sound. 'Rose Mallett,' Sophia went on, so lost in her vision that the jarring laughter was not heard, 'such a pretty name—a nun! She would never be forgotten: people would tell their children. Sister Rose!' She developed her idea. 'Saint Rose! ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... satirical sketch of the loose and easy Venetian society in which he was actually living. Here, again, his somewhat ribald letters from Venice do his romantic poetry some wrong; but in fact he had a diabolic pleasure in betraying himself, and his Memoires d'Outre Tombe, if they had been preserved, would have been very different ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the Long Trail to bear again the flag of his country. If his clothes were old and ill-fitting, at least they were his best, and the largeness of the empty sleeve belittled the too-largeness of the other. In all this ribald, laughing, irreverent, commonplace, semi-vicious crowd he was the one note of sincerity. To him this was a real occasion, and the exalted reverence in his eye for the task he was so simply performing was Smith's real triumph—if he could have known it. We understood ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... censorious eye upon someone responsible, the last ripple was on the farther rows. Nobody can catch a laugh in a crowd; it is as evasive as a pickpocket. Nobody can turn with watchful eye upon it and tell in what face the ribald gleam first breaks. It is as impossible as the identification of the first stalk shaken when a breeze ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... tea is not only an hour but a drink; and (though I am a sympathetic soul) I can only say that those who like it like it. For my part, I preferred the concoction sold at rustic soda-fountains, which is known locally as a "Chautauqua highball,"—a ribald term devised by college men who make up the by-no-means-despicable ball-team. This beverage is compounded out of unfermented grape-juice and foaming fizz-water; and, if it be taken absent-mindedly, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... I was shipped from Bristol to Cork composed as ribald and foul-mouthed a crew as I remember to have seen, and long before I assumed Her Majesty's uniform, I was sickened of the enterprise on which I had embarked. I think I am justified in saying that I was instrumental ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... then, too, we find, in the half-random and wholly scurrile slander of womankind, a touch of real humour, of the humour that has feeling behind it, as here, where a sufficiently ribald variation on the theme of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... breeze stirred the budding silver-leafs, the distant breakers grumbled, the crows in the pines near Captain Eben Hammond's tavern cawed ribald answers to the screaming gulls perched along the top of the breakwater. And seated on one of the hard benches of the little Come-Outer chapel, Grace Van Horne heard her "Uncle Eben," who, as usual, was conducting ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... effect of rousing his supporters to greater enthusiasm and greater zeal. When his fresh step began to be understood, when Lady Mildmay came with him no more, and it dawned upon Henstead that Sir Winterton would not bring her, the very supporters felt themselves offended. Were a few ribald cries and the folly of a wrong-headed old Japhet Williams to outweigh all their loyalty and devotion? Was the town to be judged by its rowdies? They could not but remember that Lady May Quisante sat smiling through ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... window, glanced round. Her first impulse was to speak; her second to remain silent. For the Arkansan was not looking at her. His mocking ribald gaze was ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... Selden is again referred to and complimented: "one of your own now sitting in Parliament, the chief of learned men reputed in this land." Acquaintance, on the other hand, is implied or avowed, on Milton's part, with some of the most notoriously ribald writers that the world had produced: with Petronius Arbiter, and him of Arozzo "dreaded and yet dear to the Italian Courtiers," and an Englishman whom he will not name, "for posterity's sake," but "whom Harry the Eighth named in merriment his Vicar of Hell." We may add, that Wycliffe and Knox are ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... before the State House had gathered, with an increasing mob aware of the hearing within, at the entrance to the municipal offices. The windows on either side of the marble steps were crowded with faces, ribald or blank or censorious, and Jasper Penny had to force his way into the building. He tried to recall if there was another, more private, ingress, through which Susan might be taken; but his thoughts evaded every discipline; ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... be answered by his dying word of reproach! The horsemen of the army followed, and then the legions, every spear wreathed, every head crowned with bay, so that an evergreen grove might have seemed marching through the Roman streets, but for the war songs, and the wild jests, and ribald ballads that custom allowed the soldiers to shout out, often in pretended mockery of their ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "What a ribald boy! Now, listen, Ted; be very attentive, and I will tell you a true, true story. You mustn't laugh the tiniest titter—ah, now, Ted! you ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... when he learned the truth, and the younger Checkleigh, who delighted to sketch her, left off because his hand shook so, and he couldn't see clearly. The Spanish student in the velvet coat, who could sing lustily to a guitar, came and sang for her, not the ribald songs the Quartier heard from him, but the beautiful and soft love songs he had heard as a child in Andalusia—how love is an immortal rose one carries through the gates of the grave into the gates of paradise. And the Quartier, which knows so much sorrow as well as so much ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... we witnessed of a public man being independent enough to denounce the fanaticism of secession. A more amusing scene than that presented by the attitudes-the questions in regard to South Carolina licking the Federal Government-the strange pomp-ribald gasconade, and high-sounding chivalry of the worthies, cannot be imagined. They were in a perfect ecstasy with themselves and South Carolina, and swore, let whatever come, they were ready to ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... conversation. The two youths looked down. The deck plan of the tug lay flat and empty save for the inert form of Gaskin. The noise came from inside the cabin and arose to a shouting. It was a drunken ribald sound. A suspicion ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... scattered parties were collected, men—living yet, but singed as with hot irons—were plucked out of the cellars, and carried off upon the shoulders of others, who strove to wake them as they went along, with ribald jokes, and left them, dead, in the passages of hospitals. But of all the howling throng not one learnt mercy from, or sickened at, these sights; nor was the fierce, besotted, senseless rage of one ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... A mocking, ribald cheer arose from the men around me. The platform was ascending. Why the long delay? A premonition of disaster chilled me. I ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... similar ribald remarks greeted Mr. Wedmore as he appeared at the window, telling him only too plainly that the merry days of old were gone, never to be restored, and that the feudal feeling which bound (or is supposed to have bound) rich and poor, gentle ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... probably—I may say certainly—more meritorious countrymen. I do not indeed go so far as to say that this woman is in collusion with those ferocious ruffians who have made these sacred precincts of justice ring with their ribald and threatening scoff's. But the persistence of these riotous interruptions, and the ease with which their perpetrators have evaded arrest, have produced a strange impression in my mind. (Very impressively.) However, gentlemen, that impression I do not ask you to share; on the contrary, I ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... Massachusetts Bay, then called Wessagusset, now the town of Weymouth, which they had selected for their residence. They left their sick behind them, to be nursed by those Christian Pilgrims whose piety had excited their ribald abuse. ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Moliere is that he does not exaggerate; his fools are never overwitty, his buffoons too grotesque, his men of wit too anxious to display their smartness, nor his fine gentlemen too fond of immodest and ribald talk. His satire is always kept within bounds, his repartees are never out of place, his plots are but seldom intricate, and the moral of his plays is not obtruded, but follows as a natural consequence of the whole. He rarely rises to those lofty ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... himself, he was unbreakable. They thanked him kindly for his efforts in their behalf, those fat, fresh men,—thanked him kindly, with broad grins and ribald laughter; and now, when he understood, he made no answer. Nor did he cherish silent bitterness. It was immaterial. The idea—the fact behind the idea—was not changed. Here he was and his thousand dozen; there was Dawson; the ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... jingle set the immediate crowd in a roar. I became an object for ribald laughter and cheers; I was pushed and hustled, albeit good-naturedly enough, but none the less to my great annoyance, so that I made all haste to wriggle away and, espying a narrow lane between these canvas booths and tents, I slipped into it, took to my heels and turning a sharp corner ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... could see a perspective of barrels labelled: "Absinthe," "Bitter," "Madere," "Vermouth," etc. Here, leaning against the bar, were always a band of loafers in long blouses and high hats, who saluted the poor abbe, walking quickly along the pavement, with ribald jests. ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... way to comment unfavourably. I merely look on at the rapidities of change with unalloyed interest. As the Head of the House of Coombe I am not sure WHAT I am an Example of—or to. Which is why I at times regard myself in that capacity with a slightly ribald lightness." ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... been the same, almost, for it was the voice which reached through liquor befuddled brains to find and stir remote and hidden recesses in natures long since hardened to sentiment. Rough speeches, ribald words and oaths died on the lips of those who crowded the doorway of saloons, and they stood spell-bound by the song which was sung as they felt dimly the angels must sing up there in that shadowy land back of the stars in which vaguely ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... men at such a moment; even careless hearts learn fear of God as they face the end. Holy Mother! but 't would even pale your black face, and put a stopper on that ribald tongue, were grim Death stalking at your very heels. You may smile now, making reckless mock of the sacraments, but that hour will come when you will be as a child at the knee of Mother Church. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... draw this painful narrative to a close, dismissing with merely a few lines those facts that in a garbled form have already reached the public eye through the medium of a ribald and disrespectful press—how my youthful companions, returning betimes to our camping place and finding me gone, and finding also abundant signs of a desperate struggle, hastened straightway to return home by the first train to spread the tidings that I had been kidnapped; how search ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... shortest limit; and as heavy clouds hung in the sky, the streets already began to look dark. Within the ill-lighted tavern the obscurity was still greater. Cuthbert pushed his way through the door, and found himself amongst the afternoon drinkers, who were making the room ring with ribald songs and loud laughter. But the host quickly singled him out, and approached ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... its influence is lessening, and men are returning to their manly senses. But while that Press has its evil eye in every house, and its black hand in every appointment in the state, from a president to a postman; while, with ribald slander for its only stock in trade, it is the standard literature of an enormous class, who must find their reading in a newspaper, or they will not read at all; so long must its odium be upon the country's head, and so long ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... frowning faces before my eyes; no longer rang in my ears those harsh voices—harsher from jests, ribald and blasphemous utterings. No; I saw only the jovial face of my companion; I heard only his cheerful voice—more cheerful because he too was in high spirits with the prospect of ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... reverently raised to pronounce upon the crowds gathered to witness his entry into Paris the customary benediction in the name of the triune God, and his lips were seen to move, there were those near his person, it is said, that caught the ribald words which were really uttered instead: "Let us deceive this people, since ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... for Jigger's well-being, together with her duties as hostess, had prevented her from dwelling on that scene in the silent house at midnight which had shocked her so—her husband reeling up the staircase, singing a ribald song. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... much love lost between them. He hath never forgotten the day when they pelted the Queen with rotten eggs, and sang their ribald songs; nor they the day he rode them down at Lewes like corn before ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Does he break his word to his publisher? Does he write begging letters? Does he get clothes or lodgings without paying for them? Again, whilst a wanderer, does he insult helpless women on the road with loose proposals or ribald discourse? Does he take what is not his own from the hedges? Does he play on the fiddle, or make faces in public-houses, in order to obtain pence or beer? or does he call for liquor, swallow it, and then say to a widowed landlady, "Mistress, I have no brass?" In a word, what vice and crime ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... sons, yet England was applying it to Irishmen," said Gilbert Galbraith in Honesty; adding: "for all she wants of Irishmen is their lives that she might live," and he warned Irishmen that "she (England) who took everything they had and stripped them naked and left them like Christ to the ribald jest and sneer of the rabble in the world's back-streets, would, like every bully, try to have revenge when she ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... commanders of the Union armies, were frequently brought to the attention of Parliament, as if America were in some way accountable to the judgment of England. Harsh comment came from leading British statesmen, while the most ribald defamers of the United States met with cheers from a majority of the House of Commons, and indulged in the bitterest denunciation of a friendly Government without rebuke from ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... one corner of the stifling room, on a raised platform, sat two oily and fat negroes, making the place hideous with their ribald songs and the twanging of a guitar and banjo. When, a familiar air was sounded the entire gathering joined in chorus, and when such tunes as "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" came, the place was pandemonium. Yet through it all perfect order ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... broken reliques of my Schoolmaster's former Cruelty are yet Green, and who can conjure up all the events that bore upon my Running away into Charlwood Chase, even to the doggish names of the Blacks, their ribald talk, and the fleering of the Women they had about them, find it sore travail to remember what I had for dinner yesterday, what friends I conversed with, what Tavern I supped at, what news I read in the Gazette? But 'tis the knowledge of that ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... the stupid credulity and the savage passions of the populace, had exchanged smiles and compliments with the perjured informers, had roared down the arguments feebly stammered forth by the prisoners, and had not been ashamed, in passing the sentence of death, to make ribald jests on purgatory and the mass. As soon as the butchery of Papists was over, the butchery of Whigs had commenced; and the judges had applied themselves to their new work with even more than their old barbarity. To these scandals the Revolution had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the lanyard and sent the great black flag with its skull and crossbones to fly from the masthead. The grog was served out. No man would have believed that the roaring, rollicking gang of cutthroats who tossed off their liquor in cheers and ribald laughter was identical with the grumbling, sour-faced crew of twenty hours before. As they finished, something came skipping over the water astern and the first echoing report followed close. The ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... grandfather used to hesitate. There were some prints among them very odd indeed; some that girls could not understand; some that boys, indeed, had best not see. We swiftly turn over those prohibited pages. How many of them there were in the wild, coarse, reckless, ribald, generous book of old ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the comic effect of his action, and armed with a dagger of lath, perhaps as symbolical that his use of weapons was but to the end of provoking his own defeat. Therewithal he was vastly given to cracking ribald and saucy jokes with and upon the Devil, and treating him in a style of coarse familiarity and mockery; and a part of his ordinary business was to bestride the Devil, and beat him till he roared, and the audience roared with him; the scene ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... have claimed a longer period of existence, as their first charter was granted by Edward IV. Their bye-laws are particularly interesting, and give minute directions with regard to their profession. They tested the skill of music and dancing masters, forbade the singing of ribald, wanton, or lascivious songs, or the playing of any instrument under any knight or gentleman's window without the company's licence. The Needlemakers existed in the time of Henry VIII., but have little history. The Painters' or Painter-stainers' Company suggests many ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... to glory in her triumph, and when Mahdi butted into a corner and refused to stir, she took him by one leg, and towed him twice round the cage, and the tittering the crowd swelled to yells of derisions and ribald laughter, while Professor Thunder pranced about and cursed furiously. To save his show from being ruined with ridicule, he rushed in, seized the woman, and bundled her ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... were sword-players and mountebanks, pedlars who vended their wares at a lower price than those at which they were sold within the limits of the city, booths at which wine and refreshments could be obtained. Here many soldiers were sitting drinking, watching the passers-by, and exchanging ribald jests with each other, and sometimes addressing observations to the wives and daughters of the citizens, amid fits of laughter at the looks of indignation on the part of their husbands ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... gauged his own capacity. They are either random discharges of superlatives or vigorous assertions of sound moral principles. He compliments some favourite author with an emphatic repetition of the ordinary eulogies, or shows conclusively that Montgomery was a sham poet, and Wycherley a corrupt ribald. Nobody can hit a haystack with more certainty, but he is not so good at a difficult mark. He never makes a fine suggestion as to the secrets of the art whose products he admires or describes. His mode, for example, of criticising Bunyan is to give a list of the passages ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... society has got work to do. We, as a people, have got tired of seeing a Thomas cat that never paid any taxes, get upon a pile of wood, swell his tail up to the size of a rolling pin, bid defiance to all laws, spit on his hands and say in ribald language to a Mariar cat, of a modest and retiring disposition, "Lay on, Mac Duff, and blanked be he who first cries purmeow." This thing has got to cease. The humane society will soon be on the track of ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck |
