"Tartan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bagpipe, or saw ye the banners That floated sae light o'er the fields o' Kildairlie; Saw ye the broadswords, the shields and the tartan hose, Heard ye the muster-roll sworn to Prince Charlie? Saw ye brave Appin, wi' bonnet and belted plaid, Or saw ye the Lords o' Seaforth and Airlie; Saw ye the Glengarry, M'Leod, and Clandonachil, Plant the white rose in their ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to be expected, was the deck member, with her curiously-wrought chair and her furs and her portable bookcase; while Miss Skeat, who looked tall and finny, and sported a labyrinthine tartan, was generally to be seen entangled in the weather-shrouds near by. As for the Duke's sister, Lady Victoria, she was plain, but healthy, and made regular circuits of the steamer, stopping every now and then to watch the green swirl of the foam by the side, and to take long draughts ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... in a bonnet which had spent six months in a show-case, a very pretentious gown and a faded tartan shawl, whose face had been buried twenty years of her life in a damp lodge, and whose swollen hand-bag betokened no better social position than that of an ex-portress. With her was a slim little girl, whose eyes, fringed with black lashes, had lost their innocence and showed ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... contained in milk is so trifling, that it can hardly answer that purpose. I have heard of only one instance of its being used for the production of a spirituous liquor, and this is by the Tartan Arabs; their abundance of horses, as well as their scarcity of fruits, has introduced the fermentation of mares' milk, by which they produce a liquor called koumiss. Whey is likewise susceptible of being acidified by combining with oxygen from the atmosphere. It then ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... their shoulders. One was a very dark man who might have been a Spaniard but for his blue eyes. The second was a mere boy with a ruddy face and eyes full of dancing merriment. The third was tall and red-haired, tanned of countenance and lean as a greyhound. He wore trews of a tartan which Mr. Lovel, trained in such matters, recognised as that of the house ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... as 1746, a statute was passed to punish with six months' imprisonment, and on a second offense with seven years' transportation, the Scottish Highlanders, men or boys, who wore their national costume or a tartan plaid, it being conceived to be closely associated with a rebellious disposition. After thirty-six years the statute was repealed. While the act was in force it was evaded by people carrying their clothes in a bag over their shoulders. The prohibition was hateful to ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... turned up, the better to catch the sound of the clergyman's voice, were all marks of his profession and infirmities. Beside him sat his sister Janet, a little neat old woman, with a Highland curch and tartan plaid, watching the very looks of her brother, to her the greatest man upon earth, and actively looking out for him, in his silver-clasped Bible, the texts which the minister ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... legs and a tartan costume, who was frisking about between his grandpapa's legs, who heartily wished him ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... she said to an old woman dressed in tartan stuff, and who looked like a porter's wife in her Sunday best, "so you are all very happy? Your daughter is ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... me grandly in the lead, come gasping at a respectful distance behind, modelling his behavior (as he thought) after that of some flunky of nobility he had once clapped eyes on; and as we thus proceeded up the hill—a dandy in tartan kilt and velvet and a gray ape in slops—he would have a quick word of wrath for any passenger that might chance to jostle me. 'Twas a conspicuous progress, craftily designed, as, long afterwards, I learned; we were not long landed, you may be sure, before ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... repeated, and arranged so that the two blue lines meet in the centre. At each end, for about six or seven inches, and at spaces set at regular intervals, these lines of colour are crossed, so as to form a check or tartan; the spaces corresponding with the words in the following inscription, and one word being ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... incident, which, though very trifling, struck me at the moment. As I was walking on by myself on the road by the river-side leading to the lake, I came up to a Highlander who was stretched on the grass under a bush, while two little boys in tartan caps were playing beside him. I stopped to talk to the children, showed them my watch, and, holding it to their ears, asked if they had ever seen the inside of a watch. They did not answer, but they did not seem surprised, nor were they ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... from heaven upon his head. Leave his broadsword as we found it, rent and broken with the blow, That, before he died, avenged him on the foremost of the foe. Leave the blood upon the bosom—wash not off that sacred stain; Let it stiffen on the tartan, let his wounds unclosed remain, Till the day when he shall show them at the throne of God on high, When the murderer and the murdered meet before their Judge's eye. Nay—ye should not weep, my children! leave it to the faint and weak; Sobs ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... garrisoned by five or six hundred men, among whom are bare-legged Highlanders (I must say that this costume is very fine and becoming, tho their thighs did look blue and frost-bitten) and also some soldiers of other Scotch regiments, with tartan trousers. Almost immediately on passing the gate, we found an old artillery-man, who undertook to show us round the castle. Only a small portion of it seems to be of great antiquity. The principal edifice within the castle wall is a palace, that was either built or renewed by James VI.; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... half forgets her theme. See through the streets that slumbered in repose The living current of devotion flows, Its varied forms in one harmonious band Age leading childhood by its dimpled hand; Want, in the robe whose faded edges fall To tell of rags beneath the tartan shawl; And wealth, in silks that, fluttering to appear, Lift the deep borders of the proud cashmere. See, but glance briefly, sorrow-worn and pale, Those sunken cheeks beneath the widow's veil; Alone she ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... evening to Princess Galitzin, where were a whole covey of Princesses of Russia arrayed in tartan! with music and singing to boot. The person in whom I was most interested was Mad. de Boufflers,[399] upwards of eighty, very polite, very pleasant, and with all the agremens of a French Court lady of the time of Mad. Sevigne, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... stevedores. He was an office-bearer of the local Scottish Society, talked braid Scots on occasions (though his command of Yankee slang when stimulating his men in the holds was finely complete), and wore a tartan neck-tie that might aptly be called a gathering of ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... the evening, to Scottish hearts and ears, has begun. It is the fine pipe band of the 42nd Royal Highlanders from Montreal, khaki clad, kilts and bonnets, and blowing proudly and defiantly their "Wha saw the Forty-twa." Again a pause and from the other side of the hill gay with tartan and blue bonnets, their great blooming drones gorgeous with flowing streamers and silver mountings, in march the 43rd Camerons. "Man, would Alex Macdonald be proud of his pipes to-day," says a Winnipeg Highlander for these same pipes are Alex's ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... of these visits, Ralph once or twice tried the experiment of leaving Paul with his grand-parents and calling for him in the late afternoon; but one day, on re-entering the Malibran, he was met by a small abashed figure clad in a kaleidoscopic tartan and a green velvet cap with a silver thistle. After this experience of the "surprises" of which Gran'ma was capable when she had a chance to take Paul shopping Ralph did not again venture to leave his son, and their subsequent Saturdays were ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... in common—and having finished off with some very strong Cheshire cheese, wheeled their chairs to the fire, while Bags the butler cleared the table and placed it between them. They were dressed in full suits of flaming large-check red-and-yellow tartans, the tartan of that noble clan the 'Stunners,' with black-and-white Shetland hose and red slippers. His lordship and Jack had related their mutual adventures by cross visits to each other's bedrooms while dressing: and, dinner being announced by the time they were ready, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... tables teebles, and chairs cheers! To such renegadoes we prefer the honest quixotism of a modern champion[55] for the Scottish accent, who boldly asserted that "the broad dialect rises above reproach, scorn, and laughter," enters the lists, as he says of himself, in Tartan dress and armour, and throws down the gauntlet to the most prejudiced antagonist. "How weak is prejudice!" pursues this patriotic enthusiast. "The sight of the Highland kelt, the flowing plaid, the buskined leg, provokes my antagonist to laugh! Is this dress ridiculous in the eyes ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... CAILEN, Green Colin, the laird of Dunstaffnage, so called from the green colour which prevailed in his tartan. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Protestant lords. Mary then showed herself a heroic queen. At the head of a motley band of soldiery who came at her call—half-clad, uncouth, and savage—she rode into the west, sleeping at night upon the bare ground, sharing the camp food, dressed in plain tartan, but swift and fierce as any eagle. Her spirit ran like fire through the veins of those who followed her. She crushed the insurrection, scattered its leaders, and returned in triumph to ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... He met the smith king of Hamath in battle at Qarqar, and, having defeated him, had him skinned alive. Then he marched southward. At Rapiki (Raphia) he routed an army of allies. Shabi (?So), the Tartan (commander-in-chief) of Pi'ru[526] (Pharaoh), King of Mutsri (an Arabian state confused, perhaps, with Misraim Egypt), escaped "like to a shepherd whose sheep have been taken". Piru and other two southern kings, Samsi and Itamara, afterwards paid tribute to ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... the hall with a noiseless step, like a bird of night flying in a circle. A black hat, of the hue of charred paper, confined her bandeaux of grizzled hair. From her square, high masculine shoulders, hung a sombre-hued Scotch tartan. When she reached the door, she cast a last glance about the hall, that embraced everyone therein, with the eye of a vulture ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... all occasions. In most places they are as fond of plaids as their betters, and in a house where everything else is methodical and well arranged, you will find the dishes plumped on the table by a young woman wearing a tartan blouse decidedly decolletee, and ornamented with a large cheap lace collar. I have dined with people whose silver, glass, and food were all luxurious; while the girl who waited on us wore a red and white checked blouse, a plaid neck-tie with floating ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... the top of the vehicle a short, stout, elderly gentleman, in a Glengarry bonnet, green tartan shooting-coat, and shepherd's-plaid vest and pantaloons; two active youths, of the ages of seventeen and fifteen respectively, in precisely similar costume; a man-servant in pepper and salt, and a little thin timid boy ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... culmen of Gibbie's day! its cycle, rounded through regions of banishment, returned to its nodus of bliss. In triumph he spread over his sleeping father his dead mother's old plaid of Gordon tartan, all the bedding they had, and without a moment's further delay—no shoes even to put off—crept under it, and nestled close upon the bosom of his unconscious parent. A victory more! another day ended with success! ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... bought a fine Scotch tartan shawl for you, Aunt Hannah, and a heavy shepherd's maud for Uncle Reuben. They are such articles as you cannot purchase in this country. I will send them to you by one of the servants. I would have brought them myself, only you see ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... were received by Mr. Allan Macdonald and his wife, the celebrated Miss Flora Macdonald. She is a little woman of a genteel appearance, and uncommonly mild and well-bred. Dr. Johnson was rather quiescent, and went early to bed. I slept in the same room with him. Each had a neat bed with tartan curtains. Dr. Johnson's bed was the very bed in which the grandson of the unfortunate King James II. lay on one of the nights after the failure of his rash ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... remember with infinite pleasure the strains of Mr. Cameron's Poolewe Choir, heard in Gairloch school-house. That energetic and complaisant conductor brought his clear-throated minstrels over to the meeting in a brake. It was a luxury to see them with their white robes and tartan sashes, while in front of them stood their genial leader clad in kilts. The Gaelic Mod, which is now a regular institution in the land, is bound to do splendid service towards keeping alive the fine old music of the North. The Poolewe Choir, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... were his nurses, and want and misery were his familiar friends. "It is among the earliest of my recollections," wrote he in 1824, "that I lay in bed one morning during the grievous famine in Britain in 1800-1, while my poor mother took from our large kist the handsome plaid of the tartan of our clan, which in her early life her own hands had spun, and went and sold it for a trifle, to obtain for us a little coarse barley meal, whereof to make our scanty breakfast; and of another time during the same famine when she left me at home crying from hunger, and for (I think) eight ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... three and thirty, lusty and well-proportioned, very tanned and ruddy. He had a quick lively eye and a firm good-humoured mouth. In brief, he was the very picture of a frank open-hearted Highland gentleman, and in the gay Macleod tartan looked as gallant a figure of a soldier as one would wish to see. He greeted me with charming friendliness and expressed himself as deeply gratified for my care of his sister, offering again and again to put himself at my service in any way I ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... high-priest was the equal and the director of the king, and the king himself was a priest, and the adopted child of Bel. In Assyria, on the contrary, the arbitrary power of the monarch was practically unchecked. Under him was the Turtannu or Tartan, the commander-in-chief, who commanded the army in the absence of the king. The Rab-saki, Rab-shakeh, or vizier, who ranked a little below him, was the head of the civil officials; besides him we hear of the Rab-sa-resi or Rabsaris, "the chief of the princes," ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... Clara, looking more radiantly beautiful than ever I had seen her, in a sweet dress of Stuart tartan. I had to make my apologies, which were most sincerely penitent ones, for not being in time to claim my privilege of dancing the first quadrille with her. She smiled at my evident earnestness, and good-humouredly added, that the next would be a much more pleasant dance, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... pinnace, scow, banca, transport, dory, galley, cruiser, ship, barge, bark, brig, bucentaur, skiff, caique, drogher, schooner, cockleshell, vessel, tug, towboat, tow, cog, wangan, ferry-boat, dinghey, argosy, oomiac, junk, longboat, catboat, felucca, cutter, frigate, xebec, tartan, una boat, moses, raft, catamaran, sampan, lifeboat, caravel, trekschuit, masoola, argo, coggle. Associated Words: davits, oar, helm, stern, pilot, rudder, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... received. Cirri, the brother of Cati to the sovereignty over them 140 I set. On my return to the country of Amanus I ascended. Beams of cedar I cut, 141 I removed, to my city Assur[1] I brought. In my 27th year the chariots of my armies I mustered. Dayan-Assur 142 the Tartan,[2] the Commander of the wide-spreading army, at the head of my army to the country of Armenia I urged, 143 I sent. To Bit-Zamani he descended. Into the low ground to the city of Ammas he went down. The river Arzane he crossed. 144 'Seduri of the country of the Armenians heard, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... Dursley's School of Arts library. The reading I accomplished in bed; the shorthand studies on the top of a packing-case which hailed originally from a match factory in east London, and doubtless had contained the curious little cylindrical cardboard boxes of wax vestas, stamped with a sort of tartan plaid pattern, that are seen so far as I know only in ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... was Rigolette, ever neat and coquettish. A little plain cap, very clean, and trimmed with cherry-colored ribbons, which harmonized wonderfully with her jet-black hair, surrounded her pretty face; a very white collar was turned over her long brown tartan. She carried on her arm a straw basket, and, thanks to her neat and graceful manner of walking, her thick-soled boots were of marvelous cleanliness, although she came, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... very much. The music was well performed, and as for the sermon—I had to be back for breakfast, you know. It was specially pleasing to see at church the detachment of British soldiers, the more so as they were Highlanders. My heart will warm to the tartan. One strange feature I shall not soon forget. Several soldiers, in their scarlet uniforms, sang in the choir. I scarcely ever see soldiers without being saddened by the thought that the civilization of the race is yet little better than a name when so much must still be done to teach millions ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Edinburgh, and a murky night when they rode up Leith Wynd; the tall houses of Edinburgh hung over them; the few lights struggled against the thick, enveloping air. Figures came out of one dark passage, and disappeared into another. A body of Highlanders, in the Campbell tartan, for a moment blocked the way. Twice they were cursed by unknown voices, and when Claverhouse reached his lodging someone called out his name, and added: "The day of vengeance is at hand. The blood of John Brown crieth from the altar!" ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... colors, polychrome, maculation, spottiness, striae. spectrum, rainbow, iris, tulip, peacock, chameleon, butterfly, tortoise shell; mackerel, mackerel sky; zebra, leopard, cheetah, nacre, ocelot, ophite^, mother-of-pearl, opal, marble. check, plaid, tartan, patchwork; marquetry-, parquetry; mosaic, tesserae^, strigae^; chessboard, checkers, chequers; harlequin; Joseph's coat; tricolor. V. be variegated &c adj.; variegate, stripe, streak, checker, chequer; bespeckle^, speckle; besprinkle, sprinkle; stipple, maculate, dot, bespot^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the act which has covered his name with infamy. He had no personal reason to wish the Glencoe men ill. There had been no feud between them and his family. His property lay in a district where their tartan was never seen. Yet he hated them with a hatred as fierce and implacable as if they had laid waste his fields, burned his mansion, murdered his child in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... they walked along. In those days Marjolin wore a big scarlet waistcoat which hung down to his knees; it had belonged to the defunct Monsieur Chantemesse, who had been a cab-driver. Cadine for her part wore a white and blue check gown, made out of an old tartan of Madame Chantemesse's. All the canaries in the garrets of the Latin Quarter knew them; and, as they passed along, repeating their cry, each echoing the other's voice, every cage poured ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... faint light of the tallow candles, in tin sconces, gleams on the scarlet uniforms and green facings of the 49th regiment, on the tartan plaid of the Highland clansman, on the frieze coat and polished musket of the Canadian militiaman, and on the red-skin and hideous war-paint of the Indian scout, quartered for the night in the barracks. In one corner is heard the crooning of the Scottish pipes, where old ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... after all, but a Scotch mist. See, I am dressed for it;" and she threw a tartan cloak over her shoulder—a blue-and-green tartan that I had never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... this animal's tooth resembles a gun-shot wound; it is generally followed by a great deal of sloughing and discharge, and pains are felt in the part periodically ever afterward. I had on a tartan jacket on the occasion, and I believe that it wiped off all the virus from the teeth that pierced the flesh, for my two companions in this affray have both suffered from the peculiar pains, while I have escaped with only the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Kilmarnock, brought to the block; and forty persons of rank attainted by Act of Parliament. More extensive measures of repression were needful in the Highlands. The feudal tenures were abolished. The hereditary jurisdictions of the chiefs were bought up and transferred to the Crown. The tartan, or garb of the Highlanders, was forbidden by law. These measures, and a general Act of Indemnity which followed them, proved effective for their purpose. The dread of the clansmen passed away, and the sheriff's ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... square chequers. And we are thus urged naturally to enquire what is the effect on the moral character, in each nation, of this vast difference in their pursuits and apparent capacities? and whether those rude chequers of the tartan, or the exquisitely fancied involutions of the Cashmere, fold habitually over the noblest hearts? We have had our answer. Since the race of man began its course of sin on this earth, nothing has ever been done by it so significative ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... and voice trembling with joy. He was so beautiful. His hair was bright and curly. His broad forehead was clear white where he had pushed back his bonnet with the eagle feather standing upright on it. His strong legs and knees were white between his tartan kilt and his rolled back stockings. The clasps which held his feather and the plaid over his shoulder were set with fine stones in rich silver. She did not know that he was perfectly equipped as a little Highland chieftain, the head of his clan, ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the region which was now exciting Jack's expectations. Soon after they were passing great heavy-looking junks with their Celestial crews, or light Malay prahus with their swarthy, coffee-coloured sailors in tartan skirts, in whose folds at the waist the formidable wavy dagger known as a kris was worn, the handle, like the butt of a pistol in form, carefully covered by the silk or cotton sarong ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... brook I see a man fishing, with a boy and a dog—a picturesque and pretty group enough certainly, if they had not been there all day starving. I know them, and I know the dog's ribs also, which are nearly as bare as the dead ewe's; and the child's wasted shoulders, cutting his old tartan jacket through, so ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... still in those mechanical and hushed tones that had at first affected him, 'you must go on to Holyhead alone; go on board the steamer; and if you see a man in tartan trousers and a pink scarf, say to him that all has been put off: if not,' she added, with a sobbing sigh, 'it ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... closing day. Through all thy glens, Albyn! hadst thou reason to mourn, at the bursting of the shells that Queen-bird had been cherishing beneath her bosom. Aloft in heaven wheeled the Royal Pair, from rising to setting sun. Among the bright-blooming heather they espied the tartan'd shepherd, or hunter creeping like a lizard, and from behind the vain shadow of a rock watching with his rifle the flight he would fain see shorn of its beams. The flocks were thinned—and the bleating ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... this in two days for our new residence. I shall not fail to let you know what I think of these Scotch inmates, whom I have but too much reason to believe my father means to quarter in his house as a brace of honourable spies; a sort of female Rozencrantz and reverend Guildenstern, one in tartan petticoats, the other in a cassock. What a contrast to the society I would willingly have secured to myself! I shall write instantly on my arriving at our new place of abode, and acquaint my dearest Matilda with ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Gaul for a uniform of khaki: the one would be less of a shining mark for the enemy than the other, and, its adoption would probably result in saving many lives. You know their decision. I think I hear them say, "All this may well be true; but we stand by the kilt and the tartan." That, a critical world may say, is magnificent, but it is not war. We say, magnificent or not, it is war; for the kilt and the tartan are inseparable from the sentiment that makes these men the redoubtable soldiers they are. Take those away, and you break their touch with a continuous ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... while he himself went to the war against the Egyptians and Ethiopians, he left his general Rabshakeh, and two other of his principal commanders, with great forces, to destroy Jerusalem. The names of the two other commanders were Tartan ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... seven times a day. The consequence is that it is necessary to have at hand not only a vast number of naval and military uniforms, but also a diversity of shooting suits, hunting suits, civilian clothes, Tyrolese jaeger costumes, and even the kilt, sporran and tartan of a Highlander, for he is very proud of the fact that Stuart blood flows in his veins, and considers that he is quite as much entitled to wear the Stuart tartan as his uncle, the Prince ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... stylish; nor could anything be said against him, as a rule, but that he looked a trifle too like a wedding guest to be quite a gentleman. To-day he had fallen altogether from these heights. He wore a flannel shirt of washed-out shepherd's tartan, and a suit of reddish tweeds, of the colour known to tailors as "heather mixture"; his neckcloth was black, and tied loosely in a sailor's knot; a rusty ulster partly concealed these advantages; and his feet were shod with rough walking boots. His hat was an old soft felt, which he removed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 1745, he presided as Lord High Steward with judicial impartiality at the famous trial of the rebel Lords, and was chiefly responsible for the means taken in the pacification of Scotland, the most questionable of which was the suppression of the tartan! Good fortune, as is usually the case when a man rises to great eminence, played its part in his career. He had friends who early recognised his ability and gave him the opportunities of which he was quick to avail himself. He took the tide at its flood and was led on ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... travel. In this malodorous and slippery well his interested friend saw him sit down upon his bundle, roll a cigarette, and fall into easy conversation with an Italian voyager who, having shaved, was now putting on a clean collar and a tartan necktie. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... very rich gold band and large gold tassel at the crown; nankeen gaiters, and a pair of blue spectacles, completed his costume, which was any thing but becoming. This was his general dress of a morning for riding, but I have seen it changed for a green tartan plaid jacket. He did not ride well, which surprised us, as, from the frequent allusions to horsemanship in his works, we expected to find him almost a Nimrod, It was evident that he had pretensions on this point, though ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... of her face. But that instant Beauchamp entered, and as she turned once more to greet him, the light flashed from her face and her eyes, as if her heart had been a fountain of rosy flame. Beauchamp was magnificent, the rather quiet tartan of his clan being lighted up with all the silver and jewels of which the dress admits. In the hilt of his dirk, in his brooch, and for buttons, he wore a set of old family topazes, instead of the commoner cairngorm, so that as he entered ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Molyneux's children, however, whom I pitied the most. Once her boy, in a flaring tartan, went up to speak to Master Roderick Lacy, whose maid was engaged ogling a policeman; and the children were going to make friends, being united with a hoop which Master Molyneux had, when Master Roderick's maid, rushing up, clutched her charge to her arms, and hurried away, leaving ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tragedy and pathos, again, Monsieur Parent stands first—the history of the late vengeance of a deceived husband and friend. Miss Harriet gives us something more than a stage Englishwoman with large feet, projecting teeth, tartan skirts, and tracts, though it gives us this too. Madame Baptiste—the very short tale of a hapless woman who, having been the victim of crime in her youth, is pursued by the scandal thereof to suicide, in spite of her having found a worthy ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... opened, dark deep grey and decidedly prominent, though curtained with thick black lashes. The glossy chestnut hair partook of the redundance and vigour of the whole being, and the roses hung on it gracefully though not in congruity with the thick winter dress of blue and black tartan, still looped up over the dark petticoat and hose, and stout high-heeled boots, that like the grey cloak and felt hat bore witness to the early walk. Grace's countenance and figure were in the same style, though without so much ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... jurisdictions were abolished, and it could no longer claim to be a political force of any kind, for every vestige of independence was removed. The only individual characteristic left to the clan or to the Highlander was the tartan and the Celtic garb, and its use was prohibited under very severe penalties. These were measures which were not possible in the days of David as they were in those of George. But a further step was common to both centuries—the ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... is a pity. It is worth while being in Inverness then; you see all the different families and their guests; and the balls are picturesque—with the kilt and tartan. It is really the wind-up of the season; the parties break up after that. We come back here and remain until about the middle of October; then we go on to the Braes—worse luck for me. I like the rough-and-tumble of this place; the absence ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... irony of fate full of Scottish soldiers on their way up the line. Such a bit of luck in the shape of a free cinema show had rarely come their way and they were bent on enjoying it to the fullest extent. The fact that the officer now standing ruefully on the bank was in Tartan riding "troos" of course added to the piquancy of ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... achieved unqualified success in the part of the Englishman. He had kept on purpose an immense chimney-pot hat and a tartan plaid which he used to perfection, and his "Oh's!" and "Ah's!" were of such ludicrous prolongation, and his gait so stiff, and his comical blunders delivered with so much of haughty assurance, that he "brought down ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... one evening he was seated in his new house, now nearly completed, busily employed on some plans which he had taken home from Mr Todd's office, when he was aroused by a knock at the door. On opening it he saw standing before him a tall slight young man, whom he knew by his bonnet and tartan coat to be Scotch, "Does one Donald Morrison live here?" asked the stranger, gazing eagerly at his face. The moment he spoke Donald knew the voice; it was David's, and the brothers' ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... the peculiar grace and dignity of the Chieftain's figure, Above the middle size, and finely proportioned, the Highland dress, which he wore in its simplest mode, set off his person to great advantage. He wore the trews, or close trousers, made of tartan, chequed scarlet and white; in other particulars, his dress strictly resembled Evan's, excepting that he had no weapon save a dirk, very richly mounted with silver. His page, as we have said, carried his claymore and the fowling-piece, which he held in his hand, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Scotia our king's to be blessed with a treat, A balleting one if the Scotch have their nacks, For the papers put forth he's at Perthshire to meet, Dressed in tartan and bonnet, a band of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... He is tiresome afterwards, I know, with his Bootjack. But Sir Walter for ever! What a fine Picture would that make of Evan Dhu's entrance into Tully Veolan Breakfast Hall, with a message from his Chief; he standing erect in his Tartan, while the Baron keeps his State, and pretty Rose at the Table. There is a subject for one of your Artists. Another very pretty one (I thought the other Day) would be that of the child Keats keeping guard with a drawn sword at his sick Mother's Chamber door. Millais might do it over here: ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... like that of a dog standing at point, mouth only too glad to talk, hands free and easy, ready for a shake with anybody; a tall, vigorous, broad-shouldered, powerful man. By the way in which he settled himself and put down his bag, and unrolled his traveling rug of bright-hued tartan, I had recognized the Anglo-Saxon traveler, more accustomed to long journeys by land and sea than to the comforts of his home, if he had a home. He looked like a commercial traveler. I noticed that his jewelry was in profusion; rings ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... Father was, he couldn't sit still. He was wearing a decorative new traveling cap, very smart and extensive and expensive, shaped like a muffin, and patterned with the Douglas tartan and an Etruscan border. He rather wanted to let people see it. He was no Pilkings clerk now, but a world-galloper. With his cap clapped down on one side and his youthful cigarette-holder cocked up on the ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... honeysuckles so plentiful and rathe in the hedges, that she once or twice was tempted to ask the coachman to stop till she had gathered a nosegay. She began to dread the end of her little journey of seven miles; the only drawback to which was, that her silk was not a true clan-tartan, and a little uncertainty as to Miss Rose's punctuality, At length they came to a village; straggling cottages lined the road, an old church stood on a kind of green, with the public-house close by it; there was a great tree, with a bench all round the trunk, midway between the church gates and ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... London was reached, and an audience obtained with the Duke of Argyie. His Grace's heart warmed to the tartan when Jeannie appeared before him in the dress of a Scottish maiden of her class. His grandfather's letter, too, was a strong injunction to assist Stephen Butler, his friends or family, and he exerted himself to such good purpose, that he brought her into the presence of the queen ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... true, I hadn't. The tie in question was an attempt to hybridise the respective colour-schemes of a tartan ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... a blue dress-coat, trimmed with lace, and bearing a Government gilt button. In his hand he carried a cocked hat. At the Communion on Sunday (he sat on Dr. Wilson's right hand, who sat on my right) he wore a blue surtout, with Government gilt buttons, and shepherd-tartan trousers; and he had a gold band round his cap[67]. I spent two hours In his society last evening at Dr. Wilson's. He was not very complimentary to Burton. He is to lecture ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... out of this condition of property at home, if a wise appropriation were made of the virgin soil of the Empire. Give the Scotchman who has no land a piece of North America, purchased by the blood which stained the tartan on the Plains of Abraham. Let the Irishman or the Englishman whose kindred clubbed their muskets at Bloody Creek, or charged the enemy at Queenston,[3] have a bit of the land their fathers fought for. Let them have at least the option of ownership and occupation, and a bridge to convey them over. ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... Church in Scotland. Mr. Forbes collected his information very carefully, closely comparing the narratives of the various actors in the story. Into the boards of his volumes are fastened a scrap of the Prince's tartan waistcoat, a rag from his sprigged calico dress, a bit of his brogues—a twopenny treasure that has been wept and prayed over by the faithful. Nobody, in a book for children, would have the heart to tell the tale of the Prince's later years, of a moody, heart-broken, degraded ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... the changes is frae the field to the habited place, and not from the place of habitation to the desert; for Shanet, her nainsell, kent a glen where there were men as weel as there may be in Croftangry, and if there werena altogether sae mony of them, they were as good men in their tartan as the others in their broadcloth. And there were houses, too; and if they were not biggit with stane and lime, and lofted like the houses at Croftangry, yet they served the purpose of them that lived there, and mony a braw bonnet, and mony a silk snood and comely white curch, would come out ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... bottle of quaint Dutch cut, with hollow pillars at each of its four corners and two glasses extravagantly tall of stem, and he filled out the drams upon the table, removing with some embarrassment before he did so the book of arms. It surprised Count Victor that he should not be in the native tartan of the Scots Highlander. Instead he wore a demure coat and breeches of some dark fabric, and a wig conferred on him all the more of the look of a lowland merchant than of a chief of clan. He was a man at least twenty years the senior of his visitor—a handsome man of his kind, dark, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Iris, whom mortals know as Trotting Nelly in her tartan cloak, will bring us the stranger's ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... garb, in which he was very carefully dressed by the Laird of Garth, but the pride of the Macgregors and Glengarries who thronged around the royal person, suffered a serious blow when a London alderman entered the circle clothed in a suit of the same tartan. The portly figure and civic dignity of Sir William Curtis gave to the costume too much the appearance of a burlesque to pass unnoticed either by the Sovereign or his loyal admirers, and it was some time before they recovered their gravity. On the 24th, the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... UN battledress came up and took them prisoner. Benson shouted to them, and then rose and came down to join them. They were British—Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders, advertising the fact by inconspicuous bits of tartan on their uniforms. The subaltern in command ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... Goddess found in the Temple Repositories. In some cases—e.g., that of the votaress of the Snake Goddess—the skirt, below a small panier or apron, is composed of different coloured materials combined in a chequer pattern distantly resembling tartan. A fresco from Hagia Triada represents a curious and elaborate form of dress, consisting apparently of wide trousers of blue material dotted with red crosses on a light ground, and most wonderfully frilled and vandyked. Diaphanous ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... see to you myself, at least once a day. It 'minds me of the good ole times to wait upon you. O, Lord! how long?" shaking her tartan turban with a portentous groan, her chin almost scraping the hearth, as she stooped to blow into the crater of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... stature fair, and slender frame, But firmly knit, was Malcolm Graeme. The belted plaid and tartan hose Did ne'er more graceful limbs disclose; His flaxen hair, of sunny hue, Curled closely round his bonnet blue. Trained to the chase, his eagle eye The ptarmigan in snow could spy; Each pass, by mountain, lake, and heath, He knew, through Lennox and Menteith; Vain was the bound of dark-brown ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... didn't he wear spectacles and a Scotch plaid arranged in a manner which seemed to say, 'I have trustworthy information that that is the way they do it in the Highlands'? Was he not exemplary and very poor, so that I supposed he had no overcoat and his tartan was what he slept under at night? Was he not working very hard still, and wouldn't he be in the natural course, not yet satisfied that he knew enough to launch out? He would be a man of long preparations—Miss Mavis's white face seemed to speak to one of that. It appeared ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... to a job, debating Church affairs and politics with their tools upon their arm. But the most part are of a different order—skulking jail-birds; unkempt, barefoot children; big-mouthed, robust women, in a sort of uniform of striped flannel petticoat and short tartan shawl: among these, a few supervising constables and a dismal sprinkling of mutineers and broken men from higher ranks in society, with some mark of better days upon them, like a brand. In a place no ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Yes, they be;" and as the pair walked over the trim gravel, and by the neat shrubberies, up the steps to the hall-door, which old John opened, Mr. Wagg noted everything that he saw; the barometer and the letter-bag, the umbrellas and the ladies' clogs, Pen's hats and tartan wrapper, and old John opening the drawing-room door, to introduce the new-comers. Such minutiae attracted Wagg instinctively; he seized them in spite ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... up, to loup on leas, Two tabards of the tartan; They counted nought what their clouts were When sew'd them on, in certain. Syne clampit up St. Peter's keys, Made of an old red gartane; St. James's shells, on t'other side, shews As pretty as a partane Toe, On Symmye and ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... a sandwich of the bread and cheese, which she wrapped up in a clean handkerchief. She would not take the napkin, because that belonged to Grandma. Hanging up in the wardrobe was a long cloak of the MacDonald hunting tartan, which looked as if it had been fashioned out of a man's plaid. On each side was a pocket; and into one of these Barrie slipped her little package. Already made up and lying on the floor of the wardrobe was another parcel, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... different sorts of studs, and a butterfly brooch, made of various coloured glasses, sat in the centre. His cravat was of a yellow silk with a flowered border, confining gills sharp and pointed that looked up his nostrils; his double-breasted waistcoat was of red and yellow tartan with blue glass post-boy buttons; and his trousers, which were very wide and cut out over the foot of rusty-black chamois-leather opera-boots, were of a broad blue stripe upon a white ground. A curly, bushy, sandy-coloured wig protruded from ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... he felt himself that night, as he confronted his brilliant image in the glass. A Scot of the Scots, kilted in vivid plaid, a rakish cap on his black hair, a tartan draped across his shoulder, short, heavy stockings clasping his legs and low shoes gay ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... should be beaten very stiff and when partly beaten sprinkle over 1/2 teaspoonful of cream of tartan Finish beating egg whites and sift in slowly 1/2 cup of fine granulated sugar, then sift 1/2 cup of flour (good measure). Flavor with a few drops of almond flavoring. Bake in small Gem pans, placing a tablespoonful of butter in each. Sift pulverized ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... of people these Lowlanders are!" exclaimed the senior lady—"so different from the brave and noble mountaineers. My brother, the chieftain, is lucky in having such a splendid set of retainers, and the tartan ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... boy to lead my horse to grass,' replied George, giving a peculiar whistle, which brought to his side a shock-headed, barefooted lad, in a shepherd's tartan and little else, but with limbs as active as a wild deer, and an ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he repaired to Harwich, where he embarked for Holland, from whence he proceeded to Brussels, where he procured a passport from the French king, by virtue of which he travelled to Marseilles, and there took a tartan for Genoa. The first letter Sir Everhard received from him was dated at Florence. Meanwhile the surgeon's prognostic was not altogether verified. Mr. Darnel did not die immediately of his wounds, but he lingered a long time, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... First, it occupies a prominent position in the narrative; second, it excited the enmity of Joseph's brethren; and third, they dipped it in blood when they sold their younger brother.' I could have proved it as logically to be Stuart tartan, and, at the same time, the original of the song 'Not for Joe,' because he lost it before he became steward to Pharaoh. Bah! that's what makes people sick of going to church. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... on her overshoes, wrapped a large tartan shawl around her, put on a man's felt hat, and ventured out along the causeways of the first yard. It was very dark. The wind was roaring in the great elms behind the outhouses. When she came to the second yard the darkness seemed deeper. She was unsure of her footing. She wished she ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... he bids good-by, wraps his tartan around him, and is out in the snow again. Where Linwood Street is he "knows no more than the ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... charming picture of him in the "Heart of Mid-Lothian" as the patriotic Scotchman, whose heart must "be cold as death can make it when it does not warm to the tartan"—the kind and generous protector of Jeanie Deans. Argyll was a man of many gifts. He was a soldier, a statesman, and an orator. He had charged at Ramilies and Oudenarde, had rallied a shrinking column at Malplaquet, and served in the sieges of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... seen the like in former years, and a face which could be no other than Haggarty's. It was Haggarty, ten years older than when we last met, and greatly more grim and thin. He had on one shoulder a young gentleman in a dirty tartan costume, and a face exceedingly like his own peeping from under a battered plume of black feathers, while with his other hand he was dragging a light green go-cart, in which reposed a female infant of some two years old. Both were roaring with ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a frock of tartan! O for clear, wild grey eyes! For fingers light as violets, 'Neath branches that the blackbird frets; O for a thistly meadow! O For ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... minute of dreadful uncertainty, Phil was reminded of what he had read about some Highland chief leading his tartan clan to battle, a Rob Roy McGregor, it ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... Gaily clustering in the thronged precincts of the College, might be observed many a glistening form: airy Greek or sumptuous Ottoman, heroes of the Holy Sepulchre, Spanish Hidalgos who had fought at Pavia, Highland Chiefs who had charged at Culloden, gay in the tartan of Prince Charlie. The Long Walk was full of busy groups in scarlet coats or fanciful uniforms; some in earnest conversation, some criticising the arriving guests; others encircling some magnificent hero, who astounded them with his slashed doublet ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... the name of Old Rag, being indisposed in a hotel in London, the landlord came to enumerate the good things he had in his larder, to prevail on his guest to eat something. The earl at length, starting suddenly from his couch, and throwing back a tartan night-gown which had covered his singularly grim and ghastly face, replied to his host's courtesy; "Landlord, I think I could eat a morsel of a poor man." Boniface, surprised alike at the extreme ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... closet, up a steep stair, in a narrow, confined, dark-browed house in the Canongate of Edinburgh, one of the belles of 17—made her toilette. Her chamber woman, in curch and tartan screen, was old nurse and sole domestic of the high-headed, strong-minded, stately widow of a wild north-country laird, whose son now ruled alone in the rugged family mansion among the grand, misty mountains of Lochaber. Nelly Carnegie was no beauty; ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... cap that enclosed the keen monkeyish face like a ruff. Her every-day gown was one of coarse brown camlet, any number of years old, darned and patched till it was like a Joseph's coat; and the Rob Roy tartan shawl which she pinned across her bosom hid a state of dilapidation which even she did not care should be seen. She wore a black stuff apron full of fine tones from fruit-stains and fire-scorchings; and she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... of virtue, or some contemporary work of lesser genius. Though the general costume was like that worn in the other parts of the island, perhaps a little behind London fashions, the fair visitors would still be veiled with the plaid, the fine woven screen of varied tartan which covered the head like a hood, and could on occasion conceal the face more effectually than Spanish lace or Indian muslin—a singular peculiarity not ancient and scarcely to be called national, since the tartan ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... surely heard of famous Neil, The man who play'd the fiddle weel; He was a heartsome merry chiel', And weel he lo'ed the whisky, O! For e'er since he wore the tartan hose He dearly liket Athole brose![63] And grieved he was, you may suppose, To ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... as it is, our men have to put up with a compromise in the matter of kilts which makes their retention almost ridiculous, i.e., in order to screen his gay attire from the keen eyes behind the Mauser barrels every Highlander wears over the tartan a dingy apron of khaki. The war pictures we occasionally see in illustrated papers of Scotch regiments charging with flying sporrans are probably drawn in England. Even when the apron is used, the khaki jacket, the tartan kilt and the white legs offer a good mark when the wearer is lying on the ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... twenty-five years of age, tall, finely formed, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, with a well-turned, stately head, a Grecian profile, a fair, open brow, dark, deep blue eyes, and very rich auburn hair and beard. He wore the picturesque highland dress—the tartan of ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... with a large forehead:—so much could be seen; but the sweetness of her mouth, the blueness of her eyes, the extreme darkness of her hair, were not to be distinguished. The man also was dark. His coat was of some rough brown material, probably dyed and woven in the village, and his kilt of tartan. They were more than well worn—looked even in that poor light a little shabby. On his head was the highland bonnet called a glengarry. His profile was remarkable—hardly less than grand, with a certain aquiline expression, although the nose was not roman. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... they'd have me swathe the clamorous tartan In lieu of trousers round my waist, Then they evoke the spirit of the Spartan Inherent in my simple taste; Inexorably I decline To drape the kilt on any hips ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... the Roman type, his mouth large and determined, and his chin firm, square and somewhat obstinate. His eyebrows were very thick and bushy, thus lending to his face a sinister and rather forbidding expression. He wore a rough home-spun shooting suit, and had folded round his shoulders a tartan of the McAllister plaid, which from time to time he pushed from him with a hasty impatient gesture, as he addressed his son ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... may have noticed, had no goodwill to the Highland race. "I will wager on Old Nick, of whom I should know something, he being indeed a worker in the same element with myself, against Catharine on that debate: the devil will have the tartan, that ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Then he fought his way across two or three blocks to the nearest "L" station. He managed to wedge himself into a train there, and then at least he was on his way. He was thinking hard and fast, but through all his planning the warm hug of the tartan comforter round his neck kept Little Ann near him. He had been very thankful for the additional warmth as the whirling snow and wind had wrought their will with him while he waited for the cars at the street corner. On the "L" train he saw her serious eyes and heard the motherly drop in ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... head bound about with bandages till it looked like a great melon, and his sleeve dangled empty from his great-coat. Others of the Seaforths, and mere boys of the Highland Territorials, wore khaki shirts over their tartan, and these were bullet-torn and hanging in great rents. And some boys still wore their caps with the wee dambrod pattern jauntily, and some had no caps to wear, and some were all daubed about with white bandages stained crimson, and none had hose, and few had brogues. They ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... Elspeth and Grizel, set off excitedly for the town, the country folk were already swarming in. The Monypenny road was thick with them, braw loons in blue bonnets with red bobs to them, tartan waistcoats, scarves of every color, woollen shirts as gay, and the strutting wearers in two minds—whether to take off the scarf to display the shirt, or hide the shirt and trust to the scarf. Came lassies, ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... 20th July, Captain Mitchell and Lieutenant Davidson went in the pinnace, furnished with all necessaries, in order to make a discovery of a passage on the southern side of the straits, through which a French tartan is said to have gone into the South Sea in May, 1713, and to examine if there were any anchorage beyond Cape Quad. The pinnace returned on the 29th, having found the passage, but so narrow that it was deemed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... of his youth never forsook him. In his early voyage into Greece, not only the shapes of the mountains, but the kilts and hardy forms of the Albanese,—all, as he says, "carried him back to Morven;" and, in his last fatal expedition, the dress which he himself chiefly wore at Cephalonia was a tartan jacket. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... Mother Fetu transformed, magnificent in a clean white cap, a new gown, and tartan shawl wrapped round her shoulders. Her voice, however, still retained its ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... boldly to the open street. Before he could do either M'Allister, the retainer, had magnetised him into the hall, relieved him of his hat—almost with the seductive adroitness of a Drury Lane thief—and drawn him down a tartan passage into a very sensible-looking boudoir, in which Lady Enid was sitting by a wood fire with a very tall and lusty ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... that it had been remarked among a party of Edinburgh masons that, though regarded as the first of Glasgow stone-cutters, he would find in the eastern capital at least his equals, he attired himself most uncouthly in a long-tailed coat of tartan, and, looking to the life the untamed, untaught, conceited little Celt, he presented himself on Monday morning, armed with a letter of introduction from a Glasgow builder, before the foreman of an Edinburgh squad of masons engaged upon one of the finer buildings at that time ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... were, their white spats flashing in time with their step, their kilts swaying free over their tartan hose and naked knees, their white tunics gleaming through the dusk of the evening, and over all the tossing plumes of their great feather bonnets nodding ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... a grand dinner at the duke's, and there were plenty o' great southern lords and braw leddies in velvets and satin; and vara muckle surprised they were at my uncle, when he came in wi' his tartan kilt, in full Highland dress, as the head of a clan ought to do. Caimbogie, however, pe'd nae attention to them; but he eat his dinner, and drank his wine, and talked away about fallow and red deer, and at last the duchess, for she was aye fond ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... commenced the siege of Lachish with all his power; and while engaged in this operation, finding that Hezekiah was not alarmed by his proximity, and did not send in his submission, he detached a body of troops from Ins main force, and sent it under a Tartan or general, supported by two high officers of the court—the Rabshakeh or Chief Cupbearer, and the Rob-saris or Chief Eunuch—to summon the rebellious city to surrender. Hezekiah was willing to treat, and sent out to the Assyrian camp, which was pitched ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... the philibegs, And skyrin tartan trews, man, When in the teeth they dared our Whigs, And Covenant TRUE-BLUES, man; In lines extended lang and large, When bayonets opposed the targe, And thousands hasten'd to the charge, Wi' Highland wrath, they frae the sheath Drew blades o' death, till, out o' breath, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... day it was the tartan cloak that she wore, by special request, as we climbed the hill to the Ledge. It was spring indeed—bluebirds in the air, and all the sky shone clear ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... there might have been seen, pacing up and down the shore on the seaward side of the Lido, and peering anxiously about him through an eyeglass, as if in search of somebody or something, the figure of a tall, spare Englishman, clad in a complete suit of shepherd's tartan, with a wide-awake on his head, a leather bag slung by a strap across his shoulder, and a light coat over his arm. Myself, in point of act, in ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... bass-like, violoncello notes, gathering up all the others and fusing them into a pealing strain, it was electin'. Everybody sang. Old voices, that had not sung for a quarter of a century or more, joined in. It was a furor: Dalgetty swung his tartan cap, Sandy his hat; handkerchiefs were waved, staves rang on the floor. The children, half frightened in spite of their pleasure, were quieter ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Barrett the only specimen of this rough race whom New Zealanders may remember with interest. There was Stewart, ex-Jacobite, sealer, and pilot, whose name still conceals Rakiura, and whose Highland pride made him wear the royal tartan to the last as he sat in Maori villages smoking among the blanketed savages. There was the half-caste Chaseland, whose mother was an Australian "gin," and who was acknowledged to be the most dexterous and best-tempered ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... the peddler was crying, holding up a gay square of silk tartan, "is one fifty, and dirt cheap at that. Seein' it's you, ma'am, however, I'll take a dollar for it. Wuth two—it is, by ginger! Sold three dozens on 'em down the village, and got two dollars apiece for 'em, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... adventurer and his guilty myriads. "Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters. Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?"—Sennacherib, king of Assyria, sends Tartan, and Rabsaris, and Rabshakeh, with a great host against Jerusalem, in the reign of Hezekiah. Mark their insolent blasphemy: "Hearken not unto Hezekiah when he persuadeth you, saying, The Lord will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... swatch on Friday of what I talked about and we'll—Come away this minute, Mary, and look me out my uniform. Jiggy Crawford! Young Jiggy that danced in the booze-house in Madrid! He was Ensign then and now he has his spurs and handles tartan. He is at the very topmost of the thing and I am going down, down, down, out, out, out, like this, and this, and this," and so saying he pinched out the candle flames one by one. The morning swept into the room, no longer with a rival, lighting up this parlour of old people, ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... his head a little he commanded, through the foliage of a festooning creeper, a view of the three bungalows. Irregularly disposed along a flat curve, over the veranda rail of the farthermost one hung a dark rug of a tartan pattern, amazingly conspicuous. Ricardo could see the very checks. A brisk fire of sticks was burning on the ground in front of the steps, and in the sunlight the thin, fluttering flame had paled almost to invisibility—a mere ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... time were those people which were called the Red-shanks.[22] Their habit is shoes with but one sole apiece; stockings (which they call short hose) made of a warm stuff of divers colours, which they call tartan: as for breeches, many of them, nor their forefathers never wore any, but a jerkin of the same stuff that their hose is of, their garters being bands or wreaths of hay or straw, with a plaid about their shoulders, which ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... kicking his little blue shoes in boisterous rapture. Jane kept guard at the door while Clarissa put on her bonnet and jacket, and wrapped up the baby—first in a warm fur-lined opera-jacket, and then in a thick tartan shawl. They had no hat for him, but tied up his pretty flaxen head in a large silk handkerchief, and put the shawl over that. The little fellow submitted to the operation, which he evidently regarded in the light ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... the exuberance of an imagination which ranged over all nature for illustrations, and yet managed and applied each of them with the same unerring dexterity, as if that single one had been the study of a whole life. "The tartan beats us," said Mr. Canning; "we have no preaching like that ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... time Colonel Morrison had the pleasure of dining with the Sultan of Egypt at his Palace near Alexandria, his tartan slacks ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison |
