"Troubadour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whereabouts he was wholly ignorant and of whose very existence he was doubtful. The narrow slits which lighted the cell in which he was confined might look into an inner court, or the cell itself might be below the surface of the soil. The legend of the troubadour who discovered King Richard of England's place of captivity by singing without the walls had always been present in his mind, but no such plan would be practicable here. He knew no song which his father, and his father only, would recognize; and even did ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... of poetry, is common to Chaucer and the humblest ballad-maker; it pulses through any book of lyrics printed yesterday, and it came straight to us out of Provence, the Roman Province. It was the Provencal Troubadour who, like the Prince in the fairy tale, broke through the hedge of briers ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Troubadour songs[7] often shew mind and Nature very strikingly brought together, either in harmony or contrast. For ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... point of Dante's speculation. A shadow of her old sovereignty was still left her in the primacy of the Church, to which unity of faith was essential. He accordingly has no sympathy with heretics of whatever kind. He puts the ex-troubadour Bishop of Marseilles, chief instigator of the horrors of Provence, in paradise.[227] The Church is infallible in spiritual matters, but this is an affair of outward discipline merely, and means the Church as ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... whole heart—their highest and completest love. Roger looked to find a grand woman, his equal, and his empress; beautiful in person, serene in wisdom, ready for counsel, as was Egeria. Molly's little wavering maiden fancy dwelt on the unseen Osborne, who was now a troubadour, and now a knight, such as he wrote about in one of his own poems; some one like Osborne, perhaps, rather than Osborne himself, for she shrank from giving a personal form and name to the hero that was to be. The squire was not unwise in ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... intellect than for refinement or learning, Count Renneberg, on the contrary, was an elegant and accomplished gentleman—the Sydney of his country in all but loyalty of character. He was a classical scholar, a votary of music and poetry, a graceful troubadour, and a valiant knight. He was "sweet and lovely of conversation," generous and bountiful by nature. With so many good gifts, it was a thousand pities that the gift of truth had been denied him. Never did treason look more amiable, but it was treason of the blackest die. He was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... then, has brought you back into this realm, my hero, my troubadour?" inquired Mr. Kecskerey. "Some love-adventure, some notable affair, I'll be bound. I'll dare to guess that you have abducted some Hindu vestal ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... the defence of the widow, the fatherless, and the oppressed; and by the beginning of the eleventh century liturgies already contain the form of religious service by which neophytes were initiated into knighthood. This early and religious form of chivalry (there was a later and lay form, invented by troubadour and trouvere, which was chiefly concerned with the rules for the loves of knights and ladies) culminated in the Crusades. In the Crusades we touch perhaps the most typical expression of the mediaeval spirit. Here we may see the clergy moulding into conformity with Christian ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... kidnap. The Arabs, on their part, were in close contact with the European minds, and as they helped to originate the chivalrous spirit in Europe, so they must have been in turn influenced by the developments of the troubadour spirit which culminated in such maxims as Montagnogout's declaration that "a true lover desires a thousand times more the happiness of his beloved than his own." As Saadi lived in the time of the troubadours—the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—it ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... sing, would be a troubadour; if he could pray, would be a pilgrim friar—in either case a natural object of womanly solicitude. But as he could do neither, he was simply ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... you were a Donna of old Castile And a Troubadour were I, I'd sing at night beneath your room And weave you dreams in a minstrel's loom With rainbow tears and the roses' bloom And star-shine out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... He looked like a drunken troubadour en deshabille, with those up-brushed mustaches and his usually neat brown beard all spread awry. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Clark, the sweet-souled troubadour of reform, sang for woman's freedom in suffrage conventions all ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... until, in the sixteenth century, they were burned out, and nothing remained but cinders—these broken ruins of their eyrie, and some outworn and dusty titles. Very strange are the fate and history of these same titles: King of Arles, for instance, savouring of troubadour and high romance; Prince of Tarentum, smacking of old plays and Italian novels; Prince of Orange, which the Nassaus, through the Chalons, seized in all its emptiness long after the real principality had passed away, and came therewith ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... I tell him? That I was following a woman? That I had given her my name, and that I must protect her? It would sound to him like a parrot's laughter. This was no court of love. It was war. A troubadour's lute would tinkle emptily in these woods that had seen massacre and knew the shriek of the death cry. Again I set my ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... gratifying, to be sure?" Well, yes, it is gratifying—thank you. It is at least as gratifying to be certified sober as to be certified romantic, though such certificates would not qualify one for the secretaryship of a temperance association or for the post of official troubadour to some lordly democratic institution such as the London County Council, for instance. The above prosaic reflection is put down here only in order to prove the general sobriety of my judgment in mundane affairs. I make a point of ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... without which it is incomprehensible throughout that period—the reputation of being in the very vanguard of chivalry. The great romances of the Round Table, the attachment of knighthood to the name of a British king, belong to this period. Richard was not only a knight but a troubadour; and culture and courtesy were linked up with the idea of English valour. The mediaeval Englishman was even proud of being polite; which is at least no worse than being proud of money and bad manners, which is what many Englishmen in our ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... from them that the mariners of Barcelona first introduced its use into Europe. The first mention of it is given in a treatise on Natural History by Alexander Neckam, foster-brother of Richard, Coeur de Lion. Another reference, in a satirical poem of the troubadour, Guyot of Provence (1190), states that mariners can steer to the north star without seeing it, by following the direction of a needle floating in a straw in a basin of water, after it had been touched by a magnet. But little use, however, seems to have been made of this, for Brunetto Latini, ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... reverie in which they flirt with the divinity. They will recount their privileges and ecstasies, and how ingeniously and wonderfully God has tried and proved them. But indeed the true God was not the lover of Madame Guyon. The true God is not a spiritual troubadour wooing the hearts of men and women to no purpose. The true God goes through the world like fifes and drums and flags, calling for recruits along the street. We must go out to him. We must accept his discipline and fight his battle. The peace of God comes not by thinking about it but by ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... verses on his copy-books and read Racine for his own amusement. Turning his back upon the mill-wheels of his native town and an assured future in a Parisian business house, like Gil Bias's friend, il s'est jet dans le bel esprit—in other words, he betook himself to the career of a troubadour. Never, surely, did master of song-craft write ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... was not by any means the first who ever burst into the responsive heart of Ludwig I. She had many predecessors there. One of them was an Italian syren. But that Lola soon ousted her is clear from a poetical effort of which the royal troubadour was delivered. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... young troubadour, the boy poet, beloved by all, burning for fame; and, in his innocence, he performs the mean work ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... again disagree; but, by my halidame, I think one troubadour roundel worth all that Petrarch ever wrote. He has but borrowed from our knightly poesy, to disguise ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in the Roman Catholic Church to the Virgin Mary and other female saints, a sort of woman worship had, in the thirteenth century, spread through the south of Christendom. It was no unusual thing for a knight or a troubadour to select a certain lady, celebrate her in his songs, call on her name in the hour of danger, and wear her color in battle. The adored or the adorer might be either of them married—that made no difference; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... appeal to Pupkin, and Pupkin looked one glance of comprehension, and turned and fled down Oneida Street. And if the scene wasn't quite as dramatic as the renunciation of Tancred the Troubadour, it at least had something of ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... poor. Moreover, exaggerated as some of her husband's ideas upon wifely submission appear today, the book leaves a strong impression of good sense and of respect as well as love for her. The Menagier does not want his wife to be on a pedestal, like the troubadour's lady, nor licking his shoes like Griselda; he wants a helpmeet, for, as Chaucer said, 'If that wommen were nat goode and hir conseils goode and profitable, oure Lord God of hevene wolde never han wroght hem, ne called hem "help" of man, but rather confusioun of man.'[23] Ecclesiastical ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... satisfaction that already touched the top of swagger. Muscari had an eagle nose like Dante; his hair and neckerchief were dark and flowing; he carried a black cloak, and might almost have carried a black mask, so much did he bear with him a sort of Venetian melodrama. He acted as if a troubadour had still a definite social office, like a bishop. He went as near as his century permitted to walking the world literally like Don Juan, ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... characteristics of Franklin Lane gives a picture of the man, without taking into account his temperament, for that colored every hour of his life, and every act of his career. The things that he knew seized his imagination. Even when a middle-aged man he sang, like a troubadour, of the fertility of the soil; he was stirred by the virtue and energy of what he saw and touched; his heart leaped at the thought of the power of water ready to be unlocked for man's use—most happy in that the thing that was his ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... spiritual trinitrotoluol which he had been storing up for so long. Up in the air in a million pieces had gone the prudence and self-restraint of a lifetime. And here he was, as desperately in love as any troubadour of ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... 't is no troubadour That sings so sweetly at your door, To tell you of the joys in store— So grand and gay; But one that sings "Remember ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... in the hills half heard, Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred, Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall, The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall, The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung, That once went singing southward when all the world was young. In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid, Comes up along a winding road the noise of ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... than a rose, Divinely breasted as the Queen of Love, Lies robeless in the glimmer of the moon, Like Danae within the golden shower. Seated beside her aromatic rest, In rapture musing on her loveliness, Her knight and troubadour. A lute, aslope The curious baldric of his tunic, glints With pearl-reflections of the moon, that seem The silent ghosts of long-dead melodies. In purple and sable, slashed with solemn gold, Like stately twilight o'er the snow-heaped hills, He bends ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... the subject," said the Prince, leaning back in his chair. "The boy is safe, and, as you say, Fulk, that is all that is of importance. Call hither the troubadour that was in the hall at noon. I would have your opinion of his lay," he ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of my own estate—who had counted the illusory greatness of this world well lost so that he might win the bliss of Paradise. Similarly did I take delight in the Life, written by Tommaso da Celano, of that blessed son of Pietro Bernardone, the merchant of Assisi, that Francis who became the Troubadour of the Lord and sang so sweetly the praises of His Creation. My heart would swell within me and I would weep hot and very bitter tears over the narrative of the early and sinful part of his life, as we may weep to see a beloved brother beset ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... upon the floor, passing her little hand-shuttle through the cotton-woof. Now she sang—and sweetly she sang—some merry air of the American backwoods that had been taught her by her mother; anon some romantic lay of Old Spain—the "Troubadour," perhaps—a fine piece of music, that gives such happy expression to the modern song "Love not." This "Troubadour" was a favourite with Rosita; and when she took up her bandolon, and accompanied herself with its guitar-like notes, ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... all, his voice—how, in the name of absurdity could any one who had once heard it ever forget Jeremy Langdon's voice? Even now she had only to close her eyes, and it rang out again, with its clipped, British accent and its caressing magic, as un-English as any Provincial troubadour's! And yet she had forgotten—he had had to speak twice before she had even ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... situation for a father of a family, for a man whose youth was past, compromising himself in a love affair, getting melancholy in the twilight, kissing a white hand like an enamored troubadour! Good God! How his friends would have laughed to see him in that posture! He must purge himself of that romanticism which sometimes mastered him. Every man must follow his fate, accepting life as he found it. He was born to be virtuous, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... seems a foolish one to me. I can never play the part. But, Uncle, what do you say? Shall I make a good troubadour?" ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... did. I even had a play in hand which treated of the fate of the troubadour Bernard de Ventadours in ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... from the carriages of our time, especially the "elegant" ones, but was as graceful and pleasant in line as a Wessex waggon. We got in, Dick and I. The girls, who had come into the porch to see us off, waved their hands to us; the weaver nodded kindly; the dustman bowed as gracefully as a troubadour; Dick shook the reins, and ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... Gavaudan, a troubadour of the twelfth century, meets the undiscerning critic more than half-way. Let none judge, he writes, till he be capable of separating the grain from the chaff; 'for the fool makes haste to condemn, and the ignorant only pretends to know ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... writes Guardastagno, but the troubadour, Cabestaing, or Cabestany, is the hero of ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... her wickedness seemed more than natural, and had the Southdown Road known anything of Italian opera, there is little doubt that Miss Brookes would have been compared to Lucretia Borgia. The young women looked out of their windows at night, and wondered how they'd feel if a troubadour were suddenly to sing to them from behind the privet hedges. The young men were even more impressed than their womenfolk; they cursed their place of birth and habitation, knowing that it incapacitated them from knowing her; they wasted their mothers' candles sitting up till ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... that somewhere among the princess' ancestors there was a troubadour; for she was something of a poet. Indeed, I have already remarked that she wrote verses. The atmospheric change of the morning turned her mind into sentimental channels. How she envied the peasant woman, who might come and go at ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... "Come, my young troubadour, bring your guitar and sit down upon this cushion at my feet and play an accompaniment to my song, as I sing ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... life, were these: "I have always been the same, intense and sad. I have loved God, my father, and liberty." The unhappy Letitia Landon found a congenial friend in her father, the early loss of whom was the first in the sad series of her misfortunes. She closes her poem of "The Troubadour" with an affecting ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... of the Cronica General de Espana, the most ancient of the Prose Chronicles of Spain, in which adventures of the Cid are fully told. This old Chronicle was compiled in the reign of Alfonso the Wise, who was learned in the exact science of his time, and also a troubadour. Alfonso reigned between the years 1252 and 1284, and the Chronicle was written by the King himself, or under his immediate direction. It is in four parts. The first part extends from the Creation of the World to the occupation of Spain by the Visigoths, and is ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... should have loved to be a troubadour, or a trouvere, Frank; that was my true metier, to travel from castle to castle singing love songs and telling romantic stories to while away the tedium of the lives of the great. Fancy the reception ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... romantic. "Outbreaks of this spirit come naturally with particular periods: times when . . . men come to art and poetry with a deep thirst for intellectual excitement, after a long ennui." He instances, as periods naturally romantic, the time of the early Provencal troubadour poetry: the years following the Bourbon Restoration in France (say, 1815-30); and "the later Middle Age; so that the medieval poetry, centering in Dante, is often opposed to Greek or Roman poetry, as romantic ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... cousin should I be indeed. What does she think I would go as? A mousquetaire? or a troubadour in blue satin trunks and cloak, white silk tights and shoes and a Grecian helmet, like Mr. Snodgrass at ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... weather, comes down our street a certain tremulous old troubadour with an aged cithern, on which he strums feebly with bones which remain to him from former fingers, and in a thin quivering voice pipes worn-out ditties of youth and love. Sadder music I have never heard, but though it has at times drawn from me the sigh of sensibility ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... and in antiquity the man of letters, a sort of encyclopaedic doctor, a successor of the troubadour and the poet, all-knowing, was almighty. Literature lorded it over society with a high hand; kings sought the favor of authors, or revenged themselves for their contempt by burning them,—them and their books. This, too, was a way of recognizing ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... dance was over, he caught up a guitar, and lolling against the old marble fireplace, in an attitude which I am half inclined to suspect was studied, began the little French air of the Troubadour. The Squire, however, exclaimed against having anything on Christmas eve but good old English; upon which the young minstrel, casting up his eye for a moment, as if in an effort of memory, struck into another strain, and, with a charming air of gallantry, ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... You'll be caught napping," Ferrando called to his comrades. "It is time for the Count to come. I suppose he has been under the Lady Leonora's windows. Ah, he is madly in love with her—and so jealous of that troubadour who sings beneath her windows that some day they will ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... healed. These were the evil counsellors. Mahomet was there; there too was Ali. But ghastliest of sights was that of a headless trunk walking through the grim plain, holding its severed head by the hair like a lantern, and exclaiming "O me!" This was the notorious Bertrand de Born, the Troubadour, who had caused dissension between Henry II. of England and his son. Among this throng Dante recognized his kinsman Geri del Bello, who gave him a disdainful look because he had not yet avenged his death. From the tenth and last pit of Malebolge came a stench as ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... beaten back from under their ramparts not two years before. Such public sentiment as they had centred about their dear Duke of Burgundy, and the dear Duke had no more urgent business than to keep out of their neighbourhood. . . . At least, and whether he liked it or not, our disreputable troubadour was tubbed and swaddled as a subject of the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... name is associated with Blois is Francois Villon. A loafer and a vagabond he was, and a thief he may have been, yet by reason of his genius and for the beauty of his song this troubadour was welcomed to the literary court of Charles d'Orleans. That Villon received substantial assistance and protection from his royal brother poet appears from his poems. Among them we find one upon the birth of the Duke's daughter Mary: Le Dit de la Naissance ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... one, And tell thee why the bird that loves the sun Loves not the moon, though conscious of her fame. For he's the soul of truth, in his acclaim, And knows not treason! And of like intent Are all my yearnings, too, when I lament. And, though I say it, there's no troubadour Has lov'd as I, since ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... near Palmer, who should I discover but Mr. and Mrs. J. T. Fields, returning from a Western trip, as gay as a troubadour. I took an empty seat next to them, and we had a jolly ride to Boston. I drove to Mr. Williams's house, where I met the Chelsea agent, who informed me that there was no hotel in Chelsea, but that they were expecting to send over for me. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... rough sketches by John Leech, Charles Keene, Tenniel, Sambourne, Furniss, Caldecott, etc.; not to mention, also, endless little sketches in silver point of a most impossibly colossal, blackavised, shaggy-coated St. Bernard—signed with the familiar French name of some gay troubadour of the pencil, some stray half-breed like myself, and who seems to have loved his dog as much ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... looked at this wayworn fugitive he knew that another, and perhaps the final crisis of his life, was come to Jean Jacques Barbille, and the human pity in him shrank from the possible end to it all. It was an old-world figure this, with the face of a peasant troubadour and the carriage of an aboriginal— or an aristocrat. Indeed, the ruin, the lonely wandering which had been Jean Jacques' portion, had given him that dignity which often comes to those who defy destiny and the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... supposed to be mother and daughter, were both poetesses. The elder lady was beloved by Rabaud d'Orange, who died in 1173, and the younger is celebrated by William Adhemar, a distinguished troubadour. He was visited on his death-bed by both these ladies, who afterwards erected a monument to his memory. The younger countess retired to a convent, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... song, Stephen, like a gallant troubadour from the land of the sunny south, to reward ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... her the instrument and Dona Eustaquia swept the chords absently for a moment then sang the song of the troubadour. Her rich voice was like the rush of the wind through the pines after the light trilling of a bird, and even Russell sat enraptured. As she sang the colour came into her face, alight with the fire of youth. Her ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... ridicule. Like everything else in these romances, it is a gross exaggeration of the real sentiment of chivalry, but its peculiar extravagance is probably due to the influence of those masters of hyperbole, the Provencal poets. When a troubadour professed his readiness to obey his lady in all things, he made it incumbent upon the next comer, if he wished to avoid the imputation of tameness and commonplace, to declare himself the slave of her will, which the next was compelled to cap by some still stronger declaration; and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... diatribes against sentimentalism and operatic romance. If Nature wishes primarily to entrap us into sexual union, then all the means of sexual attraction, even the most maudlin or theatrical, are justified at one stroke. The guitar of the troubadour is as practical as the ploughshare of the husbandman. The waltz in the ballroom is as serious as the debate in the parish council. The justification of Anne, as the potential mother of Superman, is really the justification ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... lovely marble columns, rich with age; the lintels are exquisitely carved with flowers, arms, casques, musical instruments, the crossed sword and the torch, and the mandolin, perhaps the emblem of some troubadour knight. Wherever we went we found bits of old carving, remains of columns, sections of battlemented roofs. The town is saturated with the old Knights. Near the mosque is a foundation of charity, a public kitchen, at which the poor were fed or were free to come and cook their food; it is in decay ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... published in a collected form; Poetical Works of Winthrop Mackworth Praed, now first collected by Rufus W. Griswold; New York, 1844. This collection contains some thirty-six pieces. The longest poems, "Lillian" and "The Troubadour," each in two cantos, display passages of great beauty and exquisite musical flow. Among the charades, five in number, "Sir Harry, he charged at Agincourt", is not to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... days of the troubadours, who sang their lively lays not only in Provence but in other lands. Richard himself composed lays and sang them to the harp, and Blondel, a troubadour of renown, was his favorite minstrel, accompanying him wherever he went. This faithful singer mourned bitterly the captivity of his king, and at length, bent on finding him, went wandering through foreign lands, singing under ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... books must be considered irreparable. In the Germania he had shown the power of that liberty which the barbarians enjoyed, had indicated their polity, in which, even then the germs of feudalism, chivalry, the worship of the sex, troubadour minstrelsy, fairy mythology, and, above all, representative government, existed. In the Historiae he paints with tremendous power the disorganisation, of the Roman state, the military anarchy which made the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... hear the two new pages of her morning's work. It was a Fouque-like tale, relieving and giving expression to the yearnings for holiness and loftiness that had grown up within Isabel Conway in the cramped round of her existence. The story went back to the troubadour days of Provence, where a knight, the heir of a line of shattered fortunes, was betrothed to the heiress of the oppressors, that thus all wrongs might be redressed. They had learnt to love, when ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Troubadour touched his guitar, As he was hastening home from the war, Singing, "From Palestine hither I come,— ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... "A troubadour!" he said scornfully to himself. "Edward Mauville sighing at a lady's window like some sentimental serenader! There's a light yonder. Now to play my despairing part, I must watch for her image. If I were some one else, I should say my heart beats faster than usual. She comes—the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... anything so nice as that, or as its great author's more famous couplet respecting Africa and the men thereof. The longer romances of the same date, "Gog," "Lilian," "The Troubadour," are little more than clever reminiscences sometimes of Scott, Byron, Moore, and other contemporaries, sometimes of Prior and the vers de societe of the eighteenth century. The best passage by ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... longer," wrote he, "repress my enthusiastic admiration for one who has arisen in our days to strike in France with a master hand the lyre of the troubadour and to fling into the shade all the triumphs of bygone minstrelsy. Need I designate Beranger, who has created for himself a style of transcendent vigor and originality, and who has sung of war, love, and wine, in strains far excelling those of Blondel, Tyrtaeus, Pindar, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... violin until his compositions attracted the attention of his countrymen and induced his being called to London. The most important compositions of Dr. Mackenzie up to the present time are the operas "Colomba" (1883), "The Troubadour" (1886) and the oratorio "The Rose of Sharon" (1884). There are several cantatas, "Jason," "The Bride," "The Story of Sayid" (1886) and a considerable number of orchestral pieces, of which two Scotch rhapsodies and the overture to "Twelfth Night" are the best known. He has also produced a violin ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... deservedly requited by the arrogance of women; it affords to all Asiatics continual material for laughter, in which the Greeks would have joined. In the golden Middle Age the matter went as far as a formal and methodical service of women and enjoined deeds of heroism, cours d'amour, bombastic Troubadour songs and so forth, although it is to be observed that these last absurdities, which have an intellectual side, were principally at home in France; while among the material phlegmatic Germans the knights distinguished themselves more ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... knight austere, Who bore Saint Louis company, And came home hurt to death, and here Landed to die; Some youthful troubadour, whose tongue Fill'd Europe once with his love-pain, Who here outworn had sunk, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... became to her a glorious troubadour, having no relationship with prosaic affairs and common standards, but a care-free creature to be loved and praised because of his song; to be heard gladly and sped on ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... behind him, his ears cocked up politely, his eyes full of tears—he wept like a cow this poor Nepomucene—they called him Nepomucene—and when Mimi looked at him he would utter little cries of the heart like a strangulated troubadour. Ah, it was hopeless this passion; but for one long year he never wavered. The Quartier respected him. Of him it was said: "Love is given to us as a measure to gauge our power of suffering." Suddenly Mimi disappeared. She married a certain Godiveau, a charcoal merchant in ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Boys, and at 'em"), or something similar, appears to have been the usual war-cry of both parties. So a trumpet-like poem of the Troubadour warrior Bertram de Born, whom Dante found in such evil plight below (xxviii. 118 seqq.), in which he sings with extraordinary spirit ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... were creeping from one hut to another did Bakahenzie and his satellites return from the ghoulish offices of the dead. Zalu Zako, the chiefs and magicians arose to the wild beating of the drums and the wailing chant of the hereditary troubadour with the five stringed lyre. With Kingata Mata carrying a brand of the newly lighted sacred fire, was Kawa Kendi led in procession through the deserted village ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... strains in the English blood, the one northern and ascetic, the other southern and epicurean. In the modern English poet the austere prophetic character of the Norse scald is wedded to the impressionability of the troubadour. No wonder there is a battle in his breast when he tries to single out one element or the other as his most distinctive quality of soul. Yet, were it not unsafe to generalize when our data apply to only one country, we should venture the assertion that the dualism of the poet's ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... of the same kind we have long been familiar in the Troubadour poetry of Provence. But Provencal literature has a strong chivalrous tincture, and every one is aware with what relentless fury the civilisation which produced it was stamped out by the Church. The literature of the Wandering Students, on the other hand, owes nothing ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... was a redbird again. And now a vireo. And this the mockingbird, love-drunk, emptying his heart of a troubadour in a song of fire and dew. And on a vagrant air, a gipsy air, the scent of the honey-locust. The spring for all the world else. But ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... most striking testimony to the fact that this work is none other than the original "Book of the Graal" is to be found in the "Chronicle of Helinand", well known at the time the Romance was written not only as a historian but as a troubadour at one time in high favour at the court of Philip Augustus, and in later years as one of the most ardent preachers of the Albigensian Crusade. The passage, a part of which has been often quoted, is inserted in the Chronicle under the year 720, ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... procession into the recreation room, where Miss Maitland (a stately Marie Antoinette) acted hostess, and received her guests with the assistance of Miss Parkinson (a Spanish gipsy) and Vivian Holmes (hastily attired as a troubadour). ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... array of presentation copies from other authors to the poets made an interesting library of themselves, as did the various translations of their own poems into many languages. There was a portrait of Browning painted when a young man, with a troubadour cloak falling over his shoulders; and a most interesting portrait of Milsand, painted by Barrett Browning, as a gift ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... difficulty that M. Lupot obtains silence for his daughter's song. At sight of the old neighbour and his guitar a smothered laugh is visible in the assembly. It is undeniable that the gentleman is not unlike a respectable Troubadour with a barrel organ, and that his guitar is like an ancient harp. There is great curiosity to hear the old gentleman touch his instrument. He begins by beating time with his feet and his head, which latter movement gives him very much the appearance of a mandarin that you sometimes see ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Templar, "you are a man of gallantry, learned in the study of beauty, and as expert as a troubadour in all matters concerning the 'arrets' of love; but I shall expect much beauty in this celebrated Rowena to counterbalance the self-denial and forbearance which I must exert if I am to court the favor ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... passed through in my pilgrimage." It is the gay confidence of youth. It is the bright prelude of the happy traveller and scholar, to whom the very quaint conceits and antiquated language of romance are themselves romantic, and who makes himself a bard and troubadour. Hope allures him; ambition spurs him; conscious power assures him. His eager step dances along the ground. His words are an outburst of youth and joy. Thirty years pass by. What sober step pauses at the Wayside Inn? Is this the jocund Pilgrim of Outre-Mer? The harp is still ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the words had not been addressed to Costanza, although she had not heard one of them. The only person who found fault with the romance was a muleteer, nicknamed Barrabas. As soon as this man saw the singer run off, he bawled after him; "There you go, you Judas of a troubadour! May the fleas eat your eyes out! Who the devil taught you to sing to a scullery-maid about celestial realms, and spheres, and ocean-beds, and to call her stars and suns and all the rest of it? If you had told her ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... pentameter; Alexandrine; anacrusis[obs3], antispast[obs3], blank verse, ictus. elegiacs &c. adj.; elegiac verse, elegaic meter, elegaic poetry. poet, poet laureate; laureate; bard, lyrist[obs3], scald, skald[obs3], troubadour, trouvere[Fr]; minstrel; minnesinger, meistersinger[Ger]; improvisatore[obs3]; versifier, sonneteer; rhymer, rhymist[obs3], rhymester; ballad monger, runer[obs3]; poetaster; genus irritabile vatum [Latin]. V. poetize, sing, versify, make ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... cemetery at Shiraz, where the nightingales are singing and the roses bloom the year through, and the doves gather with low murmurs amid the white stones of the sacred enclosure. The poets of nature, the mystical pantheist, the joyous troubadour of life, Hafiz, in the naturalness and spontaneity of his poetry, and in the winning sweetness of his imagery, occupies a unique place in the literature of the world, and has no rival ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... is no longer there, Nor the gay troubadour of Gascony, Clement Marot, surnamed by flatterers The Prince of Poets and the Poet of Princes, Who, being looked upon with much disfavor By the Duke Ercole, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... unto her Court have come Two men—unknown their names or native home, Their rank or race; but one plays well the lute, The other is a troubadour; both suit The taste of Mahaud, when on summer eve, 'Neath opened windows, they obtain her leave To sing upon the terrace, and relate The charming tales that do with music mate. In August the Moravians have their fete, But it is radiant ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... sky that we see the demons and angels. On one side is a festive company of ladies and cavaliers, with hawks and dogs, seated under orange trees, with rich carpets at their feet, all splendidly dressed. A troubadour and a singing girl amuse them with songs, amorini flutter around them and wave their torches. On the other side is another group, also a hunting party, on splendidly caparisoned horses, and accompanied by a train of ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... effeminate, Mr. Wyse this morning looked rather like a modern Troubadour. He had a velveteen coat on, a soft, fluffy, mushy tie which looked as if made of Shirley poppies, very neat knickerbockers, brown stockings with blobs, like the fruit of plane trees, dependent from elaborate "tops," and shoes with a cascade of leather frilling ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... troubadour Bearnais, "Le yeux inoudes de larmes, "A ses montagnards "Chantoit ce refrein source d'alarmes— "Louis le fils d'Henri "Est prisonnier dans Paris! "Il a tremble pour les jours "De sa compagne cherie "Qui n'a troube de secours "Que dans sa propre energie; "Elle suit ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... one sees the pink and purple mountains of the Aures. We ride to the Sulphur Baths, we drive to Sidi-Okba. We take our dejeuner out to the yellow sand dunes, and we sip our coffee among the keef smokers in Hadj's painted cafe. We listen to the songs of the negro troubadour, and we smile at Algia's dancing when the silver moon comes up and the Kabyle dogs round the nomads' tents begin their serenades. And then I give Safti five francs and my blessing, and he bids me "Bonne nuit!" and his ghostly figure is lost in ...
— Smain; and Safti's Summer Day - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... gathered a nondescript company: mountebanks and buffoons; rogues unclassified, drinking and dicing; a robust vagrant, at whose feet slept a performing boar, with a ring—badge of servitude—through its nose; a black-bearded, shaggy-haired Spanish troubadour, with attire so ragged and worn as to have lost its erstwhile picturesque characteristics. This last far from prepossessing worthy half-started from his seat upon the appearance of fool and jestress; stared ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... a sly jest out of the cornet. Passion thumbs its nose at the stars out of the cornet. The melody of jazz, the tin pan ghosts of Chopin, Tchaikowsky, Old Black Joe, Liszt and Mumbo Magumbo, jungle troubadour of the Congo, come whinnying out from ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... fly with me, lady, my gallant destrere Is as true as the brand by my side; Through flood and o'er moorland his master he'll bear, With the maiden he seeks for a bride." This, this was the theme of the troubadour's lay, And thus did the lady reply:— "Sir knight, ere I trust thee, look hither and say, Do you see ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... no other," said the ancient, shrugging her shoulders. "But one is left now; mademoiselle would make a fine troubadour." ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... fascinating swing and rhythm, and are filled with charming imagery. One of the best is L'Amiradou (The Belvedere), the story of a fairy imprisoned in the castle at Tarascon, "who will doubtless love the one who shall free her." Three knights attempt the rescue and fail. Then there comes along a little Troubadour, and sings so sweetly of the prowess of his forefathers, of the splendor of the Latin race, that the guard are charmed and the bolts fly back. And the fairy goes up to the top of the tower with the little Troubadour, and they stand ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... all unknown to Greek and Roman song, The paler hyson and the dark souchong, Tho' black nor green the warbled praises share Of knightly troubadour or gay trouvere, Yet deem not thou, an alien quite to numbers, That friend to prattle and that foe to slumbers, Which Kian-Long, imperial poet, praised So high that, cent per cent, its price was raised; ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... looked at the inn 'twixt joy and fear, And the Romany looked at me. Said I, "We ha' come to a parting here And I know not who you be." But he only laughed as I smote on the door: "Go, take ye the fighting chance; Mayhap I once was a troubadour In the knightly days of France. Oh, the feast is set for those who dare And the reddest o' wine outpoured; And some sleep sound after peril and care At ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... and, having laid aside her customary broad-bordered cap, with a high crowned turban of red, and yellow cotton handkerchief on her head, appeared at the parlor door. Mr. Tiffany paused: he saw the Moorish princess before him; rallying, however, he was proceeding to describe himself as a friendly troubadour, whose affection had been responded to, when the Captain placing his mouth to his ear, as in confidence, uttered in a portentous whisper, ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... said that Christmas miracles were often wrought, and she herself knew that this was true. Had not the Fool secured his voice, so that he who had been but lightly held became the village troubadour, and slept warm ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... an old edition of the "Memoires du Sire de Joinville" this passage, which is, perhaps, an interpolation from a contemporary document: "St. Louis drove from his kingdom all tumblers and players of sleight of hand, through whom many evil habits and tastes had become engendered in the people." A troubadour's story of this period shows that the jugglers wandered about the country with their trained animals nearly starved; they were half naked, and were often without anything on their heads, without coats, without ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... comments. A pamphlet collection that Thorp privately printed at Estancia, New Mexico, in 1908, was one of the first to be published. Thorp had the perspective of both range and civilization. He was a kind of troubadour himself. The opening chapter, "Banjo in the Cow Camps," of his posthumous reminiscences, Pardner ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... continual food for laughter to all Asiatics, and the Greeks would have joined in it. In the golden Middle Age the practice developed into a regular and methodical service of women; it imposed deeds of heroism, cours d'amour, bombastic Troubadour songs, etc.; although it is to be observed that these last buffooneries, which had an intellectual side, were chiefly at home in France; whereas amongst the material sluggish Germans, the knights distinguished ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... so circumscribed in their utterances—so tongue-tied in love. They all say one thing; so it need not be set down here what Bob Hendricks said. It was what the king said to the queen, the prince to the princess, the duke to the lady, the gardener to the maid, the troubadour to his dulcinea. And Molly Culpepper replied, "When are you ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... the other happy. You will always have my prayers and best wishes. Give my kind love to dear George and tell him he is never out of my thoughts. I have much to say, but I cannot write. I shall be glad to see you all safe and well. Give my love to Henrietta; tell her I can sing 'Gaily the Troubadour'; I only want the 'guitar.' ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... my knees. Heavens, how they spelled! They finished all the words I ever heard and spelled like lightning through a lot of others the meaning of which I couldn't imagine. Father never gave them out at home. They spelled epiphany, gaberdine, ichthyology, gewgaw, kaleidoscope, and troubadour. Then Laddie spelled one word two different ways; and the Princess went him one better, ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... Greece and Rome, With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb and the Saxon, With antique maritime ventures, laws, artisanship, wars and journeys, With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle, With the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour, the crusader, and the monk, With those old continents whence we have come to this new continent, With the fading kingdoms and kings over there, With the fading religions and priests, With the small shores we look back to from our own large and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... I packed up a few of my belongings, put in my valise the dress of a wandering troubadour, and taking with me only a trusty servant, started for Dauphiny. It would be tedious to tell you the means I resorted to to obtain the affections of the heiress. I had been well instructed in music and could play on the lute, and knew by heart large numbers of ballads, and could myself, in case of ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... childer that left me last year for foreign parts." Little Francis was Triptolemus, in the Pirate, an excellent figure, and Mrs. Carr his sister Baby. Isabella, an old lady in an old-fashioned dress, and Laura as her daughter in a court dress and powder; Anna, a French troubadour singing beautifully and speaking French perfectly; William, the youngest son, a half-pay officer, king of the coffee house; Tom, a famous London black beggar, Billy Waters, with a wooden leg; Morton, Meg Merillics; Dr. ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... at its end Makrisi followed the troubadour to his regranted fief of Vaquieras. This was a chill and brilliant night, swayed by a frozen moon so powerful that no stars showed in the unclouded heavens, and everywhere the bogs were curdled with thin ice. An obdurate wind swept like a knife-blade across a world which ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... wilderness: "You shall not hear a simple song, but you shall remember that music is the voice of love," whispered the letter against my heart. What a brave thing is life when we have love and the hope of spring latent within us! I admit, as I listened to the little red troubadour of the pine, that, had you been as near as the dreams and fancies that wrapped me about, this fight in me for freedom would have been at an end. Do not trust these feeble moods of mine, however; not one of them would last half the length of time you would ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... There I was, with Johnson at my piano, like some wayside tinker setting up his cart and working at his trade! But I did not care for appearances—not a whit. For the moment I was care free, a wandering minstrel, like some troubadour of old, care free and happy in my song. I forgot the black shadow under which we all lay in that smiling land, the black shadow of war in ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... trimmed it with manicure scissors from the same vest pocket. His light and Gallic spirits underwent a sudden, miraculous change. He hummed a blithe San Salvador Opera Company tune; he grinned, smirked, bowed, pirouetted, twiddled, twaddled, twisted, and tooralooed. Gayly, the notorious troubadour, ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... South from Saint Lawrence to the Sound, From Katskill east to the sea-bound. Anchored fast for many an age, I await the bard and sage, Who, in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed, Shall string Monadnoc like a bead. Comes that cheerful troubadour, This mound shall throb his face before, As when, with inward fires and pain, It rose a bubble from the plain. When he cometh, I shall shed, From this wellspring in my head, Fountain-drop of spicier worth Than all vintage of the earth. There's fruit upon my barren soil Costlier far than ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of troubadour story," said Lady Pentreath, an easy, deep-voiced old lady; "I'm glad to find a little romance left among us. I think our young people now ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of satire is now and then visited upon the 'Troubadour Songs,' which have become so afflictingly common of late years. Some of these we have already given; and we find them on the increase in England. We have before us, from the London press of TILT AND BOGUE, 'Sir WHYSTLETON MUGGES, a Metrical Romaunte, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... sight up here by the orchestra, they must know who was doing it. I wondered not to have Vandeman in my hair already; but he and his consort stood in dignified silence; it was his committee who came after me, a Mephistopheles, a troubadour, an Indian brave, a Hercules with his club, swarming up the step, wanting to know if I was the man responsible, why the devil I had done it, who the devil I thought I was, anyhow. ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... Stephen, who was waiting with music in his hand while Philip finished the song. "You demoralize the fair sex by warbling your sentimental love and constancy under all sorts of vile treatment. Nothing short of having your heads served up in a dish like that mediaeval tenor or troubadour, would prevent you from expressing your entire resignation. I must administer an antidote, while Miss Deane prepares to tear herself away ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... was hastening after them when she was seized and thrown into prison. In Aquitaine, where the people impartially hated both French and Normans, the enthusiasm for independence was stirred by songs such as those of the troubadour, Bertrand de Born, lord of a fortress and a thousand men, who "was never content, save when the kings of the North were at war." In Normandy old hatreds had deepened year by year as Henry had gone on steadily seizing castles and lands ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... Conqueror had been blessed by Rome. They represented Europe, and the inevitable flooding of the island outpost of "Germania" by the tide of European civilization. Chanson and carole, dance-songs, troubadour lyrics, the ballade, rondel and Noel, amorous songs of French courtiers, pious hymns of French monks, began to sing themselves in England. The new grace and delicacy is upon every page of Chaucer. What ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry |
