"Minstrel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... playing with fire one cannot doubt, but I hardly think that they set to work in their trifling with the intent of provoking blisters. The husbands of the much-lauded ladies were hardly likely to suffer this sort of fun to proceed beyond romancing. There was always a chance of a minstrel who went too far with his heart into the flames, getting it roasted on a spit and served up ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... advancing, First to the lively pipe his hand addrest; But soon he saw the brisk awakening viol, Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best; They would have thought who heard the strain 85 They saw, in Tempe's vale, her native maids, Amidst the festal sounding shades, To some unwearied minstrel dancing, While, as his flying fingers kiss'd the strings, Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round: 90 Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound; And he, amidst his frolic play, As if he would ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... charmingly; I read the Lay of the Last Minstrel aloud to him, and he seemed to enjoy it ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the other, for his teeth were rattling together in a way that reminded Hugh of the "Bones" at the end of a minstrel line; if he had ever seen a Spanish stage performance he would have said they made a sound like castanets in the hands of the senorita who ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... throng, Burst forth a rapturous shout which drowned Singer's voice and trumpet's sound. Thrice that stormy clamour fell, Thrice rose again with mightier swell. The last and loudest roar of all Had died along the painted wall. The crowd was hushed; the minstrel train Prepared to strike the chords again; When on each ear distinctly smote A low and wild and wailing note. It moans again. In mute amaze Menials, and guests, and harpers gaze. They look above, beneath, around, No shape doth own that mournful sound. It comes not from the tuneful quire; It comes ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for hidden treasures? Nay! We want the heartfelt straight. Minstrel, sing, in obvious measures— Sing that ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... lay claim to any distinguished relationship, even to that 'Nelly Bly' who, you remember, 'winked her eye when she went to sleep.'" He stopped in consternation. The terrible conviction flashed upon him that this quotation from a popular negro-minstrel song could not possibly be remembered by a lady as refined as his hostess, or even known to her superior son. The conviction was intensified by Mrs. Brooks rising with a smileless face, slightly shedding the possible vulgarity with a shake of ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... nobles. A price was set upon their heads. But while the last scions of the royal and noble races, decimated or ruined in Ireland, departed to die out under a foreign sky, amid the miseries of exile, the successor of the bards, the minstrel, whom nothing could tear from his native soil, was pursued, tracked, and taken like a wild beast, or chained and slaughtered like ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... kind depends on memory when the sight of some object awakens a feeling: as in the Cyprians of Dicaeogenes, where the hero breaks into tears on seeing the picture; or again in the 'Lay of Alcinous,' where Odysseus, hearing the minstrel play the lyre, recalls the past and ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... and Oriental scholar, who was styled by his friend Ben Jonson 'a monarch in letters,' and 'vir omni eruditionis genere instructissimus' by Archbishop Laud, was born on the 16th of December 1584 at Salvington, near Worthing, in Sussex. His father was John Selden, a farmer, known as the 'Minstrel' on account of his proficiency in music. Aubrey describes him as 'a yeomanly man of about forty pounds a year, who played well on the violin, in which he took much delight.' Selden was first educated at the free grammar school at Chichester, ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... is a foreigner, speaking no known language, but a mixture of every European dialect—so that he may be an Italian brigand, or a Tyrolese minstrel, or a Spanish smuggler, for what we know. I have heard say that he is neither of these, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... go in disguise as a minstrel?" said Denham banteringly—"like King Alfred did when he went to see about the Danes? Have you got a harp, ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... The Minstrel-boy to the war is gone, By the Belfast road he's coming; His Party sword he has girded on And his wild harp loud he's thrumming. "Land of bulls!" said the warrior bard, "Though GLADSTONE'S gang betrays thee, One sword, at least, thy rights shall ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... Lady Clifford never went down to the great hall when her lord was away, but confined herself to her own private apartments with her female attendants and her children, but she readily gave permission for the domestics to admit the minstrel for their own amusement, and right glad they were of this indulgence, as they had spent but a ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... State election in Arkansas in 1872 was that Brooks got the votes and Baxter the office, whereupon a contest was inaugurated, terminating in civil war. The Baxter, or Minstrel, wing of the party, with the view of spiking the guns of the Brindles, had, in their overtures to the Democrats during the campaign and in their platform at the nominating convention declared in favor of enfranchising the Confederates that took part ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... charge of our division the most powerful plain-ranger in the service of the company, the one person of all others, who might control the natives in case of an outbreak—and that man was Cuthbert Grant. Pierre, the minstrel, and six clerks were also in the party; but what could a handful of moderate men do with a horde of Indians and Metis wrought up to a fury ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... unpromising details without a quiver of the extravagant lashes. These, indeed, and the eyes pertaining to them, seemed rather to sweep the fine roof, and a certain minstrel's gallery and staircase, than which nothing could have been much finer, with the look of an appreciative admirer of architectural features and old oak. She had not journeyed to Stornham Court with the intention of disturbing Rosy, or of being herself ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wrestling and running, throwing the hammer, and "putting the stane," he had scarcely a rival, and he was skilled in all the learned lore of the time, wrote poetry, composed music both sacred and profane, and was a complete minstrel, able to sing beautifully and to play on the harp and organ. His queen, the beautiful Joan Beaufort, had been the lady of his minstrelsy in the days of his captivity, ever since he had watched her walking on the slopes of Windsor Park, and wooed her in ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... supposed to ask an old German musician how many instruments of music he could play, and he acts out in pantomime all of the instruments he could blow or handle. We think it was this merriment that became known in America as the song of Johnnie Schmoker in the minstrel days. ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... straight a tree sprang up on its root: It cast forth branches and throve and flourished with many a shoot. The birds, when the wood was green, sang o'er it, and when it was dry, Fair women sang to it in turn, for lo, 'twas a minstrel's lute! ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... continence, and rise the better and more chivalrous from the society of the other. Wine well used is a good familiar creature—kindles, soothes, and inspirits: the cup of wine warmed by the smile of woman gives courage to the soldier and genius to the minstrel. With Burns—and he was no ordinary seer—I hold that the sweetest hours that e'er we spend are spent among the lasses. I will go farther and say the most profitable hours. And some sweet and profitable hours 'twas mine to spend among the fawn-orbed ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... musical composition even for its melody; and very few, indeed, can gather from the silent notes the full effect of its splendid combinations. Yet even here the great master has analogous compensations. The idle amateur, the boarding-school girl, the street minstrel, and the barrel-organ, reflect his more palpable beauties; and, subjecting them to the severe test of incessant reiteration, make us wonder that "custom cannot stale" the infinite variety that is shut up even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the King, "that won't do! I do know better than that. It was Richard's minstrel who went ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... was important to know how numerous those pestilent Danes were, and how they were fortified, KING ALFRED, being a good musician, disguised himself as a glee-man or minstrel, and went, with his harp, to the Danish camp. He played and sang in the very tent of GUTHRUM the Danish leader, and entertained the Danes as they caroused. While he seemed to think of nothing but his music, he was watchful of their tents, their ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... has given it as his opinion, that a disinclination to athletic sports and exercises will be, in general, found among the peculiarities which mark a youthful genius. In support of this notion he quotes Beattie, who thus describes his ideal minstrel:— ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... number on the same bill reads: "The African Wonder, Carlo Alberto, will sing several new and popular Negro melodies." Collectors of minstrel data ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... been passionately in love with her; but his extreme old age and his somewhat haughty bearing were obstacles in his path to success. Whenever he made love to her, she turned aside, and listened instead to the thrilling tales told by some wandering minstrel. The magician finally succumbed to the infirmities of old age, his life made more burdensome by his repeated disappointments. He left to the king three enchanted winged horses; to the princess, two magic necklaces of exactly the same ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... morn and evening listed to the minstrel's song, In their ear the loathsome jackal ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... Longfellow minstrel," he continued, ignoring or not hearing my remark, "with his dreary hurdy-gurdy to cap the climax. Heavens! what a nasal twang the whole thing has to me. Not an original or cheerful note! 'Old Hundred' ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... Hercules at once, Nursed in effeminate arts from youth to manhood, And rushes from the banquet to the battle, As though it were a bed of love, deserves That a Greek girl should be his paramour, And a Greek bard his minstrel—a Greek tomb His monument. How ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... then, the fate of that high-gifted man, The pride of the palace, the bower, and the hall, The orator—dramatist—minstrel, who ran Through each mode of the lyre, and was master ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... this," Homer said. "The forming of El Hassan's basic government is beginning to take on aspects of a minstrel show. Then we've all declared ourselves ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... was able to see clearly once more, I perceived that Gussie was now seated. He had his hands on his knees, with his elbows out at right angles, like a nigger minstrel of the old school about to ask Mr. Bones why a chicken crosses the road, and he was staring before him with a smile so fixed and pebble-beached that I should have thought that anybody could have guessed that there sat one in whom ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... out of fashion. There are no modern Scheherezades, and the Sultans nowadays have to be amused in a different fashion. But, for that matter, a hundred poetic pastimes of leisure have fled before the relentless Hurry Demon who governs this prosaic nineteenth century. The Wandering Minstrel is gone, and the Troubadour, and the Court of Love, and the King's Fool, and the Round Table, ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Willie there have given the stream its 'pastoral melancholy,' and engaged Wordsworth in the renown of the water. For the poetry of Tweed we have chiefly, after Scott, to thank Mr. Stoddart, its loyal minstrel. "Dearer than all these to me," he says about our other valleys, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... done put up now, Jud?" grinned a tall weaver with that blank look of expectancy which settles over the face of the middle man in a negro minstrel troupe when he passes the stale question to the end man, knowing the ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... a super in the sensational drama She, by H. Rider Haggard. Two Englishmen were penetrating the mysterious jungles of Africa, and I was their native guide and porter. They had me all blacked up like a negro minstrel, but this wasn't a funny show, it was a drama of mystery and terror. While I was guiding the English travelers through the jungle of the local stage, we penetrated into the land of ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... expenses in the United States,—as all will finally discover who try it. At Cincinnati there is also a Varieties Theatre, but such a theatre! A vast and dirty barn, with whitewashed walls and no ceiling, in which a minstrel band of five men and two beauteous nymphs exerted themselves slightly to entertain an audience of thirty men and boys. As the performers entered the building in view of the spectators, we are able to state that beauteous Terpsichorean nymphs go about the world disguised in dingy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... the good people of Nuremberg sing when Hans Sachs, their favorite singer, as bounteous and gentle as the Eternal Father, steps out on the platform for the contest in poetry. It was the song that the poet-minstrel, the friend of Albrecht Duerer, wrote in honor of Luther when the great Reformation broke; and the prima donna, rising to her feet in the stern, and returning the ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of his style, and humour? His sweet regrets, his delicate compassion, his soft smile, his tremulous sympathy, the weakness which he owns? Your love for him is half pity. You come hot and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet minstrel sings to you. Who could harm the kind vagrant harper? Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no weapon—save the harp on which he plays to you; and with which he delights great and humble, young and old, the captains in the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... jingling wires with which the mandolin is mounted. I have sometimes stood at the door of a cafe, or, to give it the real name [Greek: kapheneion], and listened in wonder to the strains of some minstrel holding forth within. The wonder was, not that the man should play egregiously ill, but that the effect of good music should be produced by his evil playing. The people were evidently excited to sorrow when the attempt was at a mournful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... to read ... to steal God's book. He has punished ... but death pays my bond. Soon I shall read with His eyes and be at peace. Peace! (Gives a dying shudder) Nevermore!... (Rises, staggers to door and opens it wide) O, Night, with thy minstrel winds, blow gently on me dead ... for I have been thy lover! (Looks back at the men who are gazing at him intently, and speaks lowly, erect and godlike) In His own image created He man!... (Turns and steps ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... smiled. "The minstrel's song has charmed you; but I must remember what is right; for songs cannot alter justice; and I must be faithful to my name. Alcinous I am called, the man of sturdy sense, and Alcinous I will be." But for all that, Arete besought him, until she ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... their great ancestors, were alike the objects of popular attachment: the miserable destiny of the outlawed and ruined Westmorland, and the untimely end of Northumberland through the perfidy of the false friend in whom he had put his trust, were long remembered with pity and indignation, and many a minstrel "tuned his rude harp of border frame" to the fall of the Percy or the wanderings of the Nevil. There was also an ancient gentleman named Norton, of Norton in Yorkshire, who bore the banner of the cross ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... certain pretended Illyrian compositions—prose translations, the reader was to understand, of more or less ancient popular ballads; La Guzla, he called the volume, The Lyre, as we might say; only that the instrument of the Illyrian minstrel had but one string. Artistic deception, a trick of which there is something in the historic romance as such, in a book like his own Chronicle of Charles the Ninth, was always welcome to Merimee; it was part of the machinery of his rooted habit ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... I but a minstrel, deft At weaving, with the trembling strings Of my glad harp, the warp and weft Of rondels such as rapture sings,— I'd loop my lyre across my breast, Nor stay me till my knee found rest In midnight banks of bud and ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... accident you discover him balancing on a swaying twig, never far from the ground, with his comical little tail erect, or more likely pointing towards his head, what a pert, saucy minstrel he is! You are lost in amazement that so much music could come from a throat ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... in our strain, Now the months bring again The pipe and the minstrel to gladden the folk? Rather strike on the ear With a note strong and clear, A chant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... Redcliffe tow'rs, To muse in tears on that mysterious youth, Cruelly slighted, who, in evil hour, Shap'd his advent'rous course to London walls! Complaint, be gone! and, ominous thoughts, away! Take up, my Song, take up a merrier strain; For yet again, and lo! from Avon's vales, Another Minstrel[2] cometh. Youth endear'd, God and good Angels guide thee on thy road, And gentler fortunes 'wait ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the chicken is in our mouths where we sit by the fire; but if we were gnawing wretched bones, out in the cold of the streets, I doubt if we should feel in such a sublime mood. All the praises of poverty are sung by the minstrel who has got a golden harp to chant them on; and all the encomiums on renunciation come from your bon viveur who never denied himself aught in ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... hostess was already in his thoughts. The very birds of the air seemed to welcome her. The warm southern winds were full of their warbling—beccafico, loriot, merle, citronelle, woodlark, nightingale,—every tree, copse and tuft of grass held a tiny minstrel. When the great gate opened to a fanfare of trumpets, from the castle walls there came the murmur of innumerable doves. A castle had its dove-cote as it had its poultry-yard or rabbit-warren, but the birds were not always so ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... voice, and the liquor loosening the muscles of his tongue, every word came forth with the richest brogue of his native land. At first the people listened attentively as they sat forward. Then they by degrees crept up nearer and nearer, till at length Pat Doolan, a compatriot of the minstrel, seemingly unable any longer to contain himself, burst forth into the full chorus of one of the songs. To stop him would have been impossible. The poor fellow flung his whole soul into the melody. What a flood of recollections—of ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... die away in the plaintive notes of Roslin Castle, the echoes of the old walls were, after a long slumber, awakened by that enthusiastic burst of applause, with which the Scots usually received and rewarded their country's gifted minstrel. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... again Her courtship with the flowers; She chants in groves her minstrel strain, She smiles, and frowns, and weeps in rain ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... leading scholars of the eighth century: "He was an excellent harper, a most eloquent Saxon and Latin poet, a most expert chanter, or a singer, a doctor egregius, and admirably versed in scriptures and liberal sciences." The minstrel was a regular and stated officer of the Anglo-Saxon kings. Poetry is always the earliest form of literature; song the earliest form of poetry. The Muse adapts her lessons to the nation's infancy and adds the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... was not the royal minstrel who composed the songs, but that they came from the hand of Ronald who was now as skilled with his sword as with his harp, and who had become a great favourite of the emperor. He was a powerful warrior, and had already overthrown ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... Yes, I trow, and with reason, for thy native land need not grudge old Rome her 'pictures of the world'; she has pictures of her own, 'pictures of England'; and is it a new thing to toss up caps and shout—England against the world? Yes, against the world in all, in all; in science and in arms, in minstrel strain, and not less in the art 'which enables the hand to deceive the intoxicated soul by means of pictures.' {143} Seek'st models? to Gainsborough and Hogarth turn, not names of the world, maybe, but English names—and England against the world! A living master? why, there he comes! thou hast ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... of the Spring prepares: On the four winds are sped my couriers, For thee the towered trees are hung with green; Once more for thee, O queen, The banquet hall with ancient tapestry Of woven vines grows fair and still more fair. And ah! how in the minstrel gallery Again there is the sudden string and stir Of music touching the old instruments, While on the ancient floor The rushes as of yore Nymphs of the house of spring plait for your feet— Ancestral ornaments. ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... dreamed a dream at the midnight deep, When fancies come and go To vex a man in his soothing sleep With thoughts of awful woe— I dreamed that I was a corner-man Of a nigger minstrel show. ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... pass'd, where old and young Had no more heed of the glad vintaging, But all unpluck'd the purple clusters hung, Nor more of Linus did the minstrel sing, For he and all the folk were following, Wine-stain'd and garlanded, in merry bands, Like men when Dionysus came as king, And led his revel from the ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... embracing both wood and water, mountain and rock scenery. The whole gives rise to sentiments of the most pleasing, devotional tranquillity. The place, however, at which I paused, was St. Mary's Aisle: "here," I said to myself, "will the mighty minstrel sleep, when his harp shall be silent!"—and here I offered the votive tribute in anticipation, which thousands will follow me in, now that he is, too truly, alas! no more. At the little iron palisading I stood, and said, "here Scott will sleep:" in this, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... in 1802, and Scott soon became a contributor of critical articles for his friend Mr. Jeffrey, the elder. His chief work was now on "Sir Tristram," a romance ascribed to Thomas of Ercildoune; but "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was making progress in 1803, when Scott made the acquaintance of Wordsworth and his sister, under circumstances described by Dorothy Wordsworth in her Journal. In the following May, he took a lease of the house of Ashestiel, with an adjoining farm, on the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... now noted district of the south of Scotland, blended with the graceful expression of those melancholy remembrances, we doubt not deeply felt, which must ever cast a dark shadow over the minds of the surviving associates of the Great Minstrel. Alas! where can we turn ourselves without being reminded of the transitory nature of this our low estate, of its dissevered ties, its buried hopes, and lost affections! How many bitter endurances, reflected from the bosom of the past, are ever mingling with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... "seems they hitched a kind of nigger minstrel show right on to it—banjos and thingumajigs in front of the curtain while they was changin' scenes, and they hitched the second act right on to that. Nobody come out of the theatre at all. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... The minstrel gallery dated from the year 1354, and many musical instruments used in the fourteenth century were represented by carvings on the front, as being played by twelve angels. The following were the names of the instruments: cittern, bagpipe, clarion, rebec, psaltery, syrinx, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... addressed to him. London itself was now empty. Lionel found a quiet lodging in the vicinity of Twickenham. And when his foot passed along the shady lane through yon wicket gate into that region of turf and flowers, he felt as might have felt that famous Minstrel of Ercildoun, when, blessed with the privilege to enter Fairyland at will, the Rhymer stole to the grassy hillside, and murmured the spell that unlocks ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he, "I took a chaise for Melrose; and on the way stopped at the gate of Abbotsford, and sent in my letter of introduction, with a request to know whether it would be agreeable for Mr. Scott to receive a visit from me in the course of the day. The glorious old minstrel himself came limping to the gate, and took me by the hand in a way that made me feel as if we were old friends; in a moment I was seated at his hospitable board among his charming little family, and here I have been ever since.... I cannot ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... wickedness was a matter of imps and monsters rather than of villains, and of imps and monsters that could be exorcized by music. He was the Orpheus of the world who might tame the beast in all of us if we would listen to him, the wandering minstrel whom the world left to play out in the street. And yet his ultimate seriousness and the last secret of his beauty is pity, not for himself and his own little troubles, but for the whole bitter earnestness ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... afforded a peg from which much unprofitable speculation was suspended. The argument most plausible was that he went home, while one romantic youth suggested a girl. The accusation was never repeated. What? The "Lord" a ladies' man? Tut! One would as soon expect a statue to drill a minstrel show. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... only kind of patriotic poem that could satisfy the emotions of a patriotic person. But it certainly is not the sort of poem that is expected from a Poet Laureate, either on the highest or the lowest theory of his office. He is either a great minstrel singing the victories of a great king, or he is a common Court official like the Groom of the Powder Closet. In the first case his praises should be true; in the second case they will nearly always be false; but in either case he must praise. And what there is for him to ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... feasts, and the month of fasting which should follow; carn-ival means, literally, "farewell to flesh!" It is a forty days' farewell to the "blessed pullets and fat hams," so celebrated by Pantagruel's minstrel. Man prepares for privation by satiety, and finishes his sin thoroughly before he ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... Chopin is the minstrel, Neukomm the orator of music: we want them both,—the mysterious whispers and the resolute pleadings from the better world, which calls us not to slumber here, but press daily ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... country's fame, When wits and mountaineers deride, To me grows serious, for I name My native plains and streams with pride. No mountain charms have I to sing, No loftier minstrel's rights invade; From trifles oft my raptures spring; —Sweet Barnham Water wants ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... if God decrees he must be lord of Spain, Shall witness that the Leonese were not aroused in vain; He shall bear witness that we died, as lived our sires of old, Nor only of Numantium's pride shall minstrel ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... my Beloved! taken with those glances, Ah, my Beloved! dancing those rash dances, Ah, Minstrel! playing wrongful strains so well; Ah, Krishna! Krishna with the honeyed lip! Ah, Wanderer into foolish fellowship! My Dancer, my Delight!—I ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... Father was tremendously urging himself to play the mouth-organ there, to skip and be nimble, and gain a minstrel's ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... that the most buoyant, happy, hopeful, confident crowd of men in the wide world is the American army in France. If you could see them back of the lines, even within sound of the guns, playing a game of ball; if you could see them putting on a minstrel show in a Y. M. C. A. hotel in Paris; if you could see a team of white boys playing a team of negro boys; if you could see a whole regiment go in swimming; if you could see them in a track meet, you would know that, in spite ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... reading it aloud alternately. It is a charming poem: a most interesting story, generous, finely-drawn characters, and in many parts the finest poetry. But for an old prepossession—an unconquerable prepossession—in favour of the old minstrel, I think I should prefer this to either the Lay or Marmion. Our pleasure in reading it was increased by the sympathy and enthusiasm ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... which has heretofore been associated in the public mind with the Negro Minstrel business. Certain weird barbaric melodies, which defy all laws of musical composition, but which haunt one like a dream of a lonely night on some wild African river, are said to have been written by "OLD EMMET." Is there any such person? Has any one actually seen "OLD EMMET" in the flesh, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... in ancient time, from Jubal's tongue, The tuneful anthem filled the morning air, To sacred hymnings and Elysian song His music-breathing shell the minstrel woke— Devotion breathed aloud from every chord, The voice of praise was heard in every tone, And prayer and thanks to Him the Eternal One, To Him, that, with bright inspiration touched The high ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... like a sunset glow over the human element of the changed and modernised city. The twang of double-stringed lutes, the tinkle of metal tubes, and the elusive melody of silvery gongs, echo from the ages whence dance and song descend as an unchanged inheritance. An itinerant minstrel recites the history of Johar Mankain, the Una of Java, who shone like a jewel in the world which could not tarnish the purity and devotion of one whose heart entertained no evil thought. In the intricate byways of the crumbling Kraton, a professional story-teller ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... street, so denominated from the solemn procession that passed through it on Whitsun Monday, in its way from St. Mary's to St. Margaret's. In this procession the image of the Virgin was carried under a canopy, with an attendant minstrel and harp, accompanied by representatives of the twelve apostles, each denoted by the name of the sacred character he personated, written on parchment, fixed to his bonnet; these were followed by persons bearing banners, and the virgins ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... Unknown to mercy, tears the guiltless lamb; The towering eagle, darting from above, Unfeeling rends the inoffensive dove; 20 The lamb and dove on living nature feed, Crop the young herb, or crush the embryon seed. Nor spares the loud owl in her dusky flight, Smit with sweet notes, the minstrel of the night; Nor spares, enamour'd of his radiant form, The hungry nightingale the glowing worm; Who with bright lamp alarms the midnight hour, Climbs the green stem, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... programme, for it is a fine and inspiriting list, and a striking disproof of the old tradition that musicians must needs be long-haired, sallow and unathletic. Alert and young and vigorous they appealed to the eye as well as to the ear, and they played, as they fought, gloriously, these minstrel boys who had all gone to the War. Strings and woodwind, brass and percussion, all are up to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... by the light of a calm golden sunset, their baskets filled with narcissus blossoms from Hester's garden, some of which Anne carried to the cemetery next day and laid upon Hester's grave. Minstrel robins were whistling in the firs and the frogs were singing in the marshes. All the basins among the hills were brimmed with topaz ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... A minstrel's fire within me burn'd, I'd sing, as one whose heart must break, Lay upon lay: I nearly learn'd To shake. All day I sang; of love, of fame, Of fights our fathers fought of yore, Until the thing almost ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... handsome fellow, so glistening that he looked rather purple when he walked in the sunshine; and he had a voice so sweet and mellow that any minstrel might have been proud of it, though he seldom sang, and it is possible that no one but Corbie's grandmother heard it at its best. He was, moreover, a merry soul, fond of a joke, and always ready to dance a jig, with a chuckle, when anything very ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... kindly readiness to be pleased, and to find good in everything. He brought his wide knowledge of contemporary Scottish life "from the peer to the ploughman;" he brought his well-digested wealth of antiquarian lore, and the poetic skill which had just been busied with the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and was still to be occupied, ere he finished his interrupted novel, with "Marmion," "The Lady of the Lake," "Rokeby," and "The Lord of the Isles." The comparative failure of the last-named no doubt strengthened ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... dreaded fame That, when in Salamanca's cave Him listed his magic wand to wave, The bells would ring in Notre Dame. Lay of the Lost Minstrel, Canto ii. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... always bare in bitter grudge The slights of Arthur and his Table, Mark The Cornish King, had heard a wandering voice, A minstrel of Caerlon by strong storm Blown into shelter at Tintagil, say That out of naked knightlike purity Sir Lancelot worshipt no unmarried girl But the great Queen herself, fought in her name, Sware by her—vows like theirs, that high in heaven ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... and bright your wine, Sir King and brother mine! But I miss here what king and knight hold as the salt of the feast and the perfume to the wine: the lay of the minstrel. Beshrew me, but both Saxon and Norman are of kindred stock, and love to hear in hall and bower the deeds of their northern fathers. Crave I therefore from your gleemen, or harpers, some ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her aunt's chamber softly behind her, passed through the Fontenoy hall, and came out upon the wide porch. There, in the peace of the September afternoon, she found Unity alone with the Lay of the Last Minstrel. "Aunt Nancy is asleep," she said. "I left Mammy Chloe beside her. Unity, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... gold. His heart was as light as a bird's, and no bird was fonder of green woods and waving branches. He had lived since his birth in the hut in the forest, and had never wished to leave it, until one winter night a wandering minstrel sought shelter there, and paid for his night's lodging with songs of love and battle. Ever since that night Fergus pined for another life. He no longer found joy in the music of the hounds or in the cries of the ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... for Bob and Abbott now just any minute." She added, eying the crowd—"I saw Fran on the street, long and merry ago!" Her accent was that of condemnation. Like a rock she sat, letting the fickle populace drift by to minstrel show and snake den. The severity of her double chin said they might all go thither—she would not; let them be swallowed up by that gigantic serpent whose tail, too long for bill-board illustration, must needs be left to coil in ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... friend, and venal bribes would flee; When manhood wrote upon each lofty brow That glorious seal which makes the meaner bow; When Industry, Art, Science, Learning cast That light o'er Rome which gilds her to the last; The Roman minstrel caught the sacred flame, And made that age the chosen child of fame: The Golden Age recalled the happy hour, When man walked sinless in the first, sweet bower. Such was the glorious golden Age of yore,— That golden ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... so dead Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart has ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering on a foreign strand? If such there breathe, go, mark him well; For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... minstrel, if earth should unfold To thee all her treasures of silver and gold, Resign all thy riches, thy wealth, fame and power, To sing like the birds in the ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... was fostered and promoted by many of his royal successors. James III., a lover of the arts and sciences, delighted in the society of Roger, a musician; James IV. gave frequent grants to Henry the Minstrel, cherished the poet Dunbar, and himself wrote verses; James V. composed "The Gaberlunzie Man" and "The Jollie Beggar," ballads which are still sung; Queen Mary loved music, and wrote verses in French; and James VI., the last occupant of the Scottish throne, sought reputation as a writer both ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... period by Hoffmann, and I should certainly never have been tempted to extract the framework of a dramatic work from his elaborate story. The point in this popular pamphlet which had so much weight with me was that it brought 'Tannhauser,' if only by a passing hint, into touch with 'The Minstrel's War on the Wartburg.' I had some knowledge of this also from Hoffmann's account in his Serapionsbrudern. But I felt that the writer had only grasped the old legend in a distorted form, and therefore ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Queen's now manifest hostility, he presently conceived that he had found it in the influence exerted upon her by the Seigneur Davie—that Piedmontese, David Rizzio, who had come to the Scottish Court some four years ago as a starveling minstrel in the train of Monsieur de Morette, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... did at a humorous story. His tower-like head and thin, white hair marked him out among a thousand, while any one might swear to his voice again who heard it once, for it had a touch of the lisp and the burr; yet, as the minstrel said, of Douglas, 'it became him wonder well,' and gave great softness to a sorrowful story: indeed, I imagined that he kept the burr part of the tone for matters of a facetious or humorous kind, and brought ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... his mind an improved revival of his original plan. If he could have made a fortune with his great inventions in 1876, what might he not accomplish by the same means in 1598! He pictured to himself the delight of the ancient worthies when they heard the rag-time airs and minstrel ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... Elf the minstrel, With womanish hair and ring, Yet heavy was his hand on sword, Though ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... wild, weird aspect that was almost startling, as it helped to impress Max with a feeling of awe which fixed him to his chair. For if he dared to rise he felt that he would be offering a deadly affront to the old minstrel, one which, hot-blooded Highlander as he was, he might resent with his dirk, or perhaps do him a mischief in a more simple manner, by spurning him with his foot as he retreated—in other words, ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... it will be observed, is wholly different from that of the Hon. Pompey Smash and his literary descendants, and different also from the intolerable misrepresentations of the minstrel stage, but it is at least phonetically genuine. Nevertheless, if the language of Uncle Remus fails to give vivid hints of the really poetic imagination of the negro; if it fails to embody the quaint and homely humor which was his most prominent characteristic; if it does not suggest ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... noblest and most gallant of all these bards was Walter of the Vogelweid; his voice was the sweetest and his songs the most beautiful. We looked on each other and loved, but a foreign prince sought my hand and my stern father bade me wed him and forget the wandering minstrel. I refused to be the bride of any other than Walter. 'Either you obey me,' said my father, 'or you shall become a nun and die unwed.' That very night I secretly left the castle and stole away with my lover. We ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... have been pent up in cities," it ran. "The stuffy synagogue has been field and forest to them. But then there is more beauty in a heaven visioned by a congregation of worshipers than in the bluest heaven sung by the minstrel of landscapes. They are not worshipers. They are poets. It is not God they are speaking to. It is a sublime image. It is not their Creator. It is their ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... chunk of snow fell right into the cup, splashing the chocolate all over the lad. Luckily it was not hot, though after the splashing was over Ted looked as if he had colored himself to take part in a minstrel show. ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... now scrambled, and I will show you something to the effect.' Which saying, he went to his bookcase, and brought forth an elegantly-bound volume, together with a silk-tied note. 'This letter,' Mr. Gilchrist exclaimed, 'and this book, called the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," the author of the "Lady of the Lake" sent me more than ten years ago. He was then simple Mr. Walter Scott: a very humble man as you will see from his letter, in which he gives profuse thanks for a little review of his work which I ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... lives within my breast, There mem'ry has her form imprest:— Thus, when some minstrel's strain is done, Sounds seem to breathe, for ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned As home his footsteps he hath turned, From wandering on a foreign strand? If such there breathe, go, mark him well. For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch concentered all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, Unwept, ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... desolateness of the world, all the exiledom of man upon it. There was no lure, no temptation in that. The Aeolian harp of the heart does not always discourse battle music, and on this night it was as if an old sad minstrel sat before me and played unendingly one plaint, the story of a lost throne, of a lost family, lost children, a lost world. Thus a thought came to me: "We are all the children of kings; on our spiritual bodies are royal seals. Sometime or other we were abandoned on this beautiful garden, the ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... Michael Angelo spoke his mind to Cardiere and bade him set off at once to see Piero, who was at Careggi, and give him his father's warning. Cardiere, half-way to Careggi, met Piero and some friends riding in toward Florence. The minstrel stopped their way and besought Piero to hear his story. The young Medici bade him speak, but when he had heard the warning he laughed, and his friends laughed ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... afraid, old boy. Marse Robert won't frown on your banjo. He'll just smile as he recalls what the cavalry did in our last battle. Minstrel man, make yourself ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... dwells where pine and hemlock grow, A merry minstrel seldom seen; The voice of Joy is his I know— ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... there from all corners of Europe to cut the trees; to build and launch boats; to sail them, finally, across the strip of water to that England he was to meet at last, to grapple with, and overthrow, even as the English huscarles in their turn bore down on that gay Minstrel Taillefer, who rode so insolently forth to meet them, with a song in his throat, tossing his sword in English eyes, still chanting the song of Roland as he fell. None of the inn features were in the least informed with this great, impressive picture of its past. Yet does William seem by far the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... himself in sackcloth with a girdle of rope about his loins. Thus apparelled he climbed on foot to the holy mountain of La Verna, above the Val d'Arno, which mountain the Count Rolando of Montefeltro had given, many years before, to St. Francis the minstrel of God and his poor little disciples of the cross, for a refuge and a sanctuary near the sky. At the door of the Friary built upon the land of his forefathers the Count Angelo ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... youth not ended;— Even as his song the willowy scent of spring Doth blend with autumn's tender mellowing, And mixes praise with satire, tears with fun, In strains that ever delicately run; So musical and wise, page after page, The sage a minstrel grows, the bard a sage. The dew of youth fills yet his late-sprung flowers, And day-break glory haunts his evening hours. Ah, such a life prefigures its own moral: That first "Last Leaf" is now a leaf of laurel, Which—smiling not, but trembling at the ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... minstrel did not know how well off he was to have been without schooling. This, I think, every one feels at once to be poetry that sings itself. It makes its own tune, and the heart beats in time to its measure. By and by poets will begin to say, like Goethe, "I sing as the bird sings"; but this poet sings ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... just take this pleasing minstrel by the scruff of his neck and say to him, 'Nice ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... can call their free steps to our side. Him whom He loves, the Sire of men and gods, (Selected from the marvelling multitude,) Bears on his eagle to his bright abodes; And showers, with partial hand and lavish, down The minstrel's laurel or the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... poems from the United States Gazette seem to be cemeteries of departed reputations, the fate of the singers need not be deplored as if Fame had forgotten them. Fame never knew them. Fame does not retain the name of every minstrel who passes singing. But to say that Fame does not know them is not dispraise. They sang for the hearers of their day, as the players played. Is it nothing to please those who listen, because those who are out ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... manage I don't know. It isn't living at all. And when I see a fellow like that, who ought to be worried to death all the time—and who would be if he looked the facts squarely in the face—grinning and telling stories like a minstrel, it makes me so d——d mad that I can't ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... Wallack's Theater, was a succession of more or less historic playhouses. At Eighth Street was the Old New York Theater; a few doors away was Lina Edwins's; almost flanking the cigar-store and ranging toward the south were the Olympic, Niblo's Garden, and the San Francisco Minstrel Hall. Farther down was the Broadway Theater, while over on the Bowery Tony Pastor ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... himself as a minstrel, and travelled to Durham, where King Edward held his court, and where young Bruce, taken captive, was now confined. By making himself known to the Earl of Gloucester, Wallace was able to gain access to Bruce, whose father was now dead, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... elements we know of are no mean comforters; the open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown—the air is our robe of state, the Earth is our throne, and the Sea a mighty minstrel playing before it. ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... woods, my attention was attracted to a small densely-grown swamp, hedged in with eglantine, brambles, and the everlasting smilax, from which proceeded loud cries of distress and alarm, indicating that some terrible calamity was threatening my sombre-colored minstrel. On effecting an entrance, which, however, was not accomplished till I had doffed coat and hat, so as to diminish the surface exposed to the thorns and brambles, and, looking around me from a square yard of terra firma, I found myself ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... farther delighted to recognize a well-known face on the minstrel's shoulders, she hastened at the conclusion to give him her compliments. It was the young nobleman who had aided her flight with Clemenceau at Munich, and of whom she had not cherished a second thought! Better than all, while titled a baron in Germany, he held a viscount's rank ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... is dubious. In the English, and in all Scots versions, men "win their hay" at Lammastide. In Scotland the hay harvest is often much later. But if the English ballad be NORTHUMBRIAN, little can be made out of that proof of Scottish origin. If the English version be a southern version (for the minstrel is a professional), then Lammastide for hay-making is ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... a minstrel went roaming here and there, apparently aimlessly, throughout Germany. Everywhere the lovely music that breathed from his harp-strings made him welcome at the towering castles that surmounted the cliffs along the winding Rhine. ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... said, minstrel Momus: I must put you in, must I? when will you be in good fooling of ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... of the coming time, Sweet minstrel of the joyous present, Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme, The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant, Good-bye! Good-bye!—Our hearts and hands, Our lips in honest Saxon phrases, Cry, God be with him, till he stands His feet among ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... home. But you amuse me; I am rich, you poor— What boon shall I confer and make secure? What gift? ask of me, poets, what you will And I will grant it—promise to fulfil." "A kiss," said Joss. "A kiss!" and anger fraught Amazed at minstrel having such a thought— While flush of indignation warmed her cheek. "You do forget to whom it is you speak," She cried. "Had I not known your high degree, Should I have asked this royal boon," ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... Tudors), restricted to the amusements of knight and noble, no doubt presented more of pomp and splendour than the motley and mixed assembly of all ranks that now grouped around the competitors for the silver arrow, or listened to the itinerant jongleur, dissour, or minstrel, or, seated under the stunted shade of the old trees, indulged, with eager looks and hands often wandering to their dagger-hilts, in the absorbing passion of the dice; but no later and earlier scenes of revelry ever, perhaps, exhibited ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... instance, to live in London and to have no notion of the House of Commons, nor indeed of the Queen, except perhaps that she is a rich lady; the police—yes, you knew what a policeman was because you used to be sent to fetch one to make an organ-man or a Christy minstrel move on. To know of nothing but a dark kitchen, grates, eggs and bacon, dirty children; to work seventeen hours a day and to get cheated out of your wages; to answer, when asked, why you did not get your wages or leave if you weren't paid, that you "didn't ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... The native minstrel stopped in the middle of his chant; the whole shuffling, grunting crowd was petrified in as many different poses. Birnier leaped to his feet ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... eyes in an apparent agony of grief. Three children are present, the two elder crying for sympathy, the youngest sitting in a crib or cradle and amusing himself with some toy, in apparent unconsciousness of his father's approaching departure. Soft blue light from left. Music, "The Minstrel Boy." ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... And all that echoes to the song of even; All that the mountain's shelt'ring bosom shields, And all the dread magnificence of heaven; O how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven! ..... These charms shall work thy soul's eternal health, And love, and gentleness, and joy, impart. THE MINSTREL ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... of dual personality; there is one phase of him which is disclosed only in the freemasonry of his own race. I have often watched with interest and sometimes with amazement even ignorant colored men under cover of broad grins and minstrel antics maintain this dualism in the ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... literary critic we should not pass by, as he does not often take that part. Alcinous, praising the tale of Ulysses, says: "Form of words is thine, and a noble meaning, and a mythus, as when a minstrel sings." Three important qualities of poetry are therein set forth: beauty of language, nobleness of content, and the fable in its totality—all of which belong to the preceding narrative. Moreover, Alcinous draws a sharp contrast with ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... Cunard liner, and had ridden on the Strand in a hansom with William Ewart Gladstone. But the one thing of which he was proud, the one picture of his life he most delighted to recall, was himself as manager of a negro minstrel troupe, in a hired drum-major's uniform, marching down the streets of Sacramento at the head of the brass band ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... cross-piece, against which the preacher might lean his back. The services commenced with the singing of a psalm by the whole vast assemblage. Clement Marot's verses, recently translated by Dathenus, were then new and popular. The strains of the monarch minstrel, chanted thus in their homely but nervous mother tongue by a multitude who had but recently learned that all the poetry and rapture of devotion were not irrevocably coffined with a buried language, or immured in the precincts of a church, had never produced ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the long evenings have set in, and our ancestors in hall or cottage assemble round the blazing hearth, and listen to the minstrel's lays, and recite their oft-told tales of adventure and romance. Sometimes they indulge in asking each other riddles, and there exists at the present time an old collection of these early efforts of wit and humour which are not ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... company was always sure of drawing Lincoln. A Mrs. Hillis, a member of the "Newhall Family," and a good singer, was the only woman who ever seemed to exhibit any liking for him—so Lincoln said. He attended a negro-minstrel show in Chicago, once, where he heard Dixie sung. It was entirely new, ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... in earth's lifetime, Hath any cunningest minstrel Told the one seventh of wisdom, Ravishment, ecstasy, transport, Hid in the hue of the hyacinth's 5 Purple ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... This account of what occurred was given by Mr. Walter Hamilton, but Mr. Sala furnished another version. The 'authorship of the ballad,' Mr. Sala justly observed, 'is involved in mystery.' Cruikshank picked it up from the recitation of a minstrel outside a pot-house. In Mr. Sala's opinion, Mr. Thackeray 'revised and settled the words, and made them fit for publication.' Nor did he confine himself to the mere critical work; he added, in Mr. Sala's opinion, that admired passage about 'The young bride's mother, who ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... its inconsistencies and leaves in the transfigured chronicle many tell-tale incidents and remarks which, like atrophied organs in an animal body, reveal its gradual formation. Art and a deliberate pursuit of unction or beauty would have thrown over this baggage. The automatic and pious minstrel carries it with ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... marched a party of falconers with their well-trained birds, whose skill they had been approving upon their fists, their jesses ringing as they moved along, while nearer still, and almost at the foot of the terrace wall, was a minstrel playing on a rebec, to which a keeper, in a dress of Lincoln green, with a bow over his shoulder, a quiver of arrows at his back, and a comely damsel under ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... tell you why my kite is like Buddy, the guinea pig boy?" repeated Tommie, like a man in a minstrel show. "No, Uncle Wiggily, I can not. Why is my kite like Buddy, ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... Mineral mineralo. Mineralogy mineralogio. Mingle miksi. Miniature miniaturo. Minimum minimumo. Minister (religious) pastro. Minister (polit.) ministro. Ministry ministraro. Minor (age) neplenagxa. Minor (mus.) molo, mola. Minority (age) neplenagxo. Minority malplimulto. Minstrel bardo, kantisto. Mint mento. Minute menueto. Minuet (time) minuto. Minute (note) noto. Minute malgrandega. Minuti detaleto. Miracle miraklo. Miraculous mirakla. Mire sxlimo, koto. Mirror ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... to shield from harm the beloved child for whom she died; we read it in the story of the friendship and enmity between the Baron and Sir Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine; we read it in the vision seen in the forest by the minstrel Bard, of the bright green snake coiled around the wings and neck of a fluttering dove; and, finally, we read it in its most startling form, in the conclusion of the poem, "A little child, a limber elf, singing, dancing to itself," etc., wherein is exhibited ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... and his wife were always among the most welcome visitors at Lord Ulswater's. In his extreme old age, the ex-king took a journey to Scotland, to see the Author of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." Nor should we do justice to the chief's critical discernment if we neglected to record that, from the earliest dawn of that great luminary of our age, he predicted its meridian splendour. The eldest son of the gypsy-monarch inherited ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Minstrel, as were all those in the island who sang original verses at dances and serenades. He was a tall young man, slender, and narrow shouldered, a youth not yet eighteen. As he sang he coughed, his slender neck swelled, and ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... scantily-clad but stalwart Kafirs with their awkward hoes, it was not a bit like a trim English garden. It was like a garden in which Lalla Rookh might have wandered by moonlight talking sentimental philosophy with her minstrel prince under old Fadladeen's chaperonage, or a garden that Boccaccio might have peopled with his Arcadian fine ladies and gentlemen. It was emphatically a poet's or a painter's garden, not a gardener's garden. Then, as though ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... that, oft at summer midnight, there, When all is hushed and voiceless, and the air, Sweet, soothing minstrel of the viewless hand, Swells rippling through the aged trees, that stand With their broad boughs above the wave depending, With the low gurgle of the waters blending The rustle of their foliage, a light boat, Bearing two ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... becoming strangely confused. And then men of more thought or intelligence, looking more deeply into it, began to consider that the phrase did in very truth express far more serious facts. As in an old Norman tale, he who had entered as a jester or minstrel in comic garb, laid aside his disguise, and appeared as a wise counsellor or brave champion who had come to ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... when feasters roared And minstrels waited turns, Of the might of the men that Troy adored, Of the valor in vain of the Trojan sword, With the love that slakeless burns, That caught and blazed in the minstrel mind Or ever the age of pen. So maids and a minstrel rebuilt Troy, Out of the ashes they rebuilt Troy To live in the ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... Nature and Art combined is so sad as the effect of a Street Minstrel playing something with flourishes on a clarinet under the windows of your study during a yellow London ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... that if all the copies of Milton's Paradise Lost were to be destroyed, he could reproduce the book complete, from memory. In early life he was a great admirer of Walter Scott's poetry, and especially the "Lay of the Last Minstrel", and could repeat the whole of that long poem, more than six hundred lines, from memory. And at the age of fifty-seven he records—"I walked in the portico, and learned by heart the noble fourth act of the Merchant of Venice. There are four hundred ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... that the nature of this American Poem was known to the proprietor of the Quarterly Review. So far as it was a burlesque on the Lay of the Last Minstrel, I know it was; yet was he as a publisher so anxious to get it, that he engaged Lord Byron to use his utmost influence with me to obtain it for him, and his Lordship wrote a most pressing letter upon the occasion. He asked me to let Mr. Murray, who was in ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... recognised school of music, but his concert pieces were his own compositions, of no great merit, and he still more delighted his audiences by playing national airs as no one had ever played them before. He was a minstrel rather than a musician in the broad sense of the word, but he held the hearts of the people as few, if any, minstrels ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... Rev. Thomas Percy, fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, and afterwards Bishop of Dromore. "The reviver of minstrel poetry in Scotland was the venerable Bishop of Dromore, who, in 1765, published his elegant collection of heroic ballads, songs, and pieces of early poetry under the title of 'Reliques Of Ancient English Poetry.' The plan ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... gave a hearty assent; adding, at the same time, a hope that her want of practice since she left Edinburgh would be no obstacle to her success. To which Miss Devine replied, by asking him to name the window out of which she was to present her compliments to the English minstrel. "As to that, Betty," said he, "I leave you to select your own ground; but take care that you don't miss fire"—an observation which took the stable-boy, Bill Mack, by the greatest surprise, as, from Betty's ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... 'Antiquary,' under the eye of Jonathan Oldbuck, who was himself once in love but has come to see that he was a fool for his pains. Certainly, somehow or other, they are apt to be terribly wooden. Cranstoun in the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' Graeme in the 'Lady of the Lake,' or Wilton in 'Marmion,' are all unspeakable bores. Waverley himself, and Lovel in the 'Antiquary,' and Vanbeest Brown in 'Guy Mannering,' and Harry Morton in 'Old Mortality,' and, in short, the whole series of Scott's ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... freshness seemed perennial, the silence was suddenly broken by a strain so rapid and gushing, and touched with such a wild, sylvan plaintiveness, that I listened in amazement. And so shy and coy was the little minstrel, that I came twice to the woods before I was sure to whom I was listening. In summer, he is one of those birds of the deep Northern forests, that, like the Speckled Canada Warbler and the Hermit-Thrush, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various |
