"Old Irish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and he always said he was descended from the real old Irish Kings, and he was some kind of a Fenian. I mean he used to go on something terrible against the English, and say he would never rest till they were drove out of Ireland. When he got well again he was that handsome—well I've never seen any one like him, unless it's you. I expect when you ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... as fond of her. Indeed it is their loyalty to this old Irish nurse that gives me faith that they are not the cold propositions they sometimes seem to be. For once when, after much careless delay, a fragmentary message came to us that she was ill and in a hospital my two daughters, who were just starting for a ball, flew to her bedside, sat with ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... of abroad. It was as frequently referred to then as "The Irish Renaissance," because Ireland contributed most to it and because it was in Ireland that it acquired its most definite purpose. This purpose was to retell in English the old Irish legends and the still current Irish folk-songs, and to catch and preserve the moods of Irish men and women of to-day, especially those moods which came to them out of their brooding over Ireland, its history, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Excruciatingly funny to watch the stampede, after the loud "One—two—three—and away!" The plunges, the waddles, the skelter of flying heels! One might have thought the gold of Klondyke was hidden in the kitchen garden. I laughed, and laughed, in a good old Irish paroxysm of merriment, until the tears rolled down my cheeks. Mr Maplestone stared, turned on ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... it had acquired. They also build piles of stone, and always pass them on one side, and return on the other, so as to make a circuit with the sun. Mahommedans make the circuit of the Caaba in the same way. The ancient dagobas of India and Ceylon were also traversed round in the same way, and the old Irish and Scotch custom is to make all movements Deisual, or sunwise, round houses and graves, and to turn their bodies in this way at the beginning and end of a journey for luck, as well as at weddings ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... this head might not have been so clear as they are, but for a fortunate accident which happened to me when I was a very little boy. A good-hearted old Irish nurse (whom I shall not forget in my will) took me up one day by the heels, when I was making more noise than was necessary, and swinging me round two or knocked my head into a cocked hat against the bedpost. This, I say, decided my fate, and made my fortune. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... were taken from the Gaelic, and are charming examples of the naive beauty of the old Irish, and of Dr Hyde's accurate and sympathetic modern rendering. From Beside the ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... in magic. In more than one Italian legend which I have collected a sorceress or goddess evolves a life from her own soul, as a fire emits a spark. In fact, the fancy occurs in some form in all mythologies, great or small. In one old Irish legend a wizard turns a Thought into a watch-dog. The history of genius and of Invention is that of realizing ideas, of making them clearer and stronger and more comprehensive. Thus it seems to me that the word Forethought as generally loosely understood, when compared to what ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... symbolic art, known as Celtic, of which we have examples on old Irish crosses, and particularly on illuminated MSS. was wrought by the Christian monks of the 7th and 8th centuries, but what is generally understood as Christian symbolic art had its finest development about the 13th century. Gothic art is essentially symbolic and in many instances, ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... noted. Mr. Walter MacMurrough Kavanagh, Chairman of the Carlow County Council, was by tradition and training a strong Unionist, by inheritance the representative of one of the old Irish princely families. He had been elected to the Vice-Chairmanship of his County Council while still a Unionist; later, he adhered to Lord Dunraven's proposals of devolution, but finding no rest in a half-way house, came into full support of Redmond and for some time was a member of our party; ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... were very simple. His father was a British officer quartered at Montreal, of a good old Irish family. From his account he was an ungovernable boy, imperfectly educated, and tyrannizing over a loving but weak mother. When seventeen years old he saw a young girl at church whose appearance he described as being of angelic beauty, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... and all his charm, Warren Gregory was not a romantic figure in the eyes of most women. He had inherited from his old Irish mother a certain mildness, and a lenience, where they were concerned. He neither judged them nor idolized them. They belonged only to his leisure hours. His real life was in his club, in his books, and in the hospital world where there were children's ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... and requested his instruction regarding the proper constitution of the Church—for such is the subject of his tract; and that implies that the Romanizing movement was no longer in its infancy. There were many bishops and presbyters who had become dissatisfied with the old Irish method of Church government. They desired to bring it into conformity with that of the Roman Church. But they were in some uncertainty as to the nature of the changes that should be made, and so they asked Gilbert to give ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... up to the hotel and oversaw the preparation of Jeff's meals and kept taut the slack housekeeping of the old Irish woman who had remained as a favor, after the hotel closed, and professed to have lost the chance of a place for the winter by her complaisance. She submitted to Cynthia's authority, and tried to make interest for an indefinite stay by sudden zeal and industry, and the last days ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of the word janua itself. The regular word for door is the same in all the languages of the Aryan family from India to Ireland. It is dur in Sanscrit, thura in Greek, tr in German, door in English, dorus in old Irish, and foris in Latin. Yet besides this ordinary name for door, which the Latins shared with all their Aryan brethren, they had also the name janua, to which there is no corresponding term in any Indo-European speech. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... An old Irish woman voiced the Home Rule sentiment abroad thus: "The English have not used the Irish right, but we will forget that for the moment, for we will never be able to lift our heads again in New York if we let the ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... "Them's the old Irish breed," said Robert, as the yellow horse voluntarily stopped short to avoid stepping on one of them; "there's no better. That Gaylass there would take a line up Patrick Street on a fair day, and you'd live and die ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... evening always seemed like a fevered dream to her. Her body was crowded by people but her soul was alone in a torture-chamber of its own. Yet she played steadily for the drills and gave her readings without faltering. She even put on a grotesque old Irish woman's costume and acted the part in the dialogue which Miranda Pryor had not taken. But she did not give her "brogue" the inimitable twist she had given it in the practices, and her readings lacked their usual fire and appeal. ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for all the colleen's winsome looks. The later London whispers of a royal origin had a travestied germ of truth in her father's legendary descent from Brian Boru. He himself seemed scarcely less legendary, this highly coloured squire of the old Irish school, surviving into the Victorian era, like a Georgian caricature; still inhabiting a turreted castle romantically out of repair, infested with ragged parasites: still believing in high living and ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... London and was taken by an artist friend [Henry Scott Tuke, A.R.A.] to the National Gallery where he became very enthusiastic about the Terbourgs. They then went for a walk and, in Kensington Gore, near one of the entrances to Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens, there was an old Irish apple-woman sitting with her feet in a basket, smoking a pipe ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Strongbow. Afterwards it passed, by purchase, into the possession of the Butlers, Lords of Ormonde. Here a Parliament was held in 1367, which endeavoured by law to prevent the absorption of the newcomers by the old Irish race. It tainted the blood of all who gave their children into fosterage with Irish women, and penalised the usage of Irish dress and customs. It made it a capital offence for any of English blood to marry an Irish woman, which was humorous enough when we remember that Strongbow, "the first ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... cromlechs of large, flat unhewn stones, some six to seven feet high, and the Angami-Nagas of the extreme north of British India set up extensive alignments of menhirs, similar to those of France. Inscriptions in the old Irish cipher writing, known as ogham, prove that megalithic monuments were erected in Ireland after the time of St. Patrick; and, as we have already remarked, some of the Breton menhirs are surrounded by crosses. In India, too, we find the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... beyond one's income, he established his home in a portion of the city that was rather characterized by low rents than aristocratic abodes. However, they were respectable, and comfortably situated withal. Immediately adjoining the rabbi's house lived a garrulous old Irish woman, at once the aversion and dread of the neighborhood. Old Margery O'Flannagan needed no protection against the incursions of depredators, beyond the use of her own venomous tongue; still, she further strengthened her ramparts by the aid of a dog of most savage and ferocious ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... An old Irish legend says that "the stone Adamant in the land of India grows no colder in any wind or snow or ice; there is no heat in it under burning sods" (this is such an Hibernian touch! The peat fuel was the Celtic idea of a heating system), "nothing is broken ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... All wearied and lone, Sighing, "I'm a poor stranger, And far from my own." We invited her in, We offered her share Of our humble cottage And our humble fare; We bade her take comfort, No longer to moan, And made the poor stranger Be one of our own.' Old Irish Song. ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Sir Gammer Vans, I have pleasure in communicating what little information I have on the subject. Some years ago, when I was quite a boy, the story was told me by an Irish clergyman, since deceased. He spoke of it as an old Irish tradition, but did not give his authority for saying so. The story, as he gave it, contained no allusion to an "aunt" or "mother." I do not know whether it will be worthy of publication: but here it is, and you can make what ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 48, Saturday, September 28, 1850 • Various
... a lady and two tiny boys—Cecilia recognized them as having been passengers on their train. With them came an old Irish priest, who had met them, and the officer left them in his care while he also went off on the luggage quest. The small boys were apparently untired by their journey; they immediately began to use the swinging glass doors as playthings to the imminent risk ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... false to the spirit of all known early poetry, and is a modern note. In particular, it was argued, MacPherson's heroes are too sensitive to the wild and sublime in nature. Professor William R. Sullivan, a high authority on Celtic literature, says that in the genuine and undoubted remains of old Irish poetry belonging to the Leinster or Finnian Cycle and ascribed to Oisin, there is much detail in descriptions of arms, accouterments, and articles of indoor use and ornament, but very little in descriptions of outward nature.[10] On the other hand, the late ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... SIDNEY WARDEN's Character Sketch of the young and rather raw German Waiter, is excellent; the Waiter being "raw," is not overdone. Not a dull second in the farce. Will our B.C. Author give us some of his adaptations from PLAUTUS, TERENCE (some good old Irish plots of course, in the writings of this author), and a few other ancients with whom he was, it is most probable, personally and intimately acquainted. To think that the Wandering Jew, who can only sign himself "A.D.", ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... favourite among the combers. There used to be an Irishman named Peter O'Brady who lived not far from our house. His wife was a good singer, and what is more, she had a varied selection of good old Irish and Scotch songs. She was occasionally good enough to sing for me. This woman taught me the song "Shan Van Vocht," and other ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End |
