"Saracen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the reconquest of Spain from the Arab-Moors in 718, when the brave band of refugees who had not bowed to the Saracen yoke issued from the mountains of Asturias in the extreme northwest corner of Spain, under Pelayo, with vows resting upon them "to rid the land of its infidel invaders and to advance the standard of the cross until it was everywhere victorious over the crescent," the "Expulsion of the Moors" ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... this lair, Phoebus's mysterious companion raised his mantle to his very eyes. Meanwhile, the captain, swearing like a Saracen, hastened to "make the sun shine in a crown" ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... state. Its circuit may be between three and four miles. On the E. and N. sides the gates of the modern town, formed in the ancient wall, still remain entire, especially the northern gate; it is a narrow arch, and comparatively very small. I suppose it to be of Saracen origin. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... I purchased from the wandering Persian. I regret that I did not have them blessed by his Holiness. For who knows what spell the heretic Saracen may have ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... English Knight, announcing his determination to fight and vanquish the Turkish Knight, a vastly superior swordsman, who promptly made mincemeat of him. After the Saracen had celebrated his victory in verse, and proclaimed himself the world's champion, entered Snt George, who, after some preliminary patriotic flourishes, promptly made mincemeat of the Saracen—to the blank amazement of an audience which included several retired army officers. ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... The beautiful Saracen city of Cordres was the last to fall before the arms of Charlemagne. Long and stoutly did the besieged stronghold hold out against the conqueror, but at last its gates were carried and its towers ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... meantime, Hugh of Tabaria, who was a principal warrior among the Christians of Palestine, and indefatigable in assaulting the pagans on all occasions, having gathered together 200 horse and 400 infantry, suddenly invaded the country of a great Saracen lord, named Suet, on the frontiers of the territory of Damascus, where he took a rich booty of gold and silver and many cattle, which would have proved of great importance in assisting the army at the siege of Sidon. On his return with this ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... Do you doubt me, Turk, Saracen? I have a cousin that's a proctor in the Commons; I'll ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... brought about by the Crusades. We have seen that through the despised Jew, at the time of the Conquest, a higher civilization was brought into England. Along with his hoarded gold came knowledge and culture, which he had obtained from the Saracen. Now, these germs had been revived by direct contact with the sources of ancient knowledge in the East during the Crusades; and while the long mental torpor of Europe was rolling away like mist before the rising sun, England felt the warmth of the same quickening ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... City to meet her daughter at the Saracen's Head, whither the York coach used to run, and received her almost in silence. "Oh, mamma, dear mamma," said Lady Anna, "I am so glad to be back with you again." Sarah, the lady's-maid, was there, useless, officious, and long-eared. The Countess said almost nothing; ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... overshadow them now as mountains overshadow molehills. The Saracens captured and pillaged Genoa nine hundred years ago, but during the following century Genoa and Pisa entered into an offensive and defensive alliance and besieged the Saracen colonies in Sardinia and the Balearic Isles with an obstinacy that maintained its pristine vigor and held to its purpose for forty long years. They were victorious at last and divided their conquests ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to go directly (without stopping at the Saracen's-head-inn) to you at your lodgings. Matters are now in so good a ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... now, Villiers?" he demanded mirthfully.. "You are a regular fire-eater—a would-be Crusader against a modern Saracen host! Why are you choked with such seemingly unutterable wrath! ... what of the Press? ... it is at any ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... in character and recall similar structures erected by the Arabs in Spain, it will be remembered that the Normans brought no trained architects to the island, but employed the Arabs, Greeks, and Hebrews who had already been in the service of the Saracen emirs. But the Arab influence in architecture was dominant, and it survived well ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... cases the Italian and other European merchants had quarters, or fondachi, granted to them in the Eastern cities by the Saracen emirs of Egypt and Syria, or by the Greek emperor of Asia Minor, Constantinople, and Trebizond. These fondachi were buildings, or groups of dwellings and warehouses, often including a market-place, offices, and church, where the merchants of some Italian or Provencal city carried ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... these latter days, and young girls of the better class may, without causing much comment, go upon the street unattended. In the south, however, the position of women is very different, and they are still regarded in much the same way as are the women of Oriental countries. The long years of Saracen rule are responsible for this condition, which makes the woman little more than the slave of her husband. It is said that in some country districts it is the custom for the husband to lock his wife in the house whenever he goes from home, and the usage is so well ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... existed more keenly than this story of a little over two thousand words. By its perusal we gain an illuminating insight into that ill-directed religious enthusiasm which led men on frenzied quests for the destruction of the heretic in their own land and of the Saracen abroad, causing them to become at one and the same time unjust and heroic. In a word, within the compass of three hundred lines of verse, Chaucer contrives to body forth his age—to give us something ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... Paisley and dined, I well remember, we two alone, and, as I thought, magnificently, in a great apartment in "The Saracen's Head," at the end of which was the county ball-room. We had come across from Dunoon and landed in a small boat at the Water Neb along with Mrs. Dr. Hall, a character Sir Walter or Galt would have made immortal. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the same light. "Oh, not yet," she pleaded; "I want to speak to Mr.—" Having only heard the visitor's name once, and not finding her memory in good working order after the conjuring, Kitty hesitated. "Isn't your name something like Saracen?" she asked. ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... went to make up in the next world his quarrel with Thomas-a-Becket; and Richard Coeur de Lion made all England resound with preparations for the crusade, to the great delight of many zealous adventurers, who eagerly flocked under his banner in the hope of enriching themselves with Saracen spoil, which they called fighting the battles of God. Richard, who was not remarkably scrupulous in his financial operations, was not likely to overlook the lands and castle of Locksley, which he appropriated immediately ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... movement. The best edition of his works was published at Paris in 1712. The passage cited in our Fragments is from [Greek: peri Drakonton], a mutilated essay on dragons standing between a "Dialogue Between a Saracen and a Christian" and a ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... too much tired to care to look any longer out of the window, when the coach rumbled over the pebbly street into the courtyard of the 'Saracen's Head.' ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... sprung up, but imperfectly understood and taught. Michael Scot, with the assistance of a learned Jew,[443] translated and published the writings of the great philosopher in Latin, which greatly superseded the old versions derived from the Saracen copies. ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... so much greater. The book of crafts by Etienne Boileau, provost of the merchants in 1258-1268, contains a curious enumeration of the different craft-guilds of Paris, among which we find 'the tapiciers, or makers of the tapis sarrasinois (or Saracen cloths), who say that their craft is for the service only of churches, or great men like kings and counts'; and, indeed, even in our own day, nearly all our words descriptive of decorative textures and decorative methods point to an Oriental origin. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... beyond the deep," on the shores of the Baltic a young novitiate, amid the rigors of a monastic life, was tracing the course of the planets, and solving the problem in which Virgil delighted[47]—problems which had baffled Chaldean and Persian, Egyptian and Saracen. Columbus explained the earth, Copernicus explained the heavens. Neither of the great discoverers lived to see the result of his labors, for the Prussian astronomer died on the day that his work was published. But the centuries that have come and gone have ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... the costume of the fifteenth century. The other tomb is of similar construction, and is believed to have been brought here from Westbury College; it represents Canynge in his clerical robes, his head supported by angels, and resting his feet on the figure of a Saracen. Here Chatterton frequently ruminated; indeed, the whole church abounds with memorials which call to mind the sources of his inspiration; near the door is an effigy inscribed "Johannes Lamyngton," which gave name to one of his forgeries. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... your interests are not all alike you blame the saints for not doing what is obviously impossible. Now, I know that he whom you call St. Vincent loved the tongue of a woman no better than the scimitar of the Saracen, and for this reason did he probably prefer to spare the life of D. Barbara than be importuned by her ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... hundred years after the great Saracen invasion in the beginning of the eighth century, Spain was broken up into a number of small but independent states, divided in their interests, and often in deadly hostility with one another. It was inhabited ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... Gibbon's great work, the Decline and Fall, a prose epic in seventy-one books, upon the last victories, the last triumphs, and the long, reluctant death-struggles of the Roman Empire, the insidious advance of inner decay, the ever-renewed assaults of foreign violence, the Goth, the Saracen, the Mongol, and at the close, the leaguering lines of Mahomet, the farewell to the Greeks of the last of the Constantines, the Ottomans in the palaces of the Caesars, and the melancholy musings of an Italian scholar over the ruins on the Seven Hills. An epic ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... seems to be doubtful. He takes up his narrative at Tauris, which he describes as a large flourishing town built in the midst of beautiful gardens and carrying on a great traffic in precious stones and other valuable merchandise, but its Saracen inhabitants are disloyal and treacherous. Here he seems to divide Persia geographically into eight provinces. The natives of Persia, according to him, are formidable enemies to the merchants, who are obliged to travel armed with bows and arrows. The principal trade of the country ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... died hard, however. We discussed the possible Saracen origin of the pentagonal tower, and the vicissitudes of the castle during the struggles between Mohammedans and Christians, feudal lords and kings, Catholics and Protestants, Spaniards and French. Monsieur le Maire was a Bonapartist, and he insisted that the ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... Sir Bevis of Hamtoun, (Earl of Southampton,) he is represented as a kind of infant Hercules, who, when fifteen, killed sixty Saracen knights. He afterwards was imprisoned at Damascus in a den with two dragons, but destroyed them. He was kept in a ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... talisman," she said, "Gnostic, I should think, for there is the cock upon it, and a lot that I can't read, probably a magic formula. No doubt the old Crusader got it in the East, perhaps as a gift from some Saracen in whose family it had descended. Oh! my dear boy, I do thank you. You could not have made me a present that I ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... all that is lacking is the tutelary power to guard their growth and prolong their bright and fragrant lives. What fine old names they have, great with the blended dignities of literary and rural lore; archangel, tormentil, rosa solis or sun-dew, horehound, Saracen's wound-wort, melilot or king's clover, pellitory of Spain! I cannot coldly divide so fine a company into bare genera and species, but imagine for them high genealogies and alliances by an imaginative method of my own: to me the lily ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... the thirsty soldiers engaged in the siege of the city.[337] In keeping with these stories is the tradition that the cemetery in the area between the Walls of Heraclius and Leo V. the Armenian, is the resting-place of Saracen warriors who fell in the siege of 673. But have we not here the fancy-bred tales which Oriental imagination weaves to veil its ignorance of real facts? When etymology or history fails, romance is substituted. We may as well ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... the name of the thing) was of no account at all. Guy said that the siege of Acre was a foppery. King Philip was ill, or thought he was; Montferrat was treating with Saladin; the French knights openly visited the Saracen women; and the Duke of Burgundy got drunk. 'What else could he get, poor fool?' asked Richard; then said, 'But I promise you this: Montferrat shall never be King of Jerusalem while I live—not because I love you, my friend, but because I love the law. I shall come as soon as I can to Acre, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... frightened the horses of his host by beating drums and waving banners. Having suffered a partial defeat on account of this device, Charlemagne had the horses' ears stopped with wax, and their eyes blindfolded, before he resumed the battle. Thanks to this precaution, he succeeded in conquering the Saracen army. The whole country had now been again subdued, and Charlemagne was preparing to return to France, when he remembered that Marsiglio (Marsilius), a Saracen king, was ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... "there is a cimeter which is an heirloom. It was brought from the East during the Crusades by an ancestor. While there, he was wounded and taken prisoner by a Saracen emir named Hayreddin. This Saracen treated him with chivalrous generosity, and a warm friendship sprung up between them. They exchanged arms, the Saracen taking Talbot's sword, while Talbot took Hayreddin's cimeter. Hayreddin ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... not care to give them what he could not give without measure. The tyrants and ruffians are merely the heroes altered by a few touches, similar to those which transformed the honest face of Sir Roger de Coverley into the Saracen's head. Through the grin and frown the original features ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... race of Saracen Arabs who had brought the arts of life to such perfection in Southern Spain, but who had received the general appellation of Moors from those Africans who were continually reinforcing them, and, bringing a certain Puritan strictness of Mohammedanism with them, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... persuaded Ernis to send Sir Guy to the Soudan saying, that, since the war seemed likely to come to no speedy issue, it should be settled by single combat between two champions chosen from the Christian and the Saracen hosts. The counsel seemed good to Ernis, but yet he liked not to risk his son-in-law's life; wherefore he called his Parliament together and asked for some bold knight to go and bear this message. When all the others held their peace, Sir Guy demanded to be sent upon the business, neither could ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Cathaian king is wont to grant free access unto all foreigners that trade into his country for merchandise, and a place of liberty for them to remain in; as the Moors had, until such time as they had brought the Loutea or Lieutenant of that coast to be a circumcised Saracen: wherefore some of them were put to the sword, the rest were scattered abroad; at Fuquien, a great city in China, certain of them are yet this day to be seen. As for the Japanese, they be most desirous to be acquainted with strangers. The Portuguese, though they were straitly ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... the heights above, at Rocco Bruna, is a Saracen-built little town with strange dark people who seldom come down from the heights. You go by shady steps between high white walls to a little chapel, and there on Sunday a beloved cure beguiles an innocent little flock with a ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... chattered or listened to a girl singing excruciating songs; a crowd as old-looking as in Italy or Spain, aged as things only are in the South. We walked up to the Arena. Quite a recent development in the life of Arles, they say, that marvellous Roman building, here cut down, there built up, by Saracen hands. For a thousand years or more before the Romans came Arles flourished and was civilised. What had we mushroom islanders before the Romans came? What had barbaric Prussia? Not even the Romans to look forward to! ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... high Alps were filled with Saracen brigands and other heathen freebooters, who celebrated in the mountain fastnesses their monstrous rites. In the mountains above Aosta the god Pen had long been worshiped; the word pen in Celtic meaning ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... And now the Saracen King Marsilas began to gather his army. He laid a strict command on all his nobles and chiefs that they should bring with them to Saragossa as many men as they could gather together. And when they were come to the city, it being the third day from the issuing of ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... great that he not only became from an insignificant man Sultan of Babylon, but also gained many victories over the Saracen and Christian kings, having in many wars and in his great magnificence spent all his treasure, and on account of some trouble having need of a great quantity of money, nor seeing where he should get it quickly as he had need to, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... to make them leer significantly at each other. Note.—These (which in the catalogue are called an original portrait of the present Emperor of Prussia and ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary, its antagonist) were two old signs of the "Saracen's Head" and Queen Anne. Under the first was written 'The Zarr,' and under the other 'The Empress Quean.' They were lolling their tongues out at each other; and over their heads ran a wooden label, inscribed, 'The ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... combating with one hand the enemies of truth, and with the other those of the empire. 'I make,' says he, in one of his letters, 'continual voyages to the court during the winter. In the spring, with my arms and my books, I go as a sentinel to watch the coasts of the sea, and to fight against the Saracen and the Moor. I use my sword during the night, and my pen by day, to accomplish the works which I have commenced in solitude.' The military and ecclesiastical character of Claude de Turin was deserving a remembrance, and in describing him M. Muston could ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... English Crusader, was taken prisoner and became a slave in the palace of a Saracen prince, where he not only gained the confidence of his master, but also the love of his master's fair daughter. By and by he escaped and returned to England, but the devoted girl determined to follow him. She knew but two words of the English language—London and Gilbert; but by repeating the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... polished instruments out of very unpromising material. Nearly a thousand years ago Peter the Hermit passed like a flame of fire across the provinces of Europe calling upon men to wrest the Holy places from the hands of the Saracen. In countless thousands they responded to his call, even little children arising and pressing eastward on the great emprise. Surely there is need enough for crusading to-day. Surely, too, there are multitudes who, for their own souls' sake, and for the sake of the Church, would be all the better ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... audience. You see here not only Palmyrenes, but strangers from all parts of the East—people from our conquered provinces and dependences, who feel politically with the Palmyrene, but yet have not the manners of the Palmyrene. There is an Armenian, there a Saracen, there an Arab, there a Cappadocian, there a Jew, and there an Egyptian—politically perhaps with us, but otherwise a part of us not more than the Ethiopian or Scythian. The Senate of Palmyra would hear all you might say—or ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... Masters of all the islands in the Mediterranean, their corsairs insulted the coasts of Italy, and even threatened the destruction of the Eastern empire. While Alexis was occupied in a war with Patzinaces, on the banks of the Danube, Zachas, a Saracen pirate, scoured the Archipelago, having, with the assistance of an able Smyrniote, constructed a flotilla of forty brigantines, and some light fast-rowing boats, manned by adventurers like himself. After ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... Mohammedan. Originally applied to those who were supposed to descend from Hagar, as opposed to Saracen, a superior class, claiming descent from Sarah, the wife of Abraham. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... house, long, long, long ago, when sleeping in the heat of noon in Palestine in the first crusade, had been awakened by a grasshopper lighting on his eyelids, and so had been aroused in time to put on his armor and do battle with a troop attacking Saracen cavalry, and beat them; wherefore, in gratitude, he had taken the humble field-creature as ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... renewed the ring, and taken care to make it a Saxon. Now Ailie could get no one to believe her, but she is certain that the letter was sealed with the old Saracen not the new Saxon. But—but—if you had but ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brighter than the others pointed towards a street which opened on the river-front, and at the end of this street the water flamed away between the tall slim poplar-trunks, and beyond the stream lay a strip of luxuriant country, from which the old Saracen towers stood out confusedly, like stone islets, in the dark. The air was full of the stifling emanations of mown hay, with now and then a whiff from putrefied silkworms in the bushes. Flights of swallows crossed this space with quick, scolding cries, trafficking between the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... asked what coaches started for Essex, and the reply was, 'Where did I want to go?' and, when I said Culverwood Hall, no one could tell me by which coach I was to go, or which town it was near. At last, I did find out from the porter of the Saracen's Head, who had taken in parcels with that address, and who went to the coachman, who said that his coach passed within a mile of Sir Alexander Moystyn's, who lived there. I never knew her ladyship's ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... Leo, a fierce attack upon these unfortunate beings took place. They were hunted down and executed without mercy, and at last they turned upon their persecutors, and revenged themselves by murdering the bishop, magistrates, and judges in Armenia, after which they fled to the countries under Saracen rule. After a while, they gradually returned to the Greek empire; but when the Empress Theodora was regent, during her son's minority, she issued a stern decree against them. "The decree was severe, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... whom send we, then, To Saragossa, the Saracen den?" "I," said Roland, "will blithely go." "Nay," said Olivier; "nay, not so. All too fiery of mood thou art; Thou wouldst play, I fear me, a perilous part. I go myself, if the king but will." "I command," said Karl, "that ye both be still. Neither shall be ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... plotted the attack upon Roland, "under the tree on which Judas hanged himself." With a force of 600,000 men, divided into three companies, Marsiglio attacked the paladin in Roncesvall[^e]s and overthrew him; but Charlemagne, coming up, routed the Saracen, and hanged him on the very tree under which he ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... infidel, no Saracen, ever perpetrated such wanton and cold-blooded atrocities of cruelty as the wearers of the Cross of Christ (who, it is said, had fallen on their knees and burst into a pious hymn at the first view of the Holy City) on the capture of that city. Murder was mercy, rape tenderness, simple ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... above the cleft where tradition points to the last exploit of the valorous nephew of Charlemagne, whose type the imperial bird might well be deemed. It was here, according to the veracious chronicle of Archbishop Turpin, that, after defeating the Saracen king, Marsires, in the pass of Roncesvalles, Roland, grievously wounded, laid himself down to die, the shrill notes of his horn having failed to bring him the succour he expected from his uncle. It is in Roncesvalles that poets have laid ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... dangerous for habitation. Of all the cities upon the Ionian Sea, only Tarentum and Croton continued to exist through the Middle Ages, for they alone occupied a position strong for defence against pirates and invaders. A memory of the Saracen wars lingers in the name borne by the one important relic of Metapontum, the Tavola de' Paladini; to this ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... they do not yield to it. Face your audience pluckily—if your knees quake, MAKE them stop. In your audience lies some victory for you and the cause you represent. Go win it. Suppose Charles Martell had been afraid to hammer the Saracen at Tours; suppose Columbus had feared to venture out into the unknown West; suppose our forefathers had been too timid to oppose the tyranny of George the Third; suppose that any man who ever did ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the East, And felt the sun of Antioch scald our mail, And push'd our lances into Saracen hearts. We never hounded on the State at home To spoil ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and were noisome. The Cagots were noisome, and therefore must be of Eastern descent. What could be clearer? In addition, there was the proof to be derived from the name Cagot, which those maintaining the opinion of their Saracen descent held to be Chiens, or Chasseurs des Gots, because the Saracens chased the Goths out of Spain. Moreover, the Saracens were originally Mahometans, and as such obliged to bathe seven times a-day: whence the badge of the duck's foot. ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... old Bell-the-Cat, wrapped in sables, come from Tantallon keep. The wind blew aside the fur mantle, and I beheld beneath it, a suit of rusty mail, which I am sure must have done bloody work against Saracen and Turk. Last night that armor did not hang in Tantallon hall. Next, I saw Old Cheviot, Douglas's matchless steed, led forth, sheathed in bright armor. The Palmer sprang to the saddle, Lord Angus wished him speed, and as he bowed and bent in graceful farewells, ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... road that is known as the Great St. Bernard Pass. It is an old, old road. The Celts crossed it when they invaded Italy. The Roman legions crossed it when they marched out to subdue Gaul and Germany. Ten hundred years ago the Saracen robbers hid among its rocks to waylay unfortunate travellers. You will read about all that in your history sometime, and about the famous march Napoleon made across it on his way to Marengo. But the most interesting fact about the road to me, is that for ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... reciting quotations from Scripture. Perhaps he might be more happily likened to one of the old Templars, careless of personal renown, kneeling to pray in front of the foe, and charging upon the Saracen to the accompaniment of that famous psalm, ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... to my chamber and did as my comrade bade me, somewhat angry with myself for thinking it needful. I took a light chain-mail byrnie, of that wondrous Saracen make, which I had won from a chief when we were warring on the western frontier mountains by Roncesvalles, and belted it close to me that it should not rattle as I moved. It was hardly so heavy as a helm, and fell into a little handful of rings in one's hand when taken off; but there ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... gives king Richard several directions about managing this infernal horse, and a general engagement ensuing, between the Christian and Saracen armies, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... eld and venerable, The fauns, the nymphs, the half-defaced antiques, The gods and men of mythologic fable, And legends of steel-casqued and mailed men, The old heroic tales of love and glory, Of knight, and palmer, and the Saracen, And ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... the sword of Sir Otuel, a presumptuous Saracen, nephew of Farracute (3 syl.). Otuel was in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... on, a Saracen mounted on a horse came up with him. In the course of the conversation mention was made of the Blessed Virgin. The stranger remarked that though he admitted that the Mother of Christ had conceived without detriment to her virginal purity, yet he could not believe that after the conception of her ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... she said, "and how like unto a man he speaketh; if there were a brawl in the street, he would strike in and ask no word thereof, not even which were the better side: whereas here is my falcon-chick frighted at a little gold box and a pair of Saracen beads." ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... priests, little ugly men. I saw one when I was a boy at Carthage. So unlike your noble Roman Saliares, or your fine portly priest of Isis, clad in white, breathing odours like spring flowers; men who enjoyed this life, not like that sour hypocrite. He was as black as an Ethiopian, and as withered as a Saracen, and he never looked you in the face. And, after all, the fellow must die for his religion, rather than put a few grains of golden incense on the altar of great Jove. Jove's the god for me; a glorious, handsome, curly god—but they are all good, all ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... stories of healing by oil from a lamp burnt in honor of Christ or the saints. The following examples are from the East. The wounded hand of a Saracen was healed by oil from a lamp before ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... the Imperial Scythians, and not small will be the penalty she has incurred. You may go your way as fast as you will out of this place, which is, for the present; our hippodrome, or atmeidan, call it which you will, as you prize the Roman or the Saracen language; but for your wife, if the sacrament has united you, believe my word, that she parts not ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... gentleness and timidity of a girl, contrasting oddly with his swarthy skin, his hairy lips, his great hooked nose above a spreading moustache; in short, the head of an Algerine pirate before the conquest. These antitheses are frequent in Tarascon, where heads have too much character, Roman or Saracen, heads with the expression of models for a school of design, but quite out of place in bourgeois trades among the manners and customs of a ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... something of a chivalric character, since much of every German's imagination is concerned with the Crusades, the Order of Knight Templars, and similar historical or legendary incidents and personalities in the early stages of the struggle between the Christian and the Saracen. The birthplace of Christ has special interest for a Hohenzollern who holds his kingship by divine grace, and in the Emperor's case because his father had made the journey to Jerusalem thirty years before. The Emperor, lastly, cannot ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... two horsemen faced each other warily. One was a Christian knight in a coat of linked mail, over which he wore a surcoat of embroidered cloth, much frayed and bearing more than once the arms of the wearer—a couchant leopard. The other was a Saracen, who was circling swiftly about the knight of the leopard. The crusader suddenly seized the mace which hung at his saddle-bow, and with a strong hand and unerring aim sent it crashing against the head of his foe, who raised his buckler of rhinoceros-hide in time to save his life, ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... The Dorians, not the Trojans, would have been the foes. The epics of France of the eleventh and twelfth centuries dwell, not on the real victories of the remote Charlemagne so much as on the disasters of Aliscans and Roncesvaux—defeats at Saracen hands, Saracens being the enemies of the twelfth-century poets. No Saracens, in fact, fought at Roncesvaux.] The lays are concerned with "good old times"; presumably between 1500 and 1100 B.C. Their pictures of the details of life harmonise more with what ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... the same time that it might be altered with a very few touches, and that he himself would be at the charge[136] of it. Accordingly they got a painter by the Knight's directions to add a pair of whiskers to the face, and by a little aggravation[137] of the features to change it into the Saracen's Head. I should not have known this story had not the innkeeper, upon Sir Roger's alighting, told him in my hearing, "That his honour's head was brought back last night with the alterations that he had ordered to be made in it." Upon this my friend, with his usual cheerfulness, related ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... bids me write in cheerful hexameters my impressions of the unpronounceable spot. My martyrdom began at Penygwryd (Penny-goo-rid'). We might have stopped at Conway or some other town of simple name, or we might have allowed the roof of the Cambrian Arms or the Royal Goat or the Saracen's Read to shelter us comfortably, and provide me a comparatively easy task; but no; Penygwryd it was, and the outskirts at that, because of two inns that bore on their swinging signs the names: ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Tomfoolery, that's what it is; a set of dressed-up bullies dancin' quadrilles on 'orseback; that ain't military manoeuvrin'. It's sickenin' the way fools applaud such goins on. And cuttin off the Saracen's 'ed, too; I'd call it plucky if the Saracen 'ad a gun in his 'and. Bah, I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... an altar. And there is seven years and seven lents of pardon; and the body of St. George lieth in the middle of the quire or choir of the said chapel, and in his tomb is an hole that a man may put in his hand. And when a Saracen, being mad, is brought thither, and if he put his head in the hole he shall anon be made perfectly whole, and have ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... clenched his set teeth and his gauntleted hand, He stretched with one buffet that page on the sand. . . For down came the Templars like Cedron in flood, And dyed their long lances in Saracen blood." ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... and actually attended the proctor, with such a staring addition to the natural ghastliness of his features, that his visage bore a very apt resemblance to some of those ferocious countenances that hang over the doors of certain taverns and ale-houses, under the denomination of the Saracen's head. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... of Crusaders did not come home again, any more than Barbarossa. They were stronger than Turk or Saracen, but not than Hunger and Disease; Leaders did not know then, as our little Friend at Berlin came to know, that "an Army, like a serpent, goes upon its belly." After fine fighting and considerable victories, the end of this Crusade was, it took to "besieging Acre," and in reality lay perishing ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... accomplished in diplomacy—could have acquitted himself better under the same circumstances. Most people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a business without surveying you with looks as austere and unpropitious as those of a Saracen's head. ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... miracles, and there his body was entombed. If, therefore, any difficulty should occur that cannot elsewhere be resolved, let it be brought before these Sees, and it shall, by divine grace, be decided. As Gallicia was freed in these early ages from the Saracen yoke, by the favour of God and St. James, and by the King's valour, so may it continue firm in the orthodox faith till the ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... to their patient for a long time; and he who had taken on himself the especial care of exhorting her, Master Nicolas Midy, a scholastic of Paris, closed the scene by saying bitterly to her, "If you don't obey the Church, you will be abandoned for a Saracen." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to achieve for themselves. The dread of her went before her,—a pillar of cloud and darkness to the English, but light and hope to her countrymen. Men believed that she was called of God to regenerate the world, to destroy the Saracen at last, to bring in the millennial age. Her statue was set up in the churches, and crowds prayed before her image as before ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... straight to the old Moorish palace where the Infante resided, and came upon him there amid a numerous company in the great pillared hall. Against a background of battle trophies, livid weapons, implements of war, and suits of mail both Saracen and Christian, with which the bare walls were hung, moved a gaily-clad, courtly gathering of nobles and their women-folk, when the great cardinal, clad from head to foot in scarlet, ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... often content itself with occasional praise. Tamerlane has for a long time been acted only once a year, on the night when king William landed. Our quarrel with Lewis has been long over; and it now gratifies neither zeal nor malice to see him painted with aggravated features, like a Saracen upon ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... heretics; it was a national war, embittered by the ancient jealousies of race, between the Frank aristocracy of the north and the Gothic aristocracy of the south, who had perhaps acquired, with their half-Roman, half-Saracen civilization, mixtures both of Roman and of Saracen blood. As "Aquitanians," "Provencaux,"—Roman Provincials, as they proudly called themselves, speaking the Langue d'Oc, and looking down on the northerners who spoke the Langue d'Oil as barbarians, they ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... you," said his father, "that I would liefer lose life and land than see you wedded to her. What! A Saracen girl, bought by one of my captains! A slave! A heathen! A witch! God! I will burn her in a fire, and you ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... of an hour. Tom groaned most pitiably. I looked at him, and if I were to live for a thousand years, I shall never forget the expression of his face. His lips were blue, and—no matter, I'm not clever at portrait painting: but imagine an old-fashioned Saracen's Head—not the fine handsome fellow they have stuck on Snow Hill, but one of the griffins of 1809—and you have Tom's phiz, only it wants touching with all the colours of a painter's palette. I was quite frightened, and could only stammer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Turk and the Saracen, likewise, have had their day of power and renown. Bagdad was the seat of science and learning at a time when the nations of Europe were sunk in darkness and superstition. The Turk and Saracen should have pointed to the Koran as ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... students of Spanish poetry will perhaps hardly agree.[8] The Spanish ballads, like the British, are partly historical and legendary, partly entirely romantic or fictitious. They record not only the age-long wars against the Saracen, the common enemy, but the internecine feuds of the Spanish Christian kingdoms, the quarrels between the kings and their vassals, and many a dark tale of domestic treachery or violence. In these respects their resemblance to the English and Scotch border ballads is obvious; and it has been pointed ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... wasn't an Eton fellow? Yes, he was. He was called Poictiers then. Oh! ah! his name is in the upper school, very large, under Charles Fox. I say, Townshend, did you see Saville's turban? What was it made of? He says his mother brought it from Grand Cairo. Didn't he just look like the Saracen's Head? Here are some Dons. That's Hallam! We'll give him a cheer. I say, Townshend, look at this fellow. He doesn't think small beer of himself. I wonder who he is? The Duke of Wellington's valet come to say his master is engaged. ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... Offamilio, and in the Martorana dedicated by George the Admiral. These triumphs of ecclesiastical architecture, none the less splendid because they cannot be reduced to rule or assigned to any single style, were the work of Saracen builders assisted by Byzantine, Italian, and Norman craftsmen. The genius of Latin Christianity determined the basilica shape of the Cathedral of Monreale. Its bronze doors were wrought by smiths of Trani and Pisa. Its walls were ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... sustained in so fair a spot, who are born no one knows where, who live no one knows how, but who secure as much of the joy of life as any other human beings; the strange result of that endless combination of races which have come together in Naples—the Greek, the Italian, the Norman, the Saracen, and ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... their poetic resemblance to a flock of titanic sheep, reclining at ease upon the pasturage of the Downs. The alternative name Sarsen, has an interesting derivation. It is a corruption of the word "Saracen." But what have Saracens to do with Wiltshire? Frankly nothing. The name has come to the stones from Stonehenge itself, and is a part of that ever interesting confusion of ideas, which has been bequeathed to us by our ancestors of the ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... of thy day-spring, regenerate Greek! Dimmed the Saracen's moon, and struck pallid his cheek: In its fast flushing morning thy Muses shall speak, When their love and their lutes they reclaim; And the first of their songs from Parnassus's peak Shall be "Glory to ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... in some measure for the traditions of the existence of large sums of hidden money associated with some of our old family mansions. An amusing story is related by Thomas of Walsingham, which dates as far back as the 14th century. A certain Saracen physician came to Earl Warren to ask permission to kill a dragon which had its den at Bromfield, near Ludlow, and committed great ravages in the earl's lands. The dragon was overcome; but it transpired that a large treasure lay hid in its den. Thereupon some men of ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... caused confusion. As far as eye could see ran the gaily-painted boards—Blue Lion, varied by red, black, white, and golden lions; White Hart, King's Head, Golden Hand, Vine, Wheelbarrow, Star, Cardinal's Hat, Crosskeys, Rose, Magpie, Saracen's Head, and Katherine Wheel. Master Nicholas Clere hung out a magpie: why, he best knew, and never told. His neighbours sarcastically said that it was because a magpie lived there, meaning Mistress Clere, who was considered a chatterbox by ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... of Armenia dwelt in a castle of hewn stone about which a little city clustered, with mountains on every side to darken the sky, He was as swarthy as a Saracen and had a long nose like a Jew, but he was a good Christian and a wise ruler, though commonly at odds with his cousin of Antioch. From him Aimery had more ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... region of ineffable bliss in the bright mansions of the sun.... Thus every war became a crusade; and the warrior was not only raised to a contempt of danger, but courted it—animated by a religious enthusiasm like that of the early Saracen ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson |
