"Mummery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Christmas; we may next give some attention to English customs of the same sort during the Twelve Days, and then pass on to the strange burlesque ceremonies of the Feast of Fools and the Boy Bishop, ceremonies which show an intrusion of pagan mummery into ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... at the foot of the hill, and have been wrapped comfortably in the pleasant earth, their names are forgotten by those who screamed with pleasure or hooted in disgust at their performance, their faces are no longer remembered, their great drama is become an old-fashioned mummery of the past. Why should they care? Their work is done, they have been rewarded or punished, paid with praise and gold or mulcted in the sum of their reputation and estate. Famous or infamous, in honour or in disrepute, ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... order out the guard?" whispered Lord Percy, who, with other British officers, had now assembled round the general. "There may be a plot under this mummery." ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... publicly, or having the cause of their death declared, or having their names mentioned. They of the Guises reserved the chief of them, after dinner, to make sport for the ladies; the two sexes were ranged at the windows of the castle, as if it were a question of seeing some mummery played. And what is worse, the king and his young brothers were present at these spectacles, as if the desire were to 'blood' them; the sufferers were pointed out to them by the Cardinal of Lorraine with all the signs of a man greatly rejoiced, and when the poor wretches died with more than usual ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Christ. "Either the life of Christ, as the highest standard and example, means something or it means nothing. If something, let us try to follow it; but if nothing, then for God's sake let us put it away as a cruel, delusive, and damnable mummery!" ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... of the sixteenth century has been traced by the antiquaries as far back as the time of Edward III. But in its perfected shape it was a genuine offspring of the English renaissance, a cross between the vernacular mummery, or mystery-play, and the Greek drama. No great court festival was considered complete without such a public show. Many of our great dramatic writers, Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Middleton, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... mummery any longer," said Yeo. "Here's a soul perishing before my eyes, and it's on my conscience to speak a ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Morris. 'What—what's that?' he cried, grasping the table. He was miserably conscious the next moment of his shrill tongue and ashen face. 'What do you mean—it will not be presented? Why am I to take care? What is all this mummery?' ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... refused to acknowledge the new Majesty. Louis the Fourteenth looked down on his brother King with an air not unlike that with which the Count in Moliere's play regards Monsieur Jourdain, just fresh from the mummery of being made a gentleman. Austria exacted large sacrifices in return for her recognition, and at ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... apprentice—a lad wearing a paper cap, although I now wear a silk hat. I shall have to fetch beer and spirits for the journeymen, and they will call me 'thou,' which will be an insult. I shall endure it, however, for I shall look upon it all as a mere representation, a masquerade, a mummery, which to-morrow, that is, when I myself as a journeyman, shall have served my time, will vanish, and I shall go my way, and all that has passed will be nothing to me. Then I shall enter the academy, and get ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... back. There are no hilarious songs in this prelude such as were heard from the crests of the Blue Ridge when Spotswood's horsemen came up from the other side. It has to me the atmosphere and movement of some Greek tragedy, though one writer likens it to mediaval mummery. Perhaps it is only a knowledge of its import and the end that makes it sombre and grave despite the beautiful setting to this prelude which one may read to- day in the French archives. So full of portent and color it is that I wonder ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... masquerading. Whether they may not likewise be used as a defence for the head against stones, for which, they seem best designed; or in some of their public games; or be merely intended for the purposes of mummery, we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... which, indeed, she was very clever, though there was some who said that when she chose she could "throw the bones" and tell the future better than most, and this without dressing herself up in bladders and snake skins, or falling into fits, or trances, and such mummery. Lastly, amongst the natives about, and some of the Boers too, I am sorry to say, she had the reputation of being the best of rainmakers, and many were the head of cattle that she earned by prophesying the break-up of a drought, or the end of continual rains. Indeed, it is certain that no one ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... was silent. Then the King found voice. "What does this mean?" he cried again. "How have this vagrant and his vile beasts found entrance to my palace? It is the hour for execution, not for mummery. Why is not ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... how to form itself into utterance at all, and preferred formless silence to any utterance there possible,—what should we say of a man coming forward to represent or utter it for you in the way of upholsterer-mummery? Such a man,—let him depart swiftly, if he love himself! You have lost your only son; are mute, struck down, without even tears: an importunate man importunately offers to celebrate Funeral Games for him in the manner of the Greeks! Such mummery is not only not to be accepted,—it is ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... attendants approached the first of these figures, the men who formed it began to move themselves from side to side, lolling out their tongues, and staring as wide and horribly with their eyes as they could open them. After this mummery had continued some minutes, the men separated for them to pass, and the boys were now led over the bodies lying on the ground. These immediately began to move, writhing as if in agony, and uttering a mournful dismal sound, like very distant thunder. Having passed over these bodies, the boys ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... cares, Anxious sighes, untimely tears, Fly, fly to Courts, Fly to fond wordlings sports, Where strain'd Sardonick smiles are glosing stil And grief is forc'd to laugh against her will. Where mirths but Mummery, ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... Thus far on his journey to Salern, And the lovesick girl, whose heated brain Is sowing the cloud to reap the rain; But it's a long road that has no turn! Let them quietly hold their way, I have also a part in the play. But first I must act to my heart's content This mummery and this merriment, And drive this motley flock of sheep Into the fold, where drink and sleep The jolly old friars of Benevent. Of a truth, it often provokes me to laugh To see these beggars hobble along, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... everywhere. You shall drink, dice, bully, brawl, cudgel the men, and befool the women to the top of your bent. At the end of twelve months your Whitsun Kingship will be over, you will doff your genteel mummery, and become the leader of my heydukes. You shall then don the red mente, and wait upon those very gentlemen with whom you have been drinking and dicing for a whole year; you shall help into their carriages the same little wenches with whom you used to ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... conspiracies; and it was the rendezvous of all the discontented, of which there were many. The general assumed the task of disapproving all the acts of the First Consul; he opposed the reestablishment of public worship, and criticised as childish and ridiculous mummery the institution of the Legion of Honor. These grave imprudences, and indeed many others, came to the ears of the First Consul, who refused at first to believe them; but how could he remain deaf to reports which were repeated each day ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... He did not mean the setting forth by symbol of the very same truth which, stated in words, is the doctrine of His atoning death? This rite does not, indeed, explain the rationale of the doctrine; but it is a piece of unmeaning mummery, unless it preaches plainly the fact that Christ's death is the ground ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... wisdom of Comte was insufficient, the folly of Comte was wisdom. In an age of dusty modernity, when beauty was thought of as something barbaric and ugliness as something sensible, he alone saw that men must always have the sacredness of mummery. He saw that while the brutes have all the useful things, the things that are truly human are the useless ones. He saw the falsehood of that almost universal notion of to-day, the notion that rites and forms are something ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... shower. At length, swifter than the winged hawk, she flew towards the spot, and seized the sacred and inviolable arm of the holy Druid, which was lifted up to strike the final blow. "Barbarous and inhuman priest," she cried, "cease your vile and impious mummery! No longer insult us with the name of Gods. If there be Gods, they are merciful; but thou art a savage and unrelenting monster. Or if some victim must expire, strike here, and I will thank thee. Strike, and my bosom shall heave to meet the welcome blow. Do any ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... altar, with the crowds of figures assembled round the chapel moving about in the obscurity of the aisles and columns, produced the most striking effect I ever beheld. It was curious, interesting, and inspiring—little of mummery and much of solemnity. The night here brings out fresh beauties, but of the most majestic character. There is a colour in an Italian twilight that I have never seen in England, so soft, and beautiful, and grey, and the moon rises 'not as in northern climes obscurely bright,' but with far-spreading ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... principal streets, with groups about them in such old-fashioned garbs, that they looked like the fantastic figures that roam the streets in carnival time. Even the stately dames who gazed from the balconies, which they had hung with antique tapestry, looked more like effigies dressed up for a quaint mummery, than like ladies in their fashionable attire. Every thing, in short, bore the stamp of former ages, as if the world had suddenly rolled back a few centuries. Nor was this to be wondered at. Had not the Island of the Seven Cities been for several hundred years cut off from all communication ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... we are now, Murray," said the lieutenant. "Our guide has brought us here to see the mummery of their barbarous religion, and there is no doubt that the people have met to be stirred up to some rising against the planters who own ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... or be not backed With show of love, at least with hopeful proof Of some sincerity on the giver's part; Or be dishonoured in the exterior form And mode of its conveyance, by such tricks As move derision, or by foppish airs And histrionic mummery, that let down The pulpit to the level of the stage; Drops from the lips a disregarded thing. The weak perhaps are moved, but are not taught, While prejudice in men of stronger minds Takes deeper root, confirmed by what they see. A relaxation of religion's ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... said Charles, composing his features; "but great matter of wonder.—Come, cease this mouthing, and prancing, and mummery.—If there be a jest, come out with it, man; and if not, even get thee to the beaffet, and drink a cup of wine to refresh ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... to indulge myself in an hope that this second appearance of ambassadors was only an insolent mummery of the same kind; but, alas! Anacharsis himself, all fanatic as he was, could not have imagined that his opera procession should have been the prototype of the real appearance of the representatives of all the sovereigns of Europe themselves, to make the same prostration ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... man can be assured of his sincerity, who does not pray. Prayer is faith passing into act; a union of the will and the intellect realizing in an intellectual act. It is the whole man that prays. Less than this is wishing, or lip-work; a charm or a mummery. 'Pray always', says the Apostle;—that is, have the habit of prayer, turning your thoughts into acts by connecting them with the idea of the redeeming God, and even so reconverting your ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... make me still more your debtor. By the Holy Evangels! if I were assured the Abbot Aldam of Kirkstall had aught to do with that attack upon me, I would harry his worthless old mummery shop so clean a mouse would starve ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... me all this; Herdegen when he came home answered none of my questions. He would not grant my prayer that he should show himself to Ann in his knight's harness, and said somewhat roughly that she loved not such mummery. Thus it was not hard to guess what was in his mind; but how came it to pass that this old man, whose princely wife had wrought ruin to his peace and happiness, could so diligently labor to lead ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... works on her. She is a lone enthusiast, sensitive, Shivers, and cannot keep the tears in her eye. Such ones do love the marvellous too well Not to believe it. We will wind her up 35 With a strange music, that she knows not of, With fumes of frankincense, and mummery— Then leave, as one sure token of his death, That portrait, which from off the dead man's neck I bade thee take, the trophy of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... this as a piece of mummery. At the time I did not. As a good Catholic, which I was at that time, and a pretty Frenchwoman, I thought that nothing could be more correct than the decoration des belles. I believe that it has always been the custom to name bells—to consecrate them most certainly—and if we ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... too—but not so stoutly—that she did not believe it; but in her heart she felt that it must be true. As for Thorbeorn, who had heard it all through the wall, whatever he may have thought, he was very indignant, and angry with her too. "Put such mummery out of your head. We are not Christians for nothing, I should hope. A scandalous hag with her bell-wether voice and airs of a great lady! What has she to do with good women, well brought up? A woman's duty is to leave match-making to her parents, and the future to God and His Angels. ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... and to the other, so much with the piteous aspect of that animal, that one would not be sorry to see the ambitious imitator calipashed in his robe, and served up for the entertainment of the gallery.—There is no hint for this mummery in the Play: Whatever there may be of dishonour in Falstaff's conduct, he neither does or says any thing on this occasion which indicates terror or disorder of mind: On the contrary, this very act is a proof of his having all his wits about him, and is ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... doctor. "Can you possibly go on thinking of your philanthropic work as something genuine and useful, and not a mere mummery? It was a farce from beginning to end; it was playing at loving your neighbour, the most open farce which even children and stupid peasant women saw through! Take for instance your— what was it called?—house for homeless old women without relations, of which you ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and that any wearing the furbelows of Rome should ever enter thereat could only come of God's exceeding mercy; for himself, it must always be a duty to cry aloud to such to strip themselves clean of their mummery, and do ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... shocking formalities? What has the poor corpse to do with frills, and pillows, and napkins, and all the equipage in which it rides on its last journey? There is no intrusion so jarring to the decent grief of surviving affection, no conceivable mummery more ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... why was he here where she had parted from him so long ago? Surely not to stare at the grave of a dead woman with whom he could have had nothing to do, since she left the world some five centuries before. And another question. What had brought her here, she who hated churches and all the mummery that they signified? ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... to ascribe honour to others than to claim it for himself. To right himself, Steele wrote a light-hearted comedy, 'The Funeral', or 'Grief a la Mode'; but at the core even of that lay the great earnestness of his censure against the mockery and mummery of grief that should be sacred; and he blended with this, in the character of Lawyer Puzzle, a protest against mockery of truth and justice by the intricacies of the law. The liveliness of this comedy made Steele popular with the wits; ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... which through mummery, strange acts, dress and ritual, affect to know and impart the inmost secrets of creation and ultimate destiny, had their rise in Egypt. In Egypt now are only graves, tombs, necropolises and silence. The priests there need no soldiery to keep their secrets safe. Ammon-Ra, who once ruled the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... for the disport of the young prince Richard, son to the Black Prince, in the feast of Christmas, in this manner:—On the Sunday before Candlemas, in the night, one hundred and thirty citizens, disguised and well horsed, in a mummery, with sound of trumpets, sackbuts, cornets, shalmes, and other minstrels, and innumerable torch lights of wax, rode from Newgate through Cheape, over the bridge, through Southwarke, and so to Kennington beside Lambheth, where the young prince remained with ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... exclaimed the dervish: 'a set of blood-thirsty heathens! What sort of religion can theirs be which makes them seek the life of an inoffensive man? I come here, having no one thing to do with either Suni or Shiah, Sufi or Mohamedan: on the contrary, out of compliment to them, I go through all the mummery of five washings and five prayings per day, and still that will not satisfy them; however, I will be even with them. I will go; I will leave their vile hypocritical town; and neither will I wash nor pray until necessity obliges me to ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... houses ransacked, our bodies imprisoned. Then was the steel of the hangman blunted with mangling the ears of harmless men. Then our very minds were fettered, and the iron entered into our souls. Then we were compelled to hide our hatred, our sorrow, and our scorn, to laugh with hidden faces at the mummery of Laud, to curse under our breath the tyranny of Wentworth. Of old time it was well and nobly said, by one of our kings, that an Englishman ought to be as free as his thoughts. Our prince reversed the maxim; he strove to make our thoughts as much slaves as ourselves. To sneer at a Romish ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... about the smashed crockery of the lawyers. I intended to touch upon the exploded claim that clients are their slaves, witnesses theirs for vivisection, courts their playthings, and juries their dupes. More mummery has thrived in law than in even medicine or theology. The disenchanting and discriminating tendency of a realistic age has, however, somewhat reformed the bar. Fluency, without force, is discounted in our ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... embellished by later ornamentation in the way of golden breastplates, two stones bright and shining, golden plates united at the back by rings, the sword of Laban, square stone boxes, cemented clasps, invisible blows, suggestions of Satan, and similar mummery born from the ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... her a myth, the crucifix a vague superstition, prayer a mere unmeaning mummery. But the kisses were tangible and ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... opinion have also added, that there is a species of depravity in endeavouring by ludicrous mummery to efface the salutary effects of pathetic, virtuous, and vigorous sentiments; that it is sporting with the sympathies of our nature, repugnant to correct taste, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... elements. Yet, damme, but you possess rare advantage over the rest of us in holding converse with these people, while I must remain dumb as an oyster, save for a glance of the eye. Perhaps, now that we have time for it, you will kindly explain the meaning of all this mummery with which we passed the night, for, by all the gods of Rome, it was weird enough to turn my hair gray, yet I understood neither word nor deed. How came that grim preacher to attain such honor, taking position beside ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... (3) drop the hand open at the side and say "Loyal"; (4) catch the thumb in the vest or in the waistband and pronounce "League." This ceremony of initiation proved a most effective means of impressing and controlling the Negro through his love and fear of secret, mysterious, and midnight mummery. An oath taken in daylight might be forgotten before the next day; not so an oath taken in the dead of night under such impressive circumstances. After passing through the ordeal, the Negro usually ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... antiquarian, and amuses himself with things of this sort. In old times there really was a hermit here, and this is his effigy. Come down these narrow stairs, if you please, and see the rest of the mummery." ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... the procession filed by—the singing-men nudging each other, the standard-bearers giggling, and the English tourists craning to see the sight—the face of one white-haired old bishop beneath his canopy transformed for me a foolish piece of mummery into a prayer in action. So it was again, when the young stranger turned to us his pale clear-cut face, solemn with an awe as rapt as if he verily stood before the throne of Him he called upon, and felt ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... will not try!" I told her, again and again. "How can I tak up again with that old mummery? How can I laugh when my heart is breaking, and make others smile when the tears are ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... participated seventeen years before. Once more He saw the pitiful slaughter of the innocent lambs, and witnessed the flow of the sacrificed blood over the altars and the stones of the floor of the courts. Once more He saw the senseless mummery of the priestly ceremonies, which seemed more pitiful than ever to His developed mind. He knew that His vision had shown that He was to be slaughtered even as the sacrificial lambs, and there arose in His mind that ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... and twisting his face, and gesticulating as if he were on the stage, and dressed out in all his costume. My father's manner is quite different—it is the reading of a gentleman, who produces effect by feeling, taste, and inflection of voice, not by action or mummery. Lucy Bertram rides remarkably well, and I can now accompany her on horseback, having become emboldened by example. We walk also a good deal in spite of the cold—So, upon the whole I have not quite so much time for writing as ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... time they drink themselves into a soddened semi-intoxicated state, and then commence taking the Parica. For this purpose they pair off, and each of the partners, taking a reed containing a quantity of the snuff, after going through a deal of unintelligible mummery, blows the contents with all his force into the nostrils of his companion. The effect on the usually dull and taciturn savages is wonderful; they become exceedingly talkative, sing, shout, and leap about in the wildest excitement. A reaction soon follows; more drinking is then ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... anything when by so doing she knew she might cause suffering or give pain to anyone, even an enemy; and this defect in her character forced her to live up to what she deemed a lie. She had longed to tell the truth and thereby be saved the mummery of attending at Mass; but when she realized the consternation, the agony of mind, it would cause the nuns she loved, she held back the word. But since she had left the convent she had begun to feel that her life must correspond to her ideas and she had determined to speak to her mother ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... terrible. Should he never have his reason again, I shall never forgive myself. That Whirlwind would adhere to so ridiculous a farce is not to be wondered at; but that we, born and bred among a civilized nation, educated, and with claims to intelligence and refinement, should consent to such mummery, is ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... in a piece of silk that lay on a sofa, and rapidly, in a low voice, chanted a kind of hymn in a tongue unknown to Merton. All this he did with a bored air, as if he thought the performance a superfluous mummery. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... Mbonga were keyed to the highest pitch of hysterical excitement. They needed little to release the accumulated pressure of static nerve force which the terrorizing mummery ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... skeleton, blackened by age; a necklace of teeth from some animal's jaw; worthless trifles for the mummery of the priests. Then, beneath them, he saw two great fangs, a foot in length. They were curved, sharply pointed ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... that mummery, Doctor," broke in Cummings roughly, as he reared his head and squared his shoulders evidently intending to make a strike, "You and your nigger knew all about this, so you may as well ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... benedictions, spectacles, representations, and innumerable ceremonies, which revolve almost incessantly, furnish a variety of entertainment from one end of the year to the other. If superstition implies fear, never was a word more misapplied than it is to the mummery of the religion of Rome. The people are so far from being impressed with awe and religious terror by this sort of machinery, that it amuses their imaginations in the most agreeable manner, and keeps ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... you do not know her and she is no paying patient. A poor girl of noble birth who had entered religion and taken her vows, when a gallant appears, meets her secretly in the convent garden, promises to marry her if she will fly with him, indeed does go through some mummery of marriage with her—so she says—and the rest of it. Now he has deserted her and she is in trouble, and what is more, should the priests catch her, likely to learn what it feels like to die by inches in a convent wall. She came to me for counsel and brought some silver ornaments as the ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... after quarter of an hour of mummery and remonstrances, so that the roots of the cabbage may not be cut and it can be transplanted without injury, while spadefuls of earth are thrown into the faces of the bystanders,—woe to him who does not step aside quickly enough; though he were a bishop or ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... bend, With feet impure the sacred steps ascend; With wine unbless'd the holy chalice stain, Assume the mitre, and the cope profane; 35 To heaven their eyes in mock devotion throw, And to the cross with horrid mummery bow; Adjure by mimic rites the powers above, And ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... unnecessary and must be contemptible. "You talk of your shame and humiliation—no atonement can wipe it out. You came here prating to yourself of blotting out the past—no act of man can do so. Vain, vain, and idle as well as vain! Mere mummery and display, and a blow to ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... habitual notions of size, and looking at it in great or in little: would that some one had the boldness and the art to do a similar service, by stripping off the coat from his back, the vizor from his thoughts, or by dressing up some other creature in similar mummery! It is not his body alone that he tampers with, and metamorphoses so successfully; he tricks out his mind and soul in borrowed finery, and in the admired costume of gravity and imposture. If he has a desire to commit a base or a ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the demoniacal maledictions of the wretched creature whom I had hitherto so intensely despised, I knew not what to think, or how to act. He had assumed a fresh shape, more marvelous than any he had hitherto put on in the whole round of his extraordinary mummery. The raillery and tipsy recklessness which appeared constitutional in him had suddenly passed away, leaving not a solitary trace behind. Even his figure, while he had been speaking, seemed to heave with a new life, and to dilate into unnatural dimensions. I was perplexed to the last extremity; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... dressed in each other's clothes, and calling at various houses and drinking hot elder wine. On this day the Morris Dancers or Mummers began their visits. There were from four to eight people who took part in the Mummery. The King, Beelzebub, Doctor, Doctor's man and Jack, the fool. Sometimes one took the part of the Doctor's horse and the Doctor made his entry riding on the horse, who was on his hands and knees but he generally had a small stool in his hands to make him a little higher, ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... charmed circle of New Orleans society—that lively, sparkling epitome and relic of the old regime. He has good letters and a fair name, and mingles in the Mystick Krewe, that curious club, possible nowhere else, that has raised mummery into the sphere of aesthetics. Perhaps he has worn the gray, perhaps the blue. It is only in the very arcana of exclusive passion it makes much difference. But gray or blue, or North or South in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... With more barbaric mummery, flummery and vulgar waste of wealth than characterized even the late Marlborough- Vanderbilt wedding, Nicholas Two-Eyes was crowned Emperor of the rag-tag and bob-tail of creation, officially known as "all the Russias." Nick has a nice easy job at a salary considerably in excess of ye ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... company of men and women to run up and down in a room together, in a hundred several postures and figures, to no purpose, and with no design; and therefore dancing was invented first, and only practised anciently, in the ceremonies of the heathen religion, which consisted all in mummery and madness; the latter being the chief glory of the worship, and accounted divine inspiration. This, I say, a severe man would think, though I dare not determine so far against so customary a part now of good breeding. And yet, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... adhering thereby to the manners of the Saxons, from whom he drew his descent, and which was likely to be at least unpleasing to the Franks as well as Normans, who had already received and become very tenacious of the privileges of the feudal system, the mummery of heraldry, and the warlike claims assumed by knights, as belonging only to ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... acts was to restore the hellish Inquisition, with all its horrors, which had been abolished during the sway of the French, and which had also been suppressed by the Cortes. The amiable Pope Pius the Seventh being restored to the see of Rome, he performed his part in the scene of mummery and tyranny, by issuing a Bull for the restoration of the order of the Jesuits. So it will be clearly seen that the canting Boroughmongering Protestant Parliament of England, while it pertinaciously refused ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Goodhart and Cordeaux, the oldest form of the latter being the French name Courdoux. Momerie and Mummery are identical with Mowbray, from Monbrai in Normandy. Molyneux impresses more than Mullins, of which it is merely the dim., Fr. moulins, mills. The Yorkshire name Tankard is identical with Tancred. Stiggins goes back to the illustrious Anglo-Saxon name ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... is going to hang me after all," he said to himself; "then what, in Our Lady's name, means this strange mummery, and how comes that ill-favoured maiden to look at me as if her ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... ancient forms of celebrating the sacrifice of the altar, which he says, "are so noble, so just, sublime, and perfectly harmonious, that the change has been made to an unspeakable disadvantage." It was restoring the decorations and the mummery of the mass! He assumed even a higher tone, and dispersed medals, like those of Louis XIV., with the device of a sun near the meridian, and a motto, Ad summa, with an inscription expressive of the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... reflecting man can ever wish to adulterate manly piety (the parent of all that is good in the world) with mummery and parade. But we are strange, very strange creatures, and it is better perhaps not to place too much confidence in our reason alone. If anything, there is, perhaps, too little pomp and ceremony in our worship, instead of too much. We quarrelled ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... remembered that in Great Expectations and elsewhere the ostentation, mummery, and extravagance of the "undertaking ceremony" are severely criticised. The same feeling, and a desire for funeral reform, no doubt prompted Dickens to insert the following ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... husband with a newly furnished house and an ample income. My wife is ready to admit that purely from the point of view of common sense she would have preferred to have the child do almost anything peculiar rather than engage in her present mummery, because some people will consider her crazy; but, on the other hand, she maintains that the chances of losing her altogether are much less serious than if she had become a Toynbee Haller, for instance. "Mind you," said Josephine, "however much ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... child as well. And to go through all this mummery that we believe not in, that we have come to this new country to escape! It ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... arras? If so, we will ascend to the drawing-rooms and gallery. But stay a moment and permit this lady and oddly-dressed gentleman to pass us on their exit from the gallery, where they have been rehearsing some charming entertainment for the evening, or getting up some piece of fanciful mummery to amuse the idle guests who have congregated around the garden fountain. [Picture: Couple exiting from gallery] The light is not favourable for seeing all the pictures that deserve inspection on ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... before a priest? Thou know'st, Raoul, that, in thine eyes, all the offices of the church are mummery; that nothing is more sacred with thee, for being sworn to at the altar of God, and with one of his holy ministers for ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... from his form obese at every pore. Skilled by long practice in the priestly art, To chill with superstitious fear the heart, And versed in all the legendary lore, He knew each herb and root that healing bore; But lest his flock might grow as wise as he, Disguised their use with solemn mummery. When all the village wrapped in slumber lay, His midnight incantations often fell, His chant now weirdly rose, now sank away, As o'er some dying child he cast his spell. And sometimes through his frame strange tremors ran— Magnetic waves, swept from the unknown pole Linking the ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... continually cropping up on the walls of Pianura, and the ducal police were kept as busy rubbing them out as a band of weeders digging docks out of a garden. The Duchess's debts, the Duke's devotions, the Belverde's extortions, Heiligenstern's mummery, and the political rivalry between Trescorre and the Dominican, were sauce to the citizen's daily bread; but there was nothing in these popular satires to suggest the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... and when Trabb and his men—but not his Boy; I looked for him—had crammed their mummery into bags, and were gone too, the house felt wholesomer. Soon afterwards, Biddy, Joe, and I, had a cold dinner together; but we dined in the best parlor, not in the old kitchen, and Joe was so exceedingly particular what he did with his knife and fork and the saltcellar and what not, that ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... dismissing him for the supposed murder of her brother, she was to take the actual murderer to her arms. And he, that cur, that false villain!—out of what depths of hell did he derive the courage to go through with this mummery?—had he no heart, no conscience, no sense of ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Lucrezia, the Roman matron—put into the short skirts, spangles, and mischievous peering glances of Colombina. Belviso would have sustained it had he been present. Adone, his understudy, took his place. My own share in the mummery was humble and confusing. In toga and cothurnus I had to read a pompous prologue, and did it amid shouts of "Basta! basta!" from the audience. I don't believe that I was more thankful than they were when I had done. The less I say about the rest of the evening ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... neatly agitated. He seemed to feel a hot iron upon his cheek, for never before in his life, whether as a soldier or a priest, had he suffered such an insult. He had thrown himself upon his knees, partly from religious mummery, and partly to avoid the gaze of the marshal, fearing that, were he to meet his eye, he should not be able to answer for himself, but give way to his impetuous feelings. On seeing the Jesuit kneel down, and on hearing his hypocritical invocation, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the priesthood are filled with the superstitions of the old world, coming, as so many do from the lowest classes of Great Britain and Scandinavia, fit subjects for all the mummery imposed upon them in the name of religion. Brigham Young is often quoted as saying, that he had gathered around him a set of people that his satanic majesty himself would not have. Even after polygamy had been openly proclaimed in Utah, their missionaries utterly repudiated it, and in pursuance ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... that a secret society, with the grand and almost awful purposes of the Hetria, spite of some taint which it had received in its early stages from the spirit of German mummery, is fitted to fill the imagination, and to command homage from the coldest. Whispers circulating from mouth to mouth of some vast conspiracy mining subterraneously beneath the very feet of their accursed oppressors; whispers of a great deliverer at hand, whose mysterious ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... have induced Scott to write novels tending to make people Papists and Jacobites, and in love with arbitrary power? Did he think that Christianity was a gaudy mummery? He did not, he could not, for he had read the Bible; yet was he fond of gaudy mummeries, fond of talking about them. Did he believe that the Stuarts were a good family, and fit to govern a country like ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... in a voice quivering with rage, fastening his flashing looks on Douglas with an annihilating expression—"who, then, is that woman there? Who has dared with such cursed mummery to deceive the king, ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... labor of love; pleasure &c. 827. relaxation; leisure &c. 685. fun, frolic, merriment, jollity; joviality, jovialness[obs3]; heyday; laughter &c. 838; jocosity, jocoseness[obs3]; drollery, buffoonery, tomfoolery; mummery, pleasantry; wit &c. 842; quip, quirk. [verbal expressions of amusement: list] giggle, titter, snigger, snicker, crow, cheer, chuckle, shout; horse laugh, , belly laugh, hearty laugh; guffaw; burst of laughter, fit of laughter, shout of laughter, roar of laughter, peal of laughter; cachinnation[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... minute or two, and then turned to the door, saying, "Methinks it is hard that a dying woman cannot have the consolations of the rites of her own faith—mummery though they be. As a magistrate, my good woman, I can give no authority in this business. You must do as you think fit. I myself know of no priest in this neighborhood, or I should be bound to cause ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... of these experiments, I wished to see what sort of mummery my magician would practise if I called upon him to show me some performances of a higher order than those which had been attempted. I therefore entered into a treaty with him, in virtue of which he was to descend with me into the tombs near the Pyramids, and there evoke the devil. The negotiation ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... now in full swing on the thoroughfares; Democritus, the rollicker, had commanded his subjects to drive dull care away and they obeyed the jovial lord of laughter. Animal spirits ran high; mischief beguiled the time; mummery romped and rioted. Marshaled by disorder, armed with drollery and divers-hued banners, they marched to the Castle of Chaos, where the wise are fools, the old are young and topsy-turvy is the order of ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... not thus—not as you mean it. I knew not what I said. But it will indeed change all things for me if you do but come. Then I shall have some one to speak with—some one with whom to laugh at their pitiful Court mummery, their fiasco of dignity. You are not like these other beggarly Scots, my Lord ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... idea of rules; they develop and complicate them greatly to excess. A man finds far more regulations and definitions in his club, where there are rules, than in his home, where there is a ruler. A deliberate assembly, the House of Commons, for instance, carries this mummery to the point of a methodical madness. The whole system is stiff with rigid unreason; like the Royal Court in Lewis Carroll. You would think the Speaker would speak; therefore he is mostly silent. You would think a man would take off his ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... you, and your eyes grow warm. Both our hearts beat more quickly. Look at the sunshine! It's brighter when we're so close together. What of life? It's soon gone—and then? What of convention that says 'no'? It's but a farce that gives the same thing we ask—at the price of a few words of mummery. Our strongest instincts of nature call for each other. Why shouldn't we obey them when we wish?" She hesitated, and her voice became tender. "We would be very happy together. Won't ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... all lost.' The Herr was annoyed, as I have never seen him; and I too was angry, the more because what he said had some truth, but it was not, you understand, the moment to say it. After this we had no great trouble until we had passed the place where Herr Mummery turned back. About thirty metres from the summit we came to a bit requiring caution; a small couloir filled with good ice but at a slope—so!" Here Christian held his open hand aslant, but Mr. Frank did not lift his eyes. "They anchored themselves ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... himself forward into power, and held The reins on principles which he alone, Grown drunk and wanton with success, could own; 200 Betray'd her interest and abused her trust; Then, deaf to prayers, forsook her in disgust; With tragic mummery, and most vile grimace, Rode through the city with a woful face, As in distress, a patriot out of place! Insults his generous prince, and in the day Of trouble skulks, because he cannot sway! In foreign climes embroils him with allies, And bids at home the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... trouble of my friends. And Madame de Chartrain, did I blame her? Blame Jerome? Yes—no. I hardly knew. Viewed at a distance and impartially, such things strike us with aversion, and we are quick to condemn. But the more I thought the nearer I came to concluding it took something more than a mere mummery to make a wife. All the ceremonials and benedictions and lighted candles and high-sounding phrases could not bind a woman's heart, where that heart was free, or called some other man its lord. Yet the bare fact remained, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... marked disrespect; and the latter likewise taxed him with the design of converting the monarchy into a republic, with a regent, annually elected, nominally at its head. Against the regency bill he burst into a paroxysm of rage. He exclaimed, "It is a mere mummery, a piece of masquerade buffoonery, formed to burlesque every species of government. A hideous spectre, to which, with Macbeth, we ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... blanket closer, and looked at me, while I stared back as unwinkingly. His face was a mask, but I thought—as I have thought before and since when at the council fire—that there was amusement in the very blankness of his gaze, and that my effort to outdo him at his own mummery somewhat taxed his gravity. When he spoke at last he ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... children, who see his pictures at a distance, sometimes take them for realities: and the Sophist pretends to know all things, and he, too, can deceive young men, who are still at a distance from the truth, not through their eyes, but through their ears, by the mummery of words, and induce them to believe him. But as they grow older, and come into contact with realities, they learn by experience the futility of his pretensions. The Sophist, then, has not real knowledge; he is only an imitator, ...
— Sophist • Plato
... "It's impertinence and mummery," repeated de Peyster, "I'll have that man Doran tied to a cannon and lashed on his ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in the Compter about a week, on the 4th of February, Bonner came to degrade him, bringing with him such ornaments as appertained to the massing mummery; but the Doctor refused these trappings till they were ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... time in the future. He asked if any would like to know what the Emperor of the East was doing now? The sparkling eyes and the delighted rubbing of hands made eloquent answer—this reverend crowd would like to know what that monarch was at, just as this moment. The fraud went through some more mummery, and then made ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to town, and find your letter, with the notification of Lord Cowper's marriage; I recollect that I ought to be sorry for it, as you will probably lose an old friend. The approaching death of the Pope will be an event of no consequence. That old mummery is near its conclusion, at least as a political object. The history of the latter Popes will be no more read than that of the last Constantinopolitan Emperors. Wilkes is a more conspicuous personage in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... incessantly by some hidden hand, forced into playing parts they did not want to play, saying words they had no wish to speak, cutting antics for which they had no aptitude or liking. Cruelties lurked everywhere, waiting in the confused mummery. Reality was being left and with it the practical grasp of those powerful simplicities that alone can guide life through confusion. I felt this with stinging certainty. Everyone seemed playing a part, goaded with the urgency of seeking an ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... rights vindicated? Look at the series of penal statutes, the most bloody and the most inefficient in the world, at the puerile fictions which make every declaration and every plea unintelligible both to plaintiff and defendant, at the mummery of fines and recoveries, at the chaos of precedents, at the bottomless pit of Chancery. Surely we see the barbarism of the thirteenth century and the highest civilisation of the nineteenth century side by side; and we see that the barbarism belongs to the government, and the civilisation ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to see them run mad after such pernicious absurdities. It was impossible that people could seriously feel any liking for such a ridiculous piece of goods as this outlandish foreign-made Englishman. But he knew very well how it was: it was a miserable piece of mummery that was played only in spite of him. But God for ever blast his soul, if he were not bitterly ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... levelled pikes, but at a motion from the Seigneur his men fell back before them, and, making a lane, disclosed Michel de la Foret at the end of it. Michel had not approved of Lempriere's mummery of defence, but he understood from what good spirit it sprung, and how it flattered the Seigneur's vanity to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... drew in their breath, and gazed steadfastly at the speaker. To hear of sin and the cross was not new to them, for they had been at churches sometimes at holy days; but it was all a mummery and spectacle, with which the priests alone seemed to have to do. The truths now uttered were assuredly gaining some ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston
... a world of gnomes and hob-goblins, of ghouls and of laughing angels. The realist of the Thackeray School finds nothing but monstrous exaggeration here—and fantastic mummery. If he were right, par-dieu! If his sleek "reality" were all that there was—"alarum!" We were indeed "betrayed"! But no; the children are right. Dickens is right. Neither "realist" or "psychologist" hits the mark, when it comes to the true diablerie of living people. There is something more ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys |
