"Portcullis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... far under ground-level, before we got to the cutting on the mountain wall, and it must have been under ground-level for many centuries. They dug deep down, to make the tomb, and then covered up the entrance with earth. When Corkran got to his portcullis, he thought he'd reached the reward of his labours. Well—so he had—the punishment. Here's the heap of stone he used as a fulcrum for his lever. The heap tumbled when he was on the other side, and the slab of rock came down to trap ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... has the appearance of being composed of immense white scallop-shells, with heavy corbels of rich flowers and bunches of grapes suspended at their points of junction. The ornamental emblem of the Tudor rose and portcullis is carved in every conceivable spot and nook. Twenty-four stately and richly painted windows, divided into the strong vertical lines of the Perpendicular style, and crossed at right angles by lighter transoms and more delicate circular moldings, with the great ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... its front. The old bindings had obviously been retouched and regilt in the most approved manner; the new, when the books were of any mark, were rich, but never gaudy—a large proportion of blue morocco—all stamped with his device of the portcullis, and its motto, clausus tutus ero—being an anagram of his name in Latin. Every case and shelf was accurately lettered, and the works arranged systematically; history and biography on one side—poetry and the drama on another—law books and dictionaries ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... must be done circumspectly, insidiously, a bit apologetically, pianissimo; there must be no flaunting of unusual ideas, no bold prancing of an unaccustomed personality. Above all, it must be done without exciting fear, lest the portcullis fall and the whole enterprise go to pot. Above all, the manner of a Jenkins ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... front of us, but looking as if we could throw a stone to strike any man upon it, another crest just like our own bowed around to meet it; but failed by reason of two narrow clefts of which we could only see the brink. One of these clefts was the Doone-gate, with a portcullis of rock above it, and the other was the chasm by which I had once made entrance. Betwixt them, where the hills fell back, as in a perfect oval, traversed by the winding water, lay a bright green valley, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... narrow bridge across the chasm, while what I had first thought to be rugged piles of rock took the form of grim battlements and towers, rising so straight from the edge of the rock that I had thought them a part of it. Across the bridge frowned an angry portcullis. As the place stood, it looked as if one man could hold it against a thousand, so unapproachable did it seem. On our side the bridge, on the mainland, was a large courtyard or barrack, with an outer wall and moat round it, of itself no easy place to carry; and when, ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... appeared suddenly at the gates with half a score of men. He raised a warning hand, which compelled the Lord Giovanni to pause; then he rasped out a brisk command to his followers. The winches creaked, and the drawbridge swung up even as with a clank and rattle of chains the portcullis fell. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... the forts — Grimeston in front closely guarded by the Spanish captain — it was seen by the assailants that Redhead had kept his word: the drawbridge across the moat was down and the portcullis was up. Within the fort Lord Willoughby, Vere, and two thousand men were waiting for them. When about fifty had crossed the drawbridge the portcullis was suddenly let fall and the drawbridge hauled up. As the portcullis ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... between the houses. As the traveller put foot on the drawbridge he felt as though he were a petty trader or wandering minstrel, or some other figure of the Middle Ages, entering for a few hours' traffic or a noon-day's rest, and when he paused under the low arch of the portcullis-gate, people stared at him as they do at a stranger in little far-off towns. Once inside, he turned into a street, and was immediately obliged to step into a door-way, for a man leading a horse was approaching, and they needed all its breadth. ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... the mighty rock, which sparkled all over with crystals, he found a narrow bridge, defended by gates and portcullis and towers with loopholes. But the gates stood wide open, and were dropping from their great hinges; the portcullis was eaten away with rust, and clung to the grooves evidently immovable; while the loopholed towers had neither floor nor roof, and their tops were fast filling up their interiors. ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... was really a castle,—not simply a country mansion so called, but a stone edifice with battlements and a round tower at one corner, and a gate which looked as if it might have had a portcullis, and narrow windows in a portion of it, and a cannon mounted upon a low roof, and an excavation called the moat,—but which was now a fantastic and somewhat picturesque garden,—running round two sides of ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Albert made arrangements to leave his castle to engage in the perilous holy war against the Saracens, from which few ever returned. A few years were employed in the necessary preparations. At the sound of the bugle the portcullis was raised, the drawbridge spanned the moat, and Albert, at the head of thirty steel-clad warriors, with nodding plumes, and banners unfurled, emerged from the castle, and proceeded to the neighboring convent of Mari. His wife, Hedwige, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... turned his horse's head and fled. Owain pursued him, and followed close upon him, although he was not near enough to strike him with his sword. Then Owain descried a vast and resplendent castle; and they came to the castle gate. The black knight was allowed to enter, but the portcullis was let fall upon Owain, and it struck his horse behind the saddle, and cut him in two, and carried away the rowels of the spurs that were upon Owain's heels. And the portcullis descended to the floor. And the rowels of the spurs and part of the horse ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... to the top of the cavern, curled there or passed out into the glen through the briers that dropped like a portcullis. The fagots crackled in the flame, the light danced, the warmth was pleasant. So was the sense of adventure and of solitude a deux. They stretched themselves beside the flame. Alexander produced from his pouch four small red-cheeked ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... formidable in the aspect of Dublin Castle. It has neither a portcullis nor a drawbridge. People go in and out of it as freely as through the City Hall in New York. There is a show of sentries at the main entrance, and in one of the courts this morning the picturesque band of a Scotch regiment was playing to the delectation ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... that she derived from the impregnability of the fortress in which she had found an asylum could preserve her from great and severe suffering. The castle, with its triple ramparts, its wide moat, and its iron portcullis, might indeed defy all human enemies, but it could not exclude famine; and during her sojourn within its walls, which extended over a period of two-and-twenty years, she was compelled to pawn her jewels, and to ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... rank to make suggestions, or I would have suggested that if we went faster we should get by sooner. It seemed to me that it was an ill-judged time to be taking a walk. Just as we were drifting in that suffocating stillness past a great cannon that stood just within a raised portcullis, with nothing between me and it but the moat, a most uncommon jackass in there split the world with his bray, and I fell out of the saddle. Sir Bertrand grabbed me as I went, which was well, for if I had gone to the ground in my armor I could not have gotten up again by myself. The English warders ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... the northern base of the pillars, we find a very beautiful alabaster monument (11), with the effigy of Sir John Cheyney (died 1509) clad in military garb, and wearing the collar of SS. with the portcullis badge of Henry VII. suspended therefrom. Sir John Cheyney was the standard-bearer of Henry of Richmond at Bosworth Field. To quote from Hall's "Chronicle"—"King Richard set on so sharply at the first brount ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... building of considerable pretensions, erected on piles close to the edge of the water, above which it rose with a somewhat sombre and gloomy aspect. Not a window could be seen on the lower story, and the only entrance, which had the appearance of a gateway, with a portcullis, looked towards the mainland, to which access was obtained by a drawbridge, lowered and raised by two heavy chains. A broad veranda ran round the building above the ground-floor, on which the windows, unusually narrow, opened. From the part of the veranda above the entrance of the gate, ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... on each side riding on a broomstick, and the devil looking on from the mouth of an alligator, sir.[32] Odd, I think; interesting. Then the corners may be turned by octagonal towers, like the center one in Kenilworth Castle; with Gothic doors, portcullis, and all, quite perfect; with cross slits for arrows, battlements for musketry, machicolations for boiling lead, and a room at the top for drying plums; and the conservatory at the bottom, sir, with Virginian creepers up the towers; door supported ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... into the boats, and regained the town, and Joan and her brave comrades covered their retreat. The Burgundians were coming up in mass upon Compiegne, and Flavy gave orders to pull up the draw-bridge and let down the portcullis. Joan and some of her following lingered outside, still fighting. She wore a rich surcoat and a red sash, and all the efforts of the Burgundians were directed against her. Twenty men thronged round her horse; and a Picard archer, "a tough fellow and mighty sour," seized her by ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... with their long train, soldiers, ecclesiastics, women, and children, they saw a galloping band of Arabs in pursuit. The archbishop bade them turn instantly into a deserted castle they were just passing, to drop the portcullis and man the walls. That they might look as numerous as possible, he bade all the women dress themselves like men and tie their long hair beneath their chins to resemble beards. He then put helmets on their ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... stronghold after the Norman Conquest, when the Earls of Chester were lords of the place. In the fourteenth century it was fortified with walls of great height and thickness, three miles in circuit and strengthened by thirty-two towers, each of the twelve gates being defended by a portcullis. A parliament was held at Coventry by Henry VI., and Henry VII. was heartily welcomed there after Bosworth Field; while the town was also a favorite residence of Edward the Black Prince. Among the many places of captivity for Mary Queen of Scots Coventry also figures; ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... water ran out as it came in, without refreshing or doing him any good! How it could have happened was quite a mystery to me, till I returned with him to the town gate. There I saw that when I rushed in pell-mell with the flying enemy, they had dropped the portcullis (a heavy falling door, with sharp spikes at the bottom, let down suddenly to prevent the entrance of an enemy into a fortified town) unperceived by me, which had totally cut off his hind part, that still lay quivering on the outside of the gate. It would have been an irreparable loss, had not our ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... rock fell away almost sheer from the castle walls, whilst on the other two a deep moat had been dug, which was fed by small mountain rivulets that never ran dry; and the entrance was commanded by a drawbridge, whose frowning portcullis was kept by a grim warder looking fully equal to the office ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the command of the portcullis guard from two till five to-morrow morning. A lantern hung up on the bridge of Hornos to advise me of your approach—a password between us—and your presence. I presume your Excellency will not yield to any one ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... and I reached the gates, we found that Cecil and Lord Rutland were holding a consultation through the parley-window. The portcullis was still down, and the gates were closed; but soon the portcullis was raised, a postern was opened from within, and Sir William entered the castle with two score ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... indeed!—something to call a castle!—with its huge square tower at every corner, and its still huger two towers in the middle of its front, its moat, and the causeway where once had been its drawbridge!—Yes! there were the spikes of the portcullis, sticking down from the top of the gateway, like the long upper teeth of a giant or ogre! That was a real castle—such as he had read of in books, such as he had ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the Castle, and he looked up suddenly as he was conscious of a clang of arms and a confused medley of voices, not in very peaceful tones, breaking in upon his meditations. He now perceived that the drawbridge was thronged with armed men, the portcullis drawn up, and the courtyard beyond full of ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... narrow ledge of rock led to the ditch, now dry, and nearly filled with fragments from the ruins. He passed the tottering arch of the portcullis;—long weeds choked up the entrance, waving drearily as the light breeze went over them. Hildebrand heard not the moan of the coming blast. Evening approached, and the thousand shadows haunted him,—grim spectres that ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... said, handing the candle to the stranger, "and turn sharp to the right, and then to the left, and you will come to an iron door, which rises and falls like a portcullis. The handle is of no use, but on the ceiling you will see the motto, 'Nil desperandum,' which you must take as counsel offered to yourself. Press the space in the centre of the D, and the ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... officer appointed to render the proper salutes, acted as chief mourner, surrounded by weeping mourners, who made the ruins of Janina echo with their lamentations. The guns were fired at long intervals. The portcullis was raised to admit the procession, and the whole garrison, drawn up to receive it, rendered a military salute. The body, covered with matting, was laid in a grave beside that of Amina. When the grave had been filled in, a priest approached to listen to the supposed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the subject to Charlotte, and found, to my surprise, that she had had the same joys and encountered the same disappointments in this delectable country. She, too, had walked up that road and flattened her nose against that portcullis; and she pointed out something that I had overlooked—to wit, that if you rowed off in a boat to the curly ship, and got hold of a rope, and clambered aboard of her, and swarmed up the mast, and got into the crow's-nest, you could just see over ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... he would glory in our present prospects! 'Tis strange what a strong confidence I have ever had in the destiny of your house. I felt sure that Providence would not desert us. There is no doubt we must have a portcullis.' ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... and Poictiers, and must therefore have seen the primitive forerunner of the modern field-gun in use. The walls of the castle now enclose a grassy quadrangle, to which access is gained through a fine gateway, which still retains its outer iron portcullis. The three others, through which an attacking force was obliged to penetrate, have all disappeared. Although it has been stated that the parliamentary forces under Waller captured Bodiam Castle during the Civil War, it seems to be unlikely that such an attack was ever made; for in March ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... to the archway was suspended a portcullis of wrought-iron bars. This was the real barrier, for, even if the attacking party succeeded in battering down the outer gate, they would find themselves cooped up in the passageway and exposed to missiles ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... according to the position of each side. These moats, or defensive ditches, were crossed by drawbridges. To enter a fortified place in the Middle Ages one had to pass a barbican (i.e. an outwork consisting of a fortified wall along each side of the one way); a drawbridge across the moat; a portcullis or gate of stoutly inter-crossing timbers (set horizontally and vertically with only a small space between any two beams, giving the whole gate the appearance of a large number of small square holes, ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... him in his bodily shape. Anon, he and the hermit buried the good knight Sir Perin, and rode on with the damsel till they came to a great castle, whereinto they were about to enter. But when Sir Balin had passed through the gateway, the portcullis fell behind him suddenly, leaving the damsel on the outer side, with men around her, drawing their swords as if to ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... something other than a happy fastness for those precociously brilliant creatures—creatures whose brilliance is too often the hectic indication of a constitutional unsoundness of mind—who can "get in" before the portcullis of the nineteenth birthday falls. These new educational elements may either grow slowly through the steady and painful pressure of remorseless facts, or, as the effort to evoke the New Republic becomes more conscious and deliberate, they may be rapidly ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... churches they studied fortresses—those of Domfront and Falaise. They admired under the gate the grooves of the portcullis, and, having reached the top, they first saw all the country around them, then the roofs of the houses in the town, the streets intersecting one another, the carts on the square, the women at the washhouse. The wall descended perpendicularly as far as the palisade; and they grew ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... and could take aim from the top of their turrets, or from their loophole windows. The gates had absolute little castles of their own, a moat flowed round the walls full of water, and only capable of being crossed by a drawbridge, behind which the portcullis, a grating armed beneath with spikes, was always ready to drop from the archway of the gate and close up the entrance. The only chance of taking a fortress by direct attack was to fill up the moat with earth and faggots, and then raise ladders against the walls; or else ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... semicircle. Then it ran in a straight line for a short distance, among a grove of young evergreens, towards two dark picturesque towers covered with ivy, crossed a permanent bridge that spanned a ditch, and dashing through a gateway, in which the grooves of the portcullis are yet visible, we alighted in the court ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... permission—bolted and barred and chained against all outside inquisitiveness. The phrase so often used in law books and legal circles is mightily suggestive—every man's house is his castle. As much so as though it had drawbridge, portcullis, redoubt, bastion and armed turret. Even the officer of the law may not enter to serve a writ, except the door be voluntarily opened unto him; burglary, or the invasion of it, a crime so offensive ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... by a lofty turreted wall, of an architecture to which the pilgrim was unaccustomed: gates with drawbridge and portcullis, square towers, and loopholes for the archer. Sentinels, clothed in steel and shining in the sunset, paced, at regular intervals, the cautious wall, and on a lofty tower a standard waved, a snowy standard, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... as all folk know, is a strong Castle, standing as it doth well out to sea, on a mass of solid rock, and connected with the mainland only by one narrow strip of land, which is defended by a drawbridge and portcullis, and walls of solid masonry. Its other sides need no defence, for the wild waters of the Northern Sea beat about them with such fury that it is only at certain times of the tide that even peaceful boatmen can find a safe landing. Indeed, 'tis ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... The medieval aspect is not destroyed by buildings outside the walls, and the medieval atmosphere is undisturbed by hotel touts and postcard vendors. When we presented ourselves before the gate, not a soul was in sight. A bronze cannon of Charles-Quint's time stuck its nose out of the ground by the portcullis. We had to pull off grass and dirt to find the inscription. While we were examining the towers that flanked the gate, a wagon rattled slowly by. The driver did not look at us. A woman with a basket of vegetables on her head ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... Sullen and brown, with crumbling battlements and towers dark among the barren hills, it scowled on the procession sweeping past in the dusty road below. The iron teeth of the portcullis were drawn down over the mouth of the gate; and as a beast crouched on the mountain-side, the fortress guarded its prey. Yet, be the teeth clenched never so fast, they shall be broken and riven asunder; and ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... great prowess and daring bravery. In the year B.C. 562, when serving at the siege of a place called Peh-yang [4], a party of the assailants made their way in at a gate which had purposely been left open, and no sooner were they inside than the portcullis was dropped. Heh was just entering; and catching the massive structure with both his hands, he gradually by dint of main strength raised it and held it up, till his friends had made their escape. ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... opened through a lofty arch in the centre of the curtain into the inner court of the castle. The arms of the family, carved in freestone, frowned over the gateway, and the portal showed the spaces arranged by the architect for lowering the portcullis and raising the drawbridge. A rude farm-gate, made of young fir-trees nailed together, now formed the only safeguard of this once formidable entrance. The esplanade in front of the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... stepped rather aside than forward And welcomed her with his grandest smile; And, mind you, his mother all the while 160 Chilled in the rear, like a wind to Nor'ward; And up, like a weary yawn, with its pullies Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis; And, like a glad sky the north-wind sullies, The lady's face stopped its play, As if her first hair had grown grey; For such things ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... scene is when his rival for the princess' hand, Count Feodor, attacks him between the portcullis and the ruined chapel, armed with a mitrailleuse, a yataghan, and a couple of Siberian bloodhounds. This scene is what runs the best-seller into the twenty-ninth edition before the publisher has had time to draw a check for the ...
— Options • O. Henry
... And all our trumpets blow; And, from the platform, spare ye not To fire a noble salvo-shot: Lord Marmion waits below!" Then to the castle's lower ward Sped forty yeomen tall, The iron-studded gates unbarred, Raised the portcullis' ponderous guard, The lofty palisade unsparred, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... sees only something helpless, childish, weak; something that calls to his compassion; something that appeals powerfully to his conceit in his own strength. And so he is taken before he knows that there is a war. He lifts his portcullis in Christian charity—and the enemy is in ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... derision. Rinaldo remained in the den all night, and next day was taken to a place where a portcullis was lifted up, and the monster rushed forth. He was a mixture of hog and serpent, larger than an ox, and not to be looked at without horror. He had eyes like a traitor, the hands of a man, but clawed, a beard dabbled with blood, a skin of coarse variegated colours, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... hue of age: Fierce he broke forth; "And dar'st thou then To beard the lion in his den, The Douglas in his hall? And hopest thou hence unscathed to go? No, by Saint Bride of Bothwell, no! Up draw-bridge, grooms,—what, warder, ho! Let the portcullis fall." Lord Marmion turned,—well was his need, And dashed the rowels in his steed, Like arrow through the archway sprung; The ponderous grate behind him rung: To pass there was such scanty room, The bars, descending, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... bridge upon arches spans this peculiar ditch, the communication depending upon a double drawbridge and portcullis. Immediately facing the entrance outside the fortress is an old Turkish churchyard, through and above which the closed masonry aqueduct is conducted into the town. Following the course of the aqueduct ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... chains, between her own bedroom and any intruder of human build. To reach her, even in her drawing-room, was like going, as a flag of truce, into a beleaguered fortress; at every sixth step one was stopped by a sort of portcullis. The panic was not confined to the rich; women in the humblest ranks more than once died upon the spot, from the shock attending some suspicious attempts at intrusion upon the part of vagrants, meditating probably nothing worse than a robbery, but whom the ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... to be a most, wonderful house, Louise dear," sighed Lawford. "Do you suppose you can stand it? The front elevation looks like a French chateau of the Middle Ages, and there ought to be a moat and a portcullis to ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... at the foot of the western tower, he reined in his horse. He did not alight, but, approaching so near the wall that he could rest his foot upon an abutment, he stood up, and raised the blind of a window on the ground-floor, made in the form of a portcullis, such as is still seen ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... now, and under the arched gateway, with the portcullis over her head, fitly framing her, stood the tall, gaunt figure of the lady, grayer, thinner, more haggard than when Grisell had last seen her, and beside her, leaning on a crutch, a white-faced boy, small and stunted ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on the King Pellinore. Anon after this Balin and the damosel rode till they came to a castle, and there Balin alighted, and he and the damosel went to go into the castle, and anon as Balin came within the castle's gate the portcullis fell down at his back, and there fell many men about the damosel, and would have slain her. When Balin saw that, he was sore aggrieved, for he might not help the damosel. Then he went up into the tower, and leapt over walls into the ditch, and ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... and adjective in the art of military engineering, and not only twisted you into it and twisted you out of it, to the right, to the left, opposite, under here, over there, in the dark, in the dirt, by the gateway, archway, covered way, dry way, wet way, fosse, portcullis, drawbridge, sluice, squat tower, pierced wall, and heavy battery, but likewise took a fortifying dive under the neighbouring country, and came to the surface three or four miles off, blowing out incomprehensible mounds and ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... others that we are to find the larger and truer happiness of life. Says Jenkin Lloyd Jones, "I would rather live in an alley, stayed all round with human loves, associations and ambitions, than dwell in a palace with drawbridge, moat, and portcullis, apart from the community about me, alienated from my neighbors, unable to share the woes and the joys of those with whom I divide nature's bounty of land and landscape, of air and sky." And along this same line of thinking, Charles ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... lose!" she cried, and seizing Lecour by the arm hurried him into the passage which communicated between the new mansion on land and the ancient one in the lake, while Dominique followed. Half-way across was a decayed wooden door, which once had done duty as a gate behind the portcullis. They shut and bolted this with all speed, and then turned to look round them. The crash of the main door falling and the shout of the mob which followed, penetrated to ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... tapestry representing the adventures of St. George; the mullioned windows had their upper squares filled with glass, bearing the shield of the City of London, that of the Armourers' Company, the rose and portcullis of the King, the pomegranate of Queen Catharine, and other like devices. Others, belonging to the Lancastrian kings, adorned the pendants from the handsome open roof and the front of a gallery for musicians which ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... under the crumbling portcullis, when a deputation of the fishermen approached him. "What are we owing you, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... kept, with Nial Garve, a close prisoner in Dublin Castle. An anonymous pamphleteer celebrated the victories that had been achieved by the lord deputy, giving to his work the title, 'The Overthrow of an Irish Rebel,' having for its frontispiece a tower with portcullis, and the O'Dogherty's head impaled in the central embrazure. The spirit of the narrative may be inferred from the following passage: 'As for Tyrone and Co., or Tyrconnel, they are already fled from their coverts, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... time-scarred walls. The wagon stopped at the great gate. A horn sounded from within, the gate swung open, a drawbridge fell with a hideous creaking of machinery, and we passed in, twenty or thirty feet above the snow-drifted moat. Beyond the portcullis a dim door swung open. Some sort of seneschal met us with a light and led us below the twilight arches, where beyond, I could catch glimpses of the baileys and courts and the donjon tower against the ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... over every step which we took worthy of a diplomatist, we finally stood upon the drawbridge of the castle. Here the savage customs of the rude days in which it was built immediately impress the beholder. Traces remain of the ponderous iron portcullis, heavy wooden bars, arrow-holes, and slits in the masonry for the pouring of boiling water or oil upon adverse knight or lordly freebooter. A steep path leads through two great entrance-gates into the large ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... of cities should mould the temper of the people to their own likeness? S. George, the chivalrous, is champion of Ferrara. His is the marble group above the Cathedral porch, so feudal in its medieval pomp. He and S. Michael are painted in fresco over the south portcullis of the Castle. His lustrous armour gleams with Giorgionesque brilliancy from Dossi's masterpiece in the Pinacoteca. That Ferrara, the only place in Italy where chivalry struck any root, should have had S. George for patron, is ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of last week the portcullis, which hail been placed in the northern gate, and was composed of solid rice paper, with cross-bars of chop-sticks, was much damaged. It is now under repair, and will be coated entirely with tea-chest lead, to render it perfectly impregnable. The whole of the household troops and body-guard ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... she came to the open seashore; a pretty little harbour surrounded with quaint-looking houses; two or three white villas in fertile gardens, on a raised road; and, dominating all the scene, a fine old feudal castle, with keep, battlements, drawbridge, portcullis, and all that becomes ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... VII. we have the celebrated cope of Stoneyhurst, woven in Florence, of a gold tissue, the design raised in crimson velvet. It is without seam, and the composition which covers the whole surface is the crown of England lying on the portcullis; and the Tudor rose fills up the space with a magnificent scroll. The design is evidently English, as well as the embroidery, which is, however, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... unsophisticated Amidon could perceive, now, that the drawbridge was up, the portcullis down, and all the bars and shutters of the castle in place. Moreover, in the outer darkness in which he moved, he imagined there roamed lions and wolves and ravening beasts—and he with no guide but Judge Blodgett, who stands there ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... castle, crossed the moat by the drawbridge, passed through the arched gateway, under the portcullis, the young folks, and indeed the older ones also, gazing at it with much curiosity, and entered a spacious hall, the walls of which were hung with bows and ancient weapons, and armor such as was worn by ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... of the sea the castle rose perpendicularly from the water, the only entrance being by way of a creek, half cave, half boathouse, the entrance to which could at pleasure be barred by a portcullis. This precaution Singleton took, and had the satisfaction of feeling that on its seaboard at least the castle was as secure as if a garrison of a ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... called the sigillum ad causas, used for minor public documents or for private papers authenticated by public authority. This paper bears a seal having the legend "Sigillum ad causas oppidi Rotterodami", encircling an impression of a castle with portcullis, standing on a shore, with a swan swimming in front ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... looking, albeit with a seemingly languid interest, for the coming of the Scots who were such inveterate foes of its successive lords. The principal entrance, however, the Barbican, faces southwards to the town, and here the massive gateway, with portcullis complete, and crowned by quaint life-size figures of warriors in various attitudes of defence, conveys the impression that the huge giant is still alert and on guard. The history of Alnwick is the history of the ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... found themselves in a great arched gate-house—the enormous doors were shut and barred. There was a window in a little room at the bottom of the round turret up which the stair wound, rather larger than the other windows, and looking through it they saw that the drawbridge was up and the portcullis down; the moat looked very wide and deep. Opposite the great door that led to the moat was another great door, with a little door in it. The children went through this, and found themselves in a big courtyard, with the ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... my notion of the right mode of serving her; for any other would be as if a besieging party were to batter a postern by means of boats instead of walking over a lowered drawbridge, and under a raised portcullis. ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... creaked, the bridge sank into its appointed place, and at the same moment the portcullis was heard to wind up with a grating sound. The little troop entered the courtyard through the gateway in ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... situated where Downing Street now is. The park was approached by two noble gates, and until the year 1708 the Cock-pit Gate, which opened into the court where Queen Anne lived, was standing. It was surmounted with lofty towers and battlements, and had a portcullis, and many rich decorations. Westminster Gate, the other entrance, was designed by Hans Holbein, and some foreign architect doubtless erected the Cockpit Gate. The scene of the cruel diversion of cock-fighting was, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the gray rocks, rising sheer and bold and bare, stood the walls and towers of Castle Drachenhausen. A great gate-way, with a heavy iron-pointed portcullis hanging suspended in the dim arch above, yawned blackly upon the bascule or falling drawbridge that spanned a chasm between the blank stone walls and the roadway that winding down the steep rocky ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... the castle is gained by a bridge crossing the moat; this has replaced the old drawbridge and leads to a gatehouse with battlements, a kind of barbican, of two storeys. The passage is vaulted, and has massive doors of oak studded with iron; formerly there was also a portcullis. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... the huge portcullis went, And the draw-bridge over the moat creaking, shrieking, downward bent; On his armor flashed the torch-light, over helmet, cuirass, shield, With its lion d' or couchant ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... remembered the old banker, it was with no self-reproach that he himself was now doing what, in the banker's case, he had held up to Abel's scorn. It was only to remember that the wary old man had shut down the portcullis of the bank vaults, and that loans were getting to be almost impossible. His face darkened. He swore a sharp oath. ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... fortifications are elevated 300 feet from the level of the ocean. The upper is separated from the lower town by a stone wall, which has the form of a horn-work. Through this wall is a gate, [115] which has a guard; the guard-room is opposite the gate, and by means of a portcullis defends the entrance. For the convenience of foot-passengers there is a door [116] near the gate, with wooden stairs, by ascending which you reach the upper town. On the right of the gate is a building which resembles a chapel, [117] ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... high rock, Entrevaux shoots far up into the sky. The river bathes its dark walls, protected by devices dear to the hearts of mediaeval Vaubans. Pepper-castor sentry-boxes jut out over the water; a great drawbridge with portcullis, triple gateway, and neat contrivances for pouring oil and molten lead upon besiegers, alone gives access to the town; while behind the old crowded houses a fortified stairway in the rock leads dizzily up to a stronghold ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... enterprise, proclaim these cities creations of the present day and hour, it is refreshing and restful to go down to quiet St. Augustine, where one may gaze into the dry moat of a fort of medieval architecture, walk over its drawbridges, pass under its portcullis, and go down into its dungeons; and where in soft semi-tropical air the visitor may wander through narrow streets resembling those of Spain and Italy, where the houses on each side lean over toward one another so that ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... told all that he knew of the region, from hearsay and from personal experience. The supposed masked road, the actual rocky ascent covered with felled timber, an abatis, as the colonel called it, the access by water, and the portcullis at the narrows, were objects of great interest to the old soldier. He enquired as to the extent of the means of transportation, the probable numbers of the available force, and other particulars; and, when the weary Squire returned and bade all good people go to rest, if they could ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... thing dying a natural death." Said Philippa:—"I don't believe you want it to"—a construction denounced, we believe, by sensitive grammarians. The Earl let it pass, replying:—"I do not wish it to die a violent death." Her ladyship dropped the portcullis of her mind against a crowd of useless reflections. One was, whether her own relation with this young man's father had died a violent death; and, if so, was she any the worse? The rest were a motley ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Ivaine followed. But he could not quite catch up with the Black Knight, although gaining on him inch by inch. By the time the castle moat was reached, Sir Ivaine was only five feet behind. The horses thundered one after the other over the bridge. The Black Knight rode under the portcullis, or sharp iron gate, which was raised. The instant he was inside, the portcullis fell, in order to shut ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... had been aimed against it. But it was in the civil war that it showed itself in its full force. The weakness of the Crown and the strife of political factions for supremacy left the nobles masters of the field; and the white rose of the House of York, the red rose of the House of Lancaster, the portcullis of the Beauforts, the pied bull of the Nevilles, the bear and ragged staff which Warwick borrowed from the Beauchamps, were seen on hundreds of breasts in Parliament ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... many a neighbouring farm-house owing some of its most solid and ornamental portions to the massive ruins from which they had been borrowed or taken. Still, enough had been left to show that the place had once been a mansion of considerable pretensions. The old gateway, with its portcullis and drawbridge, was still standing, while the moat which surrounded the entire building indicated that it had been originally of very capacious dimensions. The roof and most of the walls had long since disappeared; ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... mould the temper of the people to their own likeness? St. George, the chivalrous, is champion of Ferrara. His is the marble group above the cathedral porch, so feudal in its mediaeval pomp. He and St. Michael are painted in fresco over the south portcullis of the castle. His lustrous armor gleams with Giorgionesque brilliancy from Dossi's masterpiece in the Pinacoteca. That Ferrara, the only place in Italy where chivalry struck any root, should have had St. George for patron, is at ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... this white and rose castle, with its towers and donjon and keep; it sank at the thought that he, poor old unpretentious Peter Davenant, with no social or personal passports of any kind, must force his way over drawbridge and beneath portcullis—or whatever else might be the method of entering a feudal pile—into the presence of the chatelaine whose abode here must be that of some legendary princess, and bend her to his will. Stray memories came to him of ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... dismounted, and entered cautiously, expecting to find darkness as thick as what they had left outside. But they had only gone a few steps when they were nearly blinded by a sudden blaze of light, which seemed to proceed from a sort of portcullis door, which barred the ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... work. The exterior walls had in no way suffered, and the shell of the central building had so far resisted the fire, that it was not necessary to rebuild it. The roof and floors had been replaced, and the defences considerably strengthened. A portcullis had been placed above the door; so that, in case of the outer wall being carried, or the gate forced, it could at once be lowered. A projecting battlement had been thrown out over this, with openings below, through which boiling lead and pitch could be poured on an enemy trying to ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... contained no dynamite, but they always parted with their dilapidated hats as if they never, in the nature of things, could hope to see them again, and the very contact of their persons with the benches evoked an uncontrollable wail, which seemed to say: "It is all up with us now! Let the portcullis fall!" ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... be, on the whole, termed independent, a circumstance peculiarly galling to Caleb, who had been wont to exercise over them the same sweeping authority in levying contributions which was exercised in former times in England, when "the royal purveyors, sallying forth from under the Gothic portcullis to purchase provisions with power and prerogative, instead of money, brought home the plunder of an hundred markets, and all that could be seized from a flying and hiding country, and deposited their spoil in an ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... striking device (page 88), which is thus described: Serpent biting his tail, coiled twice round the wrist of a hand issuing from the clouds and holding a wand from which springs two laurel branches, and which is surmounted by a portcullis (the Westminster Arms); in the last coil of the serpent the word "Prudentia." Equally distinct is the mark of Felix Kingston, or Kyngston, who printed a very large number of books from 1597 to 1640; in this device we have the sun shining on the Parnassus, and a laurel tree between the two ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... else you can think of belonging to castles—even the holes they used to pour boiling lead through into the eyes of besiegers when they tried to squint up to see how strong the garrison was in the keep—and the little slits they shot arrows through, and the mouldering remains of the portcullis. We went up the eight towers, every single one of them, and some parts were jolly dangerous, I can tell you. Dicky and I would not let H.O. and Noel come up the dangerous parts. There was no lasting ill-feeling about this. By the time we had had ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... to show that the engineers who designed it were acquainted even with the art of fortification as developed in the seventeenth century by Vauban. It is simply an old feudal castle, with moat, drawbridge, and portcullis, built after the model of medieval strongholds before heavy siege-ordnance came into general use. The idea that it could have done any serious damage to Admiral Sampson's fleet seems absolutely ludicrous when one has explored the interior of it and taken stock of its antiquated, not to say obsolete ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... arms and fled, a few only fighting stoutly until overpowered. As soon as the skirmish was over the keys were brought out from the guard- room, and the gate unlocked and the massive bars taken down. In the meantime some of the men-at-arms had run up on to the wall, hoisted the portcullis, and lowered the drawbridge across the fosse. As soon as they returned and mounted the party rode through. As they did so, four men ran out from a lane near the wall and followed them; and Guy at once recognized in them the archer and his three companions. Greatly pleased, ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... radiating from it. Behind the wall were tall slate roofs mossed with silver, a chapel belfry, the top of a keep. A moat filled with wild shrubs and brambles surrounded the place; the drawbridge had been replaced by a stone arch, and the portcullis by an iron gate. I stood for a long time on the hither side of the moat, gazing about me, and letting the influence of the place sink in. I said to myself: "If I wait long enough, the guardian will turn up and show me the tombs—" and I rather hoped he wouldn't ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... pursued him, and followed close upon him, although he was not near enough to strike him with his sword. Thereupon Owain descried a vast and resplendent Castle. And they came to the Castle gate. And the black Knight was allowed to enter, and the portcullis was let fall upon Owain; and it struck his horse behind the saddle, and cut him in two, and carried away the rowels of the spurs that were upon Owain's heels. And the portcullis descended to the floor. And the rowels of the spurs and part ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... was low when they came before the walls of Canalise, and passing beneath grim portcullis and through frowning gateway, with ring and tramp, crossed the wide market square a-throng with jostling townsfolk, who laughed and pointed, cheered and hooted, staring amain at Jocelyn in his threadbare motley; but Yolande, fronting all eyes ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... all sorts of curious ways are discoverable by the mere wood-lounger. At one time your way is barred by the great portcullis of the strong threaded web of the field spider, who sits like a porter in king's livery of black and gold at his gate. Then you have a peep into the winding maelstroem-funnel of another of the spider family. Poe must have suffered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... little desire to call general attention to it, that they made the joints fine and close to that degree that they escaped the attention of all men until 1865 A.D. The answer came from the diagonal joints themselves, on discovering that the stone between them was opposite to the butt end of the portcullis of the first ascending passage, or to the hole whence the prismatic stone of concealment through 3000 years had dropped out almost before Al Mamoun's eyes. Here, therefore, was a secret sign in the pavement of the entrance-passage, appreciable only to a careful eye and a measurement by angle, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... of the building very closely, for, observing his hesitation, the two guards prodded him vindictively with the points of their knives, and pushed him before them through the massive stone gateway, which was protected by a strong portcullis at either end, as well as an iron double door between, strong enough to turn rifle bullets. Frobisher now realised that even if he had succeeded in sinking all the junks and reaching the gate of the fort his difficulties would only have begun, and that his plan of blowing in the gates with powder ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... the drawbridge over the ancient moat and entered the castle gate. The light above it revealed the ghastly, iron-toothed portcullis, that looked ready to fall and impale any audacious passenger under its impending fangs. And they entered the old paved courtyard and crossed over to the main entrance of ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... swung into the narrow way and soon accomplished the ascent. Passing under a portcullis as mediaeval as that of any Rhenish castle, they stopped in an ancient, stone-flagged courtyard. On every side, thronging about them, they met the vengeful, scowling eyes of men in a frenzy of fear and hate, while a growling murmur of resentment greeted their ears as the mob ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... time to return from the donjon, than D'Artagnan placed himself in ambuscade close to the Rue du Petit-Muse, so as to see every one who might leave the gates of the Bastille. After he had spent an hour on the look-out from the "Golden Portcullis," under the pent-house of which he could keep himself a little in the shade, D'Artagnan observed a soldier leave the Bastille. This was, indeed, the surest indication he could possibly have wished for, as every jailer or warder has certain ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... had been reared, partly in a mediaeval mansion, with a portcullis and four squat towers, near the Chateau d'Arques, and partly in Paris, where the lady had a fine house in the Marais. The sisters had never looked upon each other's faces, Angela having entered upon the troubled scene after ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... self-respect and dignity must be carefully preserved; and he wrote to the Assembly of Massachusetts to say that it would be impossible for him longer to act as its agent. From that time he never attended the levee of a minister. The portcullis had dropped; the days of his service ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... (a good baronial name) cap-a-pie at the barbacan gate, his lance in rest, and his visor down, like Sir Boucicault, or the Lord de Roye, or the doughtiest of Froissart's heroes. A long white-washed mud wall, with green folding gates, began somewhat to cool our Gothic enthusiasm—. "Perhaps the portcullis was destroyed at the Revolution." A bell hung at the gate. "Pshaw, it ought at least to have been a bugle-horn." When we had rung, instead of sounding a blast, not a dwarf, but a slipshod dirty girl, not much bigger, opened the door cautiously. "Il ne faut pas entrer: Monsieur ne ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... and which has a blade above ready to fall and strike and catch, and which is suddenly released whenever anything, however gently, comes in contact with the spring. In like fashion, beneath the gate there were two springs connected with a portcullis up above, edged with iron and very sharp. If anything stepped upon this contrivance the gate descended from above, and whoever below was struck by the gate was caught and mangled. Precisely in the middle the passage ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... what looked like a big reformatory or hospital. I believe it had been a home for destitute children. There were sentries at the gate and massive concentric circles of barbed wire through which we passed under an arch that was let down like a portcullis at nightfall. The lieutenant showed his permit, and we ran the car into a brick-paved yard and marched through a lot more sentries to the ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... from his keep on the forest-bound gazed: The drawbridge was down, the portcullis was raised: And true to his hope came the palfrey amain, With his only loved lady, who checked ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... loading or unloading the big vans, or clustered about the commissariat motors while hams and quarters of beef were handed out. As we approached Verdun the cannonade had grown louder again; and when we reached the walls of the town and passed under the iron teeth of the portcullis we felt ourselves in one of the last outposts of a mighty line of defense. The desolation of Verdun is as impressive as the feverish activity of Chalons. The civil population was evacuated in September, and only a small percentage have returned. Nine-tenths of the shops are closed, and as the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... up of the Wantsum. Ships as they passed lowered their top-sails to do it reverence. Under Henry VIII. a small wooden pier was thrown out to protect the fishing boats; and about the same time, as part of the general scheme of coast defence inaugurated by the king, a gate and portcullis were erected to close the gap seaward, in case of invasion. The archway and portcullis groove remain to this day, with an inscription recording their repair in 1795 by Sir John Henniker. The railway ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... took as an affront to the King, and, leaping from his enormous black charger, he approached the portcullis and with his hand tore the ponderous thing from its sockets and ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... visible. As we leaned easily upon the giant parapet of the Admiralty Pier, watching the tireless waves dance to the cappriccio of wind and sun, there was but little evidence to show that the portcullis, recently hoist, had for four years been down. Under the shadow of the Shakespeare Cliff the busy traffic of impatient Peace fretted as heretofore. The bristling sentinels were gone: no craft sang through the empty air: no desperate ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... tongue's use is to me no more Than an unstringed viol or a harp, Or like a cunning instrument cased up, Or, being open, put into his hands That knows no touch to tune the harmony; Within my mouth you have engaoled my tongue, Doubly portcullis'd with my teeth and lips, And dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance Is made my gaoler to attend on me. I am too old to fawn upon a nurse, Too far in years to be a ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... the varlets lower the draw-bridge and raise the portcullis. Order pasties and souse-fish and a butt of malmsey; see the great hall is properly decored for my Lord Bishop of Carisbury, who will take his ambigue and bait ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... ancient, and yet more devastated by time than the former one. The arcade has fallen in, and it requires some attention to reinstate it. This gate formed three entrances. The two side ways were probably intended for pedestrians; the one in the middle was closed by means of a portcullis sliding in a groove, still visible, but covered with stucco. As the portcullis, in descending, would have, thrown down this coating, we must infer that at the time of the eruption it had not been in use for a long while, Pompeii having ceased to ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... was halted by the guard. An officer with a lantern stepped out upon the lowered portcullis. The lieutenant who had captured them ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... for the generals Renzo di Ceri and Orazio Baglioni were wounding and slaughtering everybody who abandoned the defence of the walls. [5] By the time we had reached the great gate, part of the foemen had already entered Rome, and we had them in our rear. The castellan had ordered the portcullis to be lowered, in order to do which they cleared a little space, and this enabled us four to get inside. On the instant that I entered, the captain Pallone de' Medici claimed me as being of the Papal household, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... was a narrow path cut on the side of the mountain, yawning precipice below and inaccessible rocks above, and this narrow way was at every two miles blocked up by a guard-house built upon it, and through the portcullis of which it would be necessary to force a way. And here we were, thousands of miles away from civilized life, in the heart of a country uninhabited except by occasional bands of Indians. At last we filed through the last of the guard-houses, and found ourselves ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... Hotel Dieu at Paris, cellars open on the level of the water, paved basements in whose depths of prison twilight stone steps could be seen; and on going out through the Porte Guillaume across a little humpbacked bridge, under the archway still showing the groove in which the portcullis had worked which was let down of yore to defend this side of the town, he came upon yet another arm of the river washing the feet of more houses, playing at hide and seek in the courts, musing between walls; and at once he was haunted by the recollection of another ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... is the Bloody Tower, the most picturesque bit of the entire fortress. The old portcullis there is known as the only one in England which is still fit for use. At the side is an ancient and rusty iron ring, which attracted John's attention so much that ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... them from the capital, with two cold fowls, three-quarters of a yard of bread, and a bottle of porter, for Mr. Jorrocks on the journey, and ere another sun went down, the sandy suburbs of Calais saw them toiling towards her ramparts, and rumbling over the drawbridges and under the portcullis, that guard the entrance to her gloomy town. Calais! cold, cheerless, lifeless Calais! Whose soul has ever warmed as it approached thy town? but how many hearts have turned with sickening sorrow from the mirthless tinkling ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... mustering his retainers to bid me welcome? If so, they are a long time about it,—for I have knocked once, twice, three times, and there is no admittance. It is a severe process, too; for, though the original gate, which may have been an iron portcullis for aught I know, has given place to rough boards, the latter are not particularly tender of my knuckles, and, though romance is romance, pain is a fact. So I fold my airy wings for the present, and look about me for a big stone ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... pregnant with evil, and prognosticated nothing less than the day of general doom. The city was in a state of unusual commotion, a report had gained ground that the invader was at hand, some foolish person had caused the massive portcullis of the city gate to be let down, several recruiting parties were parading the streets, two of these she met, and the shrill blasts of a few mounted trumpeters, together with a dense and portentous cloud, which just at the moment spread itself upon the horizon, ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... watching that falcon he heard the portcullis of the castle lifted, with a great noise, and the drawbridge let fall, and therewith there came a lady riding out of the castle very rapidly upon a white mule, and she rode toward where Sir Launcelot ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... were few, and strongly barred. The black and massive arch of the gateway yawned between two huge square towers; and from a yet higher but slender tower on the inner side, the flag gave the "White Bear and Ragged Staff" to the smoky air. Still, under the portal as he entered, hung the grate of the portcullis, and the square court which he saw before him swarmed with the more immediate retainers of the earl, in scarlet jackets, wrought with their chieftain's cognizance. A man of gigantic girth and stature, who officiated as porter, leaning ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... give some new impulse to her half-dreamy sensations, ineffectual as they were to recall her to the cares of a night vigil. A loud crash was the first sound that awoke her; and opening her eyes, and becoming collected, she recognised, in the sharp sound, the grating fall of the portcullis. A shrill horn now winded among the woods, though its sound was scarcely distinguishable among the repressed bellowings of the night winds that seemed to have risen considerably since she had been overcome by her slumber. She was ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... walls. I observed with much interest that the provision for closing the entrances from the street was not swinging doors of wood, but either metal bars, such as we had seen in Tizoc's house, or else a metal grating, that was arranged like a portcullis to slide up and down in a groove; and I attributed the absence of wooden doors less to a desire for stronger barriers than to the comparative recentness of the acquisition of the knowledge of wood-working ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... stalk. It was much used in late buildings as a crest or ornamental finishing to cornices, etc., to which it gave an embattled appearance. Cornices and brackets were frequently ornamented with busts of winged angels called angel-brackets, and angel-corbels. The portcullis and the Tudor rose—both badges of the house of Tudor—also figure prominently among the ornaments of the period. The crockets for the most part partake of the squareness which pervades all the foliage of ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... is girt with walls and towers, which on the land side have been nearly all repaired. The outer gateway stands between two fine old towers, with time-worn heads; twelve paces within it is a second gate, which is machicolated, and has a portcullis; and, within this, on the left hand, on a lofty point of rock, is a very ancient round tower of great strength; commanding a pass subject to every annoyance from the besieged. This fort is believed to be of Saxon origin. The keep stands on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... house; and, but that he knew the place was ten miles off, my father would have thought he was at Redgauntlet Castle. They rode into the outer courtyard, through the muckle faulding yetts, and aneath the auld portcullis; and the whole front of the house was lighted, and there were pipes and fiddles, and as much dancing and deray within as used to be in Sir Robert's house at Pace and Yule, and such high seasons. They lap off, and my ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... has ruined us yet more: The fort's revolted to the emperor; The gates are opened, the portcullis drawn, And deluges of armies from the town Come pouring in: I heard the mighty flaw, When first it broke; the crowding ensigns saw, Which choked the passage; and, what least I feared, The waving arms of Aureng-Zebe appeared, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... paces behind, and offering his hand to Dame Editha, he led her to the group of archers, while Cuthbert, alone, crossed the drawbridge, and entered the portal, the heavy portcullis ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... bathes its shadow in the Rhine had its castle; not inhabited as now by a few rats and owls, nor covered with moss and wallflowers and funguses and creeping ivy. No, no; where the ivy now clusters there grew strong portcullis and bars of steel; where the wallflowers now quiver in the ramparts there were silken banners embroidered with wonderful heraldry; men-at-arms marched where now you shall only see a bank of moss or a hideous black champignon; and ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... likely that we should be besieged by any force having guns, and I let the matter remain until the tenants should be better off and we could spend our money on such work. However, it is too late now to think of that. I suppose there is a portcullis ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... left knee slightly, folds his arms and speaks. "Burned Marmion's swarthy cheek like fire." Little wonder! If Perry Thomas spoke to me like that I'd cleave his head. But Marmion spares proud Angus. He beards the Doogulus in his hall. He dashes the rowels in his steed, dodges the portcullis, and gallops over the draw. And Perry Thomas is left standing with folded arms, gazing through the chalk-dust haze into the solemn, wide open eyes of the ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... of the title page has a square enclosed by double lines containing the Norfolk arms, a lion rampant, holding a shield in his paws, on which is another lion, a cut which also appears on the title of The Introductory. There is a full page cut of the royal arms with portcullis, &c., on the back, followed by five pages of Table. The preface to his patron, in English,——together with a Latin dedication to Bishop Veysy, in parallel columns,——begins on the verso of signature A iiii, under a cut of the author presenting his book to him, the same as that ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... but the highly finished and intricate marqueterie and carving would seem to prove that Italian or German craftsmen had executed the work. It should be carefully examined as a very interesting specimen. The Tudor arms, the rose and portcullis, are inlaid on the stand. The arched panels in the folding doors, and at the ends of the cabinet are in high relief, representing battle scenes, and bear some resemblance to Holbein's style. The general arrangement of the design reminds one of a Roman triumphal arch. The woods employed ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... never be placed but on argent, or argent but on or, that illegitimacy should be denoted by a lozenge, and widowhood by a bend, the new science would be just as good as the old science, because both the new and the old would be good for nothing. The mummery of Portcullis and Rouge Dragon, as it has no other value than that which caprice has assigned to it, may well submit to any laws which caprice may impose on it. But it is not so with that great imitative art, to the power ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the most valuable relics of early domestic architecture in England," dates from the reign of Edward II. It underwent both restoration and extension in the days of Elizabeth, and has been considerably modified since. The porch (containing a portcullis groove), hall, and kitchen are part of the original fabric. A room in the first floor, with a window of reticulated tracery, is believed to have been the chapel. The place is, of course, closely ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... PORTCULLIS. A heavy frame of wooden or iron bars, sliding in vertical grooves within the masonry over the gateway of a fortified town, to be lowered for barring the passage. When hastily made, it was termed ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Augsburg, Regensburg, and perhaps, above all, Nuernberg, represented the high-water mark of mediaeval civilization as regards town life. On entering the burg, should it have happened to be in time of peace and in daylight, the stranger would clear the drawbridge and the portcullis without much challenge; passing along streets lined with the houses and shops of the burghers, in whose open frontages the master and his apprentices and gesellen plied their trades, discussing eagerly over their work the politics of the town, and at this period probably the theological ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... and for a time surveyed the fortress with careful eye. Before him lay a moat full sixty feet across and two thirds full of water, with no means of passage save the drawbridge, that hung so high on its chains as to seem almost against the outer portcullis. From the farther edge the wall rose solid and grim, and, as he knew from Sir John, with no opening in all its circuit save ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... immediately preparations were made for the admission of the Scots. As the enraptured Edwin heard the heavy chains of the portcullis drawn up, and the massy bolts of the huge doors grating in their guards, he thought of his mother's liberty, of his father's joy, in pressing her again in his arms; and hastening to the tower where Lord Ruthven held watch over the now sleeping De ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... to have extended 1150 feet on the east and west, 760 feet on the north, and 480 feet on the south. There were great towers at the angles and entrance gateways on the north and at the south-east angle. In the centre of the north wall is the portcullis entrance gatehouse. The front wall is almost entire, and the upper floor window is crossed by the corbels which carried the movable wooden hoarding that was erected over the gateway when required for its defence.[447] At the western extremity of the north enclosing wall there is a large ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... upheaval in resentment and a firebrand applied to them all. The old English mansion has its cellars, but never an oubliette, its porch-door always open to welcome a neighbour and to relieve the indigent. It was not insulated by a dyke, and its doors clenched with a portcullis. The spoils of the chase were not a drove of "lifted" cattle taken from a peasant left stark upon his threshold, but foxes' masks and the antlers of deer. The pigeons coo about the English gables and the peacock ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... bet a doughnut their ears are glued to their doors. What ho! Somebody's at the portcullis. Probably the padre, ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... Dawn on brighter fields afar Has walked among the daisies, and has breathed The glory of the mountain winds, and sheathed The stubborn sword of Night's last-shining star. In Bathrolaire when Day's old doors unbar The motley mask, fantastically wreathed, Pass through a strong portcullis brazen teethed, And enter glowing mines of cinnabar. Stupendous prisons shut them out from day, Gratings and caves and rayless catacombs, And the unrelenting rack and tourniquet Grind death in cells where jetting gaslight gloams, And ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... (closure) 261. interference, interposition; obtrusion; discouragement, discountenance. impediment, let, obstacle, obstruction, knot, knag^; check, hitch, contretemps, screw loose, grit in the oil. bar, stile, barrier; [barrier to vehicles] turnstile, turnpike; gate, portcullis. beaver dam; trocha^; barricade &c (defense) 717; wall, dead wall, sea wall, levee breakwater, groyne^; bulkhead, block, buffer; stopper &c 263; boom, dam, weir, burrock^. drawback, objection; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget |
